GoodCatholics atPrayer 349
doxy. They made public and manifest that he was a good and Catholic man.
Visitors often found him kneeling before his little altar.^41 No private chapel
compared with that of the future Dominican Giacomo Salomone. As a
youth, he secretly erected a small altar in his bedroom and went there to
make his thanksgiving after Communion. He made sets of paraments for this
altar, according to the liturgical colors of the year. On the mornings and
evenings of duplex feasts he lighted four candles on it and incensed it ‘‘ac-
cording to the norms of the ecclesiastical office’’ (juxta ecclesiastici morem Of-
ficii).^42
Giacomo’s clericalized piety was probably not typical of even the more
devout laity. In their devotions, the people favored simplicity. When reciting
their Aves and Paters, they contented themselves with simple shrines, usually
enthroning the Virgin and Child. More than sprinkling with holy water, this
sacred image sanctified a place of prayer and showed forth the sacred pres-
ence. While Ambrogio Sansedoni was still an infant, his love of the sacred
images in books his father read to him portended his future holiness.^43 As a
layman, Francisco Patrizzi, who entered the Servites in 1285 , erected an
image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in one room of his house. There he prayed
morning and evening, genuflecting fifty times and reciting Aves and other
praises of the Virgin. Then he would scourge himself.^44 The image did not
need to be elaborate or valuable. When Umiliana dei Cerchi invoked God’s
help to escape a second marriage, she prayed before a rude image of the
Virgin sketched on a piece of parchment.^45 Francesco Patrizzi sometimes
prayed before an old and faded painting of the Virgin on a cemetery wall at
Presciano, near Siena. He expressed his devotion by leaving flowers.^46 The
flagellant confraternity of Bologna captured the lay link between devotion
and image in their statutes of 1260. These stipulated that whenever members
of the confraternity found themselves before an image of Christ or the Vir-
gin, whether stationary or carried in procession, they bow their heads and
say a prayer. Images made their subjects present in a mysterious way, but
the images were not the reality that was worshiped. A story tells that ‘‘in
Lombardy’’ ordinary people put up images of the Virgin Mary in their
homes, and fathers led their families and servants in prayer before them.
Once, a boy from one such family fell in the river—was it the Po?—and was
feared drowned. But his mother, with joy, found him still alive on a sandbar.
When asked how he was saved, the boy said it was by ‘‘Our Lady, the one
41 .Processus... B. Joannis Boni, 3. 1. 173 ,p. 815 ; 3. 3. 183 ,p. 818 : ‘‘quod publicum et manifestum erat,
quod ipse erat religiosus et catholicus homo.’’ See also ibid. 4. 4. 288 ,p. 845.
42 .Vita [Beati Jacobi Veneti Ordinis Praedicatorum], 1. 2 ,p. 453 ; 2. 14 ,p. 457.
43. Gisberto of Alessandria et al.,Vita [B. Ambrosii], 1. 6 ,p. 182.
44. Cristoforo of Parma,Legenda Beati Francisci, 6 ,p. 176 ; he continued his devout repetition of Aves
even after becoming a Servite: ibid., 13 ,p. 180.
45. Vito of Cortona,Vita [B. Humilianae], 1. 7 ,p. 387.
46. Cristoforo of Parma,Legenda Beati Francisci, 28 ,p. 186.