Table Of ContentLilies Among Thorns: Lay Saints and Their Cults in Northern and Central
Italian Cities, 1150-1350
Mary Harvey Doyno
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Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Columbia University
2010
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Abstract
Lilies Among Thorns: Lay Saints and Their Cults in Northern and Central
Italian Cities, 1150-1350
Mary Harvey Doyno
This dissertation explores the phenomenon of civic cults dedicated to
contemporary laymen and women in the late medieval Italian communes. While hundreds
of contemporary lay people were venerated in the Italian communes between the twelfth
and fourteenth centuries, I focus upon a number of saints for whom the most primary
sources survive: Ranieri of Pisa (d. 1160), Omobono of Cremona (d. 1197), Raimondo
'Palmerio' of Piacenza (d. 1200), Andrea of Siena (d. 1251), Zita of Lucca (d. 1278), Pier
'Pettinaio' of Siena (d. 1289), and Margaret of Cortona (d. 1297). Although most of
these lay saints were never officially canonized by the Roman church, their local cults
gave them a place within a pantheon of civic protectors and patrons that had previously
been dominated by biblical figures and early Christian martyrs.
In order to explore both the phenomenon and function of lay sanctity in the Italian
communes, I have mined a wide variety of sources, including vitae (or saints' lives),
miracle collections, communal deliberations and statutes attesting to the support and
growth of lay saints' cults, and the physical remains of the churches, altars, tombs,
paintings, and sculptures created to memorialize these saints.
The first cults of lay saints appear alongside the development of independent
communal governments in the twelfth century and reached their height during popolo-xvm
communes in the late thirteenth-century. My work shows that the cults of these new civic
patrons, who had been midwives, goldsmiths, domestic servants, merchants, and artisans,
emphasized aspects of lay life that were most at odds with a saintly life: familial
relationships, the decision to remain active and involved in the city, and work. Moreover,
I argue that from their first appearance, the cults dedicated to urban laymen and women
presented two models of the perfected lay life: one focused on the transformation of an
individual life and the other concerned with the reform of a civic society. I show how
between roughly 1250 and 1300, whenpopolo factions (political parties made up of a
city's merchant and artisan elite) dominated communal governments, the civic cults of
contemporary lay inhabitants rely on both models. The cults of lay saints in popolo-nm
communes emphasize how these pious inhabitants had transformed their own lives
through prayer and penance at the same time as they had rehabilitated their civic
communities through charity. Moreover, I show that by mining both models of lay
sanctity, lay saints' patrons were able to construct cults that responded to and reflected
their own civic and religious contexts. Finally, I conclude by looking at how Supra
montem, a 1289 papal bull calling for Franciscan supervision of lay penitents, changed
the terms of urban lay sanctity, emphasizing a lay saint's religious affiliation and internal
spiritual development over his or her civic identity and involvement.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
The Lay Religious Life 5
The Penitential Movement 10
The Communal Context 14
Reforming Self and City:
The Two Models of Lay Sanctity 20
1. The Beginnings of Civic Lay Sanctity in the
Italian Communes 22
Saints and Sources 23
Ranieri of Pisa 28
A Lay Saint Canonized: The Beginnings of Omobono
of Cremona's Cult 38
Raimondo 'Palmerio' of Piacenza 48
Raimondo's Religious Life 50
Raimondo's Charity 58
The Later Lives of Omobono of Cremona 66
Quoniam historiae 67
Labentibus annis 70
Conclusion 77
2. Practical Piety: Zita of Lucca and the Growth
of her Civic Cult 81
The Sources 83
Constructing Lay Sanctity 89
"With her Own Hands": Zita's Work Life 92
Pilgrimage, Penitence and Prayer: Zita's Religious
Life 97
The Balm of Charity 109
Surrogate Charity: Standing Between Rich and
