402 BuoniCattolici
lowed it in the private space of the home.^133 In 1255 , San Gimignano still
permitted public wailing, but limited the number of women raising the pi-
anto in the streets to twenty. Men might join the women’s pianto only in the
semiprivacy of the church at the Mass and vigil.^134 In the 1270 s, communes
attempted to forbid the pianto completely and even to reduce the numbers
at funerals.^135 Some tried segregation. Early-fourteenth-century Lucca in-
structed men on how to conduct ‘‘their pianto.’’ They should gather at a
designated church, ‘‘make the pianto’’ for a suitable time, and then go
straight home. Women were to wail on their own at some designated house.
There was to be no more lamenting in the streets.^136 Siena tried to force the
women to stay home during processions.^137 It seems that after 1300 the mix-
ing of the sexes, the social competition, and the private occupation of public
space was becoming intolerable. The late communes had become more oli-
garchical, religious expression ever more clericalized, and popular rites dis-
tasteful. Whatever the city fathers thought, the theatrical lamentation
remained popular. Perhaps the clergy even joined in; at least in early-thir-
teenth-century Siena the liturgists had to remind them not to.^138
Although men occasionally wailed, candle-carrying was their parallel to
the women’s pianto. Men carried candles before the bier, often in great
numbers. Families vied to outdo each other by their candles, both in number
and quality. Pious and civic societies kept a supply of mourning candles to
enhance the ceremonies. Mourners from the neighborhood of Fraternita`di
Santa Lucia at Pisa carried their lighted candles into the church and held
them throughout the service and the procession to the grave.^139 Families and
confraternities did the same. When Saint Ranieri of Pisa died, people
crowded the funeral procession as it went from the church of San Vito to
the duomo of Santa Maria. They carried candles ‘‘as at Candlemas.’’^140 The
lights presented an imposing spectacle at night.^141 The carpenters’ society at
Bologna only carried two candles in funeral processions (probably because
of city regulation), but these were twelve-pounders, of the purest wax. They
- Ibid., 31.
- San Gimignano Stat. ( 1255 ), 2. 54 , pp. 713 – 14.
- E.g., at Reggio; see Sagacino Levalossi and Pietro Della Grazata,Chronicon Regiense, RIS 18 : 8.
On women’s mourning, see Hughes, ‘‘Mourning Rites,’’ 21 – 38. - Lucca Stat. ( 1308 ), 1. 11 ,p. 15.
- Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 5. 218 , 2 : 320 ; Lucca Stat. ( 1308 ), 1. 11 , pp. 14 – 16. The intent of some of this
legislation was to keep women out of public view. Contemporary laws in Ravenna Stat., 160 , pp. 89 ,
forbade them to sit under porticoes or spin in public.
138 .Ordo Senensis, 2. 100 ,p. 506 ; this is the only regulation of clerical pianto that I have found. - E.g., Pisa Stat.i, pp. 705 – 6.
- Benincasa of Pisa,Vita [S. Raynerii Pisani], 12. 125 ,p. 370.
- A practice that San Gimignano Stat. ( 1255 ), 2. 54 , pp. 713 , sought to curb. Even at the height of
sumptuary regulations in the early 1300 s, exceptions had to be made: e.g., Florence Stat.i( 1322 ), 5. 7 ,
p. 225 , allowed the ‘‘Sotietas Marie Virginis Orti Sancti Michaelis’’ to have many ‘‘cereos sive torchios
ipsius sotietatis’’ carried at funerals. Florence tried to stop nocturnal funeral processions in 1322 : Florence
Stat.i( 1322 ), 5. 8 – 9 ,p. 225.