184 LaCitadeSancta
set up as an anchoress at the house of a relative. Only later did observers
recognize her freelance holiness; the Vallombrosan nuns at Florence invited
the conversa to become their abbess.^27 Umiliana dei Cerchi ( 1219 – 41 ) faced
similar problems when she tried to convert. Having entered an arranged
marriage to a usurer at the age of sixteen, she gave the man two children in
five years of marriage. After his death, relatives took in the children because
she wanted to enter monastic life. After rejection by the Poor Clares, she
devoted her life to social service and did penance at home, thereby becoming
the firstpinzocheraof Florence.^28 Communal piety flowered in town; it was
not at home in a monastery.
Nevolone of Faenza (d. 1280 ) practiced the trade of a cobbler until he was
twenty-four, when he felt the call to penance. But he remained married and
devoted to his wife. He expressed his new life by occasional retreats in a
hermitage and regular good works. He still had family responsibilities. His
exercise of full-time mortification had to wait until his wife died. He then set
off on the first of ten pilgrimages to Rome and Santiago de Compostella,
flagellating himself as he walked the roads. At home, he organized the first
flagellant confraternity at Faenza.^29 Otherwise, he spent his days in the pi-
azza among the down-and-out, begging bread for himself and the poor.^30
Nevolone was an independent operator; his decisions and activities betray
no sign of clerical direction or influence.
Sometimes only God could provide laypeople with the freedom to take
up the ascetic life—that is, if they wanted to be penitents and adopt a style
of life patterned in part on a monastic asceticism. Lucchese of Poggibonsi (d.
1260 ) wandered one day by himself in a quiet place. ‘‘He fell to thinking
about the great power, wisdom, and mercy of God in creation, and how
kindly he guides, puts up with, and accepts back sinners; and lest his [Lucch-
ese’s] children would impede him, he, like the similarly encumbered Angela
of Foligno, began to hope they would die.’’^31 He explained all this to his
wife. It moved her to pray with him for a solution. The children promptly
died, the couple sold their superfluous goods, and both entered the state of
penance together. The death of his mother allowed Gerardo of Cagnoli
( 1267 – 1347 ) to take up the penitent’s garb and go on pilgrimage to Rome.^32
- See her life by Biagio of Faenza,Vita [S. Humilitatis Abbatissae], AS 18 (Mayv), 207 – 23.
- Vito of Cortona composed her vita three years after her death:Vita [B. Humilianae],pp. 385 – 402.
For her cult, see Anna Benvenuti Papi, ‘‘Una santa vedova,’’In Castro Poenitentiae, 59 – 98.
29 .Vita Beati Nevoloni,ed. Francesco Lanzoni, 7 , in ‘‘Una vita del beato Nevolone faentino, terziario
francescano,’’AFH 6 ( 1913 ): 647. - Ibid., 4 ,p. 646.
31 .Vita Sancti Lucensis Confessoris,ed. Martino Bertagna, in ‘‘Note e documenti intorno a s. Lucchese,’’
AFH 62 ( 1969 ): 453 : ‘‘cogitare cepit Dei summam potentiam, sapientiam et clementiam in creatione,
gubernatione et benigna peccatorum toleratione et receptione. Et ne vita filiorum ullum foret impedi-
mentum, contra naturam ipsorum mortem cepit appetere.’’ - Bartolomeo Albizzi,Legenda Sancti Gerardi Ordinis Fratrum Minorum,ed. Filippo Rotolo, 1. 6 , in ‘‘La
Leggenda del b. Gerardo Cagnoli, O. Min. ( 1267 – 1342 ) di Fra’ Bartolomeo Albizzi, O. Min. ( 1351 ),’’
Miscellanea Francescana 57 ( 1957 ): 398.