i
Poor 110
Practical Charity: Overcoming Sex and Status 115
Perfect Charity: Zita's Death 118
Zita's Civic Cult 121
The Canons of San Frediano 127
TheRiseofthePopolo 132
A Civic Feast: Zita and the Popolo 135
Zita's Cult After the Popolo 139
Conclusion: Zita as Civic Patron 143
3. Lay Sanctity and the Sienese Commune 145
Civic Saints in Siena 145
Sources 150
Andrea Gallerani 150
Pier'Pettinaio' 154
Communal Siena 159
Siena's First Lay Saint: Andrea Gallerani 165
Andrea's Vita 166
Andrea's Miracles 173
An Indulgence and A Pair of Reliquary Shutters 175
Andrea's Cult in the Fourteenth Century 180
Siena's Holy Comb Maker: Pier 'Pettinaio' and his Cult
c. 1250-1289 182
Serving Siena: Pier's Communal Life 182
The Sermon: Pier's Communal Death , 187
Civic Sanctity and the Nine 194
Ancient Patrons: The Virgin and her Court 195
The New Cults 198
Deliberating Civic Sanctity 201
A Civic Holy Man: Pier's Vita and his Cult c. 1333 204
Pier's Practical Penitence , 205
An Active or Contemplative Saint? 209
Franciscan Connections 215
Pier's Civic Christianity 220
Money and Work 221
Following the Lay, Paying Taxes 226
li
Conclusion 230
4. Margaret of Cortona: The New Penitent 232
From Concubine to Civic Saint 232
Sources and Scholarship on Margaret 240
The San Basilio Sources 250
The Communal Statutes 253
Cortona in the Thirteenth Century 254
Affiliating with the Franciscans: Lay Penitents and
Franciscans in Cortona 258
Penance, Work and Charity in the Legenda 265
"Deserts are not relevant today": Margaret's Desire
for a Solitary Life 269
A Public Penitent: Margaret's Religious Life
in Cortona 277
The Doubting Franciscans 287
Margaret's Tribulations/Franciscan Tribulations 292
5. Margaret of Cortona: The Civic Patron 302
The Move to San Basilio 302
Criticizing the City and Helping Others:
Margaret's New Visionary Life 304
"A Particular Life of Understanding": Margaret and
SerBadia 318
Margaret's Death and Miracles 322
A Penitential Community: The Beginnings of Margaret's
Cult at San Basilio 331
The Visual Sources in San Basilio 340
The Commune's Saint 346
Conclusion 348
Conclusion 351
Figures 359
Bibliography 372
iii
1
Introduction
Sometime in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Lucchese, a merchant
living in the small Chianti town of Gaggiano, was forced to flee his native city after the
political party he had vocally supported fell out of favor. Lucchese settled with his wife,
Bonadonna, and their children in Poggibonsi, a city 25 kilometers north of Siena, where
they resumed their work as merchants. Not long after Lucchese and Bonadonna's arrival
in the city, however, all of their children died. The couple responded to their tragedy by
becoming penitents, an increasingly popular path for members of the urban laity in late
medieval Italy who were seeking a more dedicated religious life. The couple swore to
maintain a celibate marriage, followed a rigorous schedule of prayer and fasting, and
devoted as much of their time as they could to providing charity to the poor and needy of
Poggibonsi.1
Lucchese and Bonadonna died within a few months of each other around 1250.
Immediately after their death, the people of Poggibonsi as well as those from the
surrounding countryside began to flock to the couple's tombs, drawn by reports of the
many miracles occurring there. A Franciscan friar, who had served as Lucchese's and
perhaps also Bonadonna's confessor, took down accounts of these miracles. Scholars
' On Lucchese and Bonadonna of Poggibonsi, see Martino Bertagna, "Note e documenti intorno a S.
Lucchese," Archivum franciscanum historicum 62 (1969): 3-114, and 452-7; Massimiliano Zanot,
"Lucchesio, Lucio, Lucchese," in Ilpubblico dei santi: Forme e livelli di ricerzione dei messaggi
agiografwi, ed. Paolo Golinelli (Rome: Viella, 2000), pp. 157-179. Also, see Bibliotheca Sanctorum, ed. F.
Caraffa, 12 vols. (Rome: 1961-9), vol. 8 (1966), cols. 230-4 [hereafter BS\. On medieval Poggibonsi, see
Maria Grazia Ravenni, Poggibonsi nel basso medioevo: Genesi di un territorio comunale (Poggibonsi:
Lalli, 1994).
2 There has been some confusion over when Lucchese and Bonadonna died; see Zanot, "Lucchesio, Lucio,
Lucchese," p. 161.
