The Quality of Mercy: Confraternities and Public Power in Medieval Bergamo

Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 139–157
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
The quality of mercy: confraternities and public

power in medieval Bergamo
Roisin Cossar *
Department of History, University of Manitoba, 403 Fletcher Argue Building, Winnipeg,
Canada R3T 5V5
Abstract
The political transformation of Italian cities during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
had a significant impact on the social fabric of those communities. This essay examines the
effect of political change on the social order in urban Italy through a study of the response
of lay confraternities in Bergamo to the demise of the commune and the rise of the Visconti
signoria. We examine the administration, the civic commitments, and the charitable donations
of the city’s largest confraternity, the Misericordia Maggiore, from the late thirteenth century,
when it was a close supporter of the commune, to the mid-fourteenth century, when the confra-
ternity came increasingly to resemble the signorial regime. In its emulation of the social values
of contemporary government, and its willingness to adapt to suit prevailing political structures,
the Misericordia helped smooth the transition from commune to signoria for its membership
and the community at large.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Confraternities; Charity; Cities and towns; Italy
The tale of turbulent politics in Lombardy during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries is a familiar one.1 Throughout the region, powerful families such as the
della Torre and the Visconti gradually took over the rule of independent civic com-
munes. These signori often employed the waning, yet influential, communal model
* Tel.: +1-204-474-8401; fax: +1-204-474-7579.

E-mail address: cossarr@ms.umanitoba.ca (R. Cossar).
1
A version of this paper was presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo,
MI, 5 May 2000. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and
the University of Manitoba for fellowships that allowed me to complete the research for this work. I
would also like to thank Nicholas Terpstra and Len Kuffert, who both read earlier versions of this article.
0304-4181/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 4 1 8 1 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 4 - 5
140 R. Cossar / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 139–157
to create a smooth transition between old and new forms of rule. As Daniel Waley
has suggested, communal and signorial governments ‘shade into each other and are
hard to differentiate’.2 However, in time the signori turned their backs on the commu-
nal governments that had fostered them. By the end of the fourteenth century the
Visconti lords of Lombardy had transformed the region into an imperial dukedom,
as Gian Galeazzo Visconti received the title of prince and duke from the emperor
in 1395. Giovanni Tabacco has argued that the Visconti regime ‘powerfully assisted
society to re-mould itself into a hierarchical structure which increasingly developed
rigid social divisions’.3
The effectiveness of the social changes which the Visconti introduced depended
in large part on the willingness of local institutions to comply with signorial govern-
ment.4 This essay investigates the impact of the Visconti’s governance on the pious
and social fabric of one provincial city in Lombardy, studying how the lay confra-
ternities of Bergamo responded to the death of the commune and rise of the signoria
in the mid-fourteenth century.5 The confraternities of Bergamo, viewed through a
variety of sources, including matriculation lists, statutes, and account books, emerge
as organisations profoundly affected by their civic context even as they helped shape
that context.
Many Italian confraternities were founded during the communal age, a period
which spanned the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The main aim of all confra-
ternities was to allow their members personal salvation through their distributions
of charity to the needy and their sponsorship of group-oriented devotional activities
such as prayer and hymn-singing.6 Confraternities survived financially by collecting
dues and donations or bequests from members and non-members alike, and by the
fourteenth century many had become wealthy organisations.7 For instance, the chron-
icler Matteo Villani recorded that during the plague of 1348 in Florence, local citi-
zens bequeathed or donated more than 350,000 florins to the confraternity of Orsan-
michele.8 As a consequence of their position as affluent land-owning bodies and of
2
Daniel Waley, The Italian city-republics (London, 1988), 172.
3
Giovanni Tabacco, The struggle for power in medieval Italy (Cambridge, 1989), 292.
4
For one aspect of the discussion of relations between signori and local communities, see Patrizia
Mainoni, Le radici della discordia. Ricerche sulla fiscalità a Bergamo tra XIII e XV secolo (Milano,
1997), 81–144 on the question of the Visconti’s taxation of Bergamo.
5
The population of Bergamo in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is not known exactly, but
estimates place it at about 10,000 in the first part of the fourteenth century. Maria Ginatempo and Lucia
Sandri, L’Italia delle città. Il popolamento urbano tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (secoli XIII–XVI)
(Firenze, 1990), 76. Cited in François Menant, ‘L’identità civica’, in: Storia economica e sociale di
Bergamo: il comune e la signoria (Bergamo, 1999), 40.
6
On charitable confraternities’ assistance to their members, see Ronald Weissman, ‘Brothers and stran-
gers: confraternal charity in renaissance Florence’, Historical reflections/Reflexions historiques, 15 (1988),
27–45, especially 32–36. Also see Giles Gerard Meersseman, Ordo fraternitatis. Confraternite e pietà
dei laici nel Medioevo (Rome, 1977), passim.
7
On the wealth of some medieval confraternities, see Guiseppe Mira’s study of flagellant confra-
ternities, ‘Primi sondaggi su taluni aspetti economic-finanziari delle Confraternite dei Disciplinati’, in:
Risultati e prospettive della ricerca sul movimento dei Disciplinati (Perugia, 1972), 229–265.
8
Cited in John Henderson, Piety and charity in late medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994), 179.
R. Cossar / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 139–157 141
their members’ middling to high social status, lay pious associations throughout the
peninsula could justifiably concern themselves with both secular and sacred issues.
In Bergamo, one confraternity in particular, the Misericordia Maggiore, was
initially a defender of the commune. However, after the demise of communal govern-
ment and the arrival of the Visconti, the Misericordia’s administration gradually
adopted the social and political values of the signorial regime. In doing so, the confra-
ternity helped reshape the social values of its membership and the community at
large. By the end of the fourteenth century in Bergamo, the Misericordia had become
a pre-eminent local authority in both secular and spiritual life; emulating the social
concerns of the Visconti as it had those of the commune a century before. Studying
the confraternities of Bergamo in dialogue with the city’s political authorities there-
fore illuminates the process of negotiation between regional political authority and
the local social order in late medieval Lombardy.
Historians studying confraternal civic involvement have tended to see lay pious
institutions as vulnerable to control by government and social elites in the later
middle ages. James Banker, for instance, laments the developing bond between the
confraternity of San Bartolomeo and the commune of San Sepolcro in the fourteenth
century, since, he argues, it ‘eroded the fraternity’s ability to inspire the piety of
large segments of the population’.9 In his study of Bologna’s confraternities in the
medieval and early modern periods, Nicholas Terpstra argues persuasively that the
city’s lay pious associations were eventually absorbed by oligarchic government in
the sixteenth century and became ‘models … for the social services of the centraliz-
ing state’.10 Terpstra also describes elite society’s co-optation of confraternities in the
fifteenth century and remarks that this change ‘marked a step beyond the spontaneity,
artisanal autonomy, and mendicant spirituality’ of earlier groups.11 In addition, some
scholars see medieval confraternities as passive reflections of the civic order. John
Henderson characterises Florentine confraternities as mediators between private and
public life in that city, but his presentation suggests that the institutions created this
connection almost by default because they ‘reflected closely the structure of civic
institutions’.12 Brian Pullan, in his seminal work on the Scuole Grandi of Venice,
argues that Venetian pious associations, too, emulated the structure of the Vene-
tian government.13
Most scholars agree that confraternities were co-opted by civic political authorities
by the fifteenth century, and many also describe governmental suspicion of lay pious
associations. Susan Reynolds writes that authorities had good reason to view confra-
ternities with caution, since the pious organisations made ‘a good front-organization
9
James Banker, Death in the community. Memorialization and confraternities in an Italian commune
in the late middle ages (Athens, GA, 1988), 107.
