Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325

(Darren Dugan) #1

Feasting,Fasting,andDoingPenance 301 


the city, placing Reggio under interdict. The city passed new laws, forbid-


ding merchants from eating with or talking to the clergy, from baking bread


for them or cutting their hair. We do not know exactly how this conflict was


resolved, but by the next year the bishop was doing business as normal with


the commune.^193 A church council in Ravenna put systematic resistance to


tithes on par with invading church property or enacting laws limiting the


liberties of the Church. Those guilty of such crimes, if they proved contuma-


cious, were excommunicated by name at Mass on Christmas, Easter, and


All Saints in all the major churches of the province.^194


Violence was the most dramatic way to rupture the fabric of communal


society. The lay theologian Albertano of Brescia considered violence the


besetting evil of communal Italy and speculated on ways to prevent it.^195 In


spirit, any antisocial act was like blood violence. The story was told of a


Cremonese woman who could not forgive the murder of her son. She took


some kind of unspecified but nonlethal revenge. From then on, whenever


she ate, she saw the food filled with blood. When a poor neighbor who had


relied on a Florentine man for food came begging alms during his dinner,


he drove her away. He then saw his own food covered with blood.^196 Both


sinners, it is said, repented and sought reconciliation. Savage sins generated


savage punishments. A Bolognese man murdered his nephew and threw the


boy’s body down the well of Sant’Agnese. When captured, the city had him


placed naked in a barrel studded with nails and rolled him to his decapitation


in the city square.^197 Murder and crimes of blood demanded public expia-


tion.


More serious yet was laying hands on a cleric, even if he himself was guilty


of a crime. In theory, the punishment of clerics belonged to ecclesiastical


courts alone. In 1313 , the podesta of Bologna, Giovanni of Sassoferrato,


incurred excommunication when he suspended a criminal monk of Santo


Stefano, Dom Ugolino de’ Rigucci, in a cage on the wall of the Palazzo


Comunale and let him die there.^198 City officials might lose their patience


with ecclesiastical malefactors and refuse to punish those who harmed them.


At Padua in 1282 , the commune, having had enough of criminal clergy,


reduced the punishment for murdering clerics to 1 d. ven. gros. Citizens took


vengeance, killing ‘‘many priests, clerics, and monks’’ before the bishop


agreed to turn criminal clergy over to the city for justice.^199 Murders of clerics


fill the chronicles of communal Italy. In 1173 , for example, two members of


193 .Mem. Pot. Reg.( 1280 ), cols. 1147 – 49.
194. Ravenna Council ( 1286 ), 9 ,p. 623.
195. See Powell,Albertanus, 115.
196. Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 717(earlyxivcent. section), [Speculum Exemplorum], fol. 5 r.
197. Matteo Griffoni ( 1253 ), 13 ;CCB, 134.
198. Girolamo de’ Borselli,Cronica Gestorum( 1313 ), 37. Similar rough justice was meted out to a clerical
murderer in Padua:Liber Regiminum Padue( 1331 ), 346.
199 .Liber Regiminum Padue( 1282 ), 336 ;( 1308 ), 349. See also the law prohibiting city enforcement of
excommunications in Padua Stat. ( 1258 ), 2. 1 ,p. 158 , no. 481.

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