2
have speculated that this friar may also have composed a now lost vita of Lucchese in
those first months after the merchant's death.3 A second vita written in 1370 also by a
Franciscan survives in a fifteenth-century copy and purports to include an abbreviated
version of the original collection of miracles.4
The claims made in this second vita have cemented Lucchese's reputation as a
Franciscan saint.5 The vita describes how Francis of Assisi visited Lucchese and
Bonadonna in Poggibonsi not long after the death of their children and offered the couple
a set of guidelines to organize their new religious lives and penitential habits to mark
their commitment. In short, from the mid fourteenth century on, Franciscans and scholars
have seen the couple as the first members of a Franciscan lay order. While Francis may
very well have traveled to Poggibonsi and offered spiritual guidance to Lucchese and
Bonadonna, to describe this couple only in terms of their possible association with the
Friars Minor is to overlook much of the history of the development of their cults. In civic
statutes released in 1300 and again in 1333, Lucchese is identified as one of Poggibonsi's
patron saints.6 And in communal documents issued throughout the fourteenth century,
3 Zanot, "Lucchesio, Lucio, Lucchese," p. 161.
4 See J. Bollandus and G. Henschenius, Acta Sanctorum...editio novissima, ed. J. Carnandet et al., 3rd ed.
(Paris: 1863-87), Apr. Ill, pp. 594-610 [hereafter AA.SS.]. The 1370 vita, which was written by the
Franciscan Friar, Bartolomeo de' Tomei di Siena, has been preserved through a copy made by Fra
Bartolomeo da Colle in 1477; see Bertagna, "Note e documenti intorno a S. Lucchese," pp. 10-15. While
Bartolomeo de' Tomei cites the original Legenda as one of his main sources, his vita conforms to many of
the hagiographic tropes common to Tuscan saints' lives and has raised questions about how accurately it
reproduces the thirteenth-century life; see Bertagna, Note e documenti intorno a S. Lucchese."
5 Those works that have emphasized Lucchese and Bonadonna as particularly Franciscan saints include
Agostino Neri, Vita del Beato Lucchese, terziario francescano (Assisi, 1890); Francesco Mattesini, Le
origini del Terz 'Ordine francescano: Regola antica e vita del Beato Lucchese (Milan: Vita e pensiero,
1964.
6 Bertagna has transcribed these statutes; see "Note e documenti intorno a S. Lucchese," pp. 15-17. For
more on the Poggibonsi statutes, see Una comunita della Valdelsa nel medioevo: Poggibonsi e il suo
statuto del 1332, ed. Silvio Pucci (Poggibonsi: Lalli, 1995); and L 'Archivio comunale di Poggibonsi:
3
there are several mentions of members of the city's communal government attending and
financially supporting the civic celebrations to mark Lucchese's feast day.7 Thus while
the Franciscans may have worked to establish Lucchese as a member of their pantheon,
the city to where this pious merchant fled with his family, and later underwent a
conversion to a life of penance and charity, was aiming for the same.
This dissertation will explore the appearance, beginning in the twelfth century in
northern and central Italian cities, of civic cults dedicated to contemporary laymen and
women. In cities ruled by independent communal governments, midwives, goldsmiths,
domestic servants, merchants, and artisans (to name just a few of the occupations of these
civic lay saints), with little or no association to organized religious orders, were venerated
during their lifetimes and celebrated as civic patrons after their deaths by their fellow
city-dwellers. Although only one of these civic lay saints would be canonized by the
Roman church during the Middle Ages—Omobono of Cremona (d. 1197), who was
canonized by Pope Innocent III in 1199—the vitae, miracle collections, tombs, and altars
dedicated to these pious men and women by their fellow city-dwellers as well as the
many mentions of them in civic statutes provide convincing evidence that these cults
were of great local importance. That importance has often been overlooked, because of
the success mendicant orders had during the fourteenth century connecting lay saints to
their burgeoning third or lay orders. While many of the laymen and women celebrated as
local saints in the Italian communes had some connection (and perhaps even a loose
institutional affiliation) with Franciscan and Dominicans friars, this dissertation will
Inventario della sezione storica, ed. Mario Brogi (Siena: Amministrazione Provinciale di Siena, 2003), pp.
7-40.
7 Bertagna, "Note e documenti intorno a S. Lucchese," pp. 19-39.
