430 Epilogue
There is no reason to assume the man was himself a heretic, or even a
sympathizer.
By the 1290 s heresy hunting was on a collision course with lay piety. Saint
Pietro of Foligno got dragged before the Franciscan inquisitor of Assisi, who
grilled him on the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of
Christ, and then sent him off under detention to Spoleto. It was a sorry affair
in the eyes of Pietro’s biographer.^80 Already in the 1260 s, an inquisitor’s
suspicions about the orthodoxy of Giovanni Buono of Mantua brought his
canonization process to a halt and then ended it permanently.^81 Inquisitors
scrutinized the cults of long-dead communal saints. Perhaps they undertook
a systematic review of all such devotions.^82 Guido Da Loca of Brescia, a lay
penitent who had imitated the penances of John the Baptist, had long en-
joyed a popular cult, a tomb in the Brescia duomo, and a reputation for
miraculous healings. A posthumous inquest under the Dominican bishop of
Brescia, Bartolomeo of Braganze, condemned him of heresy. Familiars of
the inquisition broke open his tomb and burned his bones in the presence of
‘‘nearly forty thousand people.’’ When they were thrown into the fire, his
bones miraculously floated above the flames and remained unharmed. The
crowd began to cry, ‘‘Death to the bishop and the friars!’’ But the clerics
escaped harm, supposedly by producing the Blessed Sacrament and chasing
off the demons protecting the false saint’s relics. Such is the story told by
Filippo of Ferrara.^83 In any case, Saint Guido’s cult was suppressed. More
notorious still was the case of Saint Alberto of Villa d’Ogna, the wine porter
of Cremona. Saint Alberto worked miracles in Cremona at his tomb, at
Parma in San Pietro near Piazza Nuova, and at Reggio in the churches of
San Giorgio and San Giovanni Battista. At Parma, his devotees processed
through town with his relics, carrying crosses and banners and singing. The
offerings at his shrine amounted to £ 300 imp., sufficient to buy a house in
the contrada of Santo Stefano and open a hospital named in his honor.
Parish priests erected images of him in their churches, and people had his
image painted on porticoes and city walls. But Alberto was a drunkard, said
Fra Salimbene, and his devotees were a pack of wine guzzlers and silly
women.^84 Thank goodness a Franciscan inquisitor finally got around to sup-
pressing his cult.
No suppression of a cult equaled in notoriety that of Saint Armanno Pun-
- Giovanni Gorini,[Legenda de Vita et Obitu Beati Petri de Fulgineo], 2. 14 ,AS 31 (Jul.iv), 668 , and ibid.,
9 b,Analecta Bollandiana 8 ( 1889 ): 365. - Golinelli, ‘‘Dal santo,’’ 33 – 34.
- So suggests Wessley, ‘‘Thirteenth-Century Guglielmites,’’ 302 n. 68 , and Orioli,Venit Perfidus
Heresiarcha, 80 – 81. - Filippo of Ferrara,Liber de Introductione Loquendi, 2. 25 , in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1552
(xvcent., original ca. 1330 ), fols. 8 r–v, and the version edited by Creytens in ‘‘Le manuel de conversation,’’
120 – 21 , from Vatican City, Biblioteca Vaticana,msPal. Lat. 960 , fol. 94 v. - Does he by these terms simply mean laypeople? Salimbene,Cronica( 1279 ), 733 – 36 , Baird trans.,
512 – 13. Alberto’s cult is also described inChronicon Parmense( 1279 ), 34 – 35.