Renaissance Studies Vol. 12 No.

The I 1 5 cults of the saints in later medieval and

Renaissance Perugia: a demographic overview
of a civic pantheon
GARYDICKSON

The civic cult of saints in Perugia did not, of course, exist in a political,
religious, or social vacuum, although here it is not possible to do more than
hint at the broader historical context in which it flourished.’ Described very
summarily, the elements which strongly influenced later medieval and
Renaissance Perugia’s culture of civic veneration included the implantation
of the various monastic and religious orders in the city from the Benedic-
tines onwards - and particularly Perugia’s location in the Umbrian heartland
of primitive and Observant Franciscanism; the fact that Perugia belonged
to the Papal State; its typical civic experience of communal political unrest,
vendetta, war, and plague; the periodic revivals (or waves of collective
religious enthusiasm) which swept the city; and the localfama of those ‘living
saints’ - ecstatics, preachers, and churchmen - whose charisma, acknowledged
within the city, foreshadowed their posthumous cultus.
Some substance may be given to these last points, if we compare an outline
chronology of revivalism in Perugia (table 1) with the ‘living saints’ - all friars,
and all but two of them Franciscans - who received posthumous veneration
in the city (table 2). To do so immediately makes it clear that Perugia’s later
medieval and Renaissance cult of saints was indeed bound up with the col-
lective religious experiences of the city. Nevertheless, these charts also reveal
apparent anomalies. For instance, there is no evidence that Raniero Fasani,
the local penitent most closely associated with the Perugian origins of the
disciplinati (1260), was honoured with a cult in his native city, even though
he was venerated in Bologna.‘ Moreover, the cult of the Dominican pope,
Benedict XI (1303-4), probably owed at least as much to Weberian
T h e greater part of this research was undertaken for my thesis, ‘Patterns of European sanctity:
the cult of the saints in the later Middle Ages (with special reference to Perugia)’. Ph.D., University
of Edinburgh, 1975, which was supervised by Professor Denys Hay. He was indeed my Doktoruater,
and (together with his wife Gwyneth) he became a dear friend. In 1989, the award of a research grant
by the Leverhulrne Trust, to whom I am happy to acknowledge my gratitude, permitted further work
in the Archivio de Stato di Perugia (ASP).
’For a n idea of the social and economic context, see Sarah Rubin Blanshei, ‘Population, wealth
and patronage in medieval and Renaissance P e r u g i a ’ , J m d Oflnferdisciplina~Histmy, 9 (1979). 597-619
and Albert0 Grohmann, Citta e territm.0 tra medioevo ed etu moderns: Perugiu, secc. XlII-XVI, 2 vols (Perugia,
1981).
Ernilio Ardu, ‘Frater Raynerus Faxanus d e Perusio’, in his I1 mouimento dei disciplinati (Perugia,
1962). 84-98.

0 1998 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxjord University Press

 A demographic ovmiew of a civic pantheon 7

TABLE
1 Revivalism in Perugia, c.1200-c.1500

c.1208-26 Franciscan revivalism in Perugiawmbria

Francis preaches and recruits friars
Giles of Assisi (d. 1261)
1260 Flagellant movement begins in Perugia
Raniero Fasani
During Lent or Eastertide (4 April)?
Civic endorsement: 4-15 May; then to 29 May
1300-1 Papal anm santo
Jubilee pilgrimage from Perugia to Rome
1399 Bianchi movement comes to Perugia
Main group of Bianchi in Perugia 2 September;
they make circuit of neighbouring towns,
6-14 September
1400 Jubilee
C. 1415-56 John of Capistrano, OFM (Observ.)
c.1448 he promotes plague processions in the city
1422-76 James of the Marches, OFM (Observ.)
1425-44 Bernardino of Siena, OFM (Observ.)
Many visits to Perugia
Preaching stirs the city; peacemaking;
burning of the vanities; reform of urban statutes
1448 Robert of Lecce, OFM (Observ.)
Extended preaching in Perugia; peace;
processions; outcries of ‘Iesu, misericordia’
1450 Jubilee
1486-7 Bernardino of Feltre, OFM (Observ.)
Leads plague processions; promotes cult of St
Joseph
c.1501 Colomba of Rieti, OP (Tert.)
Late 15th-cent. urban sibyl; promotes plague
processions

TABLE2 ‘Living Saints’ subsequently venerated in Perugia

POPE BENEDICT XI, OP

BERNARDINO OF FELTRE, OFM (Oberv,)
BERNARDINO OF SIENA, OFM (Observ.)
BONAVENTURE, OFM
COLOMBA OF RIETI, OP (Tert.)
FRANCIS OF ASSISI, OFM
GILES OF ASSISI, OFM
JAM= OF THE MARCHES, OFM (Observ.)
JOHN OF CAPISTRANO, OFM (Observ.)
8 Gary Dichon

