28 LaCitadeSancta
first acts was to commission the construction of a new baptistery. They
placed it in the piazza between the cathedral of Saint Mary and the episcopal
palace. The space around the baptistery was sacred: no executions might be
performed there.^80 Frescoes on the outside of the baptistery, as at Verona,
commemorated important, and sometimes frightful, events in city history.
Private citizens might decorate the interior walls with ex-voto paintings com-
memorating prayers fulfilled. Such ex-votos can still be seen in the baptistery
at Parma (fig. 12 ). The Medici princes of Renaissance Florence recognized
that their San Giovanni was a republican shrine: on seizing power they
purged the baptistery of its communal paraphernalia, removing and destroy-
ing the votive images, banners, and candle offerings from the republican
regime. Such artifacts werecose pubbliche,symbols of ancient victories and the
city’s expansion and defense of the contado—many loyal Florentines pro-
tested the sacrilege.^81
Satan hated the font and was more likely to attack it than any other sacred
object.^82 The waters of the font were powerful. Locked covers protected
them, lest they be put to use in sorcery. Every Italian, high or low, was
reborn a Christian in the same water, which, after being blessed at Easter,
served for baptisms throughout the entire year. Only in emergencies could
a minister use other—profane—water for baptism. Italians swore their most
sacred oaths over the waters of the city font, as in times of invasion, when
the commune was threatened. The chronicler Dino Compagni addressed his
fellow Florentines before the font of their baptistery in 1301 : ‘‘Dear and capa-
ble citizens, who have each of you taken holy baptism from this font, reason
forces and constrains you to love each other like brothers; also, you possess
the most noble city in the world.... Over this sacred font, whence you
received holy baptism, swear to a good and perfect peace among yourselves,
so that the lord who is attacking us finds all citizens united.’’^83 At Parma,
when Berardo Oliverio di Adamo died at the Battle of San Cesario in 1229 ,
fighting against the hated Bolognese, the commune could think of no greater
honor than to place his body in state before the font in the baptistery.^84
When the exiled Dante imagined a return in triumph to Florence and ac-
claim as loyal citizen and honored poet, he envisioned the reception would
take place in his beloved San Giovanni.^85 This Italian identification of the
- So at Bologna: Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 2. 64 , 1 : 321 – 22 ; and Vicenza: Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 203 – 7.
Bologna did allow flogging (fustigatio). - Filippo Rinuccini,Ricordi storici dal 1282 al 1460 ,ed. G. Aiazzi (Florence, 1840 ), 49 ; and, on the
Medici’s action, Trexler,Public Life, 453. - Didier Lett,L’enfant des miracles: Enfance et socie ́te ́ au Moyen Aˆge (xiie–xiiiesie`cle)(Paris: Aubier,
1997 ), 72. - Dino Compagni,Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne’ tempi suoi, 2. 8 (Milan: 1965 ), trans. from Trexler,
Public Life, 48. - Salimbene,Cronica( 1229 ), 52 , Baird trans., 11 ; he was Salimbene’s father’s first cousin.
- Dante,Paradiso, 25. 1 – 12. On San Giovanni, see alsoParadiso, 15. 135 – 36 , 16. 25 – 26 , and 25. 1 – 9.