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A Saint and his Money: Perceptions of Urban Wealth in the Lives of Italian Saints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Diana M. Webb
Diana M. Webb*
Affiliation:
University of London, King’s College
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Extract

In the year 1033, the Bishop of the city of Arezzo in Tuscany awarded to the hermits of Camaldoli all the tithes of buying and selling by citizens of Arezzo, urban and suburban, and by all merchants and dealers in the diocese. In so doing he gave classic expression to the hierarchy’s view of money-making. ‘I wish you to know what a great sin it is not to give God tithes of the profits of your business dealings, which you can rarely or never conduct without grave danger of fraud or crime.’ The poorest peasant, he went on, did not presume to avoid paying tithe on the fruits of the just labours of his hands. The merchant, indeed, had urgent need to give generous alms over and above the tithe for the remission of his sins.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 61 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 U. Pasqui, Documenti per la storia della Città di Arezzo: Codice Diplomatico, 3 vols (Florence, 1809–1937) I. pp. 220–1.

2 PL 172, cols 865–6.

3 Ibid., col. 863.

4 ASB Aprilis 3, pp. 828–30.

5 L. Little, ‘Pride Goes before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom’, AHR 76 (1971), pp. 16–49.

6 Crichton, G., Romanesque Sculpture in Italy (London, 1954), pp. 64–6 Google Scholar. For the iconography of the Works of Mercy see ‘Barmherzigkeit, Werke der’, in Lexicon der Christlichen Ikonographie, ed. E. Kirschbaum, 7 vols (Rome, 1968–76) 1, cols 245–51. The theme appears first in manuscript illumination of the mid-twelfth century, and in sculpture at the Minster of Basel before 1170.

7 ‘Neque vero existimes, me peregrinationum ac piorum id genus exercitiorum rationem tempore judicii praecipuam habiturum esse, cum dicam, “Venite, benedicti Patris mei; possidete regnum caelorum; esurivi enim & dedistis mihi manducare; sitivi & dedistis mihi bibere; nudus eram, & cooperuistis me; infirmus, & visitastis me; in carcere eram, & redemistis me.” Nolo itaque, fili mei, deinceps ut per orbem vageris; sed patriam tuam Placentiam repete; ubi tot pauperes, tot viduae derelictae, tot infirmi & variis oppressi calamitatibus misericordiam implorant meam, & non est qui adjuvet. Ibis tu, eroque tecum ego, & gratiam dabo, qua possis ad eleemosynam divites, dissidentes ad pacem, aberrantes denique & vagas praeserrim mulierculas ad rectam vivendi normam adducere.’ ASB Iulii 7, p. 650. Raimondo’s Vita occupies pp. 645–57.

8 Life of Umiliana in ASB Maii 4, pp. 385–418; of Zita, ibid., Aprilis 3, pp. 495–527.

9 A. Vauchez, ‘Sainteté Laïque au XIIIe siècle: la vie du bienheureux Facio de Crémone (v. 1196–1272)’, MEFRM 84. i (1972), p. 32.

10 ASB Aprilis 2, p. 595: ‘… circa pauperes tamen ita erat profusus, ut nihil sibi sed omnia eis se possidere existimarer, adeo ut non sibi sed pauperibus Christi vivere crederetur. Sed & non minus eorum causa solicitus erat qui inopia & paupertate laborarem, eleemosynamque petere erubescebant. Enimvero vocem perituri praeveniens, omnibus misericorditer compariebatur & tribuebat.’

11 ASB Iulii 7, p. 651, where there is also a further reference to ‘pauperes tam occulti quam publici’.

12 ASB Maii 4, pp. 388–9.

13 Vita delB. Pietro Pettinajo Sánese di terz’ ordine di San Francesco volgarizzata da una leggenda latina del 1333 per F. Serafino Ferri Agostiniano di Lecceto l’anno 1508, ed., M. de Angelis (Siena, 1802), p. 14.

14 Ibid., pp. 18–19.

15 A. Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen äge (Rome, 1981), pp. 234–49.

16 Little, L., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, 1978), pp. 214–15 Google Scholar.

17 F. Gatta, ‘Un antico codice reggiano su Omobono, il “Santo Popolare” di Cremona’, Bollettino Storico Cremonese, 12 (1942), p. 112: ‘Hoc ergo iam plurimos dies intentus proposito quo dudum in ilio grandi solicitudo augendarum fortunarum calere consueverat, tepere iam cepit, nec socios sequi nec operam solito artifìcio consumare; sed ecclesiis et orationibus et ieiuniis iam intentus, quas suo exercitio cumulaverat gazas, in egenos et pauperes Cristi propria manu distribuit…’. See also Vauchez, , La Sainteté, pp. 412–14 Google Scholar.

