188 LaCitadeSancta
four years.^50 Bricked into a room attached to the local church, she became
an urban hermitess. The arrangement allowed her contact with Mass and
Office through a peephole into the church and contact with neighbors
through a window in the door. Mostinclusaereceived no cult after their
deaths—and thus no vitae. But they were visible saints, a living part of the
religious geography of their cities.^51 For their neighbors, they become spiri-
tual counselors, and for the city, vehicles of prophetic insight into political or
ecclesiastical problems. Florence provides a fine example of such a freelance
holy woman. Verdiana (d. ca. 1240 ) came from a poor family. She refused
marriage and took up a life of penance after a rich relative paid for her
pilgrimage to Santiago.^52 In 1202 , Verdiana convinced the commune of
Castelfiorentino to construct an anchorhold for her at the church of San
Antonio at Florence. During the construction she took off again, on a pil-
grimage to Rome. Verdiana then settled down in the anchorhold back in
Florence. Under a vow of obedience to her local pastor, she lived on her
own. The priest merely heard her confession and brought her Communion.
During her thirty-two years as a hermitess, Verdiana befriended two snakes
from the garden, who came daily to eat with her. She asked and received
special permission from Bishop Ardingo of Florence to keep them. When a
local castellan accidentally killed her pets, she knew she would die, which
she promptly did. Thanks to prophetic insight, she did so fortified by the last
rites.^53 The locals renamed the parish church in her honor. Hers was a
homely sort of piety.
Identifying theSaint
In its very ordinariness or oddness, lay holiness could remain invisible to
those closest to it. Penance could be mistaken for eccentricity or even demen-
tia. Giovanni Pilingotto, with his weird homemade habit of rags and his
predilection for giving away his food and clothing to beggars, received more
contempt than admiration in his hometown. Only on pilgrimage to Rome
at the time of Boniface VIII’s Jubilee Indulgence did a stranger single him
out of the crowd as ‘‘that saint from Urbino.’’^54 His neighbors were never so
sure. Conversely, experiences on pilgrimage might convince a holy man to
seek sanctity at home. Meditation on the Romans’ disrespect for the Vicar
- Tomasso of Bossolasco,Vita [B. Sibyllinae],pp. 68 – 71.
- On this phenomena, see Casagrande,Religiosita`;Mario Sensi,Storie di bizzoche: Tra Umbria e Marche
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1995 ); and Benvenuti Papi, ‘‘Donne religiose,’’ 595 – 97. For the
subordination of these penitents to the mendicants after 1300 , see ibid., 597 – 98. - SeeVita Sancte Viridiane,ed. Olinto Pogni,Vita di S. Verdianan d’incognito autore estratta dal codice latino
trecentesco esistente nella Biblioteca Mediceo Laurentiana di Firenze dal fiorentino monaco Biagio(Empoli: Lambrusch-
ini, 1936 ), 7 – 13 ; there is also a late life by Giocomini of Florence (d. 1420 ), edited inAS 4 (Feb.i), 257 – 61.
53 .Vita Sancte Viridiane, 8 – 10. She seems to have had a special relationship with snakes; one of her
posthumous miracles (ibid., 12 ) includes helping a man vomit up a snake he had swallowed while asleep!
54 .Vita [Sancti Pilingotti Urbinatis], 2. 18 ,p. 148. On the crowds in 1300 , seeAnnales Veteres Mutinenses,
col. 75 , andChronicon Parmense( 1300 ), 80 – 81.