charisma of office, the presence of the papal court in the city, and the whole-
hearted support of Perugia’s Dominicans, as it did to the pope’s personal
charisma? Giles of Assisi - St Francis’s third companion - was, on the other
hand, a contemplative and ecstatic, whose friary of Monteripido later became
the Perugian home of the Observance. Although his personal charisma was
widely appreciated, he never assumed the role of charismatic leader.4 On
the other hand, the Dominican tertiary Colomba of Rieti, also an ecstatic,
did come to exercise charismatic authority within the city. When she insisted
upon plague processions, these processions were held. The Baglioni
sometimes listened to her, and -she attempted to secure civic peace. As an
urban prophet and moral force, she was truly Savonarola’s spiritual sister.
Concerning her adopted city she prayed ‘Signore, difendete il pop010
v~stro’.~
A comprehensive roster of the saints venerated in Perugia from c.1200
to c.1500, whose cults in the city can be attested to by reliable evidence (e.g.
calendrical date; claimed relics; church, chapel, or altar dedication; vita; im-
age; coin; toponym; confraternity; laud; religious drama; festal processions
noted in the municipal statutes, rifoTmanze,6 etc.) may be defined as
Perugia’s ‘total hagiographic programme’ for the designated period’ (see
table 3). The roster functions as an index towards a prosopography of
Perugian veneration. Yet its egalitarian inclusiveness may result in misap-
prehension. Because inactive cults, for which, say, only a toponym exists,
are juxtaposed with cults evidenced by the most intense manifestations of
local popular piety, the relative significance of each individual cult is wholly
ignored. Furthermore, a total hagiographic programme obscures the crucial
typological distinctions which differentiate the cult of any given saint, deter-
mining its respective clientele. Thus, saints of civic significance (e.g. Sant’
Ercolano or St Herculanus, Perugia’s best-known urban patron) rub
shoulders, as it were, with saints of personal or collective need (e.g. St
Sebastian and the plague); or saints connected with wards of the city (rioni)
(e.g. St Susanna); or saints of private devotion (e.g. St Catherine of Alexan-
dria) or saints whose cults were associated exclusively with corporate bodies
within the city, such as guilds, lay confraternities, convents (e.g. St Juliana,

Cf. Bibliotheca Sanctorum (BS), 2, cols. 1194-202 and Andre Vauchez, La Sainteti en occident aux
denziers siicles du moyen Cige, rev. edn (Rome, 1988), 367.
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 501-3.
Ettore Ricci, Storia della B. Colomba da Rieti (Perugia, 1901), 96, 141-7, 155-7, 175-6 (for quota.
tion). BS, 4, cols 101-3. Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult the published version of Una
santa, urn cittci: Cmvegna storico nel v” c e n t m r i o della venuta a Perugia di Gdomba da Rieti (Perugia, 1989).
Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley, Calif., 1987), considers Beata Colomba’s
food abstinence and eucharistic piety passim.
For an attempt to document a changing civic calendar, see D. Cambiaso, L’anno ecclesiastico e
lefeste dei santi in Genova nel 1070 mlgrmento stolico, in Atti delh societa ligure di stmia patria, 48 (1917), 1-497.
’ The notion of a ‘total hagiographic programme’ owes much to E. B. Garrison, Studies in the
Histoly of Medieual Italian Painting (Florence, 1953-4). I, 127-33 (‘hagiological programs’, 131 and n.
8). Important also for concept and method is H. Delehaye, ‘Loca sanctorum’, Analecta Bollandiana,
48 (1930), 5-64.
 A demographic ovmiew of a civic pantheon 9

TABU.3 Comprehensive roster of the 115 saints and beati

venerated in Perugia, c.1200-c. 1500

AGATHA EUSEBIUS MARY MAGDALEN

AGNES FAUSTINUS MATTHEW
ALBERT OF TRAPANI FELIX MATTHIAS
AMBROSE FLORENTIUS MAURUS
ANASTASIUS FORTUNATUS MICHAEL
ANDREW FRANCIS O F ASSISI MUSTIOLA
ANNE GALGANUS NICHOLAS
ANTHONY ABBOT GEORGE NICHOLAS O F
ANTHONY O F PADUA GILES O F ASSISI TOLENTINO
AUGUSTINE GREGORY ONUPHRIUS
BARBARA HENRY PAUL
BARTHOLOMEW HERCULANUS PAULINUS
BASIL LLLUMINATA BIGAZZINI
BENEDICT ISIDORE PEREGRINUS
BENEDICT XI JAMES THE GREATER LAZIOSI
BERNARD JAMES AND PHILIP PETER
BERNARDINO O F JEROME PETER ABBOT
SIENA JOHN THE BAPTIST PETER MARTYR
BEVIGNATE JOHN OF CAPISTRANO PETER AND PAUL
BLAISE JOHN THE DIVINE PHILIP BENIZZI
BONAVENTURE JOHN O F PERUGIA PROSPER
BRIDGET JOSEPH ROCH
CATHERINE O F JULIAN SAVINUS
ALEXANDRIA JULIANA SCHOLASTICA
CATHERINE O F SIENA JULIANA FALCONIERI SEBASTIAN
CECILIA LAWRENCE SEVERUS
CHRISTOPHER LAZARUS SILVESTER
CLARE O F ASSISI LEONARD SIMON
COLOMBA OF RIETI LIBERATOR SIXTUS
CONRAD OF OFFIDA LOUIS SPERANDIUS
CONSTANTIUS LOUIS O F TOULOUSE STEPHEN
COSMOS LUCY SUSANNA
CRISPIN LUKE THOMAS
CRISPINIAN MANNUS THOMAS AQUINAS
CRISPOLTUS MARGARET UBALDUS
DIGNAMERITA MARK URBAN V
DOMINIC MARTHA VALENTINE
DONATUS MARTIN VICTOR
ELIGIUS MARTIN IV VINCENT FERRER
ELIZABETH O F MARY WES
HUNGARY
10 Gary Dickson

