Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy 0674971892, 9780674971899

Citation preview

i tatti studies in italian re nais sance history

Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy

Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy

Nn Roisin Cossar

cambridge, massachusetts  •  london, england 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cossar, Roisin, author. Title: Clerical households in late Medieval Italy / Roisin Cossar. Other titles: I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Series: I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016040079 | ISBN 9780674971899 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Clergy—Family relationships—Italy, Northern—History— To 1500. | Households—Italy, Northern—History—To 1500. | Households—Italy, Northern—Religious aspects—Christianity—History—To 1500. | Church renewal— Italy, Northern—Catholic Church—History—To 1500. Classification: LCC BV4396 .C68 2017 | DDC 253/.22094510902—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040079

To the memory of Shona Kelly Wray 1963–2012

Contents

Introduction

part i: Making Records 1. Notaries, Registers, and Archives

1 19 21

Notaries   21 Notarial Registers   29 Archiving Notarial Registers   34 Conclusion   38 2. Records as Artifacts and Historical Events

39

Testaments   39 Inventories and Lists of Household Objects   49 Visitation Records   54 Conclusion   60

part ii: The Clerical Familia 3. Priests as Patriarchs: The Clergy and Their Households Clerical Culture in Venice   64 Naming the Clergy   66 The Clerical Life Cycle   70 Youth   71 Middle Age   77 Bonds with Extended Family   85

61 63

An Aging Cleric: Graciolus de Sangervasio of Bergamo   88 Aging Notaries   91 Conclusion   92 4. “She Is Not My Wife but a Servant”: Clerics’ Companions

94

Names   95 Titles and Labels   99 Treatment of Women in Venetian Priests’ Testaments   106 Vulnerability and Invisibility   112 Support  115 Companions as Mothers   118 Clerics’ Companions as Priests’ Mothers   121 Conclusion   131 5. Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 132 Descriptions of Clerical Housing in City and Countryside  133 The Material Culture of the Clerical Residence   140 Work in the Clerical Residence   148 Conclusion   157 Conclusion Notes   167 Acknowledgments   223 Index   227

159

Nn Introduction

I

n 1367,Francescus de Recovratis, a priest, notary, and canon of the Venetian basilica of San Marco, wrote his last will and testament on

half a sheet of linen paper. He left that brief document among the pages of a parchment register containing records he had redacted for his cli-

ents during the later fourteenth century. At the end of his life, the register was deposited in the record office of the Venetian chancery known as the Cancelleria Inferiore, located in a lower room of the ducal palace in Venice’s Piazza San Marco. Over the next centuries, and especially after the fall of the Venetian republic in 1797, the notarial registers formerly held at the chancery were dispersed. Some remained in basement rooms of the ducal palace, some were moved to storage spaces under the eaves of the basilica of San Marco, and still others were taken to the complex known as the Fabbriche Nuove on the Grand Canal. Over the course of the nineteenth century, surviving registers created by the notaries of the republic were reunited in a fondo of the newly created Venetian State Archive located in the former Franciscan convent known as Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. That archive was eventually opened to scholars from around the world. It was in its spacious reading room, previously the convent’s refectory, that I came upon the will one morning in April 2010, as I combed Francescus’ register in search of testaments created by priests in the fourteenth century.1

1



2 

N 

Introduction

In his will, Francescus promised property to a widow named Beruzia, an inhabitant of the parish of San Basso, and her son Incollelus, who lived in the neighboring parish of San Marco.2 That property included personal items, such as “all of her household furnishings, and all of her clothing, both linen and wool, that she uses and wears,” as well as a silver belt (zentura argentea) which, he noted, had been purchased with “her own money” (de suis propriis denariis). Francescus also asserted that “a long time before” he had “given and consigned” the items to Beruzia, thus she had a right to claim them, since they were no longer his property. Francescus further named Incollelus, identified in the will only as the “son of Beruzia,” as recipient of the remainder of the estate, which included any movable property and land that remained after cash legacies had been given his brother and sister. Beruzia and Incollelus were trusted with distributing those legacies, a role that in Venice was usually assigned to a testator’s spouse and children.3 This act suggests that despite the expectation of Christian church officials that priests such as Francescus would remain celibate, Beruzia was probably the priest’s companion, and Incollelus was their son. The testament in which Francescus gave these instructions was a model of nuance. In it, he presented possibly illicit testamentary legatees in terms that ensured they would receive property from his estate. Dozens of similar records containing evidence of Venetian clerics’ intimate relationships with female companions and children survive in the Venetian State Archive, along with records containing information about priests’ bonds with their mothers, fathers, siblings, and apprentices. Similar information, in slightly different form, can be found in notarial records from mainland cities in northern Italy. In the chapters that follow, I compare and contrast both textual and material aspects of these records. My aim is to explain how clergy used written records concerning their households to manage the regulation of their domestic lives by their superiors during the later Middle Ages. As part of this exploration, I trace the relationship between perceptions of clerics’ dependents and kin and those individuals’ lived experience. In addition, I investigate the material culture of clerical households and explore the significance of the work people did within those households. The records I draw upon for this study allow me to compare and contrast

Introduction 

n 

3

ecclesiastical ideals about clerics’ domestic arrangements with the lived experience of clerical household and family life. They reveal clerics seeking to build a sustainable daily life while negotiating the often unrealistic expectations of ecclesiastical “reformers.”4 Since clerics were aware of the significance of archiving their actions, the records they made sometimes recast their potentially illicit relationships as legitimate. They also sometimes obscure the status or presence of some members of clerics’ households.5 Similarly, clerics’ ecclesiastical superiors revealed their own perspectives on the clerical household in written records. Their definitions of the identities of clerical household members in those records corresponded to their growing concern about the need for a distinct clerical “order” (ordo) free from lay influence. A study of clerical households not only provides evidence of clerics’ reception of church reform in the later Middle Ages but also provides a unique perspective on the history of the family and society in the later Middle Ages. By examining the clerical household, we can see how Roman law categories that applied to certain individuals, especially the status of the lay male head of household (paterfamilias) and his authority (patria potestas), shaped social and cultural practice across late medieval society more broadly. Clerics “performed” these categories, although they were not legally entitled to claim them as their own.6 Through these performances, clerics interpreted and reshaped law and legal categories to suit their own needs. As they did so, they created a hybrid status for themselves between the lay and ecclesiastical spheres. Acting as domestic patriarchs, with dependents reliant on them for shelter, sustenance, and security, clerical heads of household are sometimes difficult to distinguish from their lay counterparts. But while I will trace the points of connection between clerical and lay households, I will also show how clerics’ households differed in important ways from those of laypeople in both their composition and their material culture. The clergy were not seeking to undermine or reject their clerical status and live as laymen. Instead, they fashioned their own definition of a clerical ordo, whose flexibility was underpinned by strong connections to the local community and its own moral structure.7 To date, most examinations of the lived experience of Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages have focused on the participation of



4 

N 

Introduction

laypeople in devotional and liturgical life.8 In this book, I shift historiographical emphasis from the laity in the church to the clergy in the world. Recovering the intimate worlds of clerics and their household and family members is one of the main goals of this project, connecting it with others produced by a small but significant group of scholars working on the gender roles and domestic arrangements of the Christian clergy in the Middle Ages and early modern periods.9 Previously, historians primarily examined normative sources for this subject, but at the same time many acknowledged that there was a disparity between authorities’ desires and clerical conduct.10 More recently, Michelle Armstrong Partida, Daniel Bornstein, Ruth Mazo Karras, and Janelle Werner have moved beyond a normative presentation in their investigations of the composition of clerical households in Spain, Italy, England, and Germany, with Armstrong Partida and Werner paying special attention to the women in those households.11 Derek Neal and Jennifer ­Thibodeaux have also enhanced our knowledge about clerical constructions of masculinity in the Middle Ages.12 Together, this community of scholars is recovering the lost world of clerical sociability in late medieval Europe. A second goal of this project is to consider the place of family and household within historiographies of the late medieval church. Since the 1960s, historians of the church in Italy during the Middle Ages and early modern periods have provided a detailed picture of church organization at the local level, explaining the status and activities of the clergy within the diocese and the parish, as well as the relationship between clerics and laypeople in church and outside in organizations such as confraternities.13 Until recently, these studies paid little attention to mundane but still significant aspects of clerics’ experience of life in the world. Rather than examine the households in which clerics lived and the bonds of family, friendship, and companionship that protected and challenged them, scholars regularly portrayed the clergy as isolated from their social and familial networks.14 This approach to the clergy is beginning to change. For instance, Megan McLaughlin has considered the links between gender, sexuality, and Christian church organization in the medieval period in a recent monograph, examining how ecclesiastical officials and theologians used the language of family and