10
Nicholas Terpstra, Lay confraternities and civic religion in renaissance Bologna (Cambridge,
1995), 181.
11
Terpstra, Lay confraternities and civic religion, 18.
12
Henderson, Piety and charity, 2.
13
Brian Pullan, Rich and poor in renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1971), 113.
for political treachery’, and their ‘oaths and rules made them useful for subversion’.14
John Henderson also suggests that confraternities in Florence vexed conservative
members of Florentine society, who were anxious that the new men who formed
part of confraternities’ membership might conspire to take power for themselves
through the pious associations.15 In a recent essay, Jennifer Fisk Rondeau, referring
primarily to Pisan and Florentine confraternities, asserts that confraternities may have
been involved closely with local government, but ‘they were also viewed with hos-
tility and suspicion by communal authorities’.16
The confraternities of Bergamo came to the attention of English-speaking scholars
through Lester K. Little’s volume Liberty, charity, fraternity. Lay religious confra-
ternities at Bergamo in the age of the commune.17 Little describes the ties between
Bergamo’s confraternities and local mendicants, and he examines the statutes of
several of those confraternities in detail. His work focuses on the period between
the mid-twelfth and late thirteenth centuries, and therefore it provides a useful entry-
point to a discussion of the position of the Misericordia Maggiore in Bergamo during
the final years of the commune and the early signorial period.
The Misericordia Maggiore of Bergamo, rather than existing in an antagonistic
relationship with Bergamo’s political authorities, sought to emulate prevailing polit-
ical and social structures. In addition, while the Misericordia altered to suit the
government of the day, over time it became more financially independent and con-
tinued to elect its own officials. In this way, the example of the Misericordia provides
evidence for Daniel Bornstein’s argument that confraternities supported the social
order, taught youthful citizens the responsibilities of public life, and served as models
of self-management for other civic organisations.18 During the thirteenth century, the
Misericordia served the commune as a city-wide charity, often distributing donations
it had received from the commune. In the fourteenth century, the confraternity’s
officials came increasingly to resemble the officials of the signoria, and its charitable
programme gradually emphasised the growing distinctions between powerful and
weak in later medieval cities. As the Misericordia altered its structure and activities
between the late thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, it served as a model of
contemporary social values for the rest of the community.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at least nine lay confraternities
14
See Reynolds’ chapter ‘Fraternities and guilds’, in: Kingdoms and communities in Western Europe,
2nd ed. (Oxford, 1997), especially 74–76. Reynolds admits that ‘some guilds were, and remained, above
suspicion even to the most nervous clergy and rulers’.
15
However, Henderson also notes: è poco probabile che le confraternite fossero diventate centri di
cospirazione. ‘Le confraternite religiose nella Firenze del tardo medioevo: patroni spirituali e anche poli-
tici?’ Ricerche Storiche, 15 (1985), 82 and 94.
16
Jennifer Fisk Rondeau, ‘Homosociality and civic (dis)order’, in: The politics of ritual kinship. Confra-
ternities and social order in early modern Italy, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Cambridge, 2000), 39.
17
Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity. Lay religious confraternities at Bergamo in the age of the commune
(Northampton, MA, 1988).
18
Sostenevano l’ordine sociale, avviavano i giovani alle responsabilità della vita pubblica e servivano
come modelli di autogestione. Bornstein, ‘Corporazioni spirituali: proprietà delle confraternite e pietà dei
laici’, Ricerche di Storia Spirituale e Religiosa, 48 (1995), 77.
flourished in Bergamo, a small city about 50 kilometres from Milan, facing the Po
plain to the south and the Italian Alps to the north.19 The largest and most resilient
of this group was the Misericordia Maggiore, which owed its foundation to a dispar-
ate group including local laymen, the Dominican bishop, Erbordus, and, most strik-
ingly, members of both local Franciscan and Dominican orders.20 In keeping with
the range of its founders’ backgrounds, from its earliest days the Misericordia was
a city-wide organisation, drawing its members from every part of Bergamo, not sim-
ply one neighbourhood or parish. Large numbers of citizens appear to have joined
the Misericordia; although none of the matriculation lists of male members survive,
a list of female members which records all the women who joined the confraternity
between about 1270 and 1339 includes more than 1700 names.21 The only other
confraternity in the city to enjoy such a broad-ranging membership was the local
confraternity for the care of prisoners, founded in the 1320s.22
The Misericordia also served as an umbrella organisation for smaller parish-based
confraternities in Bergamo. In some cases members of these parish associations
belonged to the Misericordia. The confraternity of S. Michele del Pozzo Bianco,
founded one year after the Misericordia in 1266, explicitly required its members to
join the Misericordia.23 Other small confraternities shared officials with the Miser-
icordia. In the 1290s, about one third of the officials of the parish confraternity of
S. Pancrazio were also officials of the Misericordia.24 In some cases, the Misericord-
ia’s highest official, its minister, also led a parish confraternity in the city. During
the 1290s, a minister of the Misericordia, Iohannes de Redona, also served as the
minister of the parish confraternity of S. Alessandro della Croce.25 The Misericordia
19
These included a flagellant confraternity, an association for the comforting of prisoners, and numerous
parish or neighbourhood confraternities. Records of several parish confraternities are extant. These include
those of S. Michele del Pozzo Bianco, S. Caterina, S. Pancrazio, S. Leonardo, S. Alessandro della Croce,
and S. Alessandro in Colonna. Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity provides a discussion of these companies.
The Bergamasque flagellant confraternity’s founding statutes date from 1336. Guido Tammi, ‘Lo statuto
dei disciplini di S. Maria Maddalena di Bergamo’, in: Il movimento dei disciplinati nel settimo centenario
dal suo inizio (Perugia, 1960), 257. The earliest documented confraternity in Bergamo was the congre-
gation of Astino, whose activities stretched back to 1159. See Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity, 101.
20
Most confraternities of the period were founded by one or the other of the mendicant orders. For
the foundation of the Misericordia, see Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, Misericordia (hereafter MIA) archivio
937, 1r–1v; Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity, 111. Also see the discussion of Erbordus and Fra Pinamonte
de Brembate in: Lorenzo Dentella, I Vescovi di Bergamo (Bergamo, 1939), 214–215.
