196 LaCitadeSancta
invoking their new saint in rhyming verse.^102 Raimondo’s hospital became a
training ground for other social workers. Gualtiero of Lodi ( 1084 – 1224 ) be-
came a hospital brother in Raimondo’s hospital at the age of fifteen. After
suitable experience, he returned to Lodi to work at the hospital of San Barto-
lomeo. Finally, he founded his own hospital, the Misericordia. The bishop
and commune of Lodi both funded the project. Pietro Pettinaio, although
not a hospital founder, visited and nursed the sick at the Ospedale della
Scala. He inspired a circle of wealthy and influential Sienese to dedicate
themselves to hospital work. By 1277 , these men had become the hospital’s
administrators, and Bishop Bernardo granted them permission to found a
confraternity to assist the poor.^103
Hospital work was not restricted to men. Margherita of Cortona (d. 1297 )
had been the mistress of a local nobleman. After his murder in a feud, her
family disowned her, and she entered a life of severe penance. With time,
she recast her penance into a useful mold, worked as a midwife, did charita-
ble work, and founded both a hospital and a charitable confraternity.^104 Her
life spent in service caused the people of Cortona to declare the former kept
woman a saint immediately after her death.^105 In Cortona, visitors can see
her with the nimbus of a saint in a fourteenth-century stained-glass win-
dow—although her papal canonization had to wait until 1728.
Siena viewed hospital service as a suitable expiation for crime, as well as
a way to holiness. The city banished Andrea de’ Gallerani (d. 1251 ), a success-
ful soldier, after he killed a blasphemer in a fit of rage. They later let him
return to found a hospital and devote himself to serving the sick. Again, a
cult sprang up immediately after his death.
The carpenter Giacobino di Bonifacino—who admitted at Giovanni Buo-
no’s canonization that he had been a heretic and the son of a heretic—used
to visit the Mantuan holy man. He dropped nuts and nutshells at the foot of
Giovanni’s bed so people would think the hermit was secretly breaking his
fast. Giovanni caught him out and tried to argue theology with him. But,
Giacobino admitted, he only began to doubt his heresies because a hawk
flew in the window, landed at Giovanni’s feet, hopped on the holy man’s
knee, and obeyed him when he told it to leave. That merely made Giacobino
a regular at Giovanni’s hermitage. Full conversion came later, in a more
homely incident. Giovanni saved the ex-heretic’s life and house by appearing
- Giovanni de’ Mussi,Chronicon Placentinum( 1202 ), col. 457.
- Pietro of Monterone,Vita del beato Pietro Pettinajo, 3 , pp. 16 – 19.
- As noted by Bornstein, ‘‘Uses of the Body,’’ 165 , who, following the lead of her clerical (Francis-
can) biographer, emphasizes her asceticism. - For her vita, see Giunta Bevegnati,Legenda de Vita et Miraculis Beatae Margaritae de Cortona,ed.
Fortunato Iozzelli (Grottaferrata: Collegium Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1997 ), pp. 178 – 478. Giunta
Bevegnati was one of the custodians at her shrine and witnessed miracle depositions: ibid., 11. 1 ,p. 455.
On her life, see Menesto`and Rusconi,Umbria, 56 – 73 ; for her vita in Italian translation, seeLeggenda della
vita e dei miracoli di Santa Margherita da Cortona,trans. Eliodoro Mariani (Vicenza: Santuario di S. Margher-
ita, 1978 ).