CommunalPiety and theMendicants 433
etics, and he harbored intense dislike for the friars. Whatever Armanno’s
true beliefs, Guido’s investigation resulted in a summons of the Ferrara ca-
thedral clergy to Rome. There on 13 January 1301 , in a process presided
over by Fra Guido, the local saint was declared a heretic and his family’s
property forfeit.^101 Fra Guido returned to Ferrara and entered the duomo in
the middle of the night. He and inquisition familiars then took sledgeham-
mers to Armanno’s shrine and burned his bones. What did the canons think
about these events? What would they think three years later, when the new
pope, Benedict XI, rewarded Fra Guido’s industry by making him the new
bishop of Ferrara?^102 We know what the laity thought. Finding the shrine in
pieces on the morning after the raid, a mob attacked the Dominican monas-
tery of San Domenico and tried to lynch the inquisitor. He was saved by a
detachment of soldiers dispatched from Azzo d’Este, the lord of Ferrara.^103
In the struggle over the cult of Saint Armanno Pungilupo the views and
attitudes of the inquisitor Guido and the clergy of Ferrara are much more
visible than those of the laity. In a later clash between Fra Guido and the
people of Bologna we can begin to hear echos of the voices of these laypeople
themselves.^104
TheDeath of aPursemaker
The medieval ‘‘man in the street’’ almost never speaks in medieval docu-
ments. In the spring of 1299 , thanks to an inquisition inquest, we come very
close to hearing ordinary people giving their opinions on orthodoxy, heresy,
and the mendicants.^105 The incident that triggered the inquest may not be
unique, but its extensive documentation is.^106 The affair began on the morn-
ing of 12 May 1299 , when Fra Guido ordered his messenger to bring two
prisoners from their cells to hear his sentence. On their appearance in the
office of the inquisition at the church of San Domenico in Bologna, the
- Zanella,Itinerari, 27 – 28.
- Francesco Pipino,Chronicon, 3. 48 , col. 712.
- Benati, ‘‘Armanno Pungilupo,’’ 114.
- What made one a heretic? See Zanella, ‘‘Eresia catara,’’ 239 – 58 ; Mariano D’Alatri, ‘‘ ‘Eresie’
perseguite dall’inquisizione in Italia nel corso del duecento,’’The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages ( 11 th–
13 th C.),Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, ser. 1 , stud. 4 (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1976 ), 211 – 16 and
240 n. 3. - I thank Fr. Arturo Bernal, O.P., of the Dominican Historical Institute, Rome, for permission to
reproduce here in a slightly different format my ‘‘Lay Versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy: Protests
Against the Inquisition in Bologna, 1299 ,’’ fromPraedicatores Inquisitores 1 : The Dominicans and the Mediaeval
Inquisition: Acts of the First International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome 23 – 25 February 2002 ,
Dissertationes Historicae 30 (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2004 ), 701 – 30. - See Euge
ne Dupre ́Theseider, ‘‘L’eresia a Bologna nei tempi di Dante,’’ rpt. inMondo cittadino e movimenti ereticali nel Medio Evo (saggi)(Bologna: Patron, 1978 ), 261 – 315 ; and Lorenzo Paolini,L’eresia catara
alla fine del duecento,L’eresia a Bologna fraxiiiexivsecolo 1 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio
Evo, 1975 ), 63 – 79 ; and Lansing,Power and Purity, 151 – 58 , on these events. Guido’s register is edited by
Lorenzo Paolini and Raniero Orioli,Acta S. Officii Bononie ab Anno 1291 usque ad Annum 1310 , 2 (continuously
paged) vols. (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1982 ), with index vol. ( 1984 ). Fra Guido
was also a poet; his unedited poems are preserved in Vicenza, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana,ms 526(early
xivcent.).