CommunalPiety and theMendicants 429
were a virtual hotbed of dissent; the local heretics numbered 250. Inquisition
records reveal that the most common heresies detected were rationalist
doubts about God and the sacraments, not developed Cathar dualism.^74 Dis-
sent there was, but it had neither the numbers, concentrations, nor coher-
ence to produce a true alternative religious culture.^75 Heretical sympathies
expressed, rather, a generalized discontent with the religious and spiritual
establishment, not preference for some doctrinal alternative.^76 I have empha-
sized therelativeinsignificance of dissent in communal religion because it
throws into stark relief the mendicants’ skepticism about the orthodox lay
religiosity of the age. Ordinary people wondered why inquisitors came after
their seemingly harmless neighbors. One did not need to be a heretic to
object to aggressive policing of orthodoxy. In a celebrated incident at Parma
in 1279 , the inquisitor Fra Florio sent to the stake a certain Todesca, wife of
Ubertino Blancardo, from the contrada of San Giacopo. She had been a
servant of an authentic heretic, the well-to-do Donna Oliva de’ Fredolfi.
Todesca’s neighbors objected to this imputation of guilt by association. They
stormed the Dominican convent, looted and burned it, and killed one of the
friars, Fra Giacomo de’ Ferrari. The friars left the city in procession and
complained to the papal legate at Florence, Cardinal Latino. He excommu-
nicated the commune and put the city under interdict. Parmese opinion was
outraged: the city itself had no guilt in the matter. Negotiations to remove
the censures lasted until 1282 , when the commune paid large fines and im-
posed draconian punishments on the looters. The incident became, in popu-
lar lore, a classical example of clerical overreaching.^77 Executions of people
like Todesca provoked bad feeling againstquesti frati,‘‘these friars.’’ To the
friars themselves, their detractors were suspect of heresy.^78 A man at Gubbio,
on seeing a new image of Saint Peter Martyr in the Dominican church there,
blasphemed the saint, saying: ‘‘Those friars have painted a picture of that
Peter showing him dying for the Christian faith, but I have it for certain that
he was killed, not for the faith, but on account of a certain bad woman.’’^79
- Zanella, ‘‘Malessere ereticale,’’ 41 – 47. For Bologna in the 1270 s and 1280 s, Zanella (ibid., 45 )
estimates forty heretics total: twenty-three known by name, thirty referred to in inquisition processes. - So ibid., 62 – 63 ; conclusions repeated in id.,Itinerari ereticali, 5 – 45 , esp. 44 – 45.
- Id., ‘‘L’eresia catara fraxiiiexivsecolo: In margine al disagio di una storiografia,’’Bullettino
dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio muratoriano 88 ( 1979 ): 246 , esp. n. 15 , echoing Raffaello
Morghen, ‘‘Problemes sur l’origine de l’he ́re ́sie au Moyen Aˆge,’’He ́re ́sies et socie ́te ́s dans l’Europe pre ́-indus- trielle, 11 e– 18 esiecles,ed. Jacques Le Goff (Paris: Mouton, 1968 ), 130 – 31. - The most complete version of the incident is inChronicon Parmense, 36 , 41 , 43 ; other versions may
be found in Salimbene,Cronica, 732 , 736 – 37 , 744 , Baird trans., 511 , 514 , 518 ;Mem. Pot. Reg.,col. 1146 ;
Sagacino Levalossi and Pietro Della Grazata,Chronicon,col. 9. See also the papal letter treating the matter
in Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio,msB. 3695 , doc. 37 (BOP 2 : 129 – 30 ;msoriginal of 1282 ). - So Zanella, ‘‘Malessere ereticale,’’ 62 – 64.
79 .Vita S[ancti] Petri Martyris Ordinis Praedicatorum, 8. 61 ,p. 713 (text from Miracles of Berenguer, 1310 s):
‘‘Fratres isti pingere faciunt figuram istius Fr. Petri, quomodo mortuus fuerit, quasi subierit pro fide
Christiana martyrium: sed ego pro certo habeo, quod ipse non pro fide, sed propter mulierem quamdam
malam occisus fuit.’’