386 BuoniCattolici
the saints. Generally, the faithful lacked this kind of musical skill. Those
present simply joined in the easy response of the litany, ‘‘Ora pro eo,’’ as
Pietro Pettinaio did with his friends as he lay dying.^22 This part of the rite
ended with several collects by the priest. The clerics and bystanders then
departed, and the priest privately urged the one dying to draw up a will and
determine his place of burial. Most important, those present were to urge
satisfaction for past sins and offenses by almsgiving while the sick person still
had control of his faculties.^23 Well over half of testators probably waited until
their deathbed to make a will.^24 In such cases, the parish priest normally
advised the penitent on what benefactions and bequests to include.^25 One
cannot exclude the possibility of a bit of pious coercion by the priest, as in
the case of one Perugian testator, Pascolo Rigoli, whose contribution to mak-
ing his will in 1296 was the wordvolo(‘‘I do’’) in response to the priest Don
Angelo, who asked whether he wanted to leave half his money to the frater-
nity of the Misericordia—where he lay dying—and half to his nephew Mi-
tole.^26 The testament produced would then be notarized and, after the death,
proved by the city as a legal instrument.^27 Making a will was a personal
religious act, part of the rites of dying. Only the will of an orthodox believer
had legal effect. Should it be proved that the deceased had strayed from the
Catholic faith, his will might be invalidated by law. The podesta of Bologna,
Ranieri Zeno, did just that in 1250 with the will of Gerardo Palarini, when
he was discovered to have died in heresy.^28 An assigned notary had responsi-
bility to ensure that, after the testator’s death, the will would be publicized
and its provisions followed. The Church also acted to provide for prompt
and careful execution of wills. In Lucca, the notary who failed to have a will
executed within a month of the death was to be excommunicated.^29 The
dying themselves seem to have taken the urging to make bequests ever more
seriously. After 1300 , the Italian cities saw a ‘‘boom’’ in the production of
wills; even the relatively poor joined the well-to-do in drawing them up.^30
What kind of bequests did they make? Examples from a group of pub-
lished wills suggest that men and women approached death with rather dif-
- Pietro of Monterone,Vita del beato Pietro Pettinajo, 10 ,p. 115.
23 .Ordo Senensis, 2. 87 , pp. 490. - The proportion in Maria Immacolata Bossa, ‘‘I testamenti in tre registri notarili di Perugia
(seconda meta`del trecento),’’Nolens Intestatus Decedere, 84 , is about 63 percent, forty-two out of sixty-seven. - E.g., Novara Synodii( 1298 ), 2. 3. 2 , pp. 232 – 33 , assumes that the parish priest helps the dying
draw up their wills. On deathbed wills, see Samuel Cohn Jr., ‘‘Burial in the Early Renaissance: Six Cities
in Central Italy,’’Riti e rituali nelle societa`medievali,ed. Chiffoleau, Martines, and Paravicini Bagliani, 39 – 57.
Confraternity statutes reminded members to remember the group in their wills: e.g., Piacenza, Biblioteca
Comunale,msPallestrelli 323 ( 1317 ), fols. 19 v– 20 r.
26 .Nolens Intestatus Decedere,xiii–xiv. - Communal statutes include extensive sections regulating wills; for an early example, see Pisa Stat.
ii( 1233 ), Leges 31 – 42 , pp. 756 – 88. - Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 7. 101 ; repeated in ibid. ( 1259 – 60 ), 6. 48.
- Lucca Synod ( 1300 ), 52 ,p. 231.
- See Gerardo Gatti, ‘‘Autonomia privata e volonta`di testare nei secolixiiiexiv,’’Nolens Intestatus
Decedere, 17.