TheCityWorships 241
sew instead. If a girl was to be a nun when she grew up, then let her learn
her Latin letters in the convent.^33 Communal Italy’s women were not all
literate, but they were well on the way.
Hagiographic asides suggest that such precocious Latinity already existed
in the communal period, at least among men. Saint Giovanni of Alverna
learned to read Latin by the age of seven, ‘‘as [was] typical of boys.’’^34 By
the same age, Peter of Verona had already learned enough Latin in school
to argue with his uncle about theology, quoting biblical texts from the Vul-
gate.^35 The father of Ambrogio Sansedoni, knight that he was, hired a man
to teach his son the Latin Psalter, the Office of the Blessed Virgin, and other
prayers. Peter’s father had noticed that the boy constantly interrupted his
mother’s reading of the Psalter, demanding to see what her book con-
tained.^36 So Ambrogio’s mother was literate, if her husband was not. And it
is gratuitous to assume that he could not read. The pious grandmother of
the future Dominican saint Giacomo Salomone bribed him to practice read-
ing. She offered him money to read her the Office of the Blessed Virgin for
a hundred days running. She must have already known the text by heart
herself—and at the end of the contract, so did Giacomo.^37 Laypeople who
could not hold ordinary jobs found work teaching children to read. The
chronicler Salimbene of Parma mentions a Brescian living in Reggio who
lost his wits, became convinced that a famine was coming, and began stock-
piling food. That was the oddity. Salimbene considered it quite unremark-
able that the man supported himself by teaching children to read Latin. He
sang quite nicely, too, and gave chant lessons to laypeople.^38 The city of
Siena considered the teaching of letters important enough to exempt instruc-
tors from service in the municipal militia.^39
The Church’s liturgical Office was the primary duty of the parish priest
and his clerics. He sang it each day, chanting the major Offices of Matins
(composed of Vigils and Lauds), Mass, and Vespers, as well as the minor
hours of Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline.^40 The hours were to be
executed with dignity, without any ‘‘ruckus, movement, chatting, or dissen-
sion.’’ At least until the hour of the solemn Mass, there was to be silence in
the church, unless some civic business or crisis required that it be used for a
meeting.^41 The clergy of Piacenza fined an unordained cleric or priest for
absence from one of the hours: 2 d. for members of collegiate churches and
- Paolo of Certaldo,Libro di buoni costumi,ed. Alfredo Schiaffini (Florence: Vonnier, 1945 ), 155 , pp.
127 – 28.
34 .Acta [B. Joannis Firmani sive Alvernae], 1. 3 ,AS 36 (Aug.ii), 460.
35 .Vita S[ancti] Petri Martyris Ordinis Praedicatorum, 1. 2 ,p. 696. - Gisberto of Alessandria et al.,Vita [B. Ambrosii], 1. 5 – 7 ,p. 182.
37 .Vita [Beati Jacobi Veneti Ordinis Praedicatorum], 1. 1 ,p. 453. - Salimbene,Cronica( 1286 ), 904 , Baird trans., 627.
- Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 4. 18 , 2 : 160.
- Bologna Synod ( 1310 ), 495 – 96.
- Ravenna Stat., 195 ,p. 108.