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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The origins of the Humiliati have long been a subject of discussion amongst historians. In the twentieth century the first person to grapple with the problems was Antonino de Stefano, who was quickly followed by Luigi Zanoni, later by Herbert Grundmann and Ilarino da Milano, and more recently by Michele Maccarrone, Brenda Bolton, and Maria Pia Alberzoni. The modern writers have accepted de Stefano’s view that the Humiliati first emerged in northern Italy in the late twelfth century. The earliest references, dating from the 1170s, describe both a small group of lay men and women devoted to the religious life (humiliati per deum), and an association of clerics living in community at the church of San Pietro Viboldone. Although they initially sought papal approval, those who ‘falsely called themselves Humiliati’ were condemned in 1184 by Lucius III, not because they were guilty of doctrinal error but because they refused to stop preaching without authority or holding private meetings, probably also because of their rejection of oath-taking. In spite of this setback the Humiliati flourished, and by the end of the twelfth century three distinct elements were recognizable: married or single lay men and women living a religious life while remaining in their own homes, male and female monastics living in common under a rule, and clerics living in some sort of canonical communities. In June 1201 these groups were brought back into the Church under the auspices of Innocent III. He gave approval to the three groups or ‘orders’ which recent research has revealed were already distinct before curial intervention, but which were now organized into one framework along Cistercian lines. It was a fortunate decision. Although groups described as ‘Humiliati’ were expelled from Cerea in 1203 and Faenza in 1206, the Order of the Humiliati went on to enjoy spectacular success, becoming a major presence in the religious, economic, and administrative life of northern Italy in the thirteenth century.
1 de Stefano, A., ‘Le origini dell’ordine degli umiliati’, Rivista storico-critica delle scienze teologiche, 2 (1906), pp. 851–71 Google Scholar. He returned to the subject in 1927: idem, ‘Delle origine e della natura del primitivo movimento degli umiliati’, Archivum Romanicum (1927), pp. 31–75. Zanoni, Luigi, Gli Umiliati nei loro rapporti con l’eresia, l’industria della lana ed i comuni nei secoli xii e xiii sulla scorta di documenti inediti (Milan, 1911), pp. 3–93 Google Scholar. Grundmann, Herbert, Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Darmstadt, 1961)Google Scholar. Ilarino da Milano summarized his view in ‘Umiliati’, Enciclopedia Cattolica, 12 (Rome, 1954), cols 754–6. Maccarrone, Michele, Studi su Innocenzo III, Italia Sacra, 17 (Padua, 1972)Google Scholar. Bolton, Brenda, ‘Innocent Ill’s treatment of the Humiliati’, SCH, 8 (1984), pp. 73–82 Google Scholar. Alberzoni, Maria Pia, ‘Gli inizi degli Umiliati: und riconsiderazione’ in La conversione alla povertà nell’Italia dei secoli xii-xv, Convegni del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medioevale, 27 (Todi, 1991), pp. 187–237.Google Scholar
2 Stefano, De, ‘Le origini’, pp. 851–9 Google Scholar.
3 Tiraboschi, Girolamo, Vetera humiliatorum monumenta, 3 vols (Milan, 1766-8) [hereafter VHM], 2, pp. 120–1.Google Scholar
4 Tagliabue, Mauro, ‘Gli Umiliati a Viboldone’, in L’Abbazia di Viboldone (Milan, 1990), p. 15.Google Scholar
5 See the brief description by the Anonymous of Laon, Chronicon Universale (excerpts), ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS, XXVI (Hanover, 1882) pp. 449–50. The bull of condemnation is in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. L. Richter and E. Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1881), 2, cols 780–2.
6 Alberzoni has re-examined the register copy of the papal letter Licet multitudini credentium, sent to the Humiliati in December 1200, before the intervention of the papal delegates. It was partially mistranscribed in PL and her revisions show that it is already addressed to the three separate groups, demonstrating that tliey were already defined and that the three-tiered structure was not, as was previously believed, imposed by Innocent III and the Curia. The new transcription also reveals specific reference to clerics amongst the Humiliati. Alberzoni, ‘Gli inizi’, pp. 201 n.40, 205 n.47.
7 The bulls of approval are edited in VHM, 2, pp. 128–48. An English translation of the first is given by Robert M. Stewart, ‘De illis qui faciunt penitentiam’. The Rule of the Franciscan Order: Origins, Development, Interpretation (Rome, 1991), pp. 365–71.