patron of the Cistercian nunnery of Santa Giuliana*). Finally, such a total

hagiographic programme disguises the fact that patterns of veneration have
a geographical aspect. A saint’s cultus can be defined as universal, regional,
or local, whether o r not the saint originated from Perugia. Cults in Perugia
continued to be imported from all over Christendom.
Demographically, too, a roster of this sort might seem to be questionable.
After all, c. 1200-c.1500 represents a considerable time-span. A comprehen-
sive list of attested Perugian cults from these three centuries might create
the utterly false impression that a given cult managed to retain the same
degree of vitality throughout the period, when, in fact, cultic activity was
dynamic and inherently unstable. Then again, some cults were born centuries
before the period began (‘old saints’); others sprang into life during it (‘new
saints’);and there were cults which stagnated, or virtually expired. With hagio-
demography, however, the rebirth of a cult was never an impossibility.
Clearly, therefore, our Perugian hagiographic programme exaggerates the
number of cults religiously significant to Perugians at any specific time within
the centuries it covers. Nevertheless, with all its demographic limitations,
Perugia’s total hagiographic programme for the later Middle Ages and
Renaissance is well worth surveying. The total of 115 saints and b e d listed
in table 3 is necessarily provisional, of course, and may eventually have to
be revised upwards. At worst, what we have from this roster is a distorted
picture - a static, overcrowded snapshot, c.1500. But if we regard the list
as raw data, then, perhaps, something rather more promising may emerge.
Certainly, the total hagiographic programme needs to be categorized. The
categories which result may yield a greater understanding of the pattern of
veneration within the city (table 4).’
From table 4 we can see immediately that, of the saints venerated in Perugia
between c.1200 and c.1500, there were over two and a half times as many
cults which predated the period as those which came into existence during
it. Of the former, as one would have expected, ‘old universal saints’, those
known throughout Latin Christendom, predominated. The most arbitrary
of the categories in table 4 is that of the ‘regional’saints. Although a number
of the cults of these ‘regional’saints were derived from Umbrian or Tuscan
dioceses, others represent a cultus that was more widespread than ‘local’,yet
not widespread enough to be considered ‘universal’. Hence St Joseph is
counted as a ‘new regional saint’, because his cult in late fifteenth-century
Perugia was new, and because his revitalized, later medieval cult, though
becoming ever stronger, was not yet ‘universal’. A possibly interesting
category has been left off the list. ‘Localized universals’ are universal saints
The cult of St Juliana in Perugia is discussed in Gary Dickson, ‘MasterJohn of Toledo (Tolet)
the “Albus Cardinalis” (d. 1275) in Perugia; St Juliana’s Head; and a mid-fourteenth-century Calen-
dar from Santa Giuliana di Perugia in the University of Edinburgh Library (EUL.MS.29)’,Bollettim
della Deputaztone di Stona Patria per l’llmbria, 81 (1984), 25-75, at pp. 30-7.
’ In the formulation of these categories my intellectual indebtedness to Andre Vauchez is ap-
parent and long-standing;in the late 1960s or early 1970s he very kindly let me read his University
of Paris dipl6m thesis of 1960-1, which prepared the way for his La SaintetC en occzdent.
 A deniographic o v m i e w of a civic pantheon 11

TABW. 4 Saints venerated in Pemgia, c.1200-c.1500

categories and numbers (1 15 saints and beati)
Saints No.
OLD UNIVERSAL 61
NEW UNIVERSAL 14
OLD REGIONAL 16
NEW REGIONAL 10
OLD LOCAL 6
NEW LOCAL a
TOTAL OLD SAINTS 83
TOTAL NEW SAINTS 32
IN CIVIC ASSOCIATION WITH PERUGIA 56

TABLE
5 Mendicant saints venerated in Perugiu, c.1220-c.1500 (23 saints and beati)

