428 Epilogue
late 1200 s, penitents under Franciscan direction emphasized penance; those
under Dominican control, doctrinal orthodoxy or Marian devotions.^66 Only
the flagellants preserved their freedom to select spiritual directors and con-
duct their own affairs.^67 They were the last refuge of the freelance lay piety
of the republics, although even among them the Franciscans made inroads.^68
As cities lost their republican institutions, the new princes often suppressed
flagellant groups. The princes and the mendicants were allies, perhaps un-
wittingly, in the decline of the old style of communal piety.^69
Nowhere was the mendicant impact on religiosity more dramatic than in
attitudes toward heresy.^70 The cities had always been ‘‘orthodox’’; heretics
were ‘‘sectarians,’’ intentional outsiders to communal religion.^71 The cities
always legislated against heresy, especially if it had a public face. Modern
studies have concluded that actual heresy, formal dissent from approved
Catholic doctrine, was not common in the cities, contrary to older general-
izations. Catharism, the preeminent heresy of the communal period, was a
phenomenon of the hill country, not the great cities. Thirteenth-century
Italians recognized this. When Archbishop Federico Visconti preached on
the feast of Saint Dominic at the church of Santa Catarina in Pisa around
1277 , he suggested that the Cathar heresy had been cooked up in the hills of
Languedoc by men preaching against the violence of the rural nobility.^72
Even in the hills, heretics tended to pass through, rather than become part
of, the settled population.^73 This tendency was even more consistent in the
cities. Nor were heretics very numerous. For the period 1260 to 1308 , one
expert puts the total number of heretics active in northern Italy between 700
and 750. Perhaps a quarter to a third were women. Bologna counted about
100 heretics out of a population approaching 40 , 000. Verona and its contado
- Giuseppina De Sandre Gasparini, ‘‘Movimento dei disciplinati, confraternite e ordini mendi-
canti,’’I frati minori e il terzo ordine, 110 – 11. And on the clerical control of the penitents in the late 1200 s
generally, see Casagrande,Religiosita`, 127 – 38. - As observed by Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 512.
- On the flagellants, seeIl movimento dei disciplinati nel settimo centenario dal suo inizio (Perugia, 1260 )
(Perugia: Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 1962 ); and for Bologna particularly, see Fanti, ‘‘Gli
inizi del movimento dei disciplinati a Bologna e la confraternita di Santa Maria della Vita.’’ See De
Sandre Gasparini, ‘‘Movimento,’’ on the growing Franciscan influence over these groups; and on these
groups’ independence from clerical models, see Casagrande, ‘‘I veri laici: I disciplinati,’’Religiosita`,
438 – 41. - De Sandre Gasparini, ‘‘Movimento,’’ 86 – 87 , notes that the Devotion of 1260 did not occur in
cities controlled by the Pallavicino or the da Romano. For Este laws forbiddingbattutiin Ferrara, see
AIMA 6 : 471 – 74. It appears that the signoria of Mastino della Scala precluded the devotion in Verona:
Parisio of Cerea,Annales( 1260 ), 16. - For a brief overview of the extensive literature on heresy in communal Italy, see Gabriele Zanella,
‘‘Malessere ereticale in valle padana ( 1260 – 1308 ),’’Hereticalia, 18 – 21. - So Euge
ne Dupre ́Theseider, ‘‘Gli eretici nel mondo comunale italiano,’’ rpt. inMondo cittadino e movimenti ereticali nel Medio Evo (saggi)(Bologna: Patron, 1978 ), 233 – 59 , esp. 258 , who agrees with Manselli
and Volpe. - Andre ́Vauchez, ‘‘Les origines de l’he ́re ́sie cathare en Languedoc d’apre
s un sermon de l’archev- eˆque de Pise Federico Visconti ( 1277 ),’’Societa, istituzioni, spiritualita`: Studi in onore di Cinzio Violante
(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994 ), 2 : 1022 – 36 - Powell,Albertanus, 25 ; Zanella, ‘‘Malessere ereticale,’’ 49.