46 LaCitadeSancta
bishops on the vigil of Saint Praxedes ( 21 July).^187 Such largess was fitting for
those of means, but Italian bishops were in no way the grandees typical of
northern European dioceses. None were distant potentates like the arch-
bishop of York. When the bishop of Volterra defaulted in 1262 on the £ 215
he owed the Sienese, this may have been a sign of penury.^188 Many a com-
munal bishop was a recognizable face about town, relatively accessible, like
the secular officials of the commune. The relative modesty of Italian sees
made the bishop more a man of his city than a lord over it. The rates of
papal tithes are suggestive. At Forlı`, for example, individual parish priests
paid tithes as high as £ 10 , while the tithe of the bishop of Forlı` was only
£ 50. He was not a great magnate. Even the bishop of a larger see, like
Padua, was only assessed at £ 300. At Ferrara the bishop paid £ 100 , not even
twice the tithe of his wealthiest cathedral canon (£ 66 ). No Italian bishop was
a prince in his own right, like the prince-bishops of Cologne and Trier in
Germany.^189
Nevertheless, outside a ritual context, Italians probably encountered their
bishop mostly as a judge. Episcopal courts handled tithes, wills, marriages,
and all manner of suits concerning the clergy. Before the 1230 s, bishops’
courts also handled cases of heresy; after that, at least in theory, they were
to assist papally appointed inquisitors of heretical depravity, but they some-
times seem to have put little energy into this.^190 The bishop was an integral
part of the city’s legal institutions, and the communes recognized him as
such.^191 Before the Fourth Lateran Council forbade the ordeal, bishops
blessed the hot water and the hot iron for civil courts, a task common enough
so that Bishop Ugo of Volterra had the ceremony copied into his personal
ritual.^192 The late 1100 s were a time of expansion for Italian episcopal courts,
some hearing cases from far out in the contado.^193 Parishioners complained
to the bishop’s court about their priests.^194 At Pisa, the traffic at the episcopal
court was brisk enough in 1286 that the city fathers formed a committee to
- Ravenna Council ( 1311 ), 473 ,p. 30 ; 452 ,p. 3.
- Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 3. 376 , pp. 390 – 91.
- For Forlı`: Rat. Dec. Aem., 165 ; for Padua: Rat. Dec. Ven., 105 – 9 ; for Ferrara: Rat. Dec. Aem.,
43 – 44. See also Cinzio Violante, ‘‘Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche nell’Italia centro-settentrionale durante il
Medioevo: Province, diocesi, sedi vescovili,’’Forme di potere e struttura sociale in Italia nel Medioevo,ed. G.
Rossetti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977 ), esp. 83 – 111. - E.g., Innocent IV in 1253 wrote to the Lombard bishops, chastising them for not helping the
inquisitors investigating the murder of Peter of Verona: Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio,ms
B. 3695 , doc. 12 ( 28 January 1253 ). - E.g., Verona Stat.i( 1228 ), p. 15 ; Verona Stat.ii( 1276 ), 2. 38 ,p. 295 ; Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 4. 20 ,
1 : 403 ; Pisa Stat.ii( 1233 ), Usus 10 ,p. 848.
192 .Rituale di Hugo [di Volterra], secoloxiicon aggiunte, De Sancti Hugonis Actis Liturgicis,ed. Mario Bocci,
Documenti della Chiesa volterrana, 1 (Florence: Olschki, 1984 ), 320 – 23. - Mary Kenefick, ‘‘Episcopal Justice and Lombard Law in the Contado: Evidence from Parma
Around the Year 1200 ,’’Atti dell’ 11 oCongresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Milano, 26 – 30 ottobre 1987
(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1989 ), 947 – 67 , esp. 960 – 62. - Giovanni Cherubini, ‘‘Parroco, parrocchie e popolo nelle campagne dell’Italia centro-settentrio-
nale alla fine del Medioevo,’’Pievi e parrocchie,ed. Erba et al., 1 : 382.