TheMotherChurch 27
tery.^73 In hisCommedia, when Dante meets his ancestor Cacciaguida in
heaven and speaks to him of their native city, the poet refers to his fellow
Florentines as the ‘‘flock of San Giovanni,’’ the offspring of the city baptis-
tery:
Tell me, my dear forbear, about your ancestors;
and what were the years like
that are accounted to your youth?
Tell me about the flock of San Giovanni,
how large was it then, and who were those
in it worthy of highest rank.^74The attachment to the baptistery was almost physical, certainly experiential.
As a small boy, the Franciscan Salimbene heard from his father, Guido di
Adamo, how, when construction of the new Parma baptistery began in 1196 ,
he and other men of the city put stones into the foundation as memorials of
their families. The construction project was a long one; the Parma baptistery
opened twenty years later for the Easter baptisms of 1216 (fig. 11 ).^75 Those
who visit it today will agree it was worth the wait. Fra Salimbene’s house
was right next door.^76 In his chronicle, the friar proudly records his own
baptism there at Easter in 1221.^77 Civic attachment to the baptistery survived
to the end of the Middle Ages. In 1472 , for example, the citizens of Perugia
argued for restoration and repairs to their cathedral complex principally
because of their shared baptism there.^78 The Mother Church’s monopoly on
baptisms itself perdured into the modern period. Bologna, for example, did
not have baptismal churches in its suburbs until the late 1600 s. Until the mid-
1900 s, all Florentines received baptism in the city baptistery of San Giovanni.
Baptism attached one to a place; the site of baptism determined tithing
responsibilities.^79 The baptistery was not merely the site of baptisms. Other
religious services, public and private, occurred there. Eventually it replaced
the cathedral as the place to keep the carroccio and the city’s military ban-
ners—and those captured from enemies in battle. The baptistery was the
shrine of the republic. In 1262 , after Vicenza had thrown off the yoke of the
tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, one of the restored republican government’s
- Cf. Enrico Cattaneo, ‘‘LaBasilica Baptisteriisegno di unita`ecclesiale e civile,’’Atti del convegno di
Parma ( 1976 ), 29 – 31. - Dante,Paradiso, 16. 22 – 27 : ‘‘Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia,quai fuor li vostri antichi, e quai
fuor li anniche si segnaro in vostra pu ̈erizia:ditemi dell’ovil di San Giovanniquanto era allora, e chi
eran le gentitra esso degne di piu`alti scanni.’’
75 .Chronicon Parmense ab Anno 1038 usque ad Annum 1338 ,ed. Giuliano Bonazzi ( 1216 ),RIS^29 : 9 : 8 – 9. - Salimbene,Cronica( 1285 ), 849 – 50 , Baird trans., 590.
- Ibid., 47 , trans., 8.
- U. Nicolini, ‘‘Pievi e parrocchie in Umbria nei secolixiii–xv,’’Pievi e parrocchie,ed. Erba et al.,
2 : 879 – 80. - Valsecchi,Interrogatus, 107 n. 315 , commenting on Enrico Cattaneo,Citta
e religione nell’etadei comuni
(Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979 ), 41.