82 LaCitadeSancta
Siena and Bologna accepted testimony by penitents in legal cases without
demanding the calumny oath—a privilege previously granted only to monks
and bishops.^81 Like those under public canonical penance, lay penitents were
forbidden to take oaths, unless there was ‘‘necessity’’ or a papal dispensa-
tion.^82 Popes construed necessity very broadly, allowing peace oaths, profes-
sions of faith, testimony in court, and making a will. For those performing
public charity, cities granted tax exemptions without hesitation. They will-
ingly granted such penitents alms from public funds.^83 Siena, typically, ex-
empted penitents, there calledmantellati,from service in public office.^84 The
communes protected conversi, unarmed as they were, from those who would
harass them or interfere with their self-government or autonomy.^85 As spon-
taneous and distinctively lay as the penitents’ conversion of life was, both
Church and commune recognized and respected it.
ThePenitentialLife
The habit made the penitent; nothing obliged conversi to live together or
even join a society or confraternity. There was little standardization in ap-
pearance. Umiliana dei Cerchi simply wore a black robe with a white veil,
and so she appeared to one of her followers after her death.^86 When Marghe-
rita of Cortona decided to embrace the life of penance, she made herself a
shift of white and gray check (quadretto taccholino) and placed over it a black
mantle. She appears wearing this odd homemade habit on an early-four-
teenth-century altarpiece in Cortona (fig. 34 ). She was very much the do-it-
yourself conversa—in spite of later Franciscan attempts to claim her as one
of their Gray Penitents.^87 The Sienese combmaker Pietro Pettinaio took up
the habit of a penitent after the death of his wife, or perhaps a little before.
That act made him a penitent. By the late 1200 s, mendicant directors were
pressuring penitents to adopt the ‘‘colors’’ of their particular orders. As for
Pietro, the Franciscans claimed that his habit had been their color—gray—
not the black of Dominican-sponsored penitents. The adoption of Pietro into
the Franciscan family was postmortem wishful thinking. In life, his friend
Salvi di Orlando rebuked him for his discolored mantle. Pietro replied that
- Ibid. ( 1250 ), 4. 23 , 1 : 404 ; Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 88 ,p. 46.
- ‘‘Memoriale,’’ 17 – 18 , Meersseman,Dossier, 101 – 2.
- Parma Stat.i( 1261 ), p. 431 ; ‘‘Capitoli inediti di una redazione statutaria pavese del secoloxiii:
Documenti,’’ ed. Renato Soriga, 1. 383 ,Bollettino della Societapavese di storia patria 22 ( 1922 ): 11 ; Pisa Stat.ii
( 1313 ), 1. 271 ,p. 264 ; Florence Stat.i( 1322 ), 5. 72 ,p. 270. - Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 93 ,p. 47.
- As Florence did in 1325 : Florence Stat.ii, 2. 80 , pp. 147 – 48.
- Vito of Cortona,Vita [B. Humilianae],App. 63 , pp. 401 – 2.
- On her independence of the Franciscans, see Enrico Menesto`and Roberto Rusconi,Umbria: Una
strada delle sante medievali(Rome: Rai, 1991 ), 61 , 62. On Margherita, see Daniel Bornstein, ‘‘The Uses of
the Body: The Church and the Cult of Santa Margherita da Cortona,’’Church History 62 ( 1993 ): 163 – 77.
On the saint’s cult and image in art, see Joanna Cannon and Andre ́Vauchez,Margherita of Cortona and the
Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany(University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1997 ).