CommunalPiety and theMendicants 455
was taking revenge on Bompietro and Rosafiore because they had thwarted
his sexual advances on a sister, daughter, or niece.^223 It was not only Oddo
Lasagnoli who harbored suspicions about the friars’ morals.
What may well have attracted Fra Guido’s attention most were the forty-
one who said that they had hoped for vengeance or some calamity to be
visited on the inquisition and the friars. Perhaps there was an incendiary
among the five men in twenty-four who said it was better to burn the inquisi-
tor or San Domenico than Bompietro, but this seems little more than idle
talk. One might expect that some of the five women who wanted to end
almsgiving to the Dominicans would put their words into action. But hopes
for a boycott did not materialize. Although bequests to San Domenico were
off slightly in 1298 ( 51 ) and 1299 ( 48 ) from the high in 1297 ( 66 ), they re-
bounded to an all-time high of 174 during the Holy Year of 1300 and re-
mained at around 50 to 60 a year until the mid- 1320 s.^224 The years 1295 to
1323 were the Bolognese Dominicans’ peak period of popularity in wills. In
the end, the Dominicans and mendicants generally were too much in tune
with the piety of the age to be rejected in themselves. In spite of popular
condemnation of inquisition abuses and other kinds of friction, the mendi-
cants never lost their popularity. Nor would those people who turned them-
selves in to the Holy Office ( 243 of whom were women) have caused Fra
Guido much lost sleep. His personal attentions were directed exclusively
toward the notable, the violent, and those who might have more informa-
tion.
In the end, popular outrage was not directed at the repression of heresy
or even against the inquisition as such.^225 Rather, the Bolognese railed
against the treatment of Bompietro because he was a respected friend and
neighbor, a good and generous man, one who insisted that he was a Catholic
and venerated the Blessed Sacrament. Known Cathars could go to the stake,
and the inquisition would be merely feared; when it attacked people like
Bompietro or Rosafiore or took their children’s money, popular sensibilities
were outraged. Already by early June, however, public expression of dissent
seems to have all but disappeared. The last man apprehended by the inquisi-
tion in the affair was interrogated on 19 June. On 16 and 19 June, the porters
of San Domenico reported that about a week earlier they had heard Filisino
di Ardizzone de’ Libri defending Bompietro’s orthodoxy and attacking the
inquisition. He did so in the courtyard outside the very door of the Domini-
can monastery and in the presence of the wardens of the contrada and a
223 .ASOB,nos. 196 , 250 , 305 , 349 , 404.
224. See Bertram, ‘‘Bologneser Testamentei,’’ 211 – 15.
225 .PaceLorenzo Paolini, ‘‘Gli ordini mendicanti e l’inquisizione: Il comportamento degli eretici e
il giudizio sui frati,’’Me ́langes de l’E ́cole franc ̧aise de Rome: Moyen Aˆge–temps modernes 89 ( 1977 ): 695 – 709 , esp.
706 – 8 , who thinks the protests of these ordinary Catholics represented a dissent from enforcing ortho-
doxy. This is too sweeping; they rejected prosecution of those who met lay standards of practical ortho-
doxy.