416 BuoniCattolici
was one hundred Paters and Aves.^236 Who could tell whether God might not
be more pleased with the Paters of a pious lay brother than with the elabo-
rate prayers of clerics? Prayers for the dead had their greatest power during
the Communion at Mass, just as the sacrifice was complete. One thirteenth-
century Florentine priest collected Communion devotions, including prayers
for the dead. His collection recommended that, on entering a cemetery, one
say a Pater for the dead, remembering that what they were now all would
one day be. For the literate he excerpted two Latin prayers from the Mass
of the dead, which could be added to this Pater to make it more specific.
One was for all the dead in the cemetery, the other for one’s parents. Death
did not cancel the Fourth Commandment. But for those with no Latin, the
Pater was wholly sufficient; it was the Lord’s own prayer.^237
Whether a family, a pious association, or the commune itself, every corpo-
ration was especially responsible for its dead. In 1278 , the clergy confraternity
of Ferrara got bishop Guglielmo to promise that on the first of each month
he would chant Mass and the Office of the dead for his deceased priests.
The cathedral clergy, for their part, bound themselves to attend under a
penalty of £ 6 ven. parv., to be dispensed as alms for the poor by the archdea-
con.^238 When a priest died, four priests of his contrada read the Psalter over
his body, and the bishop or archpriest of the duomo said the funeral Mass.
All priests chanted seven Requiem Masses for him within a month of his
death. The laity were not forgotten by these clerics; they too could enroll in
the confraternity for prayers and temporal benefits. A deceased priest’s cloth-
ing and goods went to the poorer lay members from his neighborhood.^239
Bishops also stipulated that the clergy recite Masses and prayers for them
after their death. In the province of Ravenna, the bishops, cathedral canons,
and collegiate-church clergy all chanted a Mass and fed three paupers each
day for an entire month when their archbishop died.^240
Lay confraternities and communal societies recited their own Paters and
Aves for the dead after Mass, usually on the first Sunday of the month.^241
Innocent III’s 1201 provisions for Humiliati lay tertiaries required them to
attend each other’s funerals and recite there twelve Paters and the psalm
‘‘Miserere.’’^242 The most ancient parts of the Bolognese Popolo’s statutes are
probably their suffrage provisions.^243 At Pisa, the society of Santa Lucia kept
a necrology listing dead members and recited three Paters and three Aves
236 .ACGOP, 267.
237. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msMagl.xxxvi. 81 bis, fols. 37 r–v.
238. Ferrara Clergy Const. ( 1278 ), cols. 433 – 34.
239. Ibid., cols. 434 – 35.
240. Ravenna Council ( 1311 ), 2 ,p. 452 , and Ravenna Council ( 1317 ), 21 ,p. 620.
241. E.g., Lucca, Biblioteca Statale,ms 1310, fol. 9 r; Piacenza, Biblioteca Comunale,msPallestrelli
323 , fols. 17 r– 19 v; Meersseman, ‘‘Statuto dei Disciplinati di Bologna’’ ( 1260 ), 10 , Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 480 ;
id., ‘‘Statuto dei Disciplinati di Vicenza’’ ( 1263 ), 29 , Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 497.
242. On the Humiliati rites for the dead, see Andrews,Early Humiliati, 225 – 29.
243. Epstein,Wage Labor, 84 – 85.