Introduction 7
themselves.^28 Much has been done on ritual in late medieval Italy, but not
in high medieval Italy.^29 I hope this chapter will break some ground in that
direction. Processions, candle offerings, and bell ringing dominated the ritual
expressions of public life in the Italian republics. Such ceremonies claimed a
public space for the city’s ‘‘natural’’ unit, the family, shaped the social order-
ing of neighborhoods, and finally gave identity to the city itself. Rituals made
tangible the patterns and orderings of urban life. In them, the city spoke
to itself about its composition, its sources of authority and power, and its
boundaries.
Italian urban piety produced a peculiar kind of holiness. The final chapter
of Partifocuses on the most distinctive spiritual characteristic of the com-
munes, their lay saints. Medieval ‘‘sanctity’’ has also been the object of much
historical and anthropological study in recent years. So, too, the urban con-
text of medieval Italian saints is now getting the attention it deserves.^30 Still,
the towering figure of Saint Francis of Assisi—and his order—so dominate
the landscape that we easily forget that he exemplified a common lay style
of holiness.^31 The holy men and women of the cities deserve a portrait in
their own right because they represent the holiness venerated by their con-
temporaries. The saints are not a stand-in for ordinary lay piety. First, they
were saints and, by that standard, exceptional. There is no question that a
certain, more or less sizable, proportion of the lay population was not pious
at all and perhaps even religiously indifferent.^32 Second, with a couple of
exceptions, the saints were very much influenced by traditional monastic
asceticism and so distanced themselves from many aspects of ordinary life,
such as children and marriage. The exceptions include Saint Facio of Crem-
ona, Saint Pietro Pettinaio of Siena, and Saint Omobono of Cremona. As-
cetic as they were, they did not become full-fledged penitents. The lay saints
were above all good neighbors, exceptional principally in the intensity with
which they lived the common religiosity. The women saints did not enter
cloisters or join organized religious orders. The men practiced worldly pro-
fessions or dedicated themselves to organized charity. Even hermits, like
- Enrico Cattaneo, ‘‘Il battistero in Italia dopo il Mille,’’Miscellanea Gilles Ge ́rard Meersseman,ed.
Michele Maccarrone et al. (Padua: Antenore, 1970 ), 1 : 182. - See, e.g., Trexler,Public Life;E. Muir,Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice(Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1981 ); and Ronald F. E. Weissman,Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence(New York:
Academic Press, 1982 ). - See Paolo Golinelli, ‘‘Agiografia e storia in studi recenti: Appunti e note per una discussione,’’
Societa`e storia 19 ( 1983 ): 109 – 200 (with bibliography, 277 – 303 ); Sophia Boesch Gajano, ‘‘Il culto dei santi:
Filologia, antropologia e storia,’’Studi storici 23 ( 1982 ): 119 – 32 ; and Vauchez,Laity in the Middle Ages, 51 – 72. - On Francis and his movement, seeGli studi francescani dal dopoguerra ad oggi,ed. Francesco Santi
(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1993 ). - At least that was the opinion of the six mendicant preachers studied in Alexander Murray’s
‘‘Piety and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century Italy,’’Popular Belief and Practice: Papers Read at the Ninth Summer
Meeting and the Tenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society,ed. G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker,
Studies in Church History, 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972 ), 83 – 106 , but then few
moralizers underestimate the prevalence of sin.