Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325

(Darren Dugan) #1

 436 Epilogue


population.^116 Sometime between 1272 and 1273 , Giovanni rented a house at


Ferrara in the contrada of San Romano from another Cathar, Menaboi


Pizoli. Their home became a virtual hospice for heresy.^117 They harbored


Cathar believers, worshiped the perfects as the presence of the Good God,


and provided them with fish, the one flesh food they could eat. To Bompietro


the perfects seemed ‘‘the best men in the world’’; it was their piety, not, as


we will see, their doctrine, that attracted him.


In 1276 , at the age of fifteen, Bompietro had his first brush with an inquisi-


tion. Cited on 10 November before the inquisitor Fra Guglielmo of Cremo-


na, the youthful suspect perjured himself, denying any knowledge of heresy.


Convicted on 7 December, he was sentenced to wear yellow crosses and


make a pilgrimage to Rome.^118 Instead of complying, he followed his family


to Bologna, where they settled in the house that his parents had constructed


in the cathedral parish of San Pietro, near the center of the city. There


his parents continued to patronize heretics, including Giuliano, Pietro, and


Maria—all of whom they worshiped in the Cathar fashion.^119 During this


period, Bompietro also acquired a wife, a Bolognese woman named Con-


tessa di Constantino from San Martino dell’Aposa, the parish in which he


would eventually settle.


In 1283 , after a short return with his family to Ferrara, Bompietro and his


wife settled permanently in Bologna. His father and mother stayed behind


in Ferrara. Bompietro was about twenty-one years of age. Throughout this


period, he continued to consort with heretics. Contrary to the terms of Fra


Guglielmo’s sentence, he listened to them, fed them, and even worshiped


them. Before the inquisitor Fra Guido, he later named thirty-three of them,


some from influential circles in Bologna. These accusations led to only two


new trials that are recorded in the inquisition register, that of Bompietro’s


wife and that of the aristocratic Donna Rengarda degli Aldigeri.^120 The latter


was the widow of the noble Erriguccio de’ Galluzzi and the wife of the


famous jurist Francesco, son of the glossator Accursio. Whether because of


his wife’s heresy or more likely because of Francesco’s own habits (Dante


placed him in hell with the Sodomites), the couple separated at Rengarda’s


request in 1288.^121 Neither process brought a conviction. Bompietro’s house-


hold seems to have taken on the character of a ‘‘conventicle,’’ like that of his


parents in Ferrara.


Nevertheless, Bompietro insisted that he had abandoned his childhood



  1. Paolini,Eresia, 174. See also Zanella, ‘‘Armanno Pungilupo,’’ 6. Orthodox clerics—e.g., Salim-
    bene,Cronica( 1248 ), 395 – 96 , Baird trans., 269 , speaking of the Apostolici—saw vagrancy as one of the
    marks of a heretic.
    117 .ASOB,no. 11 , 1 : 26 – 27.

  2. Ibid., no. 567 , 1 : 307.

  3. Ibid., no. 11 , 1 : 29.

  4. For a catalog of these accusations, see Paolini,Eresia, 114 – 21.

  5. Dante,Inferno, 15. 110. On this separation, see Paolini,Eresia, 117 n. 117. On the Aldigeri family,
    see ibid., 116 n. 113.

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