TheHolyCity 139
infractions, and cross-dressing.^262 In contrast, the only moral issue regularly
addressed in pre- 1250 statutes was prostitution. But these laws seem mostly
ad hoc affairs, enacted during religious revivals and then forgotten.^263 The
legislation of the popular regimes against prostitution was on a wholly differ-
ent scale. Their antiprostitution statutes protected the sacred spaces of the
city: the city center, the cathedral complex, the piazzas of churches, and the
neighborhoods of monasteries and convents.^264 These were perpetual laws,
not ad hoc evictions. But even the popular regimes made no attempt to
outlaw prostitution itself.^265 Their legislation did not police morals. Rather,
it protected the dignity of the city’s holy places and shrines. Vice in such
places was sacrilege, offensive not only to God but to the city as a religious
organism. This expulsion of the unrighteous from sacred spaces did not, as
far as one can see, yet affect the Jews. Not until 1311 did a north Italian
synod legislate on the Jewish badge. Among cities, only Pisa tried to establish
a Jewish quarter, and that two years after the synod. The project failed.
Internal exile for north Italian Jews would wait for nearly two hundred years,
until the age of the Renaissance tyrants.^266
Little communal legislation focused on heretic hunting. Legislation
against heresy itself was common enough in statutes throughout the period,
but its practical implications seem oddly obscure. When it occurs, communal
legislation against heresy seems a by-product of episodes of religious fervor,
like the revivals of 1233.^267 This was true even in a city like Orvieto in the
Papal States, where the popular regime ‘‘effectively tolerated’’ Catharism.^268
Until the 1290 s, no city legislation mentioned papal inquisitions, although
heretics were ‘‘relaxed to the secular arm’’ for execution well before that.
Perhaps before the 1290 s, communes preferred to deal with heresy in their
own way, without recourse to ecclesiastical courts.^269 Extant communal legis-
lation against heretics often looks pro forma. Cities inserted Frederick II’s
antiheresy decree into their statutes verbatim or pledged to obey it—without
- Bologna Stat.i( 1259 – 62 ), 3. 21 , 1 : 278 – 79 ; Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 5. 24 – 32 , 2 : 243 – 47 , and 5. 40 – 49 ,
2 : 251 – 53 ; Florence Stat.ii( 1325 ), 5. 88 ,p. 416 ; Ravenna Stat., 326 b– 327 , pp. 150 – 51. - Treviso Stat. ( 1233 ), 615 , 2 : 242 ; Parma Stat.i( 1233 ), pp. 42 – 43 ; Padua Stat. ( 1233 ?), 3. 7 ,p. 262.
- E.g., Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 5. 15 , 1 : 450 – 53 ; (after 1250 ), 2. 52 , 1 : 309 – 13 ;( 1259 ), 5. 24 , 1 : 457 – 58 ; Pisa
Stat.i( 1286 ), 3. 33 ,p. 396 ; Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 4. 34 , 1 : 197 – 98 ; Florence Stat.ii( 1325 ), 3. 115 , pp. 270 – 72.
Only Pisa Stat.ii( 1313 ), 3. 40 , pp. 315 – 17 , expels prostitutes from the city. - Bologna, in fact, provided help to reformed prostitutes: Bologna Stat.i, 5. 7 , 1 : 444 – 46.
- Ravenna Council ( 1311 ), 23 ,p. 462 ; Pisa Stat.ii( 1313 ), 3. 89 , pp. 377 – 78. The first Jewish ghetto
in Italy was established in Venice in 1516. Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio,msB. 3695 , doc. 36
(Nicholas III, original of 4 August 1278 , Viterbo), commissions friars to preach to Jews in Bologna. - Verona Stat.i( 1228 ), 156 , pp. 116 – 17 ;Memoriae Mediolanenses,ed. Philip Jaffe ́( 1233 ),MGH.SS
18 : 402 ; Parma Stat.i( 1233 ), pp. 10 – 11 , and ( 1233 ?), 269 – 71 ; Treviso Stat. ( 1233 ) 734 , 2 : 250 – 52 ; Vercelli
Stat., 370 – 92 ( 1234 ), cols. 1231 – 38. Jones,Italian City-State, 428 – 29 , remarks on the late and unsystematic
nature of communal heresy repression. - Lansing,Power and Purity, 57 – 59 ; the phrase is hers. Before the age of the Popolo, Orvieto
experienced only short periods of repression during visits by inquisitors. - As suggested by Gabriele Zanella, ‘‘Malessere ereticale in valle padana ( 1260 – 1308 ),’’Hereticalia,
23 – 27 , who evaluates statutes from Aquileia (ca. 1220 ), Verona ( 1270 – 1300 ), Treviso ( 1270 ), Ferrara ( 1287 ),
and Cividale del Friuli ( 1307 – 9 ).