Introduction 

n 

5

domestic life to describe the church during the reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.15 This book adds to that discourse by describing the lived experience of clerics within their households. A further goal of this work is to write clerics’ households into historiography on the family while at the same time adopting some recent approaches of that historiography. Just as ecclesiastical historians have generally ignored the clerical family as a context in which to study clerics’ experiences, historians of family life have similarly neglected the clergy in their discussions of kinship and household. Even today, family historiography remains, for most, a secular enterprise, one that has only infrequently acknowledged the possibility that clerics, like laypeople, shared shelter, property, and emotional bonds with companions and kin.16 This book situates the late medieval clergy within the historiography of the family. At the same time, I draw on some of the most stimulating aspects of that historiography, especially its embrace of “the politics of home,” that is, the interdependence of household and state apparatus and its rejection of conventional binaries of “public” and “private” life.17 According to this scholarship, the intimate domain of the household in the past was in constant conversation with the political and social worlds in which it was located.18 As Mary S. Hartman writes, “we need to ask ourselves why we persist in describing the moving forces of history in ways that either ignore the household arena altogether or relegate it to a sideshow of mirrors and marionettes.”19 Some scholars might argue that the domestic arrangements that I describe in these pages exemplify the failure of a dissolute medieval church to live up to its own ideal of a clear distinction between clergy and laity. This perspective stretches back at least to the work of the nineteenth-century historian Henry Charles Lea, who denigrated the later Middle Ages as a time of corruption and decline in the Christian church.20 Some argue that such decline led almost inevitably to the splitting of the church in the sixteenth century.21 Clerical corruption is also sometimes linked to the demographic and economic changes of the later fourteenth century. That is, some observers contend that the arrival of plague in Europe was responsible for a general decline in the morality of its clergy, evidenced by the complaints of ecclesiastical officials that those who stepped in to fill the places of deceased clerics did



6 

N 

Introduction

not feel the same commitment to their work as their predecessors. But more recently, several historians have argued convincingly that the purple prose of reformers directed against the supposed faults of the clergy is hardly the best measure of actual clerical morality. If we look beyond the complaints of reformers (and the assumptions of historians), we find scant evidence in support of the notion that clergy serving after the plague were any worse than those who had served before.22 The assumption that late medieval clerics were fundamentally corrupt may be the reason that few studies of the clergy have explored the nature of clerics’ engagement with ecclesiastical reforms, despite acknowledgement that reform remained a pressing issue for the church (not just the papacy) throughout the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, reformers sought to regulate most aspects of a cleric’s life, including his celebration of the liturgy, the clothes he wore, his income-producing activities, and the identities of the people in his household. Such multifaceted and rigid attempts at control, enacted with little means of enforcement, were almost inevitably bound to fail. And yet they did not fail completely. That is, clerics did not simply ignore their reformminded superiors. Instead, they sought strategies to both manage and mitigate the demands of church officials while meeting their own needs for companionship and support. These needs differed from one household to another; some clerics lived with sexual partners, others with their mothers, and almost all, at one time or another, shared a home with servants and clerical apprentices. Clerics’ ability to construct their own households was arguably not the cause of difficulties for the late medieval church but rather its salvation.23 By seeking arrangements that responded to their own particular needs and allowed them to fulfill their professional commitments to their churches and local communities, clerics allowed the church in northern Italy to maintain itself through the economic, social, political, and physical challenges of the later Middle Ages. As I reframe notions of late medieval clerical corruption and recover the lost world of the clerical family in the burgeoning archival records of the later fourteenth century, I trace the link between written records and lived experience during a period when a culture historically based on orality and memory was becoming more reliant on written

Introduction 

n 

7

communication.24 Considering this transition “denaturalizes” the archival record as a container for information about the past.25 That is, I reject the notion that records are simply descriptive sources to be mined for the data they contain and instead argue that the archival record needs to be understood not only as a container for stories but also as an artifact and an event with its own story. Throughout this book, I show how the creators and users of written records sometimes mobilized them to distort, manipulate, or elide aspects of the lived experiences of those named within them. But even when archival records were not intentionally crafted to highlight or obscure a particular fact, they still require careful analysis of their material and structural forms, since the way documents were written—including the erasures, doodles, and organizing and indexing marks on them—impacts the historical memory of the people and events identified in those documents.26 The growing scholarly movement committed to historicizing archives and those who produced them has been labeled the “archival turn.” It has only recently gained traction among scholars of the premodern period, but it promises to be a valuable tool for those who study the world before 1500.27 Many of us are archival scholars, in that our findings are based on records preserved in those institutions. Some now pay critical attention to the relationship between the content of our records and how, why, and by whom they were created, catalogued, and stored. Turning our attention to these aspects of our records—traditionally seen as the preserve of people with technical training such as archivists, paleographers, and diplomatists—yields valuable understandings about the negotiations that led to the creation of documents involving clerics’ companions. At the same time, this attention to archival production undermines the idea of the archival record as a fixed, transparent window onto the world of the past as well as the notion of the historian as a disinterested, dispassionate miner of data in the archive.28 Scholars who embrace the archival turn reject the notion that any document or archive can provide a direct view into the realities of the past. The archive is not the space “outside of all spaces” or a neutral container for objective facts but is instead a historical construct worthy of study itself—something to look at, rather than through.29 Scholars reading “along the grain” of the archive trace its relationship with its



8 

N 

Introduction

contents, reminding us that the process of archiving (gathering, sorting, and curating records) shapes the stories scholars can tell and destabilizes any attempt at building an empirically iron-clad narrative foundation.30 Instead of peeling away its useless outer layers until we reach the useful core, we can consider how the development of the archive, the identities of its creators, the physical characteristics of its records, and the social etymology of its language are all historically contingent, shaping what we can say about the past. In this vein, the literary scholar Justin Steinberg calls records “textual events,” arguing that they are specific both to certain times and to certain places.31 Recontextualizing archival content in this way reminds us of the challenges of retrieving the transient realities of the society that produced those records.32 The archival turn contributes to a history of clerics’ households in the later Middle Ages by raising questions about the relationship between the notarial archive and the world it depicts. It prompts us, for instance, to consider the negotiations between notary and client that shaped the final copy of the notarial record.33 Kathryn Burns sees that archive as a “chessboard”—that is, as a space in which individuals jostled for status—and not a site that simply reflected the fixed social position of the individuals named within it.34 Her argument forces us to question whether the archival status of some members of the clerics’ household, including their companions, their children, and their mothers, necessarily reflects those individuals’ actual social status. To understand the relationship between the archive and these historical subjects, I pay careful attention to the choices of language evident in every aspect of the records, including the notary’s selection of legal formulas and categories, methods of identifying individuals, and the presence and identities of witnesses within them. I also focus on notaries as historical actors both in their redaction of records for others and their appearances as testators, witnesses, and participants in other types of contracts. Finally, I am attuned to what the physical qualities of records tell us about the people named in them and how different versions of the same records changed over time, revealing or effacing identities and events in the process. In order to locate the clerical household in the world of the fourteenth century, we need to trace its development across the centuries of

Introduction 

n 

9

the Middle Ages and set it in the context of social change in the same period. The composition of the clerical household became a subject of greater concern to ecclesiastical authorities across Italy after the eleventh century, when the domestic and moral life of the clergy was identified as one of the pillars of the church reform movement. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, officials had paid relatively little attention to the people who inhabited the cleric’s household, but as they sought to strengthen the church by distancing the clergy from lay society, members of the cleric’s household became a focus of their reform efforts.35 In particular, increasingly hostile depictions of women living and working in priests’ houses can be found in the records of church councils and synods and other records produced by the highest levels of ecclesiastical administration. Dyan Elliott has described such attitudes as “a remarkable spate of pollution-laden rhetoric unequaled in the previous history of the Western Church and probably never matched in subsequent centuries.”36 If we look through the rhetoric of reform, we can begin to see the human side of the clerical household. From the earliest years of the Christian church, clerics lived with a retinue, or familia.37 The term does not appear in normative texts such as those of canon law, visitation records, or the proceedings of church councils, but it is found in late medieval notarial documents of practice. These suggest that the composition of the familia was dynamic and dependent on local context. At various moments in a cleric’s life, the familia could include female and male servants and apprentices, slaves (especially in Venice), and blood kin, including the cleric’s own children. In addition, the familia extended beyond the household, as clerics retained ties to their parents and siblings after they took orders.38 Through their familiae, then, secular clerics were closely connected to the lay communities they served, first because some of the members of the familia were laypeople, and second because clerical households resembled those of laypeople.39 While clerics were denied the status of patria potestas, the legal identity of the patriarch in Roman law, they performed that status in their relationships with their household dependents.40 Although a variety of intimate relationships could be found in the clerical household, for many readers the bond that connected clerics to



