278 BuoniCattolici
honor the tiny martyr saints of the day. They not only sat in their elders’
stalls; one even took the bishop’s throne and presided over the liturgy. Fra
Salimbene, who usually had little good to say about popular customs, liked
this feast—especially if the boy bishop was a Franciscan novice of good
breeding instead of a vulgar secular cleric. Such a mendicant boy bishop
added suitable dignity to the liturgy and had the graces to preside with style
over the party that followed.^35 And youth had to have its fling. At Bologna,
on the feast of John the Evangelist ( 27 December), custom allowed boys to
tease any girl seen going to church. The more rowdy even found sport in
knocking off her father’s hat. One podesta tried to stop the fun, probably in
vain.^36 Nativitytide ended on Epiphany with yet another celebration on the
model of the boy bishop. That day was the Feast of Subdeacons, when the
most junior of the ordained clergy for once presided at Office and meals.^37
City patron saints provided good reason for celebration. Their feasts fell
with striking regularity in the good weather of summer. Saint Prosper’s feast,
on 25 June, at his hometown of Reggio was a day of obligatory attendance
for residents of the city and district, announced by criers for two weeks run-
ning.^38 Padua, too, loved her festivals. The Paduans held anundina,or ‘‘tent-
ing,’’ of Saint Prosdocimo and Saint Justina in the Prato della Valle, and yet
another tenting for All Saints on the isle of Montesalice.^39 The festivals’ name
seems to come from the pavilions erected on them. The religious calendar
accommodated without strain the popular love of feasting for its own sake.
No saint inspired greater festivity and devotion than the Blessed Virgin,
the mother of the Savior. She enjoyed a feast day every week on Saturday.
Umiliana dei Cerchi went to Communion every week on that day and
prayed that she might also die on Saturday.^40 The hermit Odo of Novara,
who almost never left his cell, never failed to go out on Saturday to celebrate
Mass at the altar of the Virgin.^41 Italian legendaries exalted the dignity of
the Virgin’s feast on Saturday. The celebration’s origin is recounted in one
of the Marian miracles from a fourteenth-century manuscript at Pisa. The
Virgin alone had remained faithful on Holy Saturday, when all the apostles
doubted; she healed her devotee Theophilus on a Saturday; and an image
of her had been miraculously revealed on that day.^42 Devotion to Mary and
her feasts brought rewards in this life and the next. The Pisa legendary tells
of a thief who fasted on bread and water on vigils of the four principal
Marian feasts, Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity, and Conception. The
- Salimbene,Cronica( 1248 ), 387 , Baird trans., 262.
- Bologna Stat.i( 1262 / 67 ), 7. 146 x, 2 : 169 – 70.
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 5. 7 , col. 227 D.
- Reggio Stat. ( 1242 ), 59 ,p. 35.
- Padua Stat. ( 1275 ), 2. 10 ,p. 183 , no. 566.
- Vito of Cortona,Vita [B. Humilianae], 3. 32 ,p. 393 ; 3. 52 ,p. 398.
41 .Apographum Processus... B. Odonis,testis 77 ,p. 350. - Pisa, Biblioteca Cateriniana del Seminario Arcivescovile,ms 139, ‘‘Miracula de Beata Virgine,’’
fol. 137 v.