CommunalPiety and theMendicants 427
to the men, they outstripped them in sheer numbers.^57 Female foundations
rode the coattails of the friars’ popularity. Women drifted into the mendicant
orbit in part because of the secular clergy’s lack of appreciation for their
freelance spirituality and independence.^58 Where confraternity matricula
exist, as at Bergamo, these record the growing, even dominant female pres-
ence in mendicant-sponsored confraternities in the late 1200 s.^59 It was hard
to be a ‘‘Sister of Penance’’ in 1200 , but these early pious women, like their
male counterparts, enjoyed a great degree of autonomy and independence.
The mendicants, on the other hand, though they made a place for women,
also exerted control over them. In the later 1200 s, confraternities of female
penitents under mendicant supervision were turned into regular monasteries;
thepinzocherebecame nuns.^60
The mendicants sought to evangelize the whole population. As they kin-
dled a more vibrant piety, they also created a lay clientele. The churches of
the mendicants may have been stark and austere—the Dominicans, like the
Franciscans, originally forbade sculpture and made do with painted decora-
tion^61 —but they developed crowd-pleasing devotions. After 1224 , the Dom-
inicans ended Compline with a procession to the people’s part of the church
for the singing of the Salve Regina to the Blessed Virgin. ‘‘Crowds of people
came running to see this out of devotion.’’^62 The Preachers had to forbid
friars from remaining in the people’s church to socialize after the proces-
sion.^63 After attracting the devout, the friars reorganized them. The mendi-
cant takeover of the penitents dates to 1282 , when an attempt was made to
impose a Franciscan form of their rule on all Italian lay penitents.^64 Local
groups of penitents had already come under Franciscan influence, but this
move caused resistance. Some Black Penitents sought protection from the
Dominicans and negotiated new statutes to govern their lives^65 Eventually
the lay penitents evolved into ‘‘third orders’’ subordinate to the mendicants.
They lost their old prerogative of selecting spiritual directors from any order
or even from the secular clergy. Mendicant direction meant that the peni-
tents would be infused with the spirituality of their clerical guides. In the
- See examples of such alms lists in Parma Stat.i( 1261 ), p. 435 ; Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 40 – 91 , pp.
36 – 47 ; Brescia Stat. ( 1252 ), col. ( 105 ); Parma Stat.ii( 1266 ), 100 – 101 ; Pisa Stat.i( 1286 ), 1. 57 , pp. 133 – 43 ;
Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 11. 5 , 2 : 191 – 92 ; and Ravenna Stat., 355 , pp. 169 – 70. - So Benvenuti Papi, ‘‘Donne religiose nella Firenze del due-trecento,’’In Castro, 631.
- See Brolis, ‘‘A Thousand and More Women,’’ 231 – 46.
- On this phenomenon, see De Sandre Gasparini, ‘‘Laici devoti,’’ 225 , and Antonio Rigon, ‘‘Peni-
tenti e laici devoti fra mondo monastico-canonicale e ordini mendicanti: Qualche esempio in area veneta
e mantovana,’’Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa,n.s., 17 / 18 ( 1980 ): 71 – 72.
61 .ACGOP( 1239 ), 11 ;( 1240 ), 13. - Girolamo de’ Borselli,Cronica Gestorum, 21 : ‘‘Multi currebant de populo ex devotione ad vide-
ndum.’’
63 .ACGOP( 1245 ), 32. - ‘‘Regula di fra Caro’’ ( 1284 ), Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 394 – 400.
- Such as theOrdinationsgiven by Munio of Zamora to thevestitaeat Orvieto in 1286 : ed. Maiju
Lehmijoki-Gardner, ‘‘Writing Religious Rules as an Interactive Process: Dominican Penitent Women
and the Making of TheirRegula,’’Speculum 79 ( 2004 ): 683 – 87.