21
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 938. The matriculation list is a rare source for women’s
participation in a confraternity. Maria Teresa Brolis has examined the register in two recent articles:
‘Confraternite bergamasche bassomedievali: nuove fonti e prospettive di ricerca’, Rivista di Storia della
Chiesa in Italia, 49 (1995), 337–354 and ‘Mille e più donne in confraternità: il consorcium Misericordiae
di Bergamo’, in: Il buon fedele. Le confraternite tra medioevo e prima età moderna (Verona, 1998),
107–133.
22
For the membership list of the Consorcium Carceratorum, see Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AB 72.
23
Gabriele Rosa, ‘Statuto di società pia in Bergamo’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 14 (1861), 29 and
Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity, 61. Of S. Michele Little remarks, ‘in this case the neighbourhood or
parish confraternity seemed to be a sort of cell of the city-wide confraternity’.
24
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 603, 2v.
25
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 718, 228r and 231r.
also functioned as the protector for confraternities during times of crisis. In 1305,
one local association, the confraternity of the congregation of Astino, turned to
Misericordia officials for assistance when its membership declined and it could no
longer maintain its charitable commitments. The Misericordia absorbed the smaller
confraternity’s lands and incomes, and promised to maintain its charitable commit-
ments, the most significant being an annual distribution on the fifth Sunday of Lent,
at which hundreds of people received alms.26
Just as it built close relationships with local lay pious organisations, the Misericor-
dia also enjoyed a familiar relationship with the communal government and the
officials of the popolo. In its 1265 Rule, the confraternity identified among its corps
of officials an individual called the patronus who would take on the responsibility
of communicating with the government. The Rule stated that the official would
‘speak for [the Misericordia] both before the officials, or anziani, of the popolo
and also in the council of the commune of Bergamo’.27 Communication with civic
government would not prove difficult for the Misericordia in any case, since many
of the men who took on official posts in the confraternity’s first decades were the
same individuals who served in the administrations of other civic associations. This
connection was also common to other cities on the Italian peninsula. Robert Brentano
has remarked that in Rieti there was ‘a continuous convergence of secular–civil and
ecclesiastical institutions; the city in its various aspects came from (or produced) the
same mold’.28 Brentano does not note whether this pattern developed within a spe-
cific political context, but in Bergamo it was clear that a connection between civic
and confraternity officials specifically characterised the communal period. During
these years a bond developed between the position of minister of the confraternity
and official positions within the communal government. For example, Zillius de Cre-
dario served as minister of the Misericordia in 1285, then as a councillor of the
commune in 1288. Bertolameus de Curnasco was minister of the confraternity in
1297 and 1301, and in 1305 he served the commune as Consul of Justice. Antonius
de Poma also held the post of minister in 1290 and that of Consul of Justice in
1298.29 Ministers of the Misericordia, with their expertise administering a large and
growing organisation, were prepared to serve the commune in a similar capacity,
and the civic government welcomed their participation.
The confraternity’s willingness to work alongside the commune proved valuable
to the government during the disorderly years of the late thirteenth century, as polit-
ical power struggles enveloped the city and control of civic offices shifted between
several powerful clans. These clans included the Suardi family, later known as mem-
bers of the imperial, or Ghibelline party, and the Rivola and Bonghi, who eventually
26
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA pergamene 1683 and 1684; Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity,
102–106.
27
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA 937, 9v; Little, Liberty, charity, fraternity, 119.
28
Robert Brentano, A new world in a small place (Berkeley, 1994), 29.
29
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 718, 88r and MIA archivio 912; Biblioteca Civica, MIA
archivio 718, 284r and 339v; Biblioteca Civica, MIA pergamene 10,375 and 7039.
carried the banner of the Guelfs.30 Factional rivalries, although born in the early
years of the thirteenth century, did not cause long-lasting political or social upheaval
in the city until the 1290s. Most historians of Bergamasque politics agree that through
the thirteenth century the commune and its rival association, the popolo, existed in
a state François Menant characterises as ‘a relative internal equilibrium’.31 The rela-
tive peace was broken in the final years of the thirteenth century, when factional
rivalries resulted in civil war and finally led to the Suardi family calling on the
assistance of their fellow Ghibellines, the Visconti, who became lords of Bergamo
in 1332.
As civic, political and social peace disintegrated, the Misericordia maintained a
regular programme of charitable distributions to the city’s poor. The abundant docu-
mentation of the Misericordia’s assistance to the needy in the thirteenth century
describes confraternity officials’ monthly donations of alms to the inhabitants of the
city’s neighbourhoods and its outlying regions.32 Officials’ charitable visits
developed a predictable form, outlined in a 1293 document in which the company’s
canevarius, or cellarer, described the amount of alms that the confraternity expected
officials to distribute to the needy in the four quarters of the city and its outlying
areas. Officials were to give the poor inhabitants of each neighbourhood similar
amounts of cash, bread, wine, and salt.33
The relief of the local poor was a goal that confraternities shared with the com-
mune, and in the thirteenth century the Misericordia served as the commune’s chari-
table arm, distributing alms donated regularly by communal officials.34 In the last
decades of the thirteenth century, the commune’s donations sometimes provided
more than 50 per cent of the confraternity’s yearly cash income. Between 1291 and
1296 the commune provided twice-yearly donations of 50 lire, as payments of a 300
30
Jorg Jarnut, ‘Gli inizi del comune di Bergamo’, Archivio Storico Bergamasco, 5 (1983), 207. Jarnut’s
history of Bergamo also contains a discussion of the rise of the commune. ‘Sulla via del comune’, in:
Bergamo 568–1098 (Bergamo, 1980), 143–149.
31
Menant cautions that this equilibrium ‘non è forse che il frutto di un trompe l’oeil documentario’.
Menant, ‘L’identità civica’, 34. Claudia Storti Storchi argues that the popolo supported the commune
during the thirteenth century because the authority of the commune was an expression of the general and
collective interests of the citizens of Bergamo. Storti Storchi, Diritto e istituzioni a Bergamo dal comune
alla signoria (Milano, 1984), 294 and 307.
32
Records of the charitable visits, which cover the period from 1272 almost continuously until 1303,
attest to the continuing importance of these visits to the Misericordia. Records of similar visits also exist
for all of the months of 1326, 1352, 1354, and the early 1360s. Thirteenth-century records are found in
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 718 and 724; fourteenth-century records are in Biblioteca
Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis and MIA archivio 1245. On similar ritual almsgiving in fourteenth-century
Avignon, see Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’Au-Delà. Les hommes, la mort et la religion dans
la région d’Avignon à la fin du moyen âge (vers 1320–vers 1480) (Rome, 1980), 309.
