80 LaCitadeSancta
approved association, merely a certified profession of vows.^66 Some married
conversi continued to live together, on their own, as a couple. In the mid-
1200 s, Bishop Guercio of Lucca ordered married couples who wished to
enter the penitential state and pledge chastity to execute a legal instrument
to that effect. Their parish priest would make this public by announcing,
four times a year, the names of those so vowed.^67
The older practice of married penitents, still active in secular life and
work, declined slowly. Although the ‘‘Memoriale’’ of 1221 did not yet require
abstinence from marriage, it had always been implicit in the assimilation of
conversi to those under canonical penance. Gregory IX, Innocent IV, and
Martin IV all assumed chastity as the normal state for penitents, although
this may have extended only to abstinence on fast days.^68 Common opinion
considered it pretty much normative for conversi to forsake marriage and
take vows of celibacy. In 1228 , Dominican leadership warned friars about
accepting vows of celibacy from undirected young penitents.^69 The midcen-
tury canonist Hostiensis concluded that, legally speaking, anyone—even a
rusticus—who pledged chastity, even within marriage, and vowed obedience
to the rector of a church or became a member of a hospital confraternity
under direction of a bishop was entitled to the canonical status of a ‘‘reli-
gious,’’ just like members of formal religious orders.^70 Celibate penitents
commonly withdrew from worldly affairs and attached themselves to local
churches.^71 If anything, the identification of celibacy with penance increased
during the thirteenth century, perhaps because of the growing number of
female penitents, since sexual abstinence was always more typical of wom-
en’s piety than of men’s.^72
To churchmen, vows of celibacy made the penitent; to the city, it was
forfeiture of private property and dependence on an ecclesiastical living. In
1233 , Parma issued the earliest extant communal legislation on the privileges
and obligations of penitents, at the request of the Franciscan Fra Gerardo of
Modena. The city pledged generally to observe penitent privileges, without
specifying any in particular. Legislation of 1248 shows that one privilege
intended was exemption from military service. This was not granted, how-
ever, to penitents who remained householders, lived with their wives, and
reared children.^73 Bologna considered someone a true ‘‘penitent,’’ or ‘‘con-
- ‘‘Cartulaire,’’ Meersseman,Dossier, 180 – 220.
- Lucca Synod ( 1253 ), 13 , pp. 56 – 57 , invokingX 2. 24. 23 – 25. For similar fourteenth-century legisla-
tion at Lucca, see Osheim, ‘‘Conversion,’’ 374 – 76. - Meersseman, ‘‘Penitenti,’’ 336 – 37.
- Meersseman,Dossier, 22.
- Hostiensis (Enrico of Susa),Summa Aurea(Venice: Junta, 1581 ), 3. 3 , fol. 193 vb, reprinted in ibid.,
- Meersseman, ‘‘Penitenti,’’ 336 ; Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 43 – 57.
- Dyan Elliott,Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock(Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993 ), 196 – 205. - Parma Stat.i, 200.