10 

N 

Introduction

their female companions is particularly compelling. It is impossible to know with certainty how many clerics lived with women, but the evidence we will examine in this book refutes the claims of historians who have concluded that there are no sources documenting the women’s lives explicitly, and so their history cannot be written.41 I agree, on the other hand, with Marie Kelleher, who has argued that historians have tended to treat the women “as a secondary element in the larger problem of clerical discipline.”42 The figure of the cleric’s female servant and purported sexual partner populates the margins of many ecclesiastical and notarial records in which clerics appear.43 Their obscurity in the archive might lead us to think that they were equally submissive and insignificant in their daily lives. However, exploring the history of these women reveals instead that they were often central, if vulnerable, figures in their households and communities and that their archival obscurity was the result of a centuries-long campaign to silence and eradicate them from the clerical household. Before the turn of the first millennium, women were often present in the clerical and religious household as servants, spiritual partners, and wives. For example, during the early Middle Ages across Christendom, unmarried women sometimes lived in the households of male ascetics. These women, known as agapetae, or subintroductae, prayed alongside their spiritual mentors.44 More often, however, the women living in many clerics’ households were their wives. While no cleric ever took a vow of celibacy, as monks and other religious practitioners did, the doctors of the early Christian church taught the need for clerical continence, or abstinence from sex.45 At the same time, these early Christian leaders were not necessarily opposed to clerics’ remaining married, as long as they lived chastely with their wives. For example, Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, posited that clergy could “have had sons [but] not continue to have sons.”46 His words reflected an ideal, but they did not necessarily shape behavior, even in his own diocese. Scholars have pointed out that clerics in Milan routinely married, even in the eleventh century, asserting that this was a common practice in their region.47 However, in a nuanced presentation of the early medieval clerical household, Helen Parish has recently argued that debate, rather than consensus, characterized the early Christian approach to clerical

Introduction 

n 

11

continence and sexual abstinence. Thus we must be cautious about arguing for the unquestioning acceptance of women in the households of clerics even before the Gregorian reform movements of the eleventh century.48 While Parish is right to seek more nuanced arguments about pre- and postreform acceptance of women in clerics’ households, on the whole before the early eleventh century there was more toleration of clerical marriage and the presence of women in clerics’ households than afterward. At the turn of the millennium, ecclesiastical authorities evinced a growing desire for the complete separation of clergy and laity as social and spiritual groups, a change that gradually led first to the demonizing of clerical sexual partners. Written records of the period contain an increasing use of sexual metaphors to discuss reform, and priests’ wives were depicted with hostility in the work of figures like Peter Damian.49 Then, in the early twelfth century, ecclesiastical authorities increased their opposition to clerical marriage through newly restrictive regulations communicated at two large meetings in Rome. At the first of these, held at the church of St. John Lateran in 1123, church officials forbade clerics in major orders—that is, priests, deacons, or subdeacons—from sharing their homes with their “concubines and wives.”50 At the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the church adopted an even harsher stance: clerics who had taken wives or concubines must set them aside and perform penance for the sin of marrying. No member of the faithful was to hear them say masses, and they would lose their benefices if they did not comply.51 From that point on, as James Brundage has written, clerical marriage became a “canonical crime.”52 Local church officials repeated these regulations for centuries afterward and extended them over time.53 The movement to outlaw clerical marriage was popular among some laypeople and many church officials, but it also met with a great deal of resistance among clergy and some theologians. Historians such as ­Jennifer Thibodeaux have chronicled resistance to the enforcement of priestly celibacy in northern Europe, both in theoretical texts and on the ground in ecclesiastical communities. Thibodeaux notes that the twelfth century in England and Normandy was characterized by a disjuncture between elite ecclesiastics’ statements about the illegality of



12 

N 

Introduction

clerical marriages and clerics’ refusal to put aside their wives, although she also notes that after 1150 there was less “vocal advocacy” for clerical marriage among elites.54 Thomas of Chobham, the twelfth-century English theologian who studied at the University of Paris, argued against clerical celibacy in his Summa confessorum, stating that marriage was not prohibited by God and therefore should not be denied to clerics. Scholars, however, disagree on the extent of Thomas’ willingness to defy church policy on this question.55 A less ambiguous document is an anonymous letter written in the eleventh century, the Epistola de continentia clericorum, supporting clerical marriage. Six copies of the letter survive from the fourteenth century, suggesting continuing interest in the question in that period, more than three hundred years after the Lateran councils banned clerical marriage in the West.56 Reforms enacted by ecclesiastical officials in and after the eleventh century not only targeted clerics’ sexual partners but also focused on other members of the clerical household. Once again, these were mainly women. In the first millennium of Christianity, ecclesiastical authorities had somewhat grudgingly allowed priests’ female kin to live in their households as more trustworthy replacements for other servants. Canon seven of the First Lateran Council, echoing a statement from the much earlier council of Nicea (325), stipulated that while a cleric in major orders could not live with his concubine, out of “necessity” he might share his home with women on whom no suspicion could fall. These were identified as his “mother, sister, or paternal or maternal aunt.”57 While this statement is far from a ringing endorsement of the women’s presence in these households, it did differentiate his female kin from the rest of the cleric’s network and gave them a special status relative to the clergy. Others have similarly argued that the priest’s mother was assigned a distinct and honorable role in the twelfth century. Brian Patrick McGuire posits that “Mother Church and the Mother of God favoured the devout mother who would care for the youth devoting his life to God.”58 But while the decrees of the Lateran councils focused on the problem of clerical concubinage, over time church officials became more sensitive to the potential danger of other female kin in the priest’s house. In the fourteenth century, ecclesiastical officials in Italy, concerned with

Introduction 

n 

13

policing clerical morality as closely as possible, developed an even more precise definition of the women in the priest’s household. At a synod held in Bergamo in 1311, church officials stated that “no regular or secular cleric of the city or diocese or province of Milan, obtaining an ecclesiastical benefice, now, or even in the future, or someone who will be constituted in sacred orders, may keep with him, in houses contiguous with or connected to a church, or in the same dwelling, any woman unless she is clearly not under suspicion because she is either related to him within four degrees of consanguinity, or joined by a bond of affinity, or is a conversa over the age of at least fifty.”59 While this statement may have been developed to bar potential concubines from living in any priest’s house, it had another effect. It defined age and spiritual kinship, along with blood ties, as the factors that defined a woman’s right to live with the priest. The emphasis on menopausal women and close kin as the only truly acceptable women in the later medieval clerical household supports Jennifer Thibodeaux’s hypothesis that clerical reformers were mainly interested in “breaking apart the cultural model of manliness that allowed . . . clerics to install their sons in their own benefices and canonries.”60 This book examines the connections between the church and lay society. To understand these connections, it is important to also understand the history of the lay family, not only the clerical familia. Just as the church’s notion of the ideal clerical family and household changed between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, so too did the rules governing the structure of lay households. Some influential historians have long argued that across western Europe the patrilineal descent group became a focus of household organization after the first millennium, meaning that the interests of eldest sons took precedence, shutting younger sons and all daughters out from inheritance.61 And at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the papacy sought increased control of marriage as an institution, entrenching the idea of marriage not only as a social bond joining the members of two households and their property but also a spiritual one between two souls.62 Historians now question the influence of both of those changes on actual practice. Clearly, as David Herlihy pointed out many years ago, the model of patrilineal descent, while influential, could not have served as the template for all



14 

N 

Introduction

household organization everywhere.63 Similarly, scholars now mostly agree that the laity never completely absorbed the idea of marriage as a spiritual bond between souls.64 Ruth Mazo Karras argues convincingly that many stable domestic unions in the Middle Ages were not formally marriages at all.65 Still, as legal theories about family organization and marriage gradually and generally moved in a new direction after the eleventh century, social organization slowly followed suit. As a result, in the later Middle Ages many accepted that in theory, property was to be concentrated in the hands of fewer members of the kin group and that in theory, the sexual and intimate relationships of the faithful were to be overseen by ecclesiastical officials. The gap between these theories and their adoption by laypeople parallels the experience of the clergy in the same period. That parallel suggests that the culture of the later Middle Ages was marked by a general and growing sense of disconnection between those who sought to regulate and control social institutions and those whose lives were most impacted by such attempts. My goal in writing this book was to identify clerical households in as many communities of northern Italy as possible. To that end, I have drawn on archival material from several cities, including Venice, Bergamo, Padua, Treviso, and Udine. I have also gathered evidence from published source collections from fourteenth-century Ivrea and Udine, with occasional comparisons and contrasts to fifteenth-century materials from Como and Ferrara. For the purposes of actually completing this study within a reasonable period of time, I have largely focused on the area on or above the Po plain, thus excluding the central Italian regions of Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marche, despite their rich archival resources. The evidence is wide-ranging, but also fragmentary, in keeping with the incomplete survival of late medieval sources. Rather than simply attempt to paint over the fragments to create a coherent portrait, I often highlight the singularity of the historical actors in this narrative. Still, this survey of many communities yields a general pattern of clerical household organization in the later fourteenth century, one that transcended particularities of social and ecclesiastical cultures and demonstrated important continuities among past realities. While this is not a book solely about Venice, the Venetian republic is a significant player in many of the stories I tell. Venice was a notable

