Chapter Seven
Feasting, Fasting, and Doing
Penance
The liturgical calendar of the medieval Church molded religious sensibilities
and gave believers a living sense of contact with Christ and his saints. It was
one of the most effective forms of popular catechesis.^1 The cycle of feasts
and fasts expressed the realities of repentance and forgiveness. The great
festivals of Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Week, Ascension, and Pentecost not
only commemorated events in the Savior’s life but made them present to the
faithful. Saints’ days punctuated the liturgical and civic calendars, displaying
the varieties of holiness and honoring the city’s glorious intercessors in
heaven. In Bergamo, Vespers of the patronal feasts brought community ban-
quets, sometimes outside under pavilions, sometimes in the church cloister.
All partook of fruit, wine, and fine white bread.^2 The calendar shaped private
religious experience to an extent hard to imagine today. Margherita of Cor-
tona’s mystical visions and locutions, usually after sacramental Communion,
almost always correlated with the feast celebrated at Mass.^3 Oringa Cristiana
had a vision of the Passion every Friday, the weekly day of fast that recalled
that saving event. Oringa’s other visions of episodes from Jesus’ life came
with remarkable regularity on their proper liturgical days.^4 Benvenuta Bojani
enjoyed uncounted visits from the saints, who invariably chose to appear on
their feast days. The Blessed Virgin came to visit, along with Saint John the
Baptist, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and Saint Agnes, on the Assumption;
Saint Dominic arrived with the Virgin, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret
on the feast of the translation of his relics.^5 The saints in heaven knew and
observed this calendar.
1. Enrico Cattaneo, ‘‘La partecipazione dei laici alla liturgia,’’I laici nella Societas Christiana, 420.
2. Valsecchi,Interrogatus, 112 – 14.
3. See Giunta Bevegnati,Legenda... Margaritae de Cortona, 5 – 6 , pp. 241 – 318.
4 .Legenda Beatae Christianae, 39 ,p. 218.
5. Corrado of Cividale,Vita Devotissimae Benevenutae, 8. 68 – 69 ,p. 168.