18 LaCitadeSancta
of the Church year. Ritually, their recommencement of baptisms put them
in competition with the cathedral. It seems their excuse for recommencing
baptisms was the fortieth anniversary of a Eucharistic miracle that was sup-
posed to have happened in their church. But miracles did not count against
the Ecclesia Matrix in this dispute. The court ordered the priests of Santa
Maria in Vado to desist and return to the cathedral—under pain of excom-
munication.^15 At Bergamo, the ancient collegiate church of Sant’Alessandro
shared baptismal rights with the cathedral of San Vincenzo. Then, in the
1180 s, the cathedral clergy went to court against Sant’Alessandro to vindicate
their exclusive right to the title of Ecclesia Matrix. Cardinal Adelardo of San
Marcello, legate of Pope Urban III, heard the case. On 23 December 1189
he resolved the dispute in favor of the cathedral and merged the two groups
of clergy into a single body.^16 The cathedral became the unique religious
head of the city. As in ritual, so in civil law. In 1224 , Volterra promulgated
new statutes and decreed of their cathedral: ‘‘As that church is the head and
authority for all the city of Volterra and its district, so it follows, to the honor
of the Blessed Virgin and the city and district of the Commune of Volterra,
that we should first discuss church matters found in its constitutions.’’^17 They
did not linger long over the cathedral’s statutes, but their legal point had
been made. The cathedral came first in authority and honor. Almost every-
where by 1200 the concentration of major religious rites at the cathedral was
complete. This consolidation of ritual and sacramental life at the cathedral
gave the bishop the exclusive responsibility over the care of souls in his city.
One might read this as episcopal imperialism, with the bishops seeking to
regain in the spiritual sphere the civil authority they were losing to the com-
mune.^18 But the identification of church and city made the commune’s secu-
lar consolidation and the bishop’s spiritual consolidation two sides of one
coin.
Thecitadewas a single sacred entity. The bishop was its pastor; his cathe-
dral was its parish church: the ‘‘house’’ (duomo) of the city. No communal
government ever doubted this. At Bologna in 1222 , Saint Francis of Assisi
gave his famous sermon to a packed crowd in the piazza of the commune.^19
The Bolognese duomo, San Pietro, was a few blocks away in its own piazza.
This separation of space was precocious. Until the late 1200 s, when most
cities completed their communal palazzi, the piazza of the duomo and pi-
- Samaritani, ‘‘Circoscrizioni,’’ 116.
- See Valsecchi,Interrogatus,esp. 49 – 53. On the city and cathedral of Bergamo, see Zizzo, ‘‘S. Maria
Maggiore di Bergamo,’’ 207 – 29. - Volterra Stat. ( 1224 ), 1 – 2 , pp. 108 – 10 : ‘‘Quoniam ecclesia est caput et principium totius Vulter-
rane civitatis eiusque districtus, sequitur ergo quod, ad honorem Dei et beate Marie Virginis et totius
comunis Vulterrane civitatis eiusque districtus, de negotiis ecclesiarum in constitutionibus istis prius tract-
are debeamus.’’ - So Miller,Bishop’s Palace, 6 , who rejects the idea that this activity shows the bishops as involved
in a power struggle with the commune: ibid., 142. - Matteo Griffoni, 8 ;CCB:Vill., 86.