Introduction 

n 

15

presence on the mainland several decades before its establishment of its terraferma dominions in the fifteenth century.66 The book emphasizes the connections between Venice and the Italian mainland at a time when other historical studies of Venice, especially those by Anglo-­ American scholars, continue to underline the disconnection between the city in the lagoon and the terraferma.67 Italian historians have always paid attention to the ties that bound Venice to the mainland, and drawing on their example, throughout the book I examine the complex web of relationships between Venetian clerics and their mainland counterparts.68 Venice ruled Treviso for much of the fourteenth century (although the diocese of Treviso fell under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Aquileia), while at the same time Padua moved in and out of the Venetian political orbit.69 Udine, the seat of the Patriarch of Aquileia from the thirteenth century, remained independent of Venice under the temporal rule of the Patriarch, although it had important cultural and social ties to Venice as well as conflict with it during that period.70 But Venice was of course not the only power in northern Italy during this time, which saw the consolidation of territories under lords such as the Visconti in Lombardy and the della Scala in the Veneto. Bergamo, for instance, was ruled by the Visconti through most of the fourteenth century, until it fell to the Venetians in 1428.71 While the Christian church sought to impose its reform programs on all its territories equally, theoretically linking those territories within a shared culture, in practice the institutional realities of northern Italian dioceses remained distinct from each other. Most importantly, although scholars generally agree that the gap between the religious cultures of Venice and the mainland diminished substantially in the years after the reform movements of the twelfth century, Venetian church organization preserved distinctive elements throughout the Middle Ages.72 For example, while on the mainland diocesan organization was marked by an increasing number of parishes staffed by one parish priest with perhaps a cleric in minor orders as his apprentice, Venetian churches were normally organized as pievi: collegiate churches in which several clerics in major orders shared spiritual and liturgical responsibilities while living in separate households.73 The heads of these churches, known as pievani, or “archpriests,” were, in Catherine Boyd’s description, “petty



16 

N 

Introduction

bishops” who had jurisdiction over other clerics and oversaw the moral and liturgical life of the area subject to the church. In Venice, archpriests were often notaries, as well.74 While these distinctions in ecclesiastical organization were important to the institutional history of the church, one of the main points of this book is that clerics from the lagoon and the terraferma also shared aspects of a common culture and lived experience. Throughout the book, I trace the points of contact as well as the differences in the lives of clerics in Venice and on the mainland, arguing for the existence of multiple clerical cultures on the Italian peninsula rather than a stark bifurcation between Venice and other regions. The book is divided into two parts. The first, comprising Chapters 1 and 2, highlights the role of record-keepers in shaping our view of clerics’ households. Those chapters survey the notarial cultures of northern Italy, comparing and contrasting notaries’ authority and status across several communities, including Venice. Chapter 2 focuses on three types of records: testaments, inventories, and episcopal visitation records. The second part of the book comprises three chapters studying the lived experience of individuals within the clerical familia. Chapter 3 begins the discussion with the patriarch of the clerical household. Here I describe the domestic and professional lives of priests and trace the trajectory of their lives from youth to old age. I also make a case for understanding their lives in tandem with those of their lay contemporaries. Chapter 4 focuses on priests’ female companions, including an investigation of the significance of their personal names, the terms and labels used to describe them, and testamentary bequests to them from their clerical companions. Here I also investigate the role of the cleric’s mother in his household and extended family and the possibility that the women who had previously been denigrated as clerics’ “concubines” or worse might be treated with honor if their sons were themselves ordained as priests. Part II ends with a final chapter discussing the material culture and work performed in the cleric’s household; in Chapter 5 I consider how sources such as inventories, which identify domestic objects and spaces, reveal and obscure how couples established and maintained their relationships, and I ask one final set of questions about the relationship between clerical and lay cultures.75

Introduction 

n 

17

Intimacy, not only sex, underpins the bonds I describe here. Most studies of clerical concubinage assume that the relationships they are investigating were sexual.76 The existence of children in these households serves as evidence that at least some of these couples had been sexually involved at one or more points in their lives. However, instead of over-determining sex as the real story behind these records, in this book, I examine relationships based on the familiar rapport created through shared mundane routines and physical proximity within households.77 Intimate relationships may of course have included a sexual element, but they went far beyond genital contact and certainly are easier to prove with the extant records. The concept of intimacy may be less titillating than sex, but it gives a clearer picture of the complicated domestic situations that these men and women made for themselves. Since I emphasize intimacy, I deliberately use the word companion (from the Latin terms used to refer to those who shared bread—pane— together at a common table) to refer to the women who shared houses, domestic routines, and / or sex with priests in the fourteenth century. The term appears nowhere in contemporary archival documents, but neither do terms for analytical categories such as gender or material culture. In this context, companion, like those other labels, is a historiographic term that reminds us of the interpretive interventions that historians make into our subjects. While companion implies a range of bonds, as well as physical and perhaps emotional proximity, it does not necessarily denote a relationship in which both partners are of equal status, or even one based on sex. It also preserves some of the ambiguous nature of these relationships as they are depicted in the written records I have analyzed here. Thus, throughout this book when I refer to priests’ female companions, I am referring to the women who may have been their sexual partners, perhaps bore them children, certainly cooked their meals, possibly washed their clothes, and undoubtedly shared many small but meaningful experiences of daily life with them.

part i

Nn MAKING RECORDS

T

his investigationof the history of the clerical family first considers the role of the archive and its records as players in the story.

Instead of simply reflecting historical lived experience back to us, the archive participates in that experience.1 For some, the idea that written

records involving the clerical household are complicit in shaping our understanding of our historical subjects might undermine the status of the archival record as a credible source. However, this idea allows us to expand our analysis of those records to encompass their making, bringing record-makers into the story and ultimately enriching it.

chapter one

Nn Notaries, Registers, and Archives

T

his booktraces representations of the clerical household in the notarial records and archives of fourteenth-century Italian cities.

Conversations and negotiations between notaries and their clerical clients shaped how information about those clients appears in the archive.1

In order to understand the clerical household, then, we need first to examine the culture of notaries and the records they made. Notarial culture took many forms across the Italian peninsula, but in every community the notariate, regardless of their legal and social status, exercised a similar function. That is, notaries were responsible for the interpretation of the law for the benefit of their clients while maintaining community standards. The written records created by both lay and clerical notaries in the Venetian lagoon and on the Italian mainland all reflected those interpretive efforts. The work of notaries, then, was united by its fundamentally hermeneutical aspect. Any work based on notarial records needs to begin with such an understanding of the role of the profession.

Notaries As paralegal professionals, notaries created documents that could be used as evidence before the courts during the Middle Ages and early

21



22 

N 

making records

modern periods.2 Notaries were so numerous and active in southern Europe that Daniel Lord Smail has argued that their relationships with the inhabitants of late medieval communities “rival[ed] the contact between the clergy and the Christian population.”3 From the twelfth century on, notaries across Italy and in other parts of Mediterranean Europe were also deemed “official truth-tellers,” since in most places they enjoyed publica fides, meaning that they were personally responsible for authenticating their documents.4 Those officially sanctioned records, known as instrumenta, required certain precisely recorded details: a list of witnesses’ names, specific information about the time and place a record was created, and the identification of the notary himself, using his special sign, or signum. These common features of the records emphasized the preeminence of the notary as guarantor of their credibility as well as his independence as an authority.5 Publica fides was first invested in the notary (by an authority such as the emperor, his agent, or a bishop) so that he could create the notarized act, or instrumentum. The concept also reflected and influenced expectations about his social status in the community.6 Across Italy, notaries took an active role in maintaining traditions and power structures within their communities. They could be found observing funeral ceremonies for their employers to ensure that mourners followed sumptuary rules about funeral displays, they dashed about during epidemics to ensure that the dying could make their wills, and they were important members of political organizations and religious associations such as confraternities.7 In Bergamo, numerous chapters of the statutes of the local College of Notaries, founded in 1264, emphasize the need for the notary to act as a trustworthy authority who could be relied on for his loyalty and discretion to the state. The statutes also underscore the need for notaries to work professionally and to submit themselves to those in political power. For instance, notaries were warned not to prepare instrumenta for those who had been exiled and not to become involved in transactions that contravened the honor of the commune (contra honorem comunis).8 They were further instructed not to make “pacts” to prepare records to favor one political faction over another.9 The statutes of the college also asked notaries to provide other forms of support to the government. Rather startlingly, they

