72 LaCitadeSancta
living, and even conduct business affairs. Conversi needed sufficient re-
sources to live on their own; they owned personal property.^16 When Umili-
ana dei Cerchi became a conversa, she distributed food and clothing,
including her bed linen, to the poor and arranged to have Mass said daily
for her sins, but she retained enough to live on.^17 When the ten-year-old
Bona of Pisa asked to become adevota,as female Pisan penitents called them-
selves, the pious women rejected her because she was young and did not
have the money to buy proper penitents’ garb, much less support herself.^18
At home, conversi could enjoy the benefits of other family members. Family
domestics waited on Umiliana dei Cerchi during her final illness, and she
continued to treat them as her own servants. One serving girl found Umilia-
na’s constant demands for water so trying that she eventually hit the holy
woman on the head with a pitcher.^19
Long before the 1220 s, penitents had begun to pool their resources and
live in small communities. At Florence, female penitenti rented houses in the
area of Santa Maria Novella and received financial patronage from the Galli,
a Guelf family of the district.^20 They turned to the Dominicans for spiritual
guidance and became known as the ‘‘sisters and mothers of the friars of the
convent.’’^21 In organizational, financial, and material matters they remained
independent of the friars. Penitents might be objects of charity, as in Vicenza
during the 1260 s, where the city provided alms to the poor Brothers of Pen-
ance living at the hospital of Santa Croce di Porta Nuova so they could
purchase bed linen.^22 A community of penitents might slowly transform itself
into something very much like a traditional religious order on a local scale.
Contemporary observers remarked on this, expressing hesitations about the
lack of ecclesiastical oversight.^23 Normally, however, penitents worked in the
marketplace to support themselves.
The penitents’ individualistic charity could develop into institutionalized
social-service projects—the penitents Ranieri of Pisa and Raimondo of Pia-
cenza eventually founded and ran hospitals. Documents between 1230 and
1244 recording the land purchases and donations relating to the hospital that
Florentine penitents established near Santa Maria Novella allow historians
to trace their transformation into a hospital confraternity.^24 This is an early
date for institutionalization on such a scale. By the 1260 s, however, penitenti-
- Casagrande, ‘‘Ordine,’’ 252.
- Vito of Cortona,Vita [B. Humilianae de Cerchis], 1. 2 ,AS 17 (Mayiv), 386.
18 .Vita [Sanctae Bonae Virginis Pisanae], 1. 10 ,AS 20 (Mayvii), 145. - Vito of Cortona,Vita [B. Humilianae], 3. 49 ,p. 397.
- Anna Benvenuti Papi, ‘‘I penitenti,’’In Castro Poenitentiae, 20 – 22.
- Benvenuti Papi, ‘‘Donne religiose nella Firenze del due-trecento,’’In Castro Poenitentiae, 621 : ‘‘so-
relle e madri dei frati del convento.’’ - Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 199.
- E.g., Jacques of Vitry,The ‘‘Historia Occidentalis’’ of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition,ed. John
Frederick Hinnebusch, Spicilegium Friburgense, 17 (Fribourg: University Press, 1972 ), 29 , pp. 146 – 49. - ‘‘Cartulaire,’’ 1 – 10 , Meersseman,Dossier, 180 – 81.