70 LaCitadeSancta
distinction between conversi and penitents had become blurred, and the
words were used interchangeably, as I will use them. Originally, married
people could undertake penance only by separating, since the state of peni-
tence demanded celibacy. In the communal period, married conversi rose to
over 50 percent of self-oblations. At Lucca, for example, 53 percent of the
conversi were married couples, 20 percent single women (more than half
widows), and the remainder single men.^3 This was an important transforma-
tion and gave a great boost to the movement.^4 Not all of the married conversi
availed themselves of the ‘‘rights’’ of marriage. Private vows of chastity were
typical for couples past childbearing age and were not uncommon among
unmarried conversi.
In the communal period, individuals practicing penance appear in Lom-
bardy along the Via Emilia from Sant’Arcangelo below Cesena to Milan,
in the Veneto north to Vicenza, and around Florence in Tuscany. Isolated
examples exist also in Umbria, the Marches, and Rome, but the true home-
land of penance culture was in central and north Italy.^5 After 1160 or so,
conversi and penitents had begun ‘‘clubbing together’’ in associations for
mutual spiritual and material support, and by 1210 , they had already com-
posed, with clerical help, written ‘‘rules,’’ or forms of life.^6 Popes like Inno-
cent III encouraged this lay asceticism, and the number of those entering
the state multiplied rapidly. A defining moment came with Gregory IX’s
bull of 21 May 1227 , in which he recognized a special canonical status for
associations of conversi, calling them ‘‘Brothers and Sisters of Penance’’ for
the first time.^7 By this bull the pope approved forms and practices at least a
generation old and in so doing gave an ecclesiastical status to groups of
penitents not dependent on a monastery or church. These communities of
the Brothers and Sisters of Penance became a permanent fixture of commu-
nal life, remaining lay-run and independent of direct clerical control until
the last decades of the thirteenth century.
Conversion toPenance
Asceticism was the foundation of conversi life. The biographer of the lay
saint Ranieri of Pisa tells us that a demon once appeared to the holy man
and explained that even devils could have been saved, had they possessed
bodies for doing penance. But since they had only a spiritual nature and no
bodies to mortify, they were stuck forever in hell.^8 For a layperson to un-
dergo ‘‘conversion,’’ to become a converso, entailed the practice of asceti-
cism, doing penance. In the later 1100 s and early 1200 s, conversion to
3. See ibid., 380.
4. As observed by Meersseman, ‘‘I penitenti,’’ Meersseman,Ordo, 301 – 2.
5. See Meersseman,Dossier, 323.
6. For this dating, see Vauchez,Laity in the Middle Ages, 117.
7. Meersseman, ‘‘Penitenti,’’I laici nella Societas Christiana, 335 n. 121 ; bull in Meersseman,Dossier, 41.
8. Benincasa of Pisa,Vita [S. Raynerii Pisani], 6. 70 ,AS 24 (Jun.iv), 361.