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

23

were to be prepared to act as an armed force if civic leaders were threatened.10 The preceding discussion describes notarial roles on the Italian mainland. Scholars who write the history of the notariate frequently draw a distinction between mainland notaries and the several hundred notaries who worked in Venice during the fourteenth century. However, one important argument of this book is that the gap between mainland Italian and Venetian notaries has been overstated.11 Examining notaries in northern Italy reveals significant areas of overlap between Venetian and mainland notarial practices, even though the legal cultures of those places were distinct from each other. This overlap can be difficult to discern, since Venetian notaries differed from their mainland counterparts in two particularly visible ways. First, Venetian notaries were never granted publica fides; that is, they did not have independent authority to authenticate their documents. Those notaries’ lack of publica fides meant that throughout the Middle Ages, witness signatures continue to appear on Venetian notarial records to establish the authenticity of those records, just as they had everywhere in the early Middle Ages. A second distinction between mainland and Venetian notaries was that the majority of notaries in Venice were clerics in major orders who also served the city’s churches.12 Rules against clerical involvement in the notariate, common elsewhere from the twelfth century, were not enforced in Venice until the fifteenth century.13 One conventional explanation for the distinctive status of the Venetian notariate is the particular needs of the state it served. By relying on supposedly celibate cleric-notaries, historians argue, the Venetian republic avoided the development of corporatist or kin-based interests that might threaten the precarious harmony of the republic.14 Maria Pia Pedani Fabris contends instead that the choice of the cleric-notary in Venice rested on the desire for a bureaucracy independent of imperial authority.15 Others considering the appeal of notarial work to the clergy in Venice posit that such work allowed the mass of underemployed priests in the city to earn extra income.16 A related explanation of the peculiarity of the Venetian notariate focuses on the singular nature of the law in Venice.17 Across the Italian peninsula, notaries worked with legal formularies originating from the



24 

N 

making records

law school at Bologna, where Roman law had been revived in the eleventh century.18 By contrast, many historians have long argued that the Venetian legal system ignored Roman law and instead favored custom, Christian Scripture, and “natural justice,” as well as the personal moral views of its judges.19 Others, especially legal historians, have countered this idea with examples of the influence of Roman law on Venetian statutes and custom.20 Whether Venetian legal practice rejected Roman models completely, it is certainly the case, as Guido Ruggiero notes, that law in Venice was only a “general framework” that could be applied selectively to individual cases in the courts.21 Notaries in Venice thus worked within a fluid legal context, and only Venetian statutes and the officials of the Cancelleria Inferiore stipulated how certain aspects of notarial records, including the date, time, and place of redaction, were to be described.22 All these perspectives on the Venetian notariate assume that it was a unitary group whose professional culture was heavily regulated by civic authorities.23 Distinctions between Venetian and mainland notaries are also evident in the form of the records they made and the terminology used to refer to them. Notaries were responsible for turning an oral agreement into a written text, and how they did so varied from one community to the next.24 Usually, when a notary met with his client to record a transaction, he took quick notes of its basic details, such as the participants’ names, the date, and the outlines of the agreement, including the property transferred and promises made. Outside Venice, he would also carefully note the exact site where the agreement was made. The notary then developed these notes, called notulae on the mainland and prex in Venice, into longer versions of a record, which he entered into registers known as imbreviatura or protocolli or quaderni. He would normally draw up an “extracted” version of the record on parchment only if he were paid for that purpose by his clients. This final version of the completed record was known as an instrumentum on the mainland and a cartula in Venice.25 Some types of acts were specific to the place they were drawn up. For instance, agreements to manumit or free slaves were mainly seen in Venice. Others were more broadly used, including quittances for debt (quietanze), receipts (cartae securitatis), promissory notes (cartae manifestationis), the occasional peace act, guardianship

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

25

contracts, and, everywhere, overwhelming numbers of testaments (testamenti). What remains for the historian to discover varies from one place to another, with perhaps the greatest variety of records found in the Venetian notarial archives. While in most places notaries discarded the slips of paper containing those notes after they drew up the more complete forms of their records in their registers, in Venice many loose papers containing annotated and corrected drafts of testaments survive. In addition, Venetian testators could draw up their own wills on loose sheets (cedole), which would then be deposited with a notary and turned into legal records with the appropriate formulas. For this reason, in the registers of testaments in the Venetian archives we often find wills written in both Latin (by the notary) and the vernacular (originally by the testator and retained in this form when written into the register). Venetian notaries also commonly collected testaments in separate registers to be handed over to the authorities, while for their own work purposes, they drew up “calendars” of other transactions, heavily abbreviated records that crowd onto the parchment pages of bound registers. The absence of publica fides for the Venetian notariate, the preponderance of cleric-notaries in the city, the peculiar legal context in which they worked, and the distinctive form of many of their surviving records have led many scholars to view notaries in the lagoon and their peninsular peers as two solitudes. However, comparing the work cultures of Venetian and mainland notaries breaks down the barriers between the two groups and underscores their functional similarities. For instance, both in Venice and on the mainland, notaries had to carefully mind their professional reputations and earn the community’s trust for themselves and their records. On the mainland, publica fides could be removed from a notary’s records if he created an instrument for someone close to him (and thus stood to profit from it) or if he was suspected of having broken the law.26 Similarly, the Venetian government required that all of its notaries demonstrate “good habits,” a stipulation not that materially different from the professional expectations on mainland notaries.27 In both places, notaries had to act with caution to maintain their status and the legal value of their records. Connections between the culture of Venetian and mainland notaries are further evident when we examine ecclesiastical toleration for



26 

N 

making records

cleric-notaries in mainland Italy throughout the Middle Ages. At no time did church officials completely prohibit clerics from undertaking notarial training or redacting notarial documents. For example, in 1211, Innocent III told the bishop of Ascoli Piceno to excommunicate all clerics acting as notaries in that diocese. But Innocent’s chief aim, ­Martina Cameli argues, was not to stop clerics from working as notaries but rather to prevent them from earning money from their activities.28 Similarly, the 1264 statutes of the notarial college in Bergamo sought to limit, but not prohibit, clerics from redacting public acts. While the statutes stated that clerics were not to create, redact, or register records, they also allowed those who had become clerics after having worked as notaries to “extract” fair copies of instrumenta from their registers.29 Furthermore, clerics who swore the usual oath to the college, promising to redact their instruments “in good faith and without fraud,” could also work as notaries.30 The leaders of the college were to search the city and outlying areas to force any cleric exercising the notarial office to either resign or swear the oath.31 In other fourteenth-century mainland cities, bishops sometimes allowed clerics to work as notaries if they obtained a license from the episcopacy. In 1360, the bishop of Padua instituted a ten-lire “penalty” for clerical notaries working without such a license.32 The relative flexibility of these statements led to a significant number of clerics working as notaries on the Italian mainland in cities including Bergamo, Treviso, and Udine, and in communities in the regions of Piemonte and the Marche.33 Notaries across the peninsula were also united in their expectations that their dependents would maintain and develop their professional connections. Just as the children of other late medieval professionals tended to marry within their fathers’ circles, notaries’ children might marry into the families of their colleagues. For instance, the Bergamasque notary Salviolus de Cazzulonibus married Anexia, daughter of his contemporary Martinus de Ambivere. It is striking that both Salviolus and Martinus worked as episcopal scribes during their careers, so this marriage further underscored the tendency of notaries to work and live within a narrowly defined group.34 Notaries’ sons often followed in their fathers’ footsteps.35 Those who did not become notaries often became clerics, such as the two sons of the Trevisan notary Bonacursius de

