TheMotherChurch 17
In 1123 , at Piacenza, Bishop Arduino, seemingly for the first time, made
his cathedral the solepieve(baptismal church) for the whole city. He ordered
the congregations of all eighteen urban chapelsandof the seven suburban
churches henceforth to attend the Easter vigil and its baptisms at the
duomo.^10 This would effectively have ended, for the suburban pievi at least,
the practice most typical of a pieve—the administration of baptism. Bishop
Lanfranco Civolla of Bergamo also tried, later in the 1100 s, to concentrate
pastoral functions at his cathedral church. He attempted to subordinate
the four suburban chapels dependent on the church of Sant’Alessandro to
the cathedral of San Vincenzo.^11 The result was that within and without the
walls all attended the duomo for major feasts. Into the 1200 s, however, the
collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the ‘‘Cappella della Citta`,’’ still
rivaled the cathedral of San Vincenzo as the religious center of the city and
diocese. That was truly exceptional at such a late date.^12 In 1136 , Bishop
Landolfo of Ferrara celebrated the consecration of his new cathedral—
whose magnificent facade still delights visitors (fig. 2 )—by issuing this edict:
‘‘Let no one, whether in town or in the suburbs, dare to baptize, confirm,
give public penance, or probate wills,’’ save by the will of the cathedral
canons. So did he centralize the rites of baptism, penance, and death at his
new cathedral,^13 and so began the displacement of the old baptismal
churches in Ferrara’s suburbs. During the decades that followed, Ferrarese
priests, like Don Giovanni of San Marco di Fossanova in 1143 , might still
occasionally bring their parishioners’ infants to the old cathedral of San Gi-
orgio for the scrutinies during Lent and for baptism at Easter. Bishop Lan-
dolfo allowed such exceptions merely as a gesture of respect to the ancient
church, where, after all, he still lived. By 1200 , however, the great rites of
baptism had become the monopoly of one place, his new Santa Maria, the
Mother Church of Ferrara.^14
The cathedral canons of Ferrara zealously vindicated their new exclusive
claim on baptism. In 1211 , priests of Santa Maria in Vado, an old baptismal
church, started doing baptism at Easter again. Previously they had con-
formed and come to the new cathedral for baptisms and for the major feasts
- Giovanni Felice Rossi, ‘‘Battistero della chiesa piacentina dalle origini a meta`del secoloxvi,’’Atti
del convegno di Parma ( 1976 ),Ravennatensia, 7 (Cesena: Santa Maria del Monte, 1979 ), 61 – 62. - Valsecchi,Interrogatus, 52 – 54.
- See Giuseppina Zizzo, ‘‘S. Maria Maggiore di Bergamo ‘Cappella della Citta
’: La basilica berga- masca nei secolixiiexiii,’’Archivio storico bergamasco 2 ( 1982 ): 216 – 19 , and Miller,Bishop’s Palace, 185 – 87. Another exception would be Forlı, with its two baptismal churches. - Document edited in Antonio Samaritani, ‘‘Circoscrizioni battesimali, distrettuazioni pastorali,
congregazioni chiericali nel Medioevo ferrarese,’’Analecta pomposiana 4 ( 1978 ): 94 – 96. On the cathedral
and city of Ferrara, seeLa cattedrale di Ferrara: [Atti del Convegno nazionale di studi storici organizzato dalla
Accademia delle scienze di Ferrara... , 11 – 13 maggio, 1979 ](Ferrara: Belriguardo, 1982 ). - Document to this effect by Landolfo, edited in Samaritani, ‘‘Circoscrizioni,’’ 99. For the cathe-
dral’s monopoly over baptism and rites of Easter at Pisa, see Mauro Ronzani, ‘‘L’organizzazione della
cura d’anime nella citta`di Pisa (secolixii–xiii),’’Istituzioni ecclesiastiche della Toscana medioevale,ed. C.
Fonseca and C. Violante (Galatina: Commissione Italiana per la Storia delle Pievi, 1980 ), 49 – 52.