Epilogue
Communal Piety and
the Mendicants
So far this book has said little about the mendicant orders or heretics, the
two topics that, along with the papacy, especially fascinate students of reli-
gious life in high medieval Italy. Communal piety, especially its penance
culture, inspired Saint Francis and his followers.^1 The Minorites and other
orders that adopted aspects of their piety, especially the Dominicans, came
to dominate the religious life of the cities. Their presence affected city space,
communal charity, political practice, and spirituality. It also brought remark-
able changes in the religious life of women, at least among a spiritual elite.
The friars cooperated in the policing of doctrinal orthodoxy, a pressing con-
cern for the thirteenth-century Roman Church. There truly were dissenters,
Cathars and others, about in the Italian cities. And inquisitions and less
dramatic forms of persuasion, such as revived preaching and new confrater-
nities supervised by both Dominicans and Franciscans, also monitored the
traditional piety of the laity. By the later 1200 s, long-venerated lay saints
might become posthumous heretics, and seemingly devout members of the
local cappella might end up at the stake. These changes are the subject of
this epilogue.
MakingSpace for theFriars
The arrival of the mendicants at Bologna was unusual for northern Italy
only in its precocity. When Saint Francis preached there in the Piazza Mag-
giore during 1222 , his followers had already arrived three years earlier. They
had located near Porta Stiera, where the first Mass was chanted at their
- On the impact of the mendicants, see first the essays edited by Andre ́Vauchez,Ordres mendiants et
la ville en Italie centrale (v. 1220 –v. 1350 )(Me ́langes de l’E ́cole franc ̧aise de Rome: Moyen Aˆge–temps modernes 89
[ 1977 ]): 557 – 773 , in particular, Luigi Pellegrini, ‘‘Gli insediamenti degli ordini mendicanti e la loro tipo-
logia: Considerazioni metodologiche e piste di ricerca,’’ 563 – 73.