84 LaCitadeSancta
also ordered penitents (and clerics) to wear distinctive garb.^97 On 24 July
1286 Bishop Giacomo Cavalcante of Citta`di Castello excommunicated any-
one who wore the penitent’s habit without making vows.^98 Bishop Giacomo’s
emphasis on vows indicates a somewhat clericalized view of penitent life.
The laity had broader views on what it took to enter the state of penance.
The penitents’ earliest entrance ceremony was nothing more than the execu-
tion of a legal instrument accepting the rule of the society and the imposition
of a penitent ‘‘habit.’’ The ‘‘Propositum’’ of 1215 , reflecting earlier practice,
gave no regulations on the habit’s appearance.^99 Use of a legal instrument,
rather than a spoken vow, followed the norms of canonical penance rather
than monastic practice.^100 Other rites of the penitents were equally nonmo-
nastic. The blessing of the ‘‘habit’’ in one early penitents’ ritual from Brescia
has nothing in common with the analogous ceremony in the rite of monastic
profession. It took the vestition prayers from the ancient rite for imposing
public or voluntary penance. As in the old ritual, the penitents called their
attire not ahabitus,like that of religious, but by the primitive wordcilicium,
‘‘hair shirt’’—even though it was nothing of the kind.^101 Only after the 1260 s
do we find penitent profession rituals including spoken vows, now patterned
on the rites of the religious orders. At Arezzo, the penitents vowed to accept
the rule, replied to questions about their acceptance of the society’s purpose
by saying Amen, and then kissed the statute book of the society.^102 Also like
ancient public penitents, a converso, once professed, could leave the life of
lay penance only to enter a canonical religious order.^103
Penitents were called to a higher standard of lay life, not a cloistered
monasticism. The penitent habit represented no separation from the daily
work of earning a living, but rather the self-discipline by which individuals
sought to overcome sins and vices. The rules of the penitents and their off-
shoots proscribed blasphemy, dicing, tavern haunting, and womanizing. The
1261 statutes of the Frati Gaudenti, or Jovial Friars, a lay brotherhood
founded by the Franciscan Ruffino Gorgone of Piacenza, captured the spirit
of this legislation: ‘‘The [brothers] are not to loiter about at intersections and
under porticoes, chatting in a worldly way, since this causes the integrity and
reputation of their religious life to be very much denigrated.’’^104 Penitents
- E.g., Pistoia,Constitutiones Synodi Diocesanae Pistoriensis sub Episcopo Ermanno Editae Anno 1308 , 1 ,
Mansi 25 : 170 – 71. - ‘‘Cartulaire,’’ 19 , Meersseman,Dossier, 203 – 4.
- ‘‘Memoriale,’’ 5 – 6 , Meersseman,Dossier, 129 – 30.
- See ‘‘Memoriale,’’ 30. 2 , Meersseman,Dossier, 109. Cf. Gratian,Decretum,C. 20 q. 1 c. 16 ;C. 27
q. 1 c. 36 ; andRule of St. Benedict,ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1982 ), 46 ,p. 68.
On the Humiliati tertiaries’ ceremony, which combined a written instrument and spoken vows, see
Andrews,Early Humiliati, 183 – 84. - Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 449 (the Brescia penitents); see Meersseman on this rite, ibid., 1 : 420.
- ‘‘Nuovo statuto della congregazione della Vergine di Arezzo’’ ( 1262 ), 7 , ibid., 2 : 1021.
- ‘‘Memoriale,’’ 31 , Meersseman,Dossier, 109 ; cf. Gratian,Decretum, De poen.D. 5 c. 3.
- ‘‘Regula Militiae B. Mariae V. Gloriosae,’’ 62 , Meersseman,Dossier, 304 : ‘‘In triviis aut porticis
more seculari in coloquiis non morentur, quoniam ex hoc religiose vite honestas et fama posset non
modicum denigrari.’’