Feasting,Fasting,andDoingPenance 305
a glass of wine on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Each day they made
a hundred genuflections and recited an equal number of Pater Nosters. They
could not wash and kept a solemn silence from Compline at night to Terce
in the morning. If other cities imprisoned public penitents, we do not know;
no rituals and regulations have survived.
Public penance and the Lenten fast culminated three days before Easter,
on the morning of Holy Thursday. The ordo of Siena summarizes the many
kinds of reconciliation and pardon celebrated on that day:
On this day, in the whole world the Holy Chrism is blessed; on this
day, also, aid is given to penitents through mercy, and discords are
reduced to concord; on this day, the angry are pacified, princes give
amnesty to criminals, lords forgive delinquent servants, judges spare
malefactors, jails are thrown open, and in the whole world those
who have been imprisoned in austerity for their sins come forth to
the delight of the feast.... Today the penitents cast out of the church
on Ash Wednesday are absolved, and the Mother Church takes
them to her bosom.... Today’s washing of the feet symbolizes the
forgiveness of sin.^216This linking of the washing of feet (a ceremony performed among the clergy
in private) to the absolution of public penitents is a clerical commonplace.
Holy Thursday, one author wrote, was the fifth day of the week—paralleling
the fifth day of creation, when the freest of animals, birds and fish, were
created. This was the day when Jesus was arrested and bound, that we might
be freed and have our sins unbound. This was the day when the great west-
ern doors of the cathedral stood open, that all who wished might enter
through them.^217 On this day, criminals and sinners could hope for mercy.
Ultramontano, a criminal bound to hard labor in the stone quarry of Or-
vieto, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, sent a message begging indul-
gence from Bishop Riccardo. His cry was urgent; the quarry walls were on
the verge of collapse. The bishop failed to come. Ultramontano invoked the
aid of Saint Pietro Parenzi to protect him and the other prisoners from
danger. The saint moved Bishop Riccardo’s heart. He arrived to hear the
man’s confession on Holy Thursday. After he and several other prisoners
had confessed, the bishop gave the ‘‘canonical admonition.’’ The quarry did
- Ibid., 1. 142 , pp. 124 – 25 : ‘‘Hac die in toto Orbe sacrum Chrisma conficitur, hac die etiam Poeni-
tenitibus per Indulgentiam subvenitur, discordes ad concordiam redeunt, hac die pacificantur irati, dant
Indulgentiam Principes criminosis, Servis malis indulgent Domini, Judices autem Latronibus parcunt,
patescant Carceres, et in toto Orbe hac die ad laetitiam festivitatis exeunt, qui clauserunt se pro austeri-
tate culparum.... Hodie namque Poenitentes absolvuntur, et qui fuerant in capite jejunii ejecti ab
Ecclesia, hodie in gremium Matris Ecclesiae recipiuntur... nam lotio pedum remissionem denotat
peccatorum.’’ For Verona, see Valsecchi,Interrogatus, 99 – 103. - On this symbolism, see Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msMagl.xiv. 49 , fol. 59 r;
Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare,ms lxxxiv(xiicent.), fols. 91 v– 92 r.