ALBERT O F TRAPANI, 0. Carm GILES O F ASSISI, OFM

ANTHONY OF PADUA, OFM JOHN OF CAPISTRANO,
BENEDICT XI, O P OFM Observ.
BERNARDINO OF SIENA, OFM Observ. JOHN O F PERUGIA, OFM
BONAVENTURA, OFM JULIANA FALCONIERI, 0. Sew.
CATHERINE OF SIENA, O P (Trt.) LOUIS OF TOULOUSE, OFM
CLARE OF ASSISI, OFM NICHOLAS O F TOLENTINO, OESA
COLOMBA OF RIETI, O P (Trt.) PEREGRINUS LAZIOSI, 0. Serv.
CONRAD O F OFFIDA, OFM PETER MARTYR, O P
DOMINIC, O P PHILIP BENIZZI, 0. Serv.
ELIZABETH O F HUNGARY, OFM, THOMAS AQUINAS, O P
(Trt.) VINCENT FERRER, OP
FRANCIS OF ASSISI, OFM

who have been naturalized, granted local citizenship, like Florence’s St John
the Baptist, or Venice’s St Mark. For Perugia, it is possible that St Lawrence,
a civic patron and titulary of the Duomo, would qualify.
The impact of the new religious orders on Perugia is impressively con-
firmed by another chart (table 5). Of all the ‘new saints’ venerated in Perugia
between the thirteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, 71.88
per cent were produced by the mendicant Orders. If many of these cults were
largely promoted by (and for) the saint’s Order brethren, few of them were
wholly confined to the friars themselves, while a number of mendicant cults
flourished throughout the entire city.
Still, not even the considerable impact of the mendicants upon Perugia’s
hagiographic programme fully explains the proliferation of cults within
the city. Nor does it account for the density of texture in its pattern of
12 Gary Dickson

veneration, that is to say, the reinvigoration of the cult of ‘old’ saints, as well
as the city’s receptivity to the cults of ‘new’saints. If the existence of a given
cult often depended upon the presence of the group which endorsed it, then
the strength of that cult was also a measure of the strength of the group which
promoted it. And because of the proliferation of Perugia’s voluntary associa-
tions - including its lay religious institutions and confraternities - a pro-
liferation of saint cults naturally followed.” In comparative terms, both the
total number of cults represented in Perugia and the relative contempora-
neity of the city’s list are remarkable. For instance, the contrast between
Perugia’s hagiographic programme and that of the diocese of Salisbury over
roughly the same period (1250-1550) could not be more striking. Of the
twenty-six cults of the saints examined by my Edinburgh colleague Andrew
Brown, the latest were twelfth-century - St Bernard of Clairvaux and St
Thomas of Canterbury - although we must not forget the later medieval
canonization of St Osmund (d. 1099, can. 1456).” With its wealth of Anglo-
Saxon cults, Salisbury seems to have inhabited a different religious world
from that of Perugia; but then again, compared to Perugia, the pattern of
veneration in Norwich appears similarly archaic.’*
We have seen (table 4) that fiftysix saints had some degree of civic associa-
tion with Perugia; that is, not quite half of our total of 115 cults. Yet very
few of these saints were named in the official civic documents as ‘patronorum,
protectorum et defensorum comunis et populi civitatis Perusii’:I3these few
were the city’s chosen intercessors. A larger number of saints, however, were,
from time to time, granted civic-sponsored images, or civic processions (with
candles), or civic funds to benefit their cults. The municipal authorities thus
varied the list of cults judged to be worthy of civic sponsorship. Taken
together, the relevant documents listing such civic-endowed feasts at different
moments of the city’s history would allow us to construct a motion-picture
of civic sanctity in P e ~ u g i a . ’For
~ the civic cult of saints was inherently
dynamic. Saints of no previous communal signifcance could suddenly

I” The subject is too vast to be touched upon here, but its scope is plain from Olga Marinelli, Le
confratmite di Perzlguc delle origini a1 secolo xix (Perugia, 1965) and Christopher Black, Italian Confrater-
nities in the Sixteenth Centuy (Cambridge, 1989).
I ‘ Andrew D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: the Diocese of Salisbury, 1250-1550
(Oxford, 1995), 294. A. R. Malden, The Canonization ofsaint osrnund (Salisbury, 1901). For England
as a whole, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in Engkznd, c.1400-c.1580 (New
Haven, Conn., 1992) refers to eight ‘new’ (post.Becket) cults, continental as well as English. Duffy,
of course, was not aiming to offer a comprehensive list.
See N. P. Tanner, The Church in Lute Medieval Nwwich, 1370-1532 (Toronto, 1984). 82-91. In
Norwich, personal devotion to the saints seems to have been relatively untouched by ‘new’ cults.
13
From the preamble to a treaty between Perugia and Gubbio (20 August 1354), which, after the
Virgin Mary, and the apostles Peter and Paul, names Lawrence, Herculanus, and Constantius as the
Perugian patrons, and, for Gubbio, lists Ubaldus, Marianus, and Jacobus. T h e document is cited in
G. Mazzatinti (ed.), Cronaca di Ser G u e ~ ~ i edor o Gubbw, RIS, 11, 21, part 4 (Citti di Castello, 1902), 1Iff
n. 1.
I4
For example, see the list of 1460 ASP, Consigli e Riformanze, 96, 5‘. T o be used with caution
as a guide to the R i f o m n z e : A. Riccieri, ‘Indice degli annali ecclesiastici perugini . . .’, in Archivio
per la stork ecclesiustica dell’Umimbria, 5, fasc. ii-iv (Foligno, 1921), 379-516, at p. 438.
 A demographic overview of a civic pantheon 13

TABLE6 Perugia: major civic saints

Traditional patrons
HERCULANUS (ERCOLANO)
CONSTANTIUS (COSTANZO)
LAWRENCE
PETER AND PAUL

