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

(Darren Dugan) #1

Chapter Two


From Conversion to Community





The laity of the communes created a spiritual geography of their own along-


side the structures of the parish and diocese. What has been called medieval


‘‘penance culture’’ inspired this creation, although its roots are much older.^1


During the Gregorian Reform, some laypeople in northern Italy were al-


ready seeking a more intense Christian life. By 1200 , these individuals were


calling themselvesconversi(converts) orpenitenti(penitents). The wordconverso


originally denoted a layman who had attached himself to a monastic order


and made a ‘‘conversion of life’’ or an ‘‘oblation’’ of himself. That is to say,


he had become a member of the monastic ‘‘family’’ and served the monks


as lay brother.^2 Strictly speaking, a ‘‘penitent’’ was a person on whom the


Church had imposed public penance for serious sin. More loosely, this was


a layperson who had more or less spontaneously taken up a life of asceticism.


Throughout the 1100 s, single and married people took up a variety of ascetic


practices, sometimes on their own but often under spiritual direction, at a


church or monastery. Documents of the early communal period record ex-


amples of conversi who privately vowed ‘‘conversion of life’’ before their


local priest but continued to live in their homes. By the early 1200 s, the



  1. On the origins of ‘‘penance culture,’’ see Gilles Ge ́rard Meersseman, ‘‘I penitenti nei secoloxie
    xii,’’ Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 265 – 304 , esp. 304. Bibliography: Gennaro Monti,Le confraternite medievali dell’alta
    e media Italia, 2 vols. (Venice: Nuova Italia, 1927 ) (on which, see James M. Powell,Albertanus of Brescia: The
    Pursuit of Happiness in the Early Thirteenth Century[Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992 ], 104
    n. 5 ); Meersseman,Ordo,and id.,Dossier(on which, see Andre ́ Vauchez, ‘‘Ordo Fraternitatis: Confraterni-
    ties and Lay Piety in the Middle Ages,’’Laity in the Middle Ages, 107 – 17 ); Ida Magli,Gli uomini della penitenza:
    Lineamenti antropologici del Medioevo italiano(Milan: Cappelli, 1967 ); Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli,Penitenze
    nel Medioevo: Uomini e modelli a confronto,Il mondo medievale, 22 (Bologna: Patron, 1994 ); Giovanna Casa- grande,Religiositapenitenziale e citta`al tempo dei comuni(Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1995 ); and,
    for Bergamo, Lester K. Little,Liberty, Charity, Fraternity: Lay Religious Confraternities at Bergamo in the Age of the
    Communes(Bergamo: Lubrina, 1988 ).

  2. On monastic conversi in Tuscany, see Duane Osheim, ‘‘Conversion,Conversi,and the Christian
    Life in Late Medieval Tuscany,’’Speculum 58 ( 1983 ): 368 – 90.

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