302 BuoniCattolici
the d’Andolo`family struck down the priest Alberto de’ Gifoni as he cele-
brated Mass in the church of Santa Margherita at Bologna.^200 In a notorious
case of 1235 , assassins murdered Bishop Guidotto of Mantua during the ro-
gation processions. They escaped punishment by fleeing to the protection of
the warlord Ezellino da Romano.^201 All these crimes against the clergy re-
quired public penance. Other sins, not punished by excommunication,
might also require public penance if they were publicly known. At Milan,
the list of sins requiring ‘‘major penance’’ included homicide, theft, adultery,
perjury, bestiality, and sodomy.^202
Chance survival of the already mentioned manuscript of a public confes-
sion by an anonymous government official shows some of the crimes against
the Church that brought public penance.^203 Around 1327 , in northeastern
Italy, this official underwent solemn penance because he had been excom-
municated by an ecclesiastical judge. In the confession, prepared as part of
his process, he listed the crimes for which he had been excommunicated.
These included support for the Franciscan antipope Nicholas V, doubts
about transubstantiation, striking a cleric, breaking into a church, forging
papal letters, and passing enactments contrary to the clergy. He omitted
other offenses worthy of excommunication given in the formulary he was
using: setting fire to churches, obtaining an absolution or an excommunica-
tion by force, and trafficking in ecclesiastical property.^204 The earlier exam-
ple of Church-commune conflict at Reggio sounds similar. Although this
man was of higher political stature than the usual public penitent, his infrac-
tions are no doubt typical.
Pope Celestine II laid down procedures for imposing solemn penance in
1143.^205 Since the tenth century, entrance into public penance had happened
on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent.^206 In early-thirteenth-century
England, at Winchester, when penitents assembled on Ash Wednesday, the
bishop sorted them out by asking: ‘‘Who are the homicides?’’ ‘‘Who are the
parricides?’’ ‘‘Who are publicly scandalous sinners?’’ The archdeacon then
accordingly presented each group to the bishop for the imposition of pen-
ances.^207 This ritual was unnecessary in Italy. There the penitents themselves
- Girolamo de’ Borselli,Cronica Gestorum, 15.
201 .Annales Sanctae Iustinae Patavini, 154 ;Annales Veteres Veronenses,ed. Carlo Cipolla,Archivio Veneto 9
( 1875 ): 92.
202 .Manuale Ambrosianum, 2 : 474 – 78. - Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 158, fols. 54 v– 56 v. After I found this text, in the summer of
1998 , Prof. Carlo Delcorno of the University of Bologna kindly examined it. He agreed with my conclu-
sion that it is a written confession from a public penance and that it is, to his knowledge, the only example
of such from the period. - Ibid., fol. 54 v. Cf. Mantua, Biblioteca Comunale Centrale Teresiana,ms 399, fol. 2 v, the formula
being adapted. - Valsecchi,Interrogatus, 100.
- Cf. Vogel, ‘‘Rites de la pe ́nitence,’’ 139 , 141 , who mistakenly thought that the Ash Wednesday
enrollment was gone by 1200. - Ibid., 140.