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

27

Clarello, who held benefices in churches in Treviso in the 1350s.36 In Venice, such clear lines of succession within notarial households were less visible, partly because sons could not inherit their fathers’ notarial registers, as they did on the mainland. Since Venetian notaries’ sons would not be able to draw income from transactions earlier redacted by their fathers, fathers may have had less incentive to train their sons as notaries. That said, a will redacted for the widow of a lay notary in Venice does suggest that treatises on the notarial arts, if not actual notarial registers, might be passed from one generation to another in a Venetian notary’s family. In her 1364 will, Lucia, widow of the Venetian notary Ser Bonincontrus of the parish of San Moisè, left books given to her by her husband to her son Thomas, who was the only one of her children not to have taken orders or entered a monastery.37 The books were likely professional manuals of the notarial arts, and therefore through her bequest Lucia may have been enacting her late husband’s will in assisting her son to take up the notarial profession.38 Finally, and most importantly, all notaries, in Venice and on the mainland, made significant contributions to the interpretation of the law in their communities.39 Notaries made decisions about how to present the particular circumstances of their clients while adhering to local customs, statutes, and the constraints of the ius comune. Notaries’ adjudication of individual cases in their records had significant legal value for those individuals since the notary had to grapple with sometimes contradictory laws about inheritance, legitimacy, and other questions at crucial moments in an individual’s life. Notarial attempts to reconcile these laws to the benefit of their clients were essential to the functioning of all households and families, lay and clerical. The role of the notary in helping his clients to shape transactions to respond to the law and benefit their own circumstances is an aspect of notarial work that requires further attention. Examining the relationship between notaries, the church, and the law thus demonstrates that the notariate in late medieval Italy was not simply divided along geographic lines. Another aspect of the profession that united rather than divided its members was the fact that while the notariate across the peninsula was socially diverse, the clergy and laymen who worked as notaries with ecclesiastical institutions and for



28 

N 

making records

clerics themselves were largely of middling to high status in their communities.40 Shona Kelly Wray’s work on notaries in fourteenth-century Bologna alerts us to the social distinctions among lay notaries in that late medieval city. She in fact argues that the notariate in Bologna was “a socially flexible profession.”41 But the evidence we will examine here suggests that within the ranks of the notariate, clerical notaries and those who served the clergy were a rarified group. In Venice, most cleric-­ notaries were high-status pievani, whose wealth and education set them apart from their peers. For instance, Cosimas de Sclavis was both a pievano of the church of Sant’Eufemia on the Giudecca and a canon of the cathedral of San Pietro di Castello. And the notary Victor Ferro began his career as a priest of the church of San Barnaba and then became pievano of San Basilio (San Basegio), then later a canon of the cathedral at Aquileia.42 Descriptions of the close relationship between a mainland notary and his local ecclesiastical institutions and clergy can be found in the testimony of the venerable Bergamasque notary (and layman) ­Bergaminus de Zandobbio, who was called as a witness in 1363 in a case against the abbot of the monastery of Valalta, accused of having ­mismanaged the monastery over a period of years. In his testimony, Bergaminus talked about the work he had done with the abbot and the bishop of Bergamo over a 25-year period. He described how he had gone “back and forth” from the house of the bishop and into the episcopal prison many times over those years, meeting with the bishop and his officials on many occasions to redact records for the local church.43 His familiarity with the local church and its personnel illuminates his solid reputation and his easy access to structures of power and authority within the community. The relatively high status of notaries working for the church and its clergy can perhaps be explained by the fact that such men were selected for that purpose from among a larger group of their peers. While most Italian dioceses had no episcopal chancery, individual notaries on the mainland could be named as “scribes” of their local ecclesiastical institutions and specialized in redacting records for those bodies and their members. The Bergamasque layman Francescus Zenaglia, notary by imperial authority, worked as a scribe (scriba) for the episcopal curia in Bergamo during the middle decades of the fourteenth century, until his

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

29

death in 1374.44 He was followed in that role by his colleague Salviolus de Cazzulonibus, another layman who enjoyed decades-long relationships with the notaries of Bergamo and the canons of its cathedral and basilica.45 Similarly, in Treviso the notary Iohannes de la Costa described himself as a notarius publicus, working for the episcopal curia and keeping separate registers for ecclesiastical matters, and the notary ­Bartolomeus da San Zenone similarly worked as a scriba for the bishop between 1366 and 1380 and also created registers marked ecclesiastica, in which he recorded the transactions concerning the local church.46 The notaries who worked for ecclesiastical institutions in this capacity also worked on behalf of individual clerics, creating their testaments and records of other types of property exchange. Their understanding of the workings of ecclesiastical institutions likely made them particularly useful to clerics seeking to ensure protection and security for their dependents and intimates.

Notarial Registers The functional similarities of the notariate in Italy largely transcended differences in notarial culture from one community to another. Their common functions also created connections between lay and clerical notaries, although these connections are sometimes hidden by differences in textual aspects of lay and ecclesiastical notarial registers, including pictures, marginalia, and indexing marks.47 For instance, lay notaries, and not their clerical counterparts, often drew pictures on the covers of their registers. These might seem to be the doodles of idle scribes, but they contain many meanings, both about registers’ contents and the professional identities of the men who made them.48 In some cases, drawings on a register might give an indication of its contents. For instance, the parchment cover of Bergamasque notary Gasparinus de Muzo’s 1361 register, with its acts concerning the workings of the confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore, contains a striking drawing of an object that may be a wine barrel, fitting for a notary working for an association that distributed large quantities of wine to its clients.49 In other cases, the pictures underscore the notary’s own status as a social critic. The registers of the lay notary and episcopal scribe Salviolus de



30 

N 

making records

Cazzulonibus include an image depicting four men sitting on benches around a gaming table, playing backgammon.50 The two players in the foreground are clearly meant to be seen in contrast to each other. The man on the right appears to be of noble status. He sits with his legs crossed, wearing a dagger, breeches, and a shirt with voluminous sleeves and a high collar. His short hairstyle (he is not wearing a hat) and long, pointed shoes, or poulaines, also suggest that he is of high status.51 The man on the left of the image is most likely a cleric. He is dressed in a long buttoned robe, most likely a cassock. He wears a headdress that resembles a priest’s tricornered berretta, and his shoes, while slightly pointed, have a rounder toe than his opponent’s. He is unshaven, in stark contrast to his opponent. The nobleman appears to be winning the game, since he has amassed more game pieces than the priest. Two details indicate that this image is a critique and not simply a notary doodling a picture of his friends at the tavern. The first is that one of the onlookers is identified as “Iohannes Boccaccio,” well known even in the fourteenth century for his biting social satire. The other significant detail is the title above the picture, which quotes a line from the Epistles of Horace, in which the narrator seeks to end a “game” (ludus) by calling for a truce with his opponent, stating “for play begets anxiety-­ producing competition and anger” (ludus enim genuit trepidum certamen et iram).52 The image of men of two distinct orders at serious play, the use of Boccaccio’s name, and the line from Horace indicate not only that the notary was reasonably well educated, but also that he was critiquing the social mores of both the church and secular society. Clerics who left their own world to play with the laity, in the view of this observer, risked creating not only unpleasant competition but bad blood, and even war between the social orders.53 Illustrations in some lay notaries’ registers also emphasize their desire for recognition as a professional body. Sketches of birds are particularly common in notarial records, and Carolyn Dean has suggested that these might be an intentional reference to notaries, who used quills for writing.54 Certainly, birds are a common presence in some registers, sometimes in very stylized ways, such as the initial Q in the registers of the Trevisan Antonius Vendremini de Nepote, which has a feathery tail and a topknot that give it a birdlike aspect.55 In other examples, notaries

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

31

drew more realistic birds, such as in the register prepared by the notary Georgius, son of the late Zeno, who worked for the bishop of Treviso in the final years of the fourteenth century. On one of its pages, a bird with a long neck sits on top of a shield with a figure of a lion.56 The registers of the fourteenth-century Trevisan notary Iohannes de Crespano also contain an image of a bird, in his case with a human face and the talons of an eagle.57 In both cases, the birds are used to make statements about autonomy and power. If notaries indeed compared themselves to birds, such statements would have had political value for the notariate. The marginalia commonly found in lay notarial records also distinguish them from those prepared by clerics. For example, when a lay notary had extracted a record from his registers, he usually wrote the letter “f” (probably meaning “the instrument has been made / completed”—factum est instrumentum) in its left-hand margin.58 Less frequently, notaries drew attention-getting devices such as manicules (pointing hands or fingers) in the margins of a register to later allow them to return to a particular detail in the text.59 In other instances, notaries organized their registers for future use by making marginal notations of the names of clients and sometimes the type of record redacted. These notations were for the notary’s personal use. Since they were not a formal part of the document, they would not be seen or used by ecclesiastical officials or indeed the notary’s clients, and as such they give a view onto the process of the notary’s use of that register for his own purposes. So, for instance, when the notary Martinus de Ambivere made a note in the margin of his register to remind himself of the identities of a priest and his female companion, he recorded the names “Martinus et Bonasia,” a form that he normally used when referring to married people.60 While Bonasia could not be identified as the companion of the priest in the notarial record, the notary’s notation also suggests that she was otherwise acknowledged in that role in the community. Clerical notaries, in both Venice and on the mainland, drew less attention to themselves than their lay counterparts did in their registers. For instance, unlike lay notaries, clerical notaries rarely identified themselves in the texts of their registers. In both of the registers he created for the chapter of the canons of Sant’ Alessandro in Bergamo,



