282 BuoniCattolici
confessional practice, and the calculation of the date of Easter. If they passed,
he set their ordination for Advent Ember Days of the following year.^64 Si-
cardo of Cremona followed the traditional practice of ordaining priests, dea-
cons, and subdeacons on the Advent Ember Saturday, but he also foresaw
the possibility of ordinations on the Ember Days of the other three seasons.^65
Siena celebrated the Advent ordinations by having the Gospel of the Ember
Days chanted in both Greek and Latin so that the new deacons could show
off their vocal and linguistic skills to the assembled citizenry.^66
There were also local fasts, such as the first week of September at Pisa,
when a Lenten-style fast was observed from Thursday to Saturday.^67 The
pious added their own private mortifications to these times of self-denial.
Nevolone of Faenza and Nicola of Tolentino fasted on bread and water on
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in honor of the Blessed Virgin.^68 Some,
like Omobono of Cremona, simply intensified the restrictions on meat and
dairy by subsisting on bread and water. Omobono observed that regimen
during the four seasonal fasts, the vigils of solemnities, the Ember Days, and
the weekday fasts of Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.^69 Pietro Pettinaio
fasted only from All Saints to Christmas (thus combining the fasts of Saint
Martin and Advent) and on vigils, Fridays, and Saturdays.^70 Occasionally we
meet virtuoso fasters. One peasant from Piacenza went without food for
seventy days. This so amazed some Piacentines that they spread the word
about him. At Cremona, always at odds with Piacenza, some citizens put the
man under guard to make sure he ate nothing during a fasting demonstra-
tion. On another occasion, he went forty days without food. This sort of
behavior looked odd to contemporaries. It mystified Filippo of Ferrara, who
commented on the fellow in his rhetorical manual.^71
The days and seasons of fasting, punctuated by days and seasons of feast-
ing, gave the devotional life of the communes an almost bipolar swing. Feasts
at family meals gave a domestic aspect to celebrations that might have
stopped at the great western doors of the duomo. Popular sensibility, if any-
thing, exaggerated the swing from abstinence to indulgence. Lent was the
great season of self-denial that led up to the feasting of Easter, but common
attitudes focused as much on the feasting given up as that yet to come.
The communes bid a raucous farewell to meat during the days before Ash
Wednesday—carnival. The canonist Gratian begrudgingly admitted that
- Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1785, Rolando the Deacon,Liber de Ordine Officiorum,fol. 18 v.
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 5. 3 , col. 208 C; 8. 14 , col. 366 – 98.
66 .Ordo Senensis, 1. 25 ,p. 22. - Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1785, Rolando the Deacon,Liber de Ordine Officiorum,fol. 36 v.
- Pietro of Monte Rubiano,Vita [S. Nicolai Tolentinatis], 3. 19 ,p. 649 ; 3. 23 ,p. 650 ;Vita Beati Nevoloni,
3 ,p. 646.
69 .Vita di s. Omobono, 164. - Pietro of Monterone,Vita del beato Pietro Pettinajo, 7 ,p. 79.
- Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1552, Filippo of Ferrara,Liber de Introductione Loquendi(ca.
1323 – 47 ), fol. 7 r.