18 Bertoni, G., ‘Di una Vita di S. Omobono del secolo XIV, Bollettino Storico Cremonese, 8 (1938), p. 164 Google Scholar.

19 ‘Vita Metrica dei SS. Imerio e Omobono secondo gli Uffici rimati dei Corali della Cattedrale’, ed. F. Zanoni, Annali della Biblioteca Governativa e Libreria Civica di Cremona, 9 (1956), pp. 10–32; compare Vauchez, La Sainteté, p. 414, n. 372.

20 One of Homobonus’s miracles in vita occurs ‘cum ipse exilem vineam purgari fecisset, quam solam pro victu suo et multorum pauperum tenuerat, ceteris aliis preditis venditis et distribuas in pauperes’, Gatta, p. 113. Of his father we are told (p. 111), ‘agrorum satis ampla possessio non longe a menibus eius urbis victus necessaria ministrabat’.

21 Vita del B. Pietro Pettinajo, pp. 6, 74–5.

22 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

23 ASB Aprilis 3, pp. 594–609 prints a Latin epitome of the original legend and a longer fourteenth-century life. The epitome has been more recently edited by M. Bertagna, AFH 62 (1969), pp.452–7.

24 ASB Aprilis 3, p. 598: beginning to be touched by the divine love, Lucchesius becomes disgusted by his trade, ‘cum in hujusmodi emptionibus et venditionibus minutorum laqueum diaboli paratum sibi conspiceret’, and turns to engrossing grain instead!

25 Ibid., p. 599: ‘qui nundinas mundi vilissimas respuens, celesti sub Francisci disciplina es mercatus’.

26 Vauchez, LaSainteté, p. 238, n. 158: ‘Facio’, pp. 37, 39.

27 Vauchez, ‘Facio’, p. 37: ‘Nam coram eo, quia faber erat, et communis opinio laycorum est quod ferrarii habent bonam manum in signando, praesentabantur aegri variis languoribus detenti, et virtute Dei, quae de eo exibat, statim sanabantur.’

28 ASB Iulii 7, p. 651.

29 Vauchez, ‘Facio’, pp. 37, 39.

30 Vita del B. Pietro Pettinajo, pp. 16–18.

31 ASB Iunii 2, p. 371.

32 ASB Maii 4, p. 389: ‘Domine tu nosti, quia dum potui, tibi largitus ministravi; nunc autem facultatibus privata, animam meam & corpus totaliter tibi trado.’

33 I. del Lungo, Dino Compagni e la sua Cronaca, 2 vols (Florence, 1879) 2, p. 83: ‘uomini di basso stato, ma buoni mercatanti e gran ricchi, e vestivano bene, e teneano molti famigli e cavalli e aveano bella apparenza’ (Cronica I. xx). As del Lungo comments (n. 4), the Cerchi belonged to the ranks of those who, as Compagni observes elsewhere, were not noble by blood, but were called grandi by virtue of other attributes.

34 ASB Maii 4, p. 410: ‘nupsit ejusdem patriae civi, nobilitate quidem pari, proposito tamen ac conscientia dispari, cum esset quaestu ac foenore infamis.’

35 M. Habig, St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, 3rd edn (London, 1973), p. 243 (Celano, bk 1, cap. 7). Compare p. 891: ‘He was naturally courteous in manner and speech.’ [Legend of the Three Companions, cap. 1.)

36 Ibid., p. 898 (Legend of the Three Companions, cap. 3).

37 Ibid., pp. 236–7 (Celano, bk 1, cap. 4).

38 For the relationship between sanctity and noble status, see the discussions of Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 204–15, 324–6, and Murray, A., Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 337–82 Google Scholar.

39 ASB Iunii 4, p. 430.

40 Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 232–4; ‘Facio’, p. 39. Compare p. 30: pilgrimage in the thirteenth century was still ‘un moyen de sanctification privilégié pour les laïcs’.

41 Sicco Polenton’s Vita Beati Antonii Peregrini, An Bol 13 (1894), pp. 417–25, though of the fifteenth century, is based on an early life prepared for the canonization process (Vauchez, La Sainteté, pp. 232–3, n. 137). Antony ‘aetate nulla se lasciviis ad voluptates et vitia, nulli se mercaturae ad opes cumulandas dedit…. Quae autem sibi a patre essent relictae opes, eas veluri compedes iter ad Deum impedientes, abiecit, sprevit, erogavit pauperibus [p. 417].’

42 ASB Martii 3, pp. 52–7. The reference to superbia is p. 54.

43 ASB Iulii 7, p. 648; Gatta, p. 111.

44 Vita del B. Pietro Pettinajo, pp. 6–8.

45 Ibid., pp. 8–10.

46 Ibid., pp. 81–2.

47 La Sainteté, p. 238.