424 Epilogue
century, municipal elections at Bologna were wholly in the control of the
Dominican prior and the Franciscan guardian. They selected the sixteen
men from each quarter who chose the consuls and ‘‘ancients’’ of the Popolo.
They supervised elections.^36 Other cities show similar patterns.^37 As friars
took over sensitive posts, lay penitents disappeared. By the end of the cen-
tury, the Brothers of Penance had completely lost their role in city adminis-
tration. Friars accumulated other political duties besides administration. In
1299 , the Bolognese named the Dominican prior of Faenza as agent in their
negotiations with the Romagnol communes harboring the exiled Lambert-
azzi faction. He met with representatives of these communes in the Francis-
can house near Monte del Re, a dependency of Dozza (Imola).^38 Exemptions
followed on duties. In 1252 , the Bolognese allowed friars to hold office simul-
taneously as syndics of the university and their own religious corporations, a
kind of pluralism forbidden to secular corporations. At Pisa, the Humiliati
were exempted from regulation by the wool guild. The Bolognese granted
exemption from the calumny oath, once a unique privilege of the bishop and
lay penitents, to friars of all orders in 1288.^39
Conversely, the mendicants drew the cities into religious activities that
earlier had been alien to them. The communes had always sought to pre-
serve the appearance and reality of Catholic orthodoxy. But after the 1230 s,
mendicant inquisitors demanded city muscle in policing heretics. In letters
of 11 and 12 May 1252 , Pope Innocent IV ordered the northern cities to
impose the ‘‘imperial penalty,’’ that is, death by fire, for heresy. He in-
structed the region’s Dominican priors to report on city compliance.^40 After
the murder of the inquisitor Peter of Verona in 1253 , papal letters first re-
warded municipal repression with indulgences and finally commanded it on
pain of excommunication.^41 The cities were slow to comply, and some even
claimed to have privileges exempting them from doing the ecclesiastical tri-
bunals’ dirty work. Pope Innocent was complaining to the friars about pas-
sive resistance within a year.^42
Friars impinged on the traditional role of the parochial clergy, first by
hearing confessions and attracting people to their Masses and Offices, and
later by doing sick calls and burials. Although the originally clerical Domini-
- Bologna Stat.ii( 1293 , but enacted originally in 1288 ), 5. 153 , 1 : 565.
- Bologna Stat.i( 1259 – 60 ), 11. 101 , 3 : 353 ; Pisa Stat.i( 1286 ), 1. 177 ,p. 335 ; Brescia Stat. ( 1313 ), 1. 160 ,
col. 48. But Brescia excluded religious from city office: Brescia Stat. (before 1277 ), col. ( 161 ); ( 1313 ), 1. 170 ,
col. 51 – 52. - Pietro Cantinelli,Chronicon( 1299 ), 91.
- Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 4. 21 , 1 : 403 ; Pisa Stat.i( 1286 ), 1. 162 ,p. 294 ; Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 6. 42 ,
2 : 34. - Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio,msB. 3695 , doc. 5 (BOP 1 : 205 ) and doc. 6 (originals both
dated 1252 ). - Innocent IV ( 31 May 1254 ), in ibid., doc. 19 (BOP 1 : 248 ), granted forty days to those attending
Dominican sermons against heresy. - Ibid., doc. 15 (BOP 1 : 231 ).