26 LaCitadeSancta
is certainly a high altar, rising to chest height on a medieval man. Like
ancient Christian altars, this altar is flat topped, unencumbered by a painted
altarpiece or reredos. In the age of the commune, altar cloths, removable
candlesticks, and reliquaries would have provided the vesture. During Mass
with the bishop, the so-called pontifical Mass, its most exquisite decoration
would have been Modena’s great pontifical missal, which can still be seen in
the Biblioteca Palatina at Parma.^70 This book’s centuries of service in the
duomo can be gathered from the faint grease stains on each folio’s lower
corner—the leavings of many years of episcopal fingers. The book is large,
225 by 300 millimeters, lavishly illustrated, and in a particularly fine, clear
late-twelfth-century hand. Its legibility and the height of the altar must have
been a godsend for elderly myopic bishops. The book is itself a monument
to civic pride: the great miniature highlighting the Mass of the city patron,
Saint Giminiano (fig. 10 ), is far larger and more splendid than the miniatures
for Christmas and Easter. Behind the high altar stands the bishop’s throne,
rising above the choir and the nave. Although the bishop on his throne
would not have been hidden from those in the nave, the canons in the choir,
raised above the people’s heads, would not have been visible during their
chanting of the daily solemn Mass and Office. Unless they had climbed the
stairs to the choir, worshipers would have experienced the pontifical liturgy
principally through the melodies of the chant and the evocative odor of
burning incense.
The cathedral as a whole recalled to Bishop Sicardo three realities. It was
a model of the Tabernacle of Moses in which God came to dwell. It was a
presentation of the whole order of the cosmos, themachina mundi.And its
coordinated parts made it a representation of the ‘‘army of the people of
God.’’^71 Taken as a whole, the cathedral made present the orders of the
church, the society, and the commune. Medieval theologians saw in the
Ecclesia Matrix the pattern of the heavenly Jerusalem come down to earth.
This was the House of God, the Holy City, and the Gate of Heaven.
TheWomb of theCommune
In 1187 , when Don Lanfranco Mazzocchi, canon of the cathedral of San
Vincenzo at Bergamo, was asked about the relation of his church to the
baptistery church of Santa Maria, he explained that the two were a single
entity, and since the baptisms for the city were performed in one, both to-
gether formed the Ecclesia Matrix, the Mother Church.^72 Baptism, above all
else, identified the first church of the city. For thirteenth-century Italians,
too, the religious heart of the commune was not the cathedral but the baptis-
- Parma, Biblioteca Palatina,msPar. 996 (latexiicent.).
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 1. 1 , col. 15.
- ‘‘Instrumentum Litis,’’ 1. 1 ,p. 132 ; on the civic significance of the font, see Pini,Citta`, comuni e
corporazioni, 31.