8 On Cerea see ‘Statuti rurali veronesi’, ed. Carlo Cipolla, Archivio Veneto, 37–8 (1889), p. 344. On Faenza, see PL, 215, cols 1042–3.
9 The fullest modern account of the thirteenth-century history of the order remains Zanoni, Gli Umiliati.
10 Bolton, ‘Innocent Ill’s treatment’, p. 79; Tagliabue, ‘Gli Umiliati a Viboldone’, pp. 11–15.
11 The state of research is summarized in Lorenzo Paolini, ‘Le Umiliate al lavoro. Appunti fra storiografia e storia’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 97 (1991), p. 234 and n.12.
12 See for example, Tommaso da Celano, Vita Prima Sancti Francisci, in Legendae S. Francisci, ed. Quaracchi Fathers, Analecta Francescana, 10 (1926-41), pp. 1–126, or Jordan of Saxony, Libellus, ed. H. C. Scheeben, Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Histórica, 16 (Rome, 1935), pp. 1–88.
13 See for example, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry. A Critical Edition, ed. J. F. Hinnebusch, Spicilegium Frihurgense, 17 (Freiburg, 1972), ch. 28, pp. 145–6.
14 Non omni spiritui, 16 June 1201, ed. Tiraboschi, VHM, 2, pp. 139–48.
15 Hinnebusch, ed., Historia Occidentalis, p. 144.
16 Brooke, Rosalind B., Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge, 1959), p. 225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 For example, five or six notaries are recorded in Veronese houses between 1210 and 1246. Verona, Archivio di Stato, Fondo di Sta Maria della Ghiara, nos 29, 35, 139, 151, and 206.
18 VHM, 3, p. 154.
19 VHM, 1, pp. 278–9.
20 Hinnebusch, W. A., The History of the Dominican Order, 2, Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.
21 See Moorman, J. R. H., A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1511 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 123–39.Google Scholar
22 Alberzoni, M. P., ‘San Bernardo e gli Umiliati’, in Zerbi, P., ed., San Bernardo e l’Italia (Milan, 1992), pp. 102–3 Google Scholar and nn.21-3. There is also a brief and slightly inaccurate reference to the approval of the Humiliati by Innocent III in the early fourteenth-century Chronicle of Francesco Pipino, a Bolognese Dominican, ed. L. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 9 (1726), col. 633.
23 Fiamma, Galvano, Chronicon extravagans et chronicon maius (ad an. 1216), ed. Ceruti, A., Miscellanea di storia italiana, 7 (Turin, 1869), pp. 506–773.Google Scholar
24 Fiamma, Galvano, Manipulus florum sive historia Mediolanensis ab origine urbis ad annum circiter 1336, ed. Muratori, L. A., Rerum italicarum scriptores, 11 (Milan, 1723), col. 632.Google Scholar
25 Alberzoni, ‘San Bernardo e gli Umiliati’, p. 103 n.22, gives the text of the Galvagnana passage, based on Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale di Brera, MS AE X 10, fol. 70v.
26 Fiamma, Chronicon maius, p. 641.
27 Ibid.
28 VHM, 2, p. 36.
29 Zanoni, Gli Umiliati, pp. 11, 14.
30 See Cochrane, E., Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago and London, 1981), p. 109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 Spinelli, G., ‘La diffusione del culto di san Bernardo in alta Italia’, in Zerbi, , San Bernardo e l’Italia, pp. 193–215.Google Scholar
32 On Simone, see Castagnoli, P. G., ed., Pittura bolognese del ’300. Scritti di Francesco Arcangeli (Bologna, 1978), pp. 184–208.Google Scholar
33 I am grateful to Dr Lorenzo Paolini of the University of Bologna for this information.
34 Gatti Perer, M. L., ‘Gli affreschi trecenteschi’, in L’abbazia di Viboldone, p. 134, fig. 91.Google Scholar
35 Alberzoni, ‘San Bernardo e gli Umiliati’, pp. 104–5. Tiraboschi had already thrown doubt on the role of Guy, pointing out that he would have been too old by 1201: VHM, 1, p. 45.
36 John of Brera includes the catalogues in his chronicle: Chronicon ordinis humiliatorum, ed. Tiraboschi, VHM, 3, pp. 229–86. The calculation of the loss is made in ch. 37, p. 273.
37 Zanoni, CU Umiliati, pp. 138–41, 285–99.
38 ‘Humiliatorum constitutiones in generalibus comitis editae’, ed. Tiraboschi, VHM, 3, p. 178.
