350 BuoniCattolici
who is in our house.’’ The moral: ‘‘And so, dearest brethren, let us bow,
bending the knee and uncovering our heads, to greet her whenever we see
the image or hear the name of the blessed Mary.’’^47
Peter the Chanter’s treatise divided prayer into two kinds, ‘‘vocal’’ and
‘‘real.’’^48 He never treated ‘‘real prayer’’ directly, but his comments describ-
ing acts of mercy as perfecting prayer suggest that real prayer consisted in
works of charity.^49 For Peter, as for communal Italians, prayer was, above
all, the words spoken to God. As a cleric, he read his prayers from a book,
in particular the Divine Office, rather than recite memorized prayers like
laypeople.^50 From Peter’s own point of view, prayer was virtually impossible
for the unlettered, since they could not decipher written texts.^51 The illiterate
might use the postures his booklet portrayed, but they could not really pray.
Italian lay piety rejected such elitism entirely; the God-given biblical prayers
of the Ave Maria and Pater Noster were the finest possible prayers, and
anyone could recite them.^52 Wiser clerics than Peter agreed. A layman ap-
proached the master of the Dominican order Jordan of Saxony, perhaps at
Bologna, and asked him, ‘‘Is the Pater Noster worth as much in the mouths
of simple folk who do not know its full meaning as in the mouths of learned
clerics who understand all they are saying?’’ To which the friar replied that
indeed it was, just as a gem’s value did not depend on the possessor’s know-
ing anything about gems.^53 Christ gave the prayer its power when he com-
posed it. Zucchero Bencivenni (fl. 1300 – 1313 ), in his Italian adaption of the
late-thirteenth-century French Dominican Laurent of Orleans’s ethical and
catechetical treatiseSomme le roi(dated 1279 ), dispensed with the need for
intellectual comprehension of set formulas entirely. Prayer was the ‘‘cry of
the heart.’’ Praying Christians just needed to ‘‘cry out’’ like the apostles in
the boat with Jesus. What made prayer perfect was the union of intention
with any vocal utterance. So David cried out, ‘‘Lord hear my voice when I
cry out and pray to you from the depths of my heart.’’^54
It was better to pray well briefly than at length badly. To pray badly was
to pray without firm attention on God or with mangled words. Worse was
to let the mind drift off to business or worldly distractions.^55 Prayer was
- Pisa, Biblioteca Cateriniana del Seminario Arcivescovile,ms 139(xivcent.), fol. 136 v: ‘‘Et nos,
fratres karissimi, visa eius ymagine et audito nominis beate Marie, flexi genibus et pilleo remoto salu-
tando, ipsam ei inclinamus.’’ - Peter the Chanter,De Oratione, 181.
- See ibid., 197 – 98.
- See Trexler,Christian at Prayer, 35.
- See Peter the Chanter,De Oratione, 179 , where words and syllables are the ‘‘matter’’ of prayer,
and, on this, Trexler,Christian at Prayer, 25 – 26. - Lay pious associations allowed that recitations of Paters and Aves discharged the obligation to
recite the Latin Office even for the literate: Piacenza Battuti Stat. ( 1317 ), 61 – 63 ; Novara Battuti Stat.
(xiv), 282.
53 .Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, 3. 31 ,p. 125 , Conway trans., 120 (slightly modified). - Zucchero Bencivenni,Sposizione, 81 – 87 , esp. 83.
- With this, Peter the Chanter,De Oratione, 206 , 223 , agrees.