Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 (review)

Augustine Thompson might not dissent from the proposition that the most important thing about this book is its existence. As he remarks, studies of Italian medieval religion have often focused on heresy or on institutional structures, devoting little attention to everyday religious practices that were (mostly) orthodox because the performers hardly considered any other possibility. On the other hand, standard treatments of the Italian communes have often neglected religion. Perhaps scholars in the field have been looking at medieval and Ren-aissance Italians in the hope of finding the ancestors of their rational, humanistic selves; they may also have been subconsciously afraid of shrinking the all-important gap between medieval Italians and their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe.

Certainly that might seem to be one of this book's effects. Not its least valuable aspect is that it is, in large part, a richly documented in-depth description of the Christian faith and practice of one medieval society. How precisely did this differ from urban Christianity elsewhere in Europe? Differences emerge, or are hinted at, from time to time. The northern or central Italian cathedral acquired a distinct identity as the baptismal 'mother church' of the whole diocese that was impossible for the cathedrals of the large dioceses common north of the Alps. At least within the city, baptism created not only the Christian but the citizen; these were Christian communities in their nature. Urban political autonomy in the period under review had its religious effects: the celebration of the civic patron was used as a public demonstration of submission to the authority of the commune. Much more often than not, the cathedral was the locus of this cult, even when (as with St. James at Pistoia or the Volto Santo at Lucca) it was not focussed on the cathedral's titular saint. Bologna's manufactured civic cult of San Petronio was an exception in being located elsewhere.

Presumptive higher literacy rates and, perhaps, the especially intimate involvement of the friars in Italian urban life are other areas in which one might perhaps look for an Italian difference. By 1300 both the politics and the religion of the communes were being reshaped under a variety of pressures. The lady who, albeit a practising Cathar, paid for a new roof for Orvieto Cathedral was an anomaly no longer to be tolerated; the Christianity that qualified one for membership in urban society had to stand official scrutiny, and the loosely regulated forms of lay piety that had nurtured and been nurtured by the independent commune progressively underwent the directive influence of the friars as the thirteenth century wore on. The book ends with a lengthy account of the riots prompted by the mendicant inquisition's execution of two lapsed heretics at Bologna in 1299.

Thompson's endeavors have resulted in a richly textured and colored book, which, quite apart from its other merits, is enjoyable to read. It is based on a vast range of sources: particularly valuable is his use of unpublished homiletic material and prayer collections. Unhappily (perhaps because of the sheer range covered) the devil has got into quite a lot of the detail. Readers who do not know the sources—and few will know them all—should beware of taking certain statements on trust. For example: the major civic offering at Lucca was on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14, not on the May feast of the Invention (here oddly called the Illumination) and, like the cults of St. Martin and St. Regulus, it was celebrated at the cathedral, not at San Frediano (pp. 170–171). The great Florentine victory of Campaldino took place not on May 1, 1289 (p. 280), but on St. Barnabas' day, June 11, resulting in civic honors for that saint. On page 192 a son of the lay saint Homobonus of Cremona is credited to the (childless) Pier Pettinaio of Siena...