Resurrection andRenewal 315
convert, perhaps rarely from Judaism or more rarely from Islam, this candi-
date was still examined as part of these ceremonies.^36
In the communal period, parish priests gathered the children to be bap-
tized, along with their parents and godparents, to attend the service at None
on the Saturday before the fifth Sunday of Lent.^37 In the countryside, the
rites occurred at the pieve, the baptismal church, but within the city walls,
the scrutinies were the special prerogative of the Mother Church. Although
he was anxious to preserve his own church’s special role in the baptismal
rites, Giovanni di Bolgare, the prior of Sant’Alessandro of Bergamo, admit-
ted in 1187 that scrutinies had to be performed at the cathedral.^38 Each city
handled the scrutinies in a slightly different way. At Siena, where the scruti-
nies began on the third Saturday rather than fourth Saturday of Lent, the
great bell of the duomo announced the first scrutiny by pealing after the
chanting of Sext.^39 It rang continuously until None, summoning the citizens,
especially those with children to be baptized, to the duomo. Then, before
the great west doors, a priest took down the names of the ‘‘pagan infants,’’
writing those of the girls and the boys in separate registers. To Bishop Si-
cardo, this ceremony recalled Ezra’s investigation of the Israelite genealogies
after the Exile, the inquest by which he separated the true members of the
chosen people from the Gentiles who had accompanied them back from
Babylon.^40
After the children had been enrolled, acolytes called each of the ‘‘elect’’
by name, and their parents took them in their arms into the nave of the
church, the girls on the north side, the boys on the south. The choir intoned
the Mass, which proceeded as usual until the collect, the opening prayer. At
this point, when the chanting of the Epistle would normally have taken place,
priests ascended the two flanking pulpits of the choir screen, one on the right
and the other on the left. A deacon called on all to kneel. As each priest
chanted the prayer of exorcism over his group of infants, priests fanned out
throughout the church. They breathed on the face of each pagan boy or girl,
invoking the Holy Spirit and claiming the children for Christ by inscribing
the sign of the cross on their foreheads, a gesture repeated three times for
each.^41 The signing on the forehead reminded those present that Christians
- Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana,msAed. 214 , fols. 46 r–v; on voluntary converts from
Judaism in our period, see Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘‘Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval Europe,
1200 – 1500 ,’’Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on His Sixty-Fifth
Birthday,ed. Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache, and Sylvia Schein (New York: Lang, 1995 ), 297 – 318 ,
esp. 310 – 12 , his one Italian example. A Hebrew letter records that this man, a Master Andrea, converted
in order to eat ritually unclean food rather than for religious reasons. - Sicardo,Mitrale, 6. 8 , cols. 283 – 84.
- ‘‘Instrumentum Litis’’ (September 1187 ), 6 ,p. 216.
- Third-week scrutinies were also the rule in Brescia: ibid., p. 107.
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 6. 8 , col. 277.
41 .Ordo Senensis, 1. 120 ,p. 106 , explains this rite in detail. See Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenzi-
ana,msAed. 214 , fol. 42 r, and the discussion in Sicardo,Mitrale, 6. 8 , col. 277.