398 BuoniCattolici
this father said, to the intervention of the Servite saint Filippo Benizzi.^102 In
an age when a coma might easily be mistaken for death, there were practical
reasons to stretch out the wake, no matter what the liturgists and city fathers
said.
TheCommunityMourns
Funeral rites in communal Italy taught lessons about community and social
order; they were a catechism of the Catholic understanding of death.^103
Everywhere they took the same shape.^104 On the day after the wake, the
death bell rang a second time, announcing the procession from the house to
the church.^105 Mourners placed the body on a stretcher and covered it with
the cappella’s simple linen pall. Some families insisted on a more festive
covering that would display their respect for the deceased and their wealth
to their neighbors. Flowers and garlands decorated the body at little cost.
The rich favored splendid silks, embroidered work, and sumptuous fabrics,
much to the chagrin of city fathers, who restricted these honors to officials.^106
When the procession left the house, the funeral ceased to be a familial matter
and involved the entire contrada. The mourners carried the body, not in a
coffin, but on a bier, with the face uncovered so that all might have a last
glimpse at their neighbor. The late-thirteenth-century communes tried to
render the rite more anonymous, requiring that the face be covered—the
reasons they gave were to protect women’s modesty or to keep passing birds
from defiling the corpse.^107 Families defied such laws. The dead remained
individual members of their community until they vanished into the ano-
nymity of the parish cemetery. Only monks and friars went to their funerals
with their faces covered, a sign that in life they had already become dead to
the world.^108 On arrival at the church, the clergy celebrated ‘‘Vigils of the
102 .Processus Miraculorum B. Philippi [Benitii], 1. 34 , fol. 53 r.
103. Giovanni Cherubini, ‘‘Parroco, parrocchie e popolo nelle campagne dell’Italia centro-settentrio-
nale alla fine del Medioevo,’’Pievi e parrocchie,ed. Erba et al., 1 : 362 , citing literary examples from the
fifteenth-centuryMotti e facezie del Piovano Arlotto,nos. 15 , 160 (available in an edition by Gianfranco Folena
[Milan: Ricciardi, 1995 ], 30 , 225 ). For liturgical forms of burial, see Pont. Rom. (xii),51a–b, pp. 277 – 85.
On the legal aspects of burial, see Elsa Marantonio Sguerzo,Evoluzione storico-giuridica dell’istituto della
sepoltura ecclesiastica(Milan: Giuffre`, 1976 ).
104. The processions and rituals of the communal funeral liturgy parallel the three-stage death-
ritual model (borrowed from van Gennep) in Metcalf and Huntington,Celebrations of Death, 29 – 30 : those
performed ( 1 ) while the dead person is treated as ‘‘present,’’ ( 2 ) in transition to the other world, and ( 3 )
finally truly gone. These three steps were signaled in medieval Italy by the three principal chants of the
rite: the ‘‘Subvenite’’ (from house to church), the ‘‘Libera’’ (at the church), and the ‘‘In Paradisum’’ (to
the grave).
105. Sicardo,Mitrale, 9. 50 , col. 427.
106. E.g., San Gimignano Stat. ( 1255 ), 2. 54 , pp. 713 ; Florence Stat.i( 1322 ), 5. 7 , pp. 223. For sumptu-
ary legislation on funerals at Bologna, see Frati,Vita privata, 59 – 60 , and, generally, Killerby,Sumptuary
Law in Italy, 71 – 80.
107. Examples: Reggio Stat. ( 1277 ), p. 47 ; Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 4. 91 , 1 : 246. See also Siena Stat.ii
( 1310 ), 5. 203 , 2 : 318 – 19 , and Florence Stat.i( 1322 ), 5. 7 and 5. 11 , pp. 225 – 26
108. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msConv. Soppr. D. 8. 2851 , fol. 13 v; see Metcalf and
Huntington,Celebrations of Death, 6 , on the social impact of such rites.