New civic patrons

BEVIGNATE (d. 11112th cent.? civic recognition 1453)
LOUIS OF TOULOUSE (d. 1297, can. 1317)
BERNARDINO OF SIENA (d. 1444, can. 1450)

become part of Perugian civic history. When the city rose up against the papal
fiscal agent on 7 December 1375, it was St Ambrose’s Day. Hence, in 1376,
Perugia had a chapel dedicated to San Ambrogio erected in the church of
Santa Maria Nuova, and decreed that the saint’s day should be kept as fwie
in 0rnnib-u~‘~Likewise, in 1385 St Lazarus, a fifth-century bishop of Milan,
also obtained his moment of glory. For in that year, on that saint’s day (then
14 March), the Perugians recovered Fratta and Montone from the Michelotti
rebels. Consequently, they decided to commemorate their triumph with
annual processions, which were never referred to again.I6
But if we were obliged to select Perugia’s most important civic patrons
- the cults most closely intertwined with the city’s political, ecclesiastical,
and religious histories; the cults closest to its urban identity - the fiftysix
saints could be reduced to a core group of eight, of whom five were tradi-
tional patrons, while three rose to their exalted status during our period
(see table 6). That even within this core group of civic patrons there con-
tinued to be development is a sure sign of confident receptivity to change.
Of the ‘traditional’ patrons the apostles Saints Peter and Paul testified to
Perugia’s position within the Papal State, and demonstrated its traditional
loyalty to political Guelfism. Alone amongst ‘traditional patrons’, St Paul was
not the titulary of a major church.” Dedicated to St Peter, however, was
Perugia’s large, venerable Benedictine monastery. The cathedral was known
as San Lorenzo’s, and both San Costanzo and Sant’ Ercolano were titularies
of respectable churches. Indisputably, St Herculanus was the most impor.
tant of Perugia’s civic patrons. His cult, more than that of any other saint,
intersects the city’s history. Conversely, St Constantius’ cult seems to have
had a stuttering, uneven existence during our period. The strongest indica-
tion of thirteenth-century veneration towards him was the consecration in
1205 of his present church. Yet Perugia’s great civic monuments of the
IS
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 424. Riccieri, ‘Indice’ 393. ASP, Consigli e Riformanze, 25 3’.
1b
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 442. Riccieri, ‘Indice’ 398. ASP, Consigli e Riformanze, 33, 56’.
17
His was a parish church in the Porta S. Pietro: see Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 451.
14 Gary Dickson

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ignored him completely. Only in the

later fifteenth century was his civic patronal status eventually asserted in stone
(see table 7). From 1510, however, for reasons which are by no means en-
tirely clear, the city began to honour him with a full civic procession on his
feast-day (29 January), and thereafter his festal celebrations became part of
the Perugian civic-religious calendar. Then, too, in the protocols to various
fourteenth-century Perugian treaties he is named as one of the city’s patrons,
protectors, and defenders. What, in effect, the fourteenth century seems to
have established, the fifteenth century regarded as traditional, and con-
tinued.’”
Perugia’s ‘new civic’ patrons included the Franciscan archbishop St Louis
of Toulouse. During his lifetime, Louis of Toulouse had no links with Perugia.
Although his Franciscan Spiritual inclinations would not have hurt his pious
reputation in fourteenth-century Umbria, the decision to promote him to
the rank of advocate of Perugia was ultimately based upon potent political
symbolism, rather than on spirituality. St Louis of Toulouse, the son of
Charles 11, king of Naples, symbolized the Perugian alliance with the Angevins
of Naples. This was the Guelf political cause to which Perugia was then com-
mitted.Ig
In sharp contrast to Louis of Toulouse, the choice of the great Franciscan
Observant preacher and revivalist Bernardino of Siena as a civic patron really
represents the culmination of a mutual love-affair between the city and the
sainted friar. Bernardino visited Perugia six times. His first visit - from mid-
September to November 1425, the longest he made - achieved results which
undoubtedly satisfied him, for two years later he told his fellow Sienese:
‘There is as much difference between you and the Perugians as [there is]
between heaven and earth.’ As to what happened in the course of his
preaching there, the chroniclers give us information which Bernardino later
confirms in his Sienese sermons: ‘So many reconciliations were made that
I was amazed that there could have been so many enmities as there had been.’
Peacemaking, however, was just the beginning of Bernardino’s Observant
reform programme. The ‘vanities’of dice, playingcards, false hair, flounces,
and baubles worth a considerable sum were heaped up in the piazza and
burnt. At this time, too, the so-called Statuta Bernardiniana entered the
Perugian law books. Under his (and possibly Capistrano’s) influence, severe
penalties were imposed for crimes of blasphemy, gambling, sodomy, brawl-
ing, and usury. That violent Perugian game, the battugZia de’ sassi, was

’* Ibid. 463-67. Riccieri, ‘Indice’, 387-88. ASP, Consigli e Riformanze, 14, 30’. Anna I. Galletti at-
tempts to explain St Constantius’s post-1310 ascent in her ‘Sant’ Ercolano, il grifo e le lasche: note
sull’immaginario collecttivo nella citti comunale’, in ‘Forme e techniche del potere nella cittP (secoli
xiv-xvii)’, Annuli della facoltu di scienxe politiche, 16 (Perugia, 1979-80). 203-16, at p. 213 and n. 26.
See also Rita Chiacchella, ‘L‘evoluzionedel culto del santo patrono in et2 moderna: il caso di Perugia’,
Ricozhe di stwiu sociule e religiosa, 34 (1988), 101-15, at pp. 104-5.
19
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 489-91.
 A hographic overview of a civic pantheon 15

TABU 7 Grouping of saints on Perugia’s civic monuments

1. FONTANA MAGGIORE (Nicola Pisano) (1278)

PETER
MICHAEL
JOHN THE BAPTIST
BENEDICT AND MAURUS
HERCULANUS (‘PASTOR PERUSINORUM’)
LAWRENCE
PAUL

2. MAESTA DEWLE VOLTE (c.1297)

MARY
LAWRENCE
HERCULANUS
CHRISTOPHER

3. PORTALE MAGGIORE, PALAZZO DEI PRIORI (c.1346153)

LAWRENCE
HERCULANUS
LOUIS OF TOULOUSE

4. CHAPEL OF THE PRIORI (B. Bonfigli) (1454-61/69)

HERCULANUS
LOUIS OF TOULOUSE

5. ORATORY OF SAN BERNARDINO (Agostino di Duccio) (1457-61)

BERNARDINO OF SIENA
CONSTANTIUS
HERCULANUS

abolished. The canonization of Bernardino in 1450 therefore set the seal

upon the Franciscan’s work in Perugia, and upon his civic memory.”
From 1260 to 1453 the commune of Perugia spent a great deal of time
and energy in attempting to secure the papal canonization of St Bevignate,
a local hermit about whom almost nothing was known. (Even the century
of his death remains uncertain.) Unfortunately, for Bevignate, there was
neither vita nor relics.*’None the less, between 1256 and c.1262 Perugia’s
imposing church of San Bevignate was constructed on behalf of the Order
of the Temple. Moreover, its mysterious titulary was singled out by the
w Ibid. 480-3. A. G. Ferrers Howell, S. B m r d i n o of Siena (London, 1913). 140-2. A. Fantozzi,
‘Documenta Perusina de S. Bernardino Senensi’,Archivum Franciscanurn Historicurn, 15 (1922), 108-54;
406-75.
P1
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 500-1. Ikon Kern, ‘A propos du mouvement des flagellants de 1260: S.
Bevignate de PCrouse’, in S t u d k am dem gebiete urn kirche und kultur: Festschrift G. Schnurer (Paderborn,
1930). 39-53. Ugolino Nicolini, ‘Le canonizzazioni “facili” del Comune di Perugia: il caso di san
Bevignate’, in M. Roncetti, P. Scarpellini and F. Tommasi, (eds.), Templari e Ospitalieri in Italia: La chiesa
di sun BevigMte a Perugia (Milan, 1987), 39-45.
16 Gary Dickson

Lezenda of Rainero Fasani as the celestial advocate of penitential flagella

tion. Indeed, after the movement of the disciplinati, the church of San
Bevignate became the spiritual home of Perugia’s first flagellant confrater-
nity. The Perugians repeatedly tried to get Bevignate canonized, but without
success. They finally lost all hope of ever achieving their ambition. So, on
22 April 1453, the municipal authorities recognized his feast-day (14 May)
as an official holiday to be observed with the customary work abstentions.
This amounted to a declaration of civic canonization. The preamble to the
Perugian decree granting him this status insists upon the need to bestow
every possible honour upon ‘sanctis illis qui specialiw paci et saluti nostre civitati
afzciuntur et inter ceteros unw sit ex pecipuis sanctw Benveniatw’.2*Such official
endorsement, the culmination of a prolonged effort to secure his papal
canonization, placed St Bevignate amongst those saints who particularly
safeguarded the peace and well-being of the city, indisputably turning him
into a communal intercessor. Although this decree is the sole evidence of
St Bevignate’s civic patronal status, it is sufficient.
Much has been written about Perugia’s fine examples of civic art.*’ Here
it is only Perugia’s changing representation of its civic identity by means
of its chosen patrons, advocates, and intercessors which concerns us (see table
7). St Herculanus, Perugia’s martyred bishop - the ‘Pastor Perusinorum’ of
the Fontana Maggiore - was omnipresent; he appeared on all civic
monuments, just as he did on Perugia’s coinage, the zeccu. With the pardon-
able hyperbole of a satirist, the Florentine Franco Sacchetti concludes a tale
about the Perugians’ love for their saint by saying that ‘[i Perugini] credono
piu in santo Ercolano che in Cristo; e tengono che sia innanzi a1 maggiore
Santo in par ad is^'.'^ Herculanus’ feasts were scrupulously observed,
especially by towns which had lost their liberty to Perugia. They were
required, in signum subjectionis, to bring their tribute (usually wax) to the saint
for his fea~t-day.’~
As already noted, St Constantius puts in a very late appearance on Perugia’s
civic monuments. Perhaps he came to do so in place of St Lawrence, whose
omission from the painted chapel of the Priori and from the sculpted Oratory
of San Bernardino may seem curious, given his previous perfect record.
What undermined St Lawrence’s civic character in the later fifteenth cen-
tury? As the cathedral titulary, did he now seem to be too diocesan, too
ecclesiastical a saint? For like the chapel of the Priori, the Oratory of San
22
Document cited in Nicolini, ‘Le canonizzazioni’, 44.
23
For a selection from an extensive literature, see K. HoffmanCurtius, Das P70gram der Fontann
Magg’ore in Pert+@ (Dusseldorf, 1968);J. White, ‘The reconstruction of Nicola Pisano’s Perugia foun-
tain’, j o u m l of the Warburg and Courtadd Institutes,33 (1 970), 70-83; Francesco Scorza Barcellona,
‘I santi della Fontana Maggiore di Perugia’ (which the author kindly allowed me to see in advance
o f publication); M. Guardabassi and F. Santi, II porta& magg’ore del palazzo deipiori di PaCgia (Perugia,
~ , storico artistica (Perugia, 1950).Jonathan B. Riess, Political I&& in Medieual
1953); F. Santi, P e r u g ~guida
Italian Art: The Frescoes in the Palauo dei Peori, Perugia (1297) (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981) does not con.
cern itself with saints.
24
0. Gigli (ed.), Le novelle di Franc0 Sachetti, II (Florence, 1909), 81.
25
Dickson, ‘Patterns’, 470-7.
 A demographic ovmiew of a civic pantheon 17

Bernardino, which was proudly inscribed ‘Augusta Perusia MCCCCLXI’, was

meant to be the newest shrine to Perugian civic Christianity. Here Bernardino
takes his place with Constantius and Herculanus as a civic patron.
The lone appearances of Saints Michael, John the Baptist, Benedict and
Maurus (on the Fontana Maggiore), and of Mary and Christopher (on the
Maests delle Volte) reflect the particular circumstances of each monument,
as well as ongoing personal and civic devotion.26
The absence of St Francis from any of these monuments underscores their
civic character. According to the Scripta Leon&, ‘Once, St Francis was
preaching to a great crowd of people gathered in the piazza at Perugia.’ The
knights of the city (milites Perusii) made so much noise that Francis’s sermon
was interrupted; they persisted, despite popular anger at their behaviour.
The story continues: ‘St Francis turned to them and said with great fervour
of spirit: “Listen and take heed of what the Lord has to say to you through
me his servant; and do not say that this is a man from Assisi.”’*’ To the
Perugians, in spite of their personal devotion to him and to his Friars Minor,
Francis continued to be perceived as ‘a man from Assisi’. True, the Perugians
did attempt to gain possession of the dying saint, although they lost him to
Assisi. Later, when they sacked Assisi in 1442, they tried to snatch his well-
protected relics from his basilica. But, in life as in death, Francis was not
to be separated from his native city. Consequently, to carve his effigy on to
Perugia’s Fontana Maggiore, along with those of the Guelf lion, the griffin
(Perugia’s own symbolic beast), or the mythical founder of the city, Eulistes,
would have been an unthinkable betrayal of civic self-representation.
Even a such brief overview of Perugia’s civic pantheon as this is sufficient,
I believe, to establish that one needs to assess a city’s total hagiographic pro-
gramme in order to grasp the patterns of cultus within it, both civic and non-
civic. Yet H. C. Peyer’s careful examination of the cults of St Mark in Venice,
St Ambrose in Milan, St John the Baptist in Florence, and the Virgin Mary
in Siena in his deservedly respected Stadt und Stadtpatron im Mittelalterlichen
Ztalien, gives an altogether different impression.*’ Unfortunately, Peyer’s e x
clusive concentration upon each of these cities’ most illustrious patron saint
leads to the same sort of distortion that would follow from isolating St Her-
culanus’ cult in Perugia from that of the city’s other intercessors, let alone
from its total hagiographic programme. As we have seen, the cult of St Her-
culanus, no matter how important, was never the sole outlet for Perugia’s
patriotic feelings; nor was the cult of this one saint an adequate symbol of
the whole of the city’s corporate identity during the medieval and
Renaissance period.
Surely the grouping of saints on civic monuments provides evidence of
this oligarchic tendency. And if further evidence is needed, we also have the
26
Ibid 446-8; 436-7; 429-30; 446; 431-2. The cult of the Virgin Mary in Perugia is not discussed
in my thesis; the subject would require a substantial essay, perhaps a book.
27
Smpa h o n k . Rufinz et Angel2 ed. Rosalind B. Brooke (Oxford, 1970), 151-3.
28
Zurich, 1955.
18 Gary Dickson

various protocols to statutes and treaties in which Perugia, like other cities,
proudly listed its celestial advocates. Moreover, amongst the familiar roll-
call of civic patrons, there was always room for surprises and innovations.
An excellent example is the preamble to Perugia’s civic statues of 1279,which
begins: ‘In nomine domini nostri Yhesu Christi, amen. . . . Ad laudem . .
. reverende matris beate Virginis Marie, beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli,
gloriosorum martirum Laurentii et Herculani, sanctissimorum confessorum
Dominici et Francisci et omnium Sanctorum et Sanctarum Dei . . . ’. 59 If the
two apostles Peter and Paul take their place as a traditional expression of
political loyalty to Rome and the papacy and Lawrence and Herculanus (but
without Constantius) are a predictably Perugian twinning, then how d o we
account for the concluding beautifully matched pair of mendicant saints?
Remember that this was one year after the Fontana Maggiore had excluded
Francis. So was his inclusion here intended to serve as compensation for
exclusion there? That is most unlikely. In bringing together Francis and
Dominic - who, as modern apostles, are in perfect symmetry with Peter and
Paul - the Perugian text effectively presents the two friars as ‘new universal’
saints, founders of religious orders in the process of becoming diffused
throughout Christendom, and of course also currently resident in Perugia.
In this context, neither saint belonged to a rival homeland. Perugian citizen-
ship, albeit of a limited, temporary nature, could thus be extended to them.
Rather unexpectedly it is true, Perugia’s freedom to choose its patron saints
as it thought fit was quietly asserted. Even though a ‘new’saint did not ap-
pear on one of its civic monuments until the mid-fourteenth century, Perugia,
in 1279, was not averse to modernizing its civic sanctity.
Perhaps, therefore, we ought to be a bit suspicious of notions of a solitary,
celestial Studtpatron. The governance of Perugia’s saints was neither signorial
nor princely. It can be described as a flexible oligarchy, to which new
members, from time to time, were joyously admitted, and from which older,
even venerable, members were unceremoniously deselected. For the com-
position of Perugia’s celestial oligarchy, however rooted in tradition it was,
was none the less dependent upon the choices of Perugia’s earthly, secular
and non-theocratic governors, a fact which ensured its continued vitality and
relevance to the citizenry. Perugia’s civic Christianity, as we have seen, was
intensely local. If there was ‘a myth of Florence’, there was also ‘a myth of
Perugia’, although it is simply not possible to explore it here.%
Perugian civic Christianity was an exceptionally strong and durable
political-religious construct which bonded universal Christianity to local
identity, and in which a civic cult of saints functioned as part of a total
hagiographic programme. Necessarily, there were benefits and dangers on
both sides. A saint like Bernardino of Siena, known and revered in his
24
Statuti Comunis P m i i Anno MCCLXXIX Digesturn, ed. A. Fabretti (n.p., n.d.), 3.
80
But see Galletti ‘Sant’ Ercolano, and her earlier essay ‘Considerazione per una interpretazione
dell’Eulistea’, Archivio StoTico Italiano. 128 (1970). 305-34. Also William Heywood, A Histmy ~JPeTugia
(London, 1910), 1-22 passim.
 A demographic overview of a civic pantheon 19

lifetime, whose canonization was ardently awaited by the city, was welcomed
into the civic pantheon immediately, and with open arms. Perugia’s
hagiographic programme retained its extraordinary vitality; it never suc-
cumbed to archaism. At the same time, as noted, the city adopted or renewed
cults whose festal days served to commemorate secular triumphs like the
recovery, in 1385, of Fratta and Montone from the Michelotti rebels or the
Perugian uprising against the papal fiscal agent in 1375. Yet was this a gain
for Perugian civic religion, or for Christianity? Could it be argued that, in
such cases, a peculiarly local civic commemoration threatened to empty Chris-
tian feast-daysof their universal, devotional significance, transforming them
into a succession of glorious, providential, yet quasi-seculardates in a patriotic
local history?”

University of Edinburgh

’ For a different view, see Andre Vauchez, ‘Patronage des saints et religion civique dans 1’Italie
communale i la fin du moyen Sge’, in V. Moleta (ed.), Patronage and Public in the Trecmto (Florence,
1986), 59-80, at pp. 75-7.
20 Gary Dickson

Fig. 1 Pope Benedict XI conceding privileges to the Dominicans of Perugia (Perugia, Biblioteca
Augusta, MS 975, Bullarium of the Church of San Domenico, 14th c., fol. 1). Reproduced from
R. A. Gallenga Stuart, P...Lgia (Bergamo, 1905), 107
A demographic overview of a civic pantheon 21

z
Y
0
22 Gary Dickson

Fig. 3 Saints of the Portale Maggiore oE the Palazzo dei Priori, Perugia. Reproduced from
William Heywood, A History OfPmCgia (London,1910), facing p. 217
 A demographic overview of a civic pantheon 23

Fig. 4 Oratory of San Bernardino, Perugia. Reproduced from R. A. Gallenga Stuart, Prmgia
(Bergamo, 1905). 99
24 Gary Dickson

Fig. 5 Perugino: St Constantius, Church of San Pietro, Perugia. Reproduced from R. A. Gallenga
Stuart, P
+ (Bergamo, 1905), 124
 A demographic overview of a civic pantheon 25

Fig. 6 Perugino: St Herculanus, Church of San Pietro, Perugia. Reproduced from R. A. Gallenga
Stuart, Pmrgia (Bergamo, 1905). 124