240 BuoniCattolici
to get some clarifications on particulars from the celebrating priest after the
service.^27 With relatively little instruction and effort, decent comprehension
was possible. Even writing simple Latin prose was not beyond the capacity
of laypeople with a modest education. Throughout the communal period lay
Italians composed hymns, prayers, and saints’ lives in Latin ‘‘as if it were a
spoken language.’’^28 The council fathers meeting at Grado in 1296 ordered
that deacons use no fancy or melismatic intonations in their reading of the
Gospel, because ‘‘these impeded the understanding of the hearers and so the
devotion in the minds of the faithful is reduced.’’^29 Note that it is the faithful’s
attention, not the clergy’s, that concerns the council. The fathers restricted
elaborate tones to the chanting of the genealogies of Christ on Christmas and
Epiphany and ‘‘to the first Gospel chanted by a newly ordained deacon.’’
At least some of the simple faithful considered it worth their while to
achieve a working comprehension of the sacred language of the cult. Al-
though a mature woman of secular life at the time she first tried a monastic
vocation, Umilta`of Faenza managed to learn enough Latin to read the
table lessons after she entered the convent of Santa Perpetua at Faenza.
Nevertheless, the choir nuns still considered her anillitterata,unlettered.
When she left Santa Perpetua to lead the life of a penitent, she took a Psalter
with her.^30 The Church expected even illiterate believers to say their daily
prayers in Latin, and they seem to have accomplished this feat. A group of
imprisoned paupers vowed to honor Saint Ranieri of Pisa if he helped them
escape. After chanting the Pater Noster three times in Latin, they fell asleep.
Ranieri appeared to one in a dream and explained how to break out of the
prison. They were to use iron bars from the window to dig through the wall.
The hagiographer considered the dream a miracle; he took it for granted
that the poor wretches could chant their prayers in Latin.^31 In any case, this
was an age of increasing literacy. The father of Saint Venturino of Bergamo
( 1304 – 46 ) personally taught his son to read his Latin devotions, although a
hope that the boy might become a friar may have lain behind the lessons.^32
Paolo of Certaldo, writing in the later 1300 s, considered it normal that boys
learn to read, and read Latin, by the age of seven. He fulminated against all
the women who were learning to read; they should have been learning to
- Tommaso of Celano, ‘‘First Life of St. Francis,’’ 9 ,St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies,
ed. Marion A. Habig (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1972 ), 246 – 47. - As the liturgist Enrico Cattaneo, ‘‘La partecipazione dei laici alla liturgia,’’I laici nella Societas
Christiana, 406 , marvels incredulously. - Grado Council ( 1296 ), 7 ,p. 1166 : ‘‘intellectum audientium impediant vel perturbent, et propter
hoc in mentibus fidelium devotio minuatur.’’ - Biagio of Faenza,Vita [S. Humilitatis Abbatissae], 1. 5 ,p. 208 ; her biographer notes she preached in
Latin: ibid., 3. 30 ,p. 213. Literacy as an orthodox religious phenomenon awaits a study: J. K. Hyde,
Literacy and Its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy,ed. Daniel Waley (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1993 ), treats only secular literacy; Peter Biller and Anne Hudson,Heresy and Literacy, 1000 – 1530
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ), only the topic of their title. - Benincasa of Pisa,Vita [S. Raynerii Pisani], 18. 180 ,p. 379.
32 .Legenda Beati Fratris Venturini Ordinis Praedicatorum,ed. A. Grion,Bergomum 30 ( 1956 ): 40 – 41.