32 

N 

making records

the Bergamasque priest-notary Gasparinus Dumottis included few identifying details about his own status or activities. Nor did he or other clerical notaries in any part of the peninsula normally adopt the practice of decorating their pages with doodles or poems. Robert Brentano once remarked that such inclusions made the notarial register more personal, and the nearly complete absence of decoration and mottos from Gasparinus’ registers performs the opposite function: attesting to their ownership by an ecclesiastical institution.61 The form of Gasparinus’ registers indeed suggests that the cathedral chapter he worked for ­perceived Gasparinus as a convenient servant, not as an independent public official. While the form of registers prepared by clerical and lay notaries distinguishes the products prepared by the two groups, an investigation of clerical and lay notarial practices indicates that there were fundamental similarities in the two groups’ work cultures.62 In particular, while the form of clerical notaries’ registers often appears to have been determined by their institutional superiors, the content of those registers indicates that cleric-notaries developed their own strategies for writing and organizing their records to lessen the burden of their work. For instance, contrasting the calendars and testamentary registers made by Venetian cleric-notaries shows how those men managed the onerous time commitment of creating new records and recopying others by always prioritizing some tasks over others. Venetian notaries’ calendar registers, which briefly note the main details of a range of transactions, were almost always organized in perfect chronological order, according to the years, months, and days of their creation. For example, the calendar of records created by Domenicus Peresemolo contains more than 420 records dating from between 1361 and 1368. Not one of those records is out of chronological order.63 This careful attention to chronology made the registers easy to search, simplifying the work for a notary who needed later to find the record of a transaction and engross it on a separate parchment. Their structure thus suggests that these registers were useful to notaries and their clients. Since notaries would earn income from clients by extracting their records from these calendars, it made sense for them to put as much time as possible into the creation of well-ordered registers.

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

33

The predictable and usable organization of the calendar registers and the care that was taken with putting them in order directly contrasts to the idiosyncratic organization of Venetian notaries’ testamentary registers, which are not always organized according to chronological time.64 But the apparent absence of organization in these records actually reflects another intentional strategy that allowed notaries to work as effectively as possible. That is, they left testaments to be recopied until a later date, and when they did, they copied them into quires organized by year but not month. For example, a series of testamentary registers created by Iohannes Campion, a prolific notary from the parish church of San Canciano (San Canzian) who worked between the early 1360s and at least 1400, exemplifies the differences in the notary’s approach to those two types of records.65 The parchment gatherings, or quires, on which Iohannes recorded testaments normally proceeded in order from one year to the next, although there are a few notable exceptions, as when a testament originally created several years before was entered between two made in a different year.66 The generally regular order within the testamentary registers followed years but not months. That is, Iohannes often entered records created in different months on the same pages. Other Venetian notaries’ testamentary registers were organized in a similar way, keeping years together in the same quire but paying little attention to the months when records were originally created.67 The gatherings of parchments were also not bound in chronological order when they came to be archived by the Cancelleria (although it’s not clear whether Iohannes himself or chancery officials were responsible for this). One register from these buste makes a nearly twenty-year leap from a quire of records dated 1380 to another from the late 1390s.68 The presence of records from different months within the same parchment gatherings suggests strongly that notaries in Venice allowed testaments to accumulate before copying them and that once they had several records to copy, they disregarded any need for strict chronological order. Recopying testaments in this way likely reflected notaries’ responses to the burdens of their work; we should keep in mind that these men were often clerics and had duties in their churches. The contents of Iohannes’ calendar registers show that he could be called on to



34 

N 

making records

draw up multiple records on the same day, and as a result he would likely have had little time for other aspects of his work. In their delays in fulfilling these tasks, and their own decisions about how to organize the testaments in the parchment volumes, Venetian notaries claimed a measure of control over their own work culture.69 Another way in which Venetian cleric-notaries managed the burden of their work was to determine their own approach to working with the witnesses who authenticated their registered transactions. While witness signatures were a required element in Venetian notarial records, the moment when witnesses appeared in the records was a decision left up to the notary. Some asked witnesses to join them when they actually wrote records into their protocols, while others simply made note of witness identities but did not meet with them to have them sign their names at the time of copying the testaments. The registers of Iohannes Campion and Simone de Robertis, notary and pievano of Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola) in the 1370s and 1380s, exemplify these individual approaches. Iohannes normally had witnesses add their signatures to the parchment protocols in which he copied testaments, as he was required to do. The forms of witness signatures in his protocols establish that these were the individuals’ own, provided either during or after the creation of the testament.70 Simone, on the other hand, was inconsistent in his use of witnesses. Of the more than eighty wills in his extant register, about one-half were signed by witnesses, twenty-­ four were completely unsigned, and eleven were signed only by one witness.71

Archiving Notarial Registers While notaries’ functions across the Italian peninsula were generally similar, the fourteenth-century practice of archiving notarial records in Venice and the mainland appears to have been distinctive. However, in this case, too, a closer investigation reveals that apparent distinctions among those archiving techniques were less rigid than they first seem. The storage of notarial acts in the Venetian lagoon and on the terraferma was theoretically distinguished by the requirement for Venetian notaries to deposit their acts with a centralized archive at the end of

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

35

their lives while their mainland counterparts passed their registers on to their heirs in their testaments. In theory, then, Venice was home to a precociously organized notarial archive, while mainland notarial acts were dispersed in the community. These requirements, important as they are, were not as clear-cut as they initially seem. It is certainly the case that the Venetian government created centralized archives of notarial records long before they appeared on the mainland.72 From 1307, the Cancelleria Inferiore required notaries to maintain two types of registers: first, testaments, which were to be recorded in registers made from relatively fragile linen paper from Amalfi (quarternis de Bombiceno) and, second, records of all acts they had redacted in volumes made of more durable sheepskin parchment (quaternis de Bergomenis). The decision to record those registers on parchment underscored the significance of those acts to the chancery. Less than ten years after this initial decision, the Great Council began to require the deposit of all deceased notaries’ papers in the Cancelleria Inferiore.73 Notaries’ clients could then apply to the chancery to request copies of records from its notaries, and they paid the chancery, rather than the notary’s heir, for a copy.74 Even in the most chaotic circumstances, such as during outbreaks of epidemic disease, the curation and storage of the notarial archive in the Cancelleria Inferiore remained a priority for Venetian authorities. However, as we have already seen, Venetian notaries developed their own approach to recopying their acts into registers, sometimes waiting months or even years before they completed those copies. This practice of accumulating records before rendering their final versions had significant consequences during the plague of 1348, when notaries who died suddenly left many testaments not copied into their registers, and the Venetian Great Council ordered that other notaries step in to complete the work.75 The notion that only Venetian authorities took an interest in the control of notarial registers is also inaccurate since a number of fourteenth-­century governments on the Italian mainland also began to direct the passage of notarial registers to notaries’ heirs. In some cases these actions were the result of Venetian influence on mainland governments. For instance, in Venetian-governed Treviso, notarial registers passed through the hands of the Venetian governor of the city before



36 

N 

making records

moving on to their next steward, just as they did in Venice. In 1368, the Trevisan notary Nicolaus de Crespano received the registers of Petrus de Zello, which spanned the years 1349 to 1353, from the Venetian podestà, dominus Dardus Polani, after the podestà had received them from the notary Covolatus de Semencio, in November 1368. A note in an unknown hand (perhaps Nicolaus’) described this transfer in the register itself, allowing us to trace its history as an artifact.76 Areas outside the Venetian sphere of influence also exhibited these tendencies. For instance, the patriarch of Aquileia also handed registers on to the next notary when an individual died, even controlling the passage of registers down from father to son.77 Even in places where Venice had no influence at all, archiving was of growing concern to civic authorities in the later Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century, the Visconti governors of cities throughout Lombardy required notaries to bring to them, within one month of a death, any testament containing bequests to pious causes of any kind.78 Finally, beginning in the fifteenth century, other civic governments on the Italian mainland also began to accumulate notarial registers, creating their own archives. For example, in Padua, a civic chancery was created in 1476, when a statute required heirs to deposit the registers of deceased notaries.79 The idea that the Venetian notariate was the only body that had no control over the passage of its work materials from one generation to another is thus not entirely accurate. Similarly, the notion that notaries on the Italian mainland were autonomous professionals who could bequeath their registers to their chosen heirs, while largely true, also starts to break down when we examine it closely. Certainly many mainland notaries did hand their registers on to the next generation—often their sons—in their testaments. The historian Andreas Meyer notes that in keeping the registers of his predecessors in this way, the mainland notary acted as “an archivist on behalf of his clients.”80 Meyer describes how notaries and their organizing bodies developed archives of numerous registers in private houses during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But this practice of notaries handing on their registers to other notaries, rather than to a central institution, posed several problems that contemporaries tried to address. Potential clients might not know where the registers were located, and the destruction of

