206 LaCitadeSancta
herald Michelino who summoned the witnesses.^169 When Giovanni’s canon-
ization commission asked Domenica of Guastalla if she had come to testify
of her free will, she replied that she had come ‘‘at the order of the com-
mune.’’^170
The cities had the power to ensure the continued observance of a cult. In
1286 , at Pisa, the podesta and the captain of the people ordered all citizens
to attend the ceremonies at the shrine of the new city patron Saint Ranieri
(under fine of 20 s pis.) and dispatched the criers to announce the festival.^171
Since Ranieri was both miracle working and popular, they probably need
not have imposed a fine. But to insult the saint by absence would have
insulted his city, so the fathers were determined to ensure a good turnout.
After 1250 , cities began to lobby Rome for recognition of the saints they had
created. Padua appealed to Rome to protect the cult of their local hero,
Saint Antonio the Pilgrim, in the face of Franciscan opposition. It seems that
the Pilgrim, whose claim to holiness rested on his practice of penance, his
fondness for pilgrimage, and his posthumous miracles, was giving competi-
tion to the Franciscan saint of the same name. The friars had more ‘‘pull’’
in Rome. The pope replied that ‘‘one Anthony is enough for you,’’ and
suppressed the Pilgrim’s cult.^172 Times were changing. By the end of the
century, the prerogative for promoting saints was becoming the property of
the mendicant orders.^173
Saints andTheirPlaces
Each Italian city had a place, sometimes several places, to which people went
on pilgrimage. Unlike the pilgrimage sites of Rome, these were not sites of
events from biblical or ancient Christian times.^174 With few exceptions, such
as the Jerusalem complex at Santo Stefano in Bologna, the shrines were
depositories of relics of local saints. When one visited the churches of Ra-
venna, Fra Salimbene noted, the relics carried the indulgences, not the
churches.^175 Even at Bologna’s Santo Stefano, the relics of Saints Vitalis
and Agricola became the major attraction by the late thirteenth century.^176
Although certainly not unknown there, the countryside outside Umbria and
169 .Processus... B. Joannis Boni,pt. 2 , pp. 797 – 814.
170. Ibid., 2. 5. 134 ,p. 805 : ‘‘Interrogata si sponte venit ad hoc testimonium, respondit quod sibi
praeceptum fecit per missum communis.’’
171. Pisa Stat.i( 1286 ), 1. 185 ,p. 339 ; Pisa Stat.ii( 1313 ), 1. 233 ,p. 245.
172. See Rigon, ‘‘De ́votion et patriotisme,’’ 271 – 73.
173. As evinced by the activity to get Saint Filippo Benizzi canonized at Todi in the 1280 s; see
Processus Miraculorum B. Philippi [Benitii],ed. Arcangelo Giani, 1. 1 ,Annales Sacri Ordinis Fratrum Servorum
Beatae Mariae Virginis(Florence: Giunta, 1618 ), vol. 1 , fol. 51 r.
174. Richard C. Trexler, ‘‘The Construction of Regional Solidarities in Traditional Europe,’’Riti e
rituali nelle societa`medievali,ed. Chiffoleau, Martines, and Paravicini Bagliani, 263.
175. Salimbene,Cronica( 1240 ), 245 , Baird trans., 160.
176. Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1473, fol. 327 r, notes that the relics made the place holy,
not vice versa.