39 Eugenius IV, 1433, cited in P. Puccinelli, Chronicon Insignis Abbatiae SS Petri et Pauli de Claxiate Mediolani (Milan, 1655), pp. 6–9.
40 Affiliated to Sta Giustina in Padua; see G. Forzatti Golia, ‘Gli ordini religiosi della diocesi di Pavia nel medioevo’, Bollettino della società pavese di storia patria, ns 41 (1989), pp. 24–5.
41 Nicholas V to the archbishop of Milan, 1447, cited in Puccinelli, Chronicon … de Glaxiate, pp. 71–4.
42 Almost nothing is known of John, although Mercati has suggested that he may be the John of Marliano who compiled a collection of papal privileges between 1408 and 1435. G. Mercati, ‘Due ricerche per la storia degli umiliati’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 11 (1957), pp. 177–8.
43 The earliest surviving manuscripts of the 1419 chronicle, both of which include later interpolations, date from the sixteenth century (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS V 9 sup, dated 1536 and MS BS 1,19 A 27 (sussidio), dated 1567), but an illustrated, if crudely executed and incomplete, copy of the Excerptum survives in a fifteenth-century codex (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS G 301 inf SP 66). Zanoni used a seventeenth-century copy for his edition (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS G 302 inf), Gli Umiliati, pp. 336–44. Comparison with the manuscript revealed only minor inaccuracies in his transcription. The copy was made at the Ambrosiana on the orders of Cardinal Federico Borromeo before his library possessed G 302 inf, which was acquired in 1802. C. Castiglioni, ‘L’Ordine degli umiliati in tre codici illustrati dell’Ambrosiana’, Memorie storiche della diocesi di Milano, 7 (Milan, 1960), p. 8. For further details on these manuscripts and those of the 1419 chronicle, see Zanoni, Gli Umiliati, pp. 248–52.
44 VHM, 1, p. 39.
45 John of Brera, Chronicon, ch. 10, p. 236.
46 Ibid., chs 1–3, p. 230.
47 Zanoni, Gli Umiliati, p. 13.
48 Arnolfo, Gesta Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium usque ad a. 1077, eds L. C. Bethmann and W. Wattenbach, MGH. SS, VIII (Hanover, 1848), p. 11, cited in Zanoni, Gli Umiliati, p. 13. On Arnolfo see C. Violante, ‘Arnolfo’, Dizionario Biografico Italiano, 4 (Rome, 1962), pp. 281–2.
49 John of Brera, Chronicon, ch. 10, p. 236. The document in fact dated to the fourteenth century: G. Giulini, Memorie spettanti alla storia di Milano, 9 vols (Milan, 1760–5), 3, p. 282.
50 John of Brera, Chronicon, ch. 9, p. 235.
51 Anonymous, ‘Vita de S. Joanne de Meda’, ed. C. Suyskens, ActaSS, September VII (Antwerp, 1760), pp. 358–60.
52 John of Brera, Chronicon, chs 10–11, pp. 236–7. His Excerptum, ch. 16, pp. 339–40, has the same story with slight variations (for example, the Brera is not mentioned) and both versions vary slightly from that of the anonymous ‘Vita de S. Joanne’, ActaSS, Sept. VII, p. 359, the tone of which is less certain: ‘unde credimus ipsum angelum Dei fore’.
53 John of Brera, Chronicon, ch. 12, p. 237. For earlier examples of this topos of relics resisting the action of thieves, see P.J. Geary, Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ., 1978), pp. 128, 184–6.
54 John of Brera, Chronicon, ch. 12, p. 237.
55 A. de Stefano, ‘Le origini dell’ordine degli umiliati’, Rivista storico-critica della scienze teologiche, 2 (1906), pp. 858–9.
56 The inscription dating the façade is published in Gatti Perer, ‘Gli affreschi trecenteschi’, p. 126.
57 John of Brera, Chronicon, preface, pp. 229–30. The relevant papal letters are in VHM, 2, pp. 198–200, 329–32.
58 John of Brera, Chronicon, preface, p. 229.
59 Ibid., ch. 16, p. 241: ‘quia contra humiliatos tunc murmurabatur, quoniam ipsi in aliquibus errabant; licet essent Religiosi sanctae vitae.’
60 Ibid., ch. 27, pp. 251–3, ch. 33, p. 263.
61 Ibid., preface, p. 230.
62 Carutti, Domenico, ‘Erberto e Guido, ossia l’origine degli Umiliati’, in Brofferio, A., ed., Tradizioni Italiane, 2 vols (Milan, 1847-8), pp. 609–38.Google Scholar