312 BuoniCattolici
a consequence one acquires citizenship through baptism.’’^18 There were
other ways to become a citizen. At Volterra, one could receive protection as
a citizen after ten years’ residence, and the juridical status after that, if one
petitioned the podesta. Siena required three years’ residence before the citi-
zenship petition, while Padua more stringently required forty years.^19 But
such citizens remained in the end ‘‘naturalized,’’ ‘‘adopted’’ members of the
community. The natural-born Sienese, Volterran, or Paduan was one reborn
in the city baptistery.
The rites of baptism created and ordered the community, and by partici-
pating in them the entire society experienced rebirth and renewal.^20 The
baptisms of Easter on the afternoon of Holy Saturday were the great civic
and religious events of the year. Only the baptisms of the Pentecost vigil,
some fifty days later, could compare to them. For children not in danger of
death, these two dates were the ordinary times of baptism, as Bishop Sicardo
of Cremona explained in the late 1100 s. On the two great feasts of redemp-
tion, the true baptizer of Christians was Christ himself, in whose death and
Resurrection the redeemed shared. Sicardo rejected the mostly Greek prac-
tice of baptizing on the anniversary of Christ’s baptism, on 6 January, Epiph-
any, since that baptism had been administered by John the Baptist, not
Christ himself.^21 When in 1264 the city fathers of Vicenza spoke of Holy
Saturday, they called it the ‘‘Saturday of Baptism.’’^22 Only grudgingly did
Bishop Sicardo admit that risk of death might be a reason not to postpone a
baptism until Easter. He admitted that bishops could, and perhaps should,
grant an ‘‘indult’’ for such exceptions.^23 Sicardo’s focus on Easter baptisms
reflected the centralization of the cult in the Mother Church in the period
of the early communes. Before the construction of the great monumental
baptisteries in the 1100 s, even a moderate-sized group baptism would have
been impossible. The fonts were small, the chapels in which they were placed
tiny.^24 The new baptisteries and their large fonts allowed for group baptisms
- Bartolus,Commentaria in Secundam Digesti Novi Partem,vol. 6 ofOpera Omnia(Venice, 1602 ), fol.
217 va: ‘‘Secundo quaero, utrum baptizatus hic, efficatur civis huius civitatis? Quod videtur, nam tam per
baptismum quis liberatur a peccato e servitute qua tenebatur satanae et angelis eius, ergo videtur quasi
manumissio, per consequens videtur per baptismum contrahatur civilitas, quia certi sunt modi per quos
civilitas contrahitur, ut hic et d. l. cives, C. de incol. li. X., in quos non est iste.’’ On Bartolus, see Julius
Kirshner, ‘‘Civitas Sibi Faciat Civem: Bartolus of Sassoferrato’s Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen,’’
Speculum 48 ( 1973 ): 694 – 713. On baptism’s making citizens, see Enrico Cattaneo, ‘‘LaBasilica Baptisterii
segno di unitaecclesiale e civile,’’Atti del convegno di Parma ( 1976 ), 26 ; on the bishop as ‘‘baptizer’’ of citizens, see Golinelli,Cittae culto, 73 – 74. - Volterra Stat. ( 1210 – 22 ), 181 ,p. 93 , and 149 ( 1224 ), pp. 184 – 85 ; Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 270 ,p. 108 ;
Padua, ‘‘Statuti extravaganti [padovani],’’ doc. 3 ( 1281 ), p. 202. - As noted for Lyons by Jacques Rossiaud, ‘‘Les rituels de la feˆte civique a
Lyon,xiiie–xviesiecles,’’
Riti e rituali nelle societa`medievali,ed. Chiffoleau, Martines, and Paravicini Bagliani, 285. - Sicardo,Mitrale, 5. 9 , col. 236 C.
- Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 168 : ‘‘die sabbati de Baptismo.’’
- Sicardo,Mitrale, 6. 8 , col. 277.
- See pages 30 – 32 above.