38 LaCitadeSancta
face-to-face community. Bologna’s approximately 150 urban and suburban
chapels of 1300 – 1315 divided an estimated population of about fifty thou-
sand—a figure that includes the many transient university students.^133 This
gives an average congregation of only 340 souls per chapel. Over half this
population would have been children. A typical chapel served as few as thirty
or forty households. Many chapels must have been smaller, considering the
differences in tithes mentioned earlier. Some congregations must have had
the feeling of small clubs.
Was Bologna typical? The population of late-thirteenth-century Vicenza
may reliably be placed between fifteen and twenty thousand. Unfortunately,
the state of the Vicenza tithe returns makes it impossible to calculate the
number of chapels.^134 But Parma, which was not much larger than Vicenza,
though population estimates are lacking, has detailed tithe reports. Gener-
ously assuming a population of twenty-five thousand for that city’s seventy
chapels yields an average of 360 individuals per chapel—a figure very close
to that of Bologna.^135 In 1288 , Bonvesin de la Riva, a member of the Mi-
lanese Humiliati, bragged that the very largest Milanese parishes had five
hundred families,^136 so an average like that of Bologna or Parma seems rea-
sonable there too. When population is considered, the network of urban
chapels seems even denser than it first appeared. Nor was the small size of
these congregations anomalous. Thirteenth-century canon law required a
mere ten male inhabitants to found a new church.^137 To be of a place was to
worship in its church, and so a neighborhood, however small, found its iden-
tity in its chapel.
The churches that served the cappelle were often miniature in size. Most
of these medieval structures, if they survived the reforms of Trent, disap-
peared because of parish consolidation under the Napoleonic regimes of
the early nineteenth century. An archaeological and architectural survey of
suppressed parishes exists for Bologna, and it opens a vista into the physical
realities of the cappelle.^138 The chapel of San Mamolo (founded between
1246 and 1255 ), for example, lies at the smaller end of the spectrum.^139 Lo-
cated at what is now Via D’Azeglio 60 , it was an aisleless structure only a
- Antonio Ivan Pini,Citta`medievali e demografia storica: Bologna, Romagna, Italia (secc.xiii–xv)(Bologna:
CLUEB, 1996 ), 135 , and id., ‘‘Problemi di demografia bolognese del duecento,’’AMDSPPR,n.s., 17 – 19
( 1965 – 68 ): 221 , give that estimate for 1294. - Francesca Lomastro,Spazio urbano e potere politico a Vicenza nelxiiisecolo dal ‘‘Regestrum Possessionis
Comunis’’ del 1262 (Vicenza: Accademia Olimpica, 1981 ), 61. The Vicenza returns of 1297 , Rat. Dec. Ven.,
215 – 25 , do not include chapels subordinate to monasteries. - Rat. Dec. Aem. (Parma, 1299 ), 356 – 95.
- Quoted by Hyde,Society and Politics, 155.
- See Hostiensis (Enrico of Susa),Summa Aurea(Venice: Sessa, 1570 ), 3. 54. 6 , fols. 314 v– 315 r.
- Luciano Meluzzi, ‘‘Le soppresse chiese parrocchiali di Bologna,’’Strenna storica bolognese 12 ( 1962 ):
113 – 40 ; 13 ( 1963 ): 167 – 97 ; 14 ( 1964 ): 165 – 88 ; 17 ( 1967 ): 291 – 317 ; 18 ( 1968 ): 227 – 39 ; 19 ( 1969 ): 141 – 72 ; 21
( 1971 ): 141 – 74. Sadly Meluzzi did not include measurements. - Ibid., 17 ( 1967 ): 293 – 96.