CommunalPiety and theMendicants 425
cans were probably the first to compete with the seculars, the Franciscans
had become so thoroughly clericalized that by 1227 the pope had already
recognized and protected their exercise of parochial functions such as confes-
sions and funerals. With sick calls and funerals came bequests, which pre-
viously would have gone to the cappelle. Above all, the encroachment on
burial rights, with its influence over bequests, rankled and provoked law-
suits.^43 From the secular clergy’s point of view, the friars’ encroachment was
not merely financial, it also disrupted pastoral care and weakened parish
unity and identity.^44 This synopsis may exaggerate mendicant-secular fric-
tion—lawsuits leave paper trails, friendly relations do not—but the Francis-
can Salimbene reported, with distaste, the accusations made by the secular
clerics. The mendicants failed to encourage people to pay tithes, buried the
dead in their own cemeteries and took the burial fees, heard parishioners’
confessions and solicited alms, and even usurped the parish priest’s office of
preaching.^45
The cities admittedly loved the friars, but there were always misgivings
about their growing domination of communal religious life. Some friars
lacked integrity. In 1308 , Lucca enacted draconian sanctions against Fra
Francesco, an Augustinian who had betrayed the commune. His death sen-
tence was not repealed until a year later, and then only at the demand of the
papal legate.^46 Mendicant churches provided sanctuary for malefactors. In
1277 , much to one Bolognese chronicler’s disgust, the Franciscans helped the
youthful Bastardino de’ Griffoni escape communal justice by hiding him and
smuggling him out of the city dressed as a friar. He had murdered a knight
of the podesta in the Piazza San Salvatore.^47 By the 1300 s, Florence and
Siena started barring friars from holding communal office.^48 The Pisans
lynched several Dominicans in 1313 , after hearing a rumor that a friar had
poisoned the emperor Henry VII.^49 The friars were no longer petted dar-
lings.
NewInsiders,NewOutsiders
Spiritually, the mendicant arrival brought winners and losers. The lay peni-
tents had always counted women in their number, but the movement was
predominantly male. The public life of the commune was a man’s preserve;
the neighborhood societies were military and so excluded women. A look at
- For litigation between friars and parish clergy over burial rights, see Florence, Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana,msAcq. e Doni 263. - See Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 157 – 58.
- Salimbene,Cronica( 1250 ), 584 , Baird trans., 407. See also Luigi Pellegrini, ‘‘Mendicanti e parroci:
Coesistenze e conflitti di due strutture organizzative della Cura Animarum,’’Francescanesimo e vita religiosa
dei laici nel ’ 200 , 133 – 34. - Lucca Stat. ( 1308 ), 3. 62 – 74 , pp. 180 – 83 ; pp. 340 – 41.
- Matteo Griffoni, 22 , 27.
- Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 1. 379 , 1 : 267 ; Florence Stat.ii( 1325 ), 3. 108 ,p. 262.
49 .CCB:A( 1313 ), 290.