186 LaCitadeSancta
down in Verona and taking up the trade of a harness maker in a shop near
the monastery of San Salvatore. His piety and humility impressed the neigh-
bors. When he finally decided to become a hermit, just before death, the
Veronese flocked to him for miracles and healings. The cleric Benincasa of
Pisa, in his life of Ranieri of Pisa, declared that the saint became a priest ‘‘by
the mortification of his body.’’ By this he meant not a quasi-clerical status
but an intensification of the ‘‘chrism on his crown and forehead’’—that is,
the grace of his baptismal and confirmation anointings. Good women, who
crucified Christ in their bodies, could also be called ‘‘priests of God,’’ in the
opinion of the hagiographer Benincasa of Pisa.^41 By their way of life, lay
saints were a rebuke to some clerics. Giovanni Buono of Mantua, after his
conversion, built for himself a hermitage outside the city walls, under the
protection of the Virgin, Santa Maria di Botriolo. He spatially distanced
himself from the squares and streets where he had plied his trade as a min-
strel. As his reputation spread and admirers arrived, he adopted greater
asceticism to protect himself against backsliding. He had three different beds,
each of increasing discomfort, so that he could choose a degree of mortifica-
tion proportionate to the temptations of the day. Some thought such con-
versi should have entered a regular religious order or submitted themselves
to more direct control of the clergy. Giovanni of Mantua, a lay follower of
Giovanni Buono, explained to the holy man’s canonization commission: ‘‘I
saw the said brother Giovanni Buono suffer tribulations and persecutions
from the Friars Minor, luring away the said Giovanni Buono’s brothers and
convincing them to accept their rule, which persecution and tribulation he
endured patiently.’’^42 Giovanni Buono simply went on competing with the
followers of Saint Francis. Perhaps the satisfaction was worth the occasional
loss of a follower.
Holiness flowered among the human refuse of the contrada. Fina of San
Gimignano (d. 1253 ) was the lovely child of a poor family. She lived at home
until the age of twelve, quietly doing domestic work and helping her family.
Then her father suddenly died, and she herself fell sick, ending up as a
cripple covered with festering sores. Until she died five years later, at the age
of seventeen, she lived in continuous pain, strapped to a board. Her dis-
gusted relatives left her to live in squalor, an object of contempt. Miraculous
bell ringing at her Requiem announced her overlooked holiness. Miracles of
healing began during her funeral, and the town of San Gimignano soon
adopted her as its patron saint.^43 Not all professional religious recognized
- Benincasa of Pisa,Vita [S. Raynerii Pisani], 3. 43 ,p. 355 ; see also Vauchez,Laity in the Middle Ages, 63.
42 .Processus... B. Joannis Boni, 4. 5. 294 ,p. 846 : ‘‘Vidi dictum fratrem Joannem Bonum pati tribulati-
ones et persecutiones a fratribus Minoribus, auferentibus fratres dicti Joannis Boni, et ducentibus eos ad
regulam suam, quam persecutionem et tribulationem sustenuit patienter.’’ - Giovanni of San Gimignano,Vita [S. Finae Virginis], AS 8 (Mar.ii), 232 – 38. On another unpub-
lished vita of Fina, see Antonella Degl’Innocenti, ‘‘Agiografia toscana delxivsecolo: Il leggendario del
ms. Laurenziano Plut.xx, 6 e un’inedita vita di Fina da San Gimignano,’’Immagini del Medioevo: Saggi di
cultura mediolatino(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994 ), 125.