33
34
References for donations to the Misericordia from the commune between 1284 and 1298 are found
in Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 718, ff. 47v, 112v, 175v, 189v, 193r, 208v, 212r, 228v,
233r, 249v, 253v, 267r, 272v, and 284v. Guiseppe Mira notes that in the fifteenth century, some flagellant
confraternities in central Italy also received monies from local government. Mira, ‘Primi sondaggi su
taluni aspetti economico-finanziari’, 242. John Henderson has also described the Florentine priors’ grants
of cash for alms to the confraternity of Orsanmichele in the 1320s. Henderson, Piety and charity, 202.
lire commitment the commune made to the Misericordia in 1291. Over the period
between 1283 and 1298, donations from the commune averaged one third of the
confraternity’s annual cash revenues.
The charitable donations from the commune to the Misericordia underscored the
shared interests of the two institutions. In addition to large sums of cash, through
the thirteenth century civic officials also provided the Misericordia with tax con-
cessions that assisted the confraternity in developing its almsgiving programme.35
The government’s tax concessions for the confraternity included the regulation of
the price of salt and donations of that commodity to the Misericordia. Beginning in
1300, tax farmers, working under the commune’s orders, each month sold the confra-
ternity eight bushels of salt (more than 160 kilos) at a favourable rate of 5 soldi per
bushel and donated four bushels (about 80 kilos) of salt to the company. Through
these privileges members of the government underlined their view that the Misericor-
dia functioned as the commune’s charitable arm. In the late thirteenth century, mem-
bers of the popolo stated that they would support the commune’s privileges for the
Misericordia ‘for the utility of the commune [and] for the performance of works of
mercy in harmony [with the Misericordia]’.36
The Misericordia played a supporting role to the commune during the later thir-
teenth century, as communal officials helped the confraternity expand its charitable
programme and in many cases provided alms for the Misericordia to distribute. Dur-
ing this period, confraternities and commune were closely linked in the minds of
Bergamasque citizens. This link became more explicit in the early fourteenth century,
as the commune gradually lost its autonomy in the early years of the fourteenth
century, and the Misericordia stepped in to support it. From 1307, Misericordia mem-
bers aided the beleaguered commune by serving as negotiators between the Suardi-
led Ghibellines and the Guelfs, now led by the Rivola, Bonghi, and Colleoni families.
This role provided the confraternity with a new set of responsibilities and a higher
profile in civic affairs. The Misericordia had not sought this function in the past;
unlike some other confraternities, its founding rule said nothing about the company’s
responsibility for civic peace.37 The Misericordia’s developing role as peacemaker
in Bergamo thus reveals not only the confraternity’s defence of the commune, but
also its ability to adapt to changing social and political circumstances. This flexibility
would enable the confraternity to survive the political changes which transformed
the city in the fourteenth century.
35
See descriptions of the commune’s regulation of the tax on salt for the Misericordia between 1300
and 1363 in Bergamo, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Notarile, Gerardus Soyarius, busta 8 and Bergamo,
Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis. Copies of legal privileges received from the civic government
in 1288 and 1357 are found in Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 912. Other legal privileges dating from
1314, 1334, and 1349 are Biblioteca Civica, MIA pergamene 11,449; 4990; and 5921.
36
pro evidenti utilitate comunis Pergami aprobata per omnes anzianos populi Pergami pro opere miser-
icordie in concordia. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 912.
37
This is in contrast with the rules of some other confraternities on the peninsula. Jennifer Fisk Rondeau
notes that most early statutes of confraternities in Italy ‘repeat a standard formula to the effect that
the confraternity was established at least in part to promote the peace and order of the city’. Rondeau,
‘Homosociality’, 37.
The relative calm of the thirteenth century ended in 1296, when open war broke
out between the Suardi-led Ghibellines and the Guelfs, now composed of the Rivola
and Colleoni families. The war caused chaos throughout the city, and this violence
shook the authority of the commune.38 Claudia Storti Storchi argues that from that
point, communal institutions of Bergamo became fundamentally unstable.39 During
this period of instability the commune looked to the Misericordia to help reassert
its control of civic institutions. Our first evidence of the Misericordia’s involvement
in civic arbitration between these factions dates from 1307. That year, a member of
the Suardi family attacked and wounded a member of the Colleoni clan, breaking
an earlier peace treaty between the two families and bringing Bergamo’s Guelfs and
Ghibellines into conflict once again.40 The commune responded to this renewal of
tension by creating a body of sixteen Savi, or ‘wise men’, to broker a peace treaty
between the Rivola and Colleoni faction, and the Suardi, who were living in exile
outside the city. Among the Savi was an official of the Misericordia: Iohannes de
Ulivenis.41 Iohannes had already served as an official of the confraternity eight times,
and consequently citizens would readily identify him as a representative of the Miser-
icordia.42
The Savi adopted a pivotal civic role for themselves. Storti Storchi notes that their
decisions surpassed the limits originally imposed on them by the officials of the
commune, since the commune published the decrees of the Savi, therefore granting
them the status of law. The goal of these decrees was to restore the authority of the
commune to the city and to control noble factionalism. Their decrees included the
further clarification of the relationship between the commune and the popolo and
the provision of war damages to four of the most powerful families in the city; the
Rivola, Colleoni, Bonghi, and Suardi.43 The committee also named members of the
four families ‘keepers of the peace’.44 Most importantly, however, the 1307 peace
aimed at reasserting the public authority not of individual families but rather of the
commune and the popolo, working in tandem for citizens’ interests. Strikingly violent
measures would be taken against those who threatened the peace; individuals who
‘said anything against the peace’ would be punished by having their tongues cut out,
38
The violence also had a direct effect on the Misericordia, as some of the confraternity’s property
was stolen or destroyed. The confraternity moved wine and barrels out of a storeroom it rented from the
commune to ensure that they would not be stolen or damaged by fire. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA
archivio 718, 276r. Looters also managed to carry off eighteen of the confraternity’s twenty-one benches
and destroyed some of the confraternity’s most valuable documents, including a membership list, a letter
of indulgence from the bishop of the city, a letter from the Prior of the Dominicans, and one from the
Minister General of the Franciscans. Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 937, 17r–20v.
39
Storti Storchi, Diritto e istituzioni, 313.
40
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AB 385, 51v. Storti Storchi also cites this reference in Diritto e istitut-
zioni, 315n.
41
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, Sala 1 N 10 2/3.
42
Iohannes was the canevarius generale of the Misericordia in 1307. The Minister, Fra Albertus de
Picollis, did not play a role on the peace committee.
43
Storti Storchi, Diritto e istituzioni, 319–322.
44
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, Mazzoleni, Zibaldone di memorie rigardante Bergamo, capitolo 25.
while individuals who challenged the power of the podestà, the popolo, or other
civic authorities would be put to death.45 Along with the rest of the Savi, the Miser-
icordia, in the person of Iohannes de Ulivenis, rejected factional government and
supported a return to a strong commune.