Notaries, Registers, and Archives 

n 

37

materials that had ceased to provide income for heirs also led to more fragmentary survivals of medieval notarial materials. The notaries of Bergamo attempted to solve this problem in the 1264 statutes of their college, which required two specially selected notaries to identify the locations where registers of defunct notaries were kept and to keep a list of these locations, to be handed over to the officials of the college.81 Such concern for the location of notarial acts in Bergamo continued in the fourteenth century. Francesca Magnoni has also documented the efforts of Lanfranco, a mid-fourteenth-century bishop of Bergamo, to engage clerics in the city to recover the acts of notaries that included instrumenta regarding episcopal property. These were eventually united in one register, which survives today.82 The dispersal of notarial materials remains an issue in Italian archives today. Since notaries across northern Italy usually worked for many clients, both clergy and laypeople, their work products were claimed by both church and lay archives, and the registers and parchment instrumenta of the same notaries can be found in both Archivi di Stato and ecclesiastical archives on the terraferma.83 One example from Bergamo illustrates this reality: the notary Francescus de Zenaglia worked for both lay and ecclesiastical clients in Bergamo in the second half of the fourteenth century. A large number of his registers are deposited in the capitular archive of the city. These mainly, but not entirely, contain acts related to the city’s clergy and ecclesiastical institutions. A further two registers, containing similar materials as the others, are held in the city’s Archivio di Stato.84 Researchers hoping to work on “ecclesiastical” or “lay” topics need to keep this apparent messiness in mind when looking for archival materials. While modern archives still reflect some of the organizational attitudes to notarial materials that prevailed in the premodern period, for practical reasons, most modern archives usually obscure differences in the ways that notarial materials arrived at their current locations.85 In the archives of the peninsula today, we find records organized at least theoretically according to an archival culture that still privileges “historical method” (metodo storico) by insisting on preserving the “original order” (ordine originario) of the sources from their moment of creation.86 Following this culture, notarial materials in both civic and



38 

N 

making records

diocesan archives are almost always divided into folders or boxes (known usually as buste), organized according to the notary’s name and dates, keeping one notary’s materials in the same place, reflecting the way the notary himself would have worked. The volume of materials available in these archival fondi is immense. For example, in the Venetian Archivio di Stato, more than 300 buste of priest-notaries active in the fourteenth century survive. Each busta normally contains hundreds of parchment folios and individual paper cedule.87 In Bergamo, a much smaller center during the Middle Ages, the number is closer to 100, but the volumes in each busta are often immense.88 In Treviso, there are so many extant medieval notaries’ folders (more than 250) that the archivists have organized the holdings in a useful spreadsheet that they make available on the archive’s website.89 Finding aids for these fondi provide very little information to the curious researcher, privileging quantity over quality and inviting researchers to treat the materials in the archive as so much data to be mined.90 And yet a more qualitative and critical examination of notarial registers can lead us to important questions about the role of the notary in determining and shaping the information we extract from those records.

Conclusion In summary, while scholars have most often focused on the distinctions between Venetian and mainland notaries and their record, functional similarities among notaries working across the Italian peninsula are more significant than any binary distinctions based on geography or status. Notaries across the Italian mainland and in the Venetian lagoon were expected to meet standards set for them by others. More important, everywhere notaries shaped those standards to suit their own needs, determining their own work culture and interpreting the law to best suit their clients. As we draw details from these records, we must remain alert to the influence of the men who made them, drawing attention whenever possible to the roles notaries played in selecting and shaping the information their records contain.

chapter two

Nn Records as Artifacts and Historical Events

H

aving establishedthat an understanding of the clerical household begins with the notaries who created its records and that the

notaries of northern Italy were united by the similar functions they exercised in their communities, here we examine three types of records created by notaries in Venice and on the mainland to better understand their role in shaping our analysis. Testaments, inventories, and episcopal visitation records name otherwise obscure individuals, items, and places in the medieval past. We can use these records to recover the history of these lost subjects, but to do so we need to understand how to read them critically as both artifacts and events. Here I consider the legal and cultural conventions that governed their creation, their structure, and their material qualities, and I compare and contrast their form and uses in different communities.

Testaments Throughout Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean during the later Middle Ages, the desire to make a will was one of the most common reasons for citizens to contact a notary.1 By the early fourteenth

39



40 

N 

making records

century, laypeople of almost all ranks in northern Italy made wills, although elites continued to be better represented among testators than their poorer co-citizens.2 It is important to understand that wills were the product of more than the desires and inner feelings of the individual testator or testatrix. They were also expressions of the needs of the household, and they were legal records shaped by legal conventions and custom. And as Robert Brentano once wrote, the influences on a testator as he made his will are “very much, things historians want to know.”3 As historians approach wills as sources, texts, artifacts, and historical events, we need to draw the curtain back on their creation to listen to the conversations among the testators, record-makers, and household members that made them. Laypeople could make wills as long as they were of the age of majority, mentally healthy, legally independent, and able to articulate their instructions to the redacting notary (meaning they could not be deaf or unable to speak).4 Clerics’ ability to testate was subject to even further restrictions, set by both notarial law and ecclesiastical authorities. ­Gratian had established clerics’ right to make wills in the twelfth century when he compared the “testating rights” (ius testandi) of clergy and those in religious orders in his compilation of legal texts known as the Decretum. He determined that the religious—that is, anyone who had entered a monastery—had given up the freedom to make a will since their personal possessions had become the property of the religious institution. In contrast, however, secular clerics could make wills bestowing their patrimonial property (property that had not come to them through their benefice) on their chosen heirs.5 Gratian also stated that blood relatives had a right to inherit a secular cleric’s patrimonial property after his death, even if he died intestate.6 This law of succession was confirmed in Canon 16 of the Second Lateran Council (1139).7 Notarial law reaffirmed Gratian’s statements about restrictions on monks’ ability to make wills and the relative independence of the secular clergy in this regard. Rolandino de Passageriis stated in his ­ thirteenth-­century treatise (summa) on the notarial arts that neither a monk (monachus) nor any person in regular orders (regularis) could testate (testari non potest). On the other hand, Rolandino agreed with Gratian that a secular cleric could make a will, so long as he did not alienate

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

41

any property belonging to the church. In the event that the ownership of property held by a secular cleric was unclear, Rolandino stated that it should be assumed to belong to the church.8 This statement echoed long-standing limitations by the church on secular clerics’ rights to testate. Canon 15 of the Third Lateran Council (1179) articulated the church’s concern about ecclesiastical goods being transferred to those outside the church on the death of a cleric.9 Legal and ecclesiastical authorities concurred that clerics could make testaments only under strict conditions. Local church authorities’ concern about the possibility that clerics might misdirect ecclesiastical property to their family members led some to impose further restrictions on clerical testation in the fourteenth century. Several Italian prelates required all clerics in their territories to obtain licenses to make wills. This was likely because bishops wished to oversee the content of bequests. In the fourteenth century, the patriarch of Aquileia and his suffragan bishop of Treviso both followed this practice; a few records of licenses granted by them can be found in the notarial registers of those working for Aquileian and Trevisan ecclesiastical communities in the fourteenth century.10 The understanding of these officials was that will making was a privilege, not a right, especially when it involved the individual cleric’s ability to direct property to specific heirs. Evidence for the strict conditions under which clerics made wills can be found in the wills drawn up by the Venetian notary Petrus Corozatis, in which he assured ecclesiastical officials that the bequests named in the testaments comprised only the clerics’ personal possessions and not ecclesiastical property.11 The inclusion of this assurance suggests that the bishop of Castello dissuaded clerics from making wills out of fear that they would alienate ecclesiastical property. Low rates of clerical testation across the Italian peninsula in the later Middle Ages were probably the result of these written restrictions coupled with unwritten pressure from church authorities.12 Venice is the one relatively rich site for clerical testaments from the fourteenth century, yet even here its holdings are meager compared to the huge volume of testamentary records produced by and for the laity.13 In Venice, a survey of a fraction of the notarial registers covering 1348 to 1400 held in two fondi in the State Archive, Cancelleria Inferiore, Notai, and



42 

N 

making records

Notai, Testamenti, reveals slightly more than one hundred clerics’ testaments.14 Perhaps because of the restrictions imposed by local bishops, mainland archives preserve even fewer examples of clerics’ wills. In Bergamo, a sample of several hundred wills of laypeople from across the fourteenth century includes only about twenty clerics’ testaments. In Treviso and Udine, where clerics were required to have licenses to make their wills, a similar sample of lay testaments contains an even smaller grouping of clerics’ wills. The apparent capitulation of the clergy to ecclesiastical authority over this