366 BuoniCattolici
gives as fruit the Eucharist, so central to the private and liturgical piety of
communal Italy. The remaining fifty verses of this prayer pay further hom-
age to the Eucharistic Christ offered on the altar daily and received by the
faithful at general Communions. The trajectory of the entire prayer is
summed up in its final acclamation: ‘‘Jesus, you are the end most hoped for’’
(Ihesus finis optatus). In the manuscript, these verses are appended to a text of
Bonaventure’sArbor Vitae,his meditation on the cross and Passion.
These prayers are not monastic devotions, cloistered from everyday life.
Their popularity lay in how their users could see their own trials, sorrows,
and sufferings as crosses Christ could himself understand and remedy. The
rubric before one long vernacular penitential prayer to the Trinity promised
that if believers used it with a constant heart, their problems and sorrows
would be turned into joys and consolations.^117 This was prayer for practical
benefit more than an exercise in mystical union or pious contemplation.
Although mostly lost, there must have been many other very practical for-
mulas like one an Italian doctor copied onto the last folio of his medical
codex, a prayer—better, a spell—against his enemies, including hostile law-
yers: ‘‘In the name of Christ. Amen. I conjure you, O herb, that I conquer
through the Lord, Father, [Son, and Holy Spirit,] and through the moon
and stars; and that you conquer all my enemies, bishop and priests, all lay
men and women, and all the lawyers opposing me.’’^118 The typical devo-
tional collection, however, contains nothing quite so heterodox.
The evocative imagery of the most common prayers suggests a desire for
direct contact with the physical person of Christ as a reality in this world.
Similar longing lies behind one image in a collection of the late 1200 s (fig.
57 ).^119 Here the standing Christ holds a cross-shaped staff and blesses the
viewer. His feet stand on a carefully drawn ‘‘carpet line’’ some five inches in
length. An inscription explains that if the line is extended ‘‘twice six times’’
(bis sexties), the result will be the exact measure of Christ’s earthly body. The
accuracy of the measure is certain, since it was copied from a golden cross
in Constantinople made to Christ’s exact size. The promise is fantastic, but
the sentiment behind it is wholly orthodox. Christ had a real human body,
with proportions like ours, and by its suffering he redeemed the world. Just
as prayer needed to yield practical results, Christ’s person needed to be expe-
rienced as present in this world.
Perhaps the most perfect, if also perhaps the most baroque, example of
- Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria,ms.W. 2. 40 , fol. 3 v.
- Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale,ms 736(I. 130 ), fol. 267 r, text partly transcribed inInventari dei
manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia,ed. Giuseppi Mazzatinti et al. (Forlı`: Bordandini, 1895 ), 5 : 190 : ‘‘In nomine
Christi. Amen. Coniuro te herbam vincham per dominum Patrem, etc., per lunam et stellas; et vinchas
omnes inimichos, pontificem et sacerdotes et omnes laicos et omnes mulieres et omnes avocatos contra
me.’’ See also prayers against various afflictions in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msConv.
Soppr. F. 4. 776 , fols. 76 r–v. - Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana,msPl.xxv 3, fol. 15 v.