In the years after 1307 the confraternity played a fully articulated role in peace
negotiations. When a new peace committee formed in 1317, several members and
officials of the Misericordia helped organise the council and acted as members.46
Two Misericordia officials headed the list: Iohannes de Ulivenis, at that time the
minister of the confraternity, and Laurentius de Apibus, its cellarer. Several others
on the committee were also linked to the confraternity, having served as officials or
given large donations to the company in the past.47
The negotiation of the 1317 truce provided the confraternity with greater responsi-
bilities than it had taken on in 1307. Every month, two confraternity officials met
as part of a committee formed by the anziani of the popolo to oversee the peace.
The duty of this committee was to report on how to ‘maintain and increase the peace
and harmony of the city’.48 The anziani were to introduce any action so identified
during meetings of the general council of the commune so that the councillors might
vote on it. In this way, the committee became a significant civic institution; its wishes
could change the laws of the city. The Misericordia’s officials also helped choose
custodians for the fortresses of the region. In the first two months after the peace
the podestà and the Savi elected the custodians, but after that twelve members of
the popolo along with twelve members of the Misericordia served as the electors.49
Once again, through its involvement in peacemaking, the Misericordia helped support
the city’s governing bodies.50
As local political institutions weakened, the Misericordia first attempted to shore
up the authority of the commune. Then, when the Visconti became the signori of
the city in the 1330s, the confraternity altered its civic identity once again. By the
mid-fourteenth century the Misericordia was the central distributor of social services
in Bergamo, and its protection of smaller confraternities had extended to include
45
Storti Storchi, Diritto e istituzioni, 322–323. She calls these measures ‘un estrema tentativo di difesa
dell’istituzione comunale nel suo complesso, attraverso la tutela dei suoi organi legittimi’. On another
peace agreement between civic officials and a Bergamasque faction (not involving the Misericordia), see
Gianluca Battioni, ‘Tra Bergamo e Romano nell’autunno del 1321’, in: L’età dei Visconti. Il dominio di
Milano fra XIII e XV secolo, ed. Luisa Chiappa Mauri et al. (Milano, 1993), 365–391.
46
I am very grateful to dott. Arveno Sala for originally directing me to the record of this peace agree-
ment (Biblioteca Civica, MAB 36), which exists now only as a photocopy of an eighteenth-century copy
of the original. Sala notes its existence in his article ‘Le Famiglie Suardi e Colleoni nei primi secoli del
comune di Bergamo’, Atti del Ateneo di Bergamo (1990), 255–276.
47
For example, Delaythinus de Paluscho, a tailor (sartor), was a credendarius of the Misericordia.
Piligrinus de Ficienis, the head of the Società Sancte Marie (the armed society of the commune), had
donated more than 1000 kilos of grain, 1170 litres of wine, and almost 10 lire to the confraternity in
1305. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 724.
48
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MAB 36, 2r.
49
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MAB 36, 12r.
50
No documents from the commune’s archive survive to attest to the actual role which the Misericordia
played in meetings after the truce was established.
closer supervision of their activities. Through its increasing emphasis on its pre-
eminent authority in the community, the Misericordia promoted the values of signor-
ial government even as it maintained the concern for poor relief which it had shared
with the commune.
The Visconti established themselves as the signori of most Lombard cities in the
early decades of the fourteenth century, and as a part of their rule they attempted
to centralise the power of traditional civic institutions. In Bergamo in the early 1330s,
Azzone Visconti named himself signore of the city and commissioned a new redac-
tion of the civic statutes in which the city’s podestà was no longer subject to the
citizens but rather to the signore himself.51 Visconti rulers of Bergamo after Azzone,
including Luchino Visconti, archbishop Giovanni Visconti, and Bernabò Visconti,
introduced related measures. Under Luchino, Milanese law took the place of Bergam-
asque law in the courts, and Giovanni reduced the number of members of the citizens’
council from 300 to 144 members, all elected directly by the Visconti-appointed
podestà.52 Historians have vilified Bernabò Visconti, presenting him as a violent,
dictatorial figure who terrorised the population throughout his thirty-year tenure, tak-
ing special pleasure in the persecution of members of the Guelf faction.53 Bernabò
also taxed the citizens of Bergamo – and all other cities he ruled – more heavily
than had previous regimes.54
While the Visconti lords of the city altered the shape of the political and economic
order in Bergamo, as they did in the other cities they ruled, they also sought a smooth
transition between communal and signorial rule. To effect such a transition, the Vis-
conti relied in part on the Misericordia. Upon their assumption of power in Bergamo,
the Visconti renewed several privileges the Misericordia had received from the com-
mune, highlighting at least this one avenue of continuity between themselves and
the former rulers of the city. For instance, regular donations of salt and the sale of the
commodity at a reduced rate to the confraternity continued until at least the 1360s.55
A comparison of two legal privileges extended to the confraternity, one by the
commune in 1288 and the other by the Visconti in 1357, further reveals the extent
to which the Visconti emulated traditional civic policies regarding the Misericordia.
In 1288, the commune had agreed to grant the Misericordia a legal privilege ‘for
the good and advantage of the poor of the city and region of Bergamo and so that
51
Bortolo Belotti, Storia di Bergamo e dei bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1959), vol. 2, 107; and Alberto
Fumagalli, Bergamo. Origini e vicende storiche del centro antico (Milano, 1981), 147.
52
Fumagalli, Bergamo, 149–150.
53
Lorenzo Dentella writes: ad ogni Ghibellino [Bernabò] diede piena facoltà di uccidere qualunque
Guelfo, di abbruciargli le case, dal che si moltiplicarono gli omicidii, le estorsioni, gli incendi … a
sconvolgere la quiete del nostro Contado. Dentella, I Vescovi di Bergamo, 265.
54
Patrizia Mainoni remarks: dal punto di vista finanziario … Galeazzo e Bernabò agirono in assoluto
dispregio di tradizioni e diritti acquisiti, in un accentramento di risorse che necessariamente andava nel
verso opposto di quelle persistenze di autonomie locali che erano state incoraggiate dai loro predecessori.
Mainoni, Economia e politica nelle Lombardia Medievale. Da Bergamo a Milano fra XIII e XV secolo
(Milano, 1994), 99.
55
Bergamo, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Notarile, Gerardus Soyarius, busta 8 and Bergamo, Biblioteca
Civica, AB 229, 39r.
God might defend the commune from all evil and danger and maintain the perpetual
peace and harmony of the commune’.56 This language emphasised the idea that the
alliance between the two institutions ensured not only the confraternity’s survival,
but the continuing harmony of the city itself.57 In 1357, the Misericordia approached
Bernabò Visconti to enquire if he would uphold the legal privileges which the com-
mune had provided the confraternity in 1288. The officials of the Misericordia went
before Bernabò ‘humbly and reverently’, requesting that he extend the Misericordia
a privilege similar to that of 1288. In its petition to the signore the confraternity
stated that its century-long tradition of assistance to the poor and the weak and the
fact that its officials received no salary from the confraternity’s revenues made it an
ideal candidate for such a privilege. Using language similar to the request of 1288,
the officials requested in the Virgin’s name that the podestà and his judges ensure,
as their predecessors had done, that a ‘summary and expedited procedure’ be fol-
lowed to avoid the ‘cavils’ (cavilacionibus) which frequently slowed the confra-
ternity’s attempt to recover bequests in the courts.58 These simplifications would
ensure that the Misericordia could focus its energies and its funds on serving the
poor as it had traditionally done. The Visconti granted the confraternity’s request.59
Bernabò’s willingness to support the Misericordia comprised an attempt to downplay
the difference between his government and the government of the commune.
The Misericordia accepted the Visconti domination of Bergamo, as evidenced by
the confraternity’s reception of the privileges described above. But the confraternity’s
support for the Visconti also extended to making administrative changes to reflect
the new social and political values the Visconti represented. From the early four-
teenth century, the Misericordia had encouraged its ministers to remain in office for
several years at a time. When the Visconti arrived in the city, the Misericordia also
began to select ministers whose learning and social status set them apart from the
rest of the company; in this way, ministers of the confraternity came to resemble
the signori themselves.
The first individual to serve the company as minister for more than one or two
terms was Iohannes de Ulivenis, the notary who joined the confraternity in the late
1290s and first became its minister in 1300. He went on to hold the post twenty
times before his death in 1340. In the mid-1330s, after Azzone had become signore
of Bergamo, the Misericordia offered Iohannes room and board within its house (the
domus consorcii) and gave him the right to select between four and six men of the
56
predicta requiruntur per ministrum et canevarium et alios bonos homines ipsius Consorci Misericordie
debere fieri et ordinari per comunem Pergami pro bono et utilitate pauperum civitatis et virtutis Pergami
et ad hoc ut Deus deffendat comunem Pergami ab omni mallo, pericullo et ipsum comunem in perpetua
pace et concordia manuteneat. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 912.
57
The guarantee of protection for the civic government as a consequence of the government’s support
of justice and the weaker members of the community is a common theme in medieval Italian cities. In
the frescoes of the allegory of Good and Bad government in the Palazzo Comunale of Siena the theme
is repeated continually. For a discussion of the fresco cycle, see William Bowsky, A medieval Italian
commune. Siena under the nine (Berkeley, 1981), 287–291.
58
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 912.
59
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 912.
confraternity as his personal councillors to help him in his work, that of ‘carrying
out the business of the confraternity’.60 The confraternity likely intended these con-
cessions to highlight the importance of Iohannes’ leadership both to its own members
and to the community at large. The concessions also placed a new emphasis on the
power of the minister within the confraternity, much like the power of the signore
over other civic officials.
In the decades after the Visconti signori came to power, the Misericordia began
to seek out ministers who resembled the social elite now more in favour in govern-
ment. Thus, in 1345, the confraternity elected the jurist Alberico da Rosciate as its
minister. Both learned and wealthy, Alberico had studied law at the University of
Padua, and was known across Europe for his commentaries on the Digest and Codex
of Justinian and for his Dictionary of civil and canon law.61 In Bergamo he sat as
a judge, helped reform the city’s statutes in 1331, and served as ambassador to the
papal court three times.62 The Misericordia treated its high-profile minister well, not
expecting him to sacrifice his other responsibilities to the confraternity’s needs. In
1348, the company gave Alberico the support of a coadiutor, an individual who had
the same authority as the minister, so that in case the minister was absent the work
of the company could continue.63
During Alberico’s tenure as minister, the Misericordia enjoyed a cordial relation-
ship with the Visconti. A company with a learned, wealthy, well-known individual
at its head would command more attention and respect from a family whose members
ruled most of the cities of Lombardy. In the years after Alberico’s death, the Miser-
icordia continued to elect ministers whose secular or ecclesiastical status dis-
tinguished them from the rest of the officials and membership of the confraternity.
Alberico’s son Petrus, a cleric trained in law, followed him as minister in 1361.
Then in 1364 the confraternity elected Graciolus de S. Gervasio, a local canon, and
in 1380 a priest, Bertulimus de la Piperata.64 At the end of the century, the minister
was Antonius de Barillis, a judge, who also helped lead the processions of the white-
robed penitents known as the Bianchi in 1399.65
It is clear that the Misericordia was profoundly affected by the political changes
the Visconti introduced to the city. Through their alteration of the confraternity’s
administration to reflect changing social values in the city, Misericordia officials
instructed the confraternity’s membership about the importance of those values. And
yet, an examination of the Misericordia’s account books from the 1330s onwards
60
Bergamo, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Notarile, Gerardus Soyarius, busta 8.
61
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AAB 225, vol. 3, 11 and Belotti, Storia di Bergamo, vol. 2, 410.
62
Alberico was appointed ambassador to the papal court in Avignon in 1335 and 1337 and 1340.
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960), vol. 1, 656–657. He is mentioned in his capacity as
judge of the city in several Misericordia documents, including Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA perga-
mene 9616. For his role in the reform of the city’s statutes, see Claudia Storti Storchi, Lo statuto di
Bergamo del 1331 (Milano, 1986).
63
Bergamo, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Notarile, Gerardus Soyarius, busta 11.
64
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1245, 9r and 24r.
65
Castello Castelli, ‘Chronicon Bergomense Guelpho-Ghibellinum’, ed. Carlo Capasso, Rerum Italica-
rum Scriptores, tom. XVI, 1926 part. 3–4, 74 and 95.
reveals that the confraternity retained its commitment to poor relief; a tradition which
preserved the memory of local communal government in Bergamo. Still, even as the
confraternity continued to serve the needy of the community, its charity reflected a
growing distinction between wealthy and poor in the community.
Although the Misericordia had formerly depended on civic government for finan-
cial assistance, by the time the Visconti arrived in Bergamo the confraternity was a
wealthy organisation. In the first decade of the fourteenth century, the Misericordia’s
revenues averaged more than 400 lire annually. The confraternity’s fiscal indepen-
dence continued into the mid-fourteenth century. In the early 1360s the confraternity
collected an average of 223 lire monthly or more than 2600 lire annually in rents,
bequests, and donations.66 In the 1350s the Visconti began to donate small amounts
of cash annually – approximately 5 lire – to the confraternity on Christmas Day. In
contrast to the commune’s substantial donations of the 1280s and 1290s, these were
little more than a token gesture.67
As the Misericordia became wealthier and more independent of external financial
support, it altered the form of its charitable donations to needy Bergamaschi. As we
have seen, in the thirteenth century the confraternity had employed a standardised
charitable programme, regularly distributing alms to neighbourhoods throughout the
city. These early initiatives had not included assistance given to individuals suffering
from short- or long-term problems such as disease or the loss of property. Sources
for the confraternity’s charitable programme in the mid-fourteenth century reveal
that it still engaged in regular general distributions of alms, but it also attempted to
respond to individuals’ specific needs. The changes to the Misericordia’s charitable
programme had an important impact on the civic scene in Bergamo. By providing
alms for those in the midst of crisis, rather than maintaining a list of regular clients,
the Misericordia portrayed itself as an organisation committed to the community as
a whole and thus as the primary institution responsible for local pious culture and
social stability.
In the mid-fourteenth century, the Misericordia altered its charitable programme
to accommodate both its growing wealth and changes to contemporary social values.
The evidence for the expansion of the programme comes first from minutes of
officials’ meetings, which show that in contrast to the previous century, when they
had met perhaps twice each month, Misericordia officials now met to discuss chari-
table concerns as often as three times a week.68 Furthermore, changes to the officials’
method of distributing some charitable donations reflected a growing emphasis on
66
For these figures, see Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, register 4.
67
In 1354 the Tesaurerius of the commune made a 5 lire donation to the Misericordia on Christmas
Day. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 3. The canevarius noted that the donation
was: pro comuni Pergami ellemosina facta ad festum nativitate domini nostri Iesu Christi. In 1357 and
1358 the donation totalled 4 lire and 18.5 soldi. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AB 229, 70r. In 1362 the
donation, again made on Christmas Day, was also 4 lire, 18 soldi and 11 denarii. Bergamo, Biblioteca
Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 4.
68
This expressed intention to meet three times weekly was not always met. In 1363, officials met seven
times in February, nine times in March, and six times in May. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio
1245, 1r–4r.
social hierarchies in the city. Officials’ traditional visits to the city’s neighbourhoods
to distribute alms gave way to a system which required the Misericordia’s clients
to go to the confraternity’s house on certain days of the week with a token which
they could redeem for wine.69 The Misericordia’s house – which served as both a
storehouse and a meeting-place – was a symbol of the confraternity’s permanence,
wealth, and civic authority. Requiring the poor to enter the house to collect alms
would have emphasised to those individuals the distinction between themselves and
their wealthy patrons.
As its system of almsgiving changed, so did the type of alms the confraternity
doled out to the needy. In the thirteenth century the confraternity’s almsgiving was
limited to distributions of wine, grain, salt, and cash. By the fourteenth century the
Misericordia was actively involved in providing crucial services for inhabitants of
the city. The charitable services the Misericordia provided consolidated its position
as the protector of social services in Bergamo. First, by providing wetnurses to
infants, the confraternity established itself as the protector of the city’s indigent chil-
dren. In one case the child was an orphan whose guardian was being held in the
communal jail after he had mistreated his ward.70 Other children were tiny infants;
in 1362 one woman received 1 lira and 5 soldi for nursing a five-day-old boy. Other
infants in need of nursing were specifically described as poor, such as the son of
the pauper Mininus de Gromfalegio, nursed at the confraternity’s expense for two
months in 1362 and again for a month the next year.71 In a few cases the confraternity
also asked wetnurses to act as guardians for needy infants. Beginning in 1353, the
Misericordia paid a widow, Ricadona de Barzizzia, to nurse and care for the orphaned
daughter of a cleric from the pieve of S. Iohannes de Telgate, south-east of the city.
The nurse continued to care for the girl for ten years, receiving payments of an
annual soma of grain and cash totalling several lire or gold florins.72
As needy children grew up, the confraternity also provided some of them with
dowries. Each month in the 1360s, the confraternity gave dowries to poor girls.
Sometimes the number of dowries distributed was substantial. During one month in
1362, the confraternity gave dowries of between 16 soldi and 2 lire each to more
than fifty poor girls.73 The amount the confraternity spent on dowries that month
totalled more than 10 per cent of all of its expenses, a significant amount for one
type of alms. Normally the confraternity gave the dowries directly to the girl herself,
69
70
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 4.
71
72
In 1353 she received a total of 6 lire and 14 soldi and another payment of 10 soldi made to her son
Zambininus, who went before the Misericordia in his mother’s place in November. Bergamo, Biblioteca
Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 3. In 1354 the payments were the same as the previous year, but
she also received 2 gold florins. In 1360 the nurse was paid 6 lire and 19 soldi to provide food for the
girl. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AB 229, 105r. In 1363 she received another 6 lire and 19 soldi, and
the Misericordia also gave her a soma of grain. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 4.
73
although if she was a servant her master might receive the dowry instead.74 The
confraternity’s interest in providing dowries probably stemmed in part from the
plague, which had hit the city the previous year. By providing Bergamasque girls
with the means to marry after a time of significant demographic change, the Miser-
icordia emphasised its commitment to social stability in Bergamo. Its assistance
would allow inhabitants of the community – regardless of status – to establish their
own households.
As well as caring for some of the needy children and young adults of the com-
munity, the Misericordia began to provide medical care for the needy, sometimes
paying physicians to provide medicines or perform surgery. In 1361, magister Don-
atus de Lemen received 4 lire and 16 soldi from the confraternity for the medicine
and care he had given the orphaned son of the late Betonus de Urio. In 1363, the
same physician operated on a boy for an illness described as malum lapidis, and the
confraternity helped the mother pay the expenses of the treatment.75 The company
also gave alms to those suffering from specific ailments or wounds, such as the man
‘wounded in one shoulder’ in 1363 who received alms ‘for the love of God’.76
Women in labour also received special attention, as the cellarer might give them a
bushel of grain or a cash donation.77
The more dramatic examples of the Misericordia’s ‘crisis aid’ included alms for
those who had lost property to civic violence and natural disaster. In 1356 the Miser-
icordia lent 16 lire and 8 soldi to Martinus, called Bornia, and Iohannes, called
Mazucho, brothers from Spirano whose property had been stolen by ‘Tomaxius de
Grecis and other evildoers’ who lived in the nearby town of Alzano Superiore. A
few years later the same source records the cellarer giving 2 lire to a man called
Cresole, an inhabitant of the Astino valley, whose house had been destroyed by fire
‘out of misfortune’.78 In 1363, Misericordia officials decided to give 9 lire rather
than the usual 6 on a charitable visit to those people who had been affected by
‘robbery, homicide and fires which have occurred daily in the region of Bergamo,
committed by evil people’.79
The payment of prisoners’ debts and ransoms also became part of the confra-
ternity’s charitable programme in the fourteenth century, and once again this form
74
For instance, in July of 1362, the confraternity gave Alexander de Crema 2 lire as a dowry for one
of his servants. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 4.
75
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1245, 4v. In another case, dominus Iacobus de Coazzis
was offered the large sum of 10 florins for having given medical care to a boy described only as ‘the
son of the late Galuzius’. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, AB 229, 124v.
76
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1245, 5v. Sometimes the confraternity gave alms to indi-
viduals who promised to pass them on to the sick or injured. Bisescus de Curno received 4 soldi from
the confraternity in 1362, and he promised to give it to a man in the village of Curno ‘whose head was
broken’. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg 4.
77
In 1363 the cellarer recorded a gift of 10 soldi ‘for the love of God’ to Zoanina de Gaicarno, an
inhabitant of Borgo S. Andrea, who was about to give birth. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio
1245, 5v.
78
79
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1245, 5r.
of assistance helped the confraternity emphasise its developing role as the guardian
of social peace in the city. Martinus de Loteris, for instance, was jailed in 1363 for
debts totalling five gold florins. His provost, Merinus, approached Misericordia
officials and asked that they lend him money so that Martinus might be released
from jail and make restitution for usury he had accepted.80 In the same year three
others, Bonettus de Muthina, Vincencius de Barzizzia, and Zambonus de Gualteriis
de Mariano, were unable to pay the debts that would release them from prison, and
the confraternity again appears to have paid for their release.81 The Misericordia also
considered requests for help from those imprisoned in other cities. Alexandrus, called
Tinctus, de Gazzis de Palazago was held in the jail at Almè, a town northwest of
Bergamo, when officials paid for his release.82 Franzischus, the heir of Brunazzius
de Sancto Gallo, was imprisoned in the communal jail at Parma when Brunazzius
himself went before the Misericordia and begged for mercy from the confraternity
officials, asking them to help Franzischus by paying the two florins which would
release him from jail.83
The Misericordia also became involved in the ransom of soldiers captured outside
the region controlled by the Visconti. Records of the confraternity’s expenses from
1363 reveal that the Misericordia helped pay the ransoms of several soldiers captured
by Can Grande della Scala, the ruler of Verona. Sometimes intermediaries
approached the confraternity and asked for the money to release captives. For
instance, Bonus de Urniano asked the confraternity for the money to release five of
his co-citizens.84 In two other instances the money was paid to the wives of the
captured men.85 The prisoners were often freed at a place called Gredeniano, in
the region of Brescia. The Misericordia had acquired several pieces of property at
Gredeniano in 1328. If the company still owned the land in the 1360s, it might have
served as a convenient site at which to hand over captives.86 By helping to free
prisoners captured by an enemy ruler, the Misericordia once again established itself
as an agent of social cohesion in Bergamo.
The Misericordia’s willingness to respond to particular crises facing local citizens
became well-known inside and outside the city during the fourteenth century, and
individuals began to turn to the confraternity to help themselves and their families
during such times. One example stands out: in 1338, a widow called Flora, a former
inhabitant of Bergamo, directed a bequest to the Misericordia for the protection of
family members living in the county of Milan. She left a house and garden in
80
81
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1245, 3r/v.
82
83
84
The men were listed as: Bertramus Pangoni de Urniano (sol. 1) et Adamus Coldere de Urniano (sol.
16) et Iacobus Molli de Urniano (sol. 16) et Peterbonus Zage de Urniano (sol. 16) et Fachus de Bruna
de Urniano (sol. 16). The total amount given in this case was 6 lire and 8 soldi. Bergamo, Biblioteca
Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 4.
85
86
The land had formerly belonged to a Misericordia official, Fra Paulus de Colzate, and the Misericordia
took possession of it for 23 soldi in 1328. Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA archivio 1383 bis, reg. 2.
Bergamo to the confraternity, and ordered that the Misericordia provide that property
to any of her husband’s relatives living in the county of Milan. She provided this
bequest so that if these members of her family were banished from the county or
fell into ‘some disgrace’, sanctuary would be available to them. In the meantime,
the Misericordia could rent the property and collect the income for itself, but Flora
stated that confraternity officials were to make the property available to her family
members at half the rate which they would demand from others.87 Bequests of land
frequently came to the confraternity with strings attached, normally so that the tes-
tator’s surviving relatives could enjoy the usufruct of the bequest during their lives.
Flora’s bequest echoed this concern, ensuring that the confraternity would provide
for her family and also evoking a role for the Misericordia as a guarantor of security
in times of political instability.
The Misericordia’s charitable assistance in the mid-to-late fourteenth century
emphasised its commitment to the social problems of the local community. In this
way, the confraternity maintained some of the responsibilities of the commune even
as that institution’s own power waned. At the same time, the confraternity’s organis-
ation of its charitable distributions now underscored the difference between its auth-
ority and wealth and its clients’ weakness and need. Through these changes to its
charity, the Misericordia helped communicate the new importance of social hierarchy
to the community.
The Misericordia also helped instruct the community in the growing importance
of central authority through its expanding role as the mentor or ‘mother’ institution
to smaller confraternities. During the mid-fourteenth century, the confraternity began
to supervise parish or neighbourhood organisations more closely. Compelling evi-
dence for this change comes from a will dated 1333. In that document, the testator,
Andreus, the son of Petrus Soarini, made a bequest of 150 lire to a small confraternity
based in Valotta, his place of birth. He instructed the confraternity to use the money
to buy a piece of land and give the income from the land to the poor. To ensure
that the bequest would be honoured, he placed a condition on it: the confraternity
could not purchase the land without the assent of the Misericordia’s cellarer. When
the original bequest proved difficult to extract from the surviving heirs, the Misericor-
dia became closely involved with the administration of the will, eventually donating
land to the smaller confraternity to allow them to carry out the testator’s wishes.88
By the mid-fourteenth century, the Misericordia had become an institution which
provided citizens with relief from social dislocation and economic privation and
which acted as a mentor and supervisor to smaller pious associations. Its charitable
initiatives, designed to relieve the worst suffering of the local indigent, also empha-
sised the growing importance of social distinctions in the city. Furthermore, by elect-
ing higher-status ministers, by rationalising its charitable programme, and by step-
ping up its supervision of smaller confraternities, the Misericordia reflected and
87
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA pergamene 587.
88
Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, MIA pergamene 737, and Bergamo, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Notarile,
Gerardus Soyarius, busta 7.
promoted the social elitism and institutional centralisation which characterised the
advent of the signori.
During the fourteenth century, distinctive changes overcame civic life in Lom-
bardy. Most notably, a stronger emphasis on the power of elites, and a related weak-
ening of communal power, altered the social fabric of Lombard cities such as
Bergamo. Confraternities such as the Misericordia, which had existed in close
relationship with local governments from their inception, helped facilitate the tran-
sition between one form of government and another. The Misericordia maintained
the commitment to its local charitable programme, developed originally with the
assistance of the commune, but the confraternity did not exist as an artefact of the
commune. As it incorporated signorial values into its institutional structure, the
Misericordia was complicit in reshaping the political and social fabric of Bergamo.
Roisin Cossar is assistant professor of history at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
She completed a PhD in medieval history at the University of Toronto in 1999.

The Quality of Mercy: Confraternities and Public Power in Medieval Bergamo

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The Quality of Mercy: Confraternities and Public Power in Medieval Bergamo

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Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 139–157

The quality of mercy: confraternities and public

Keywords: Confraternities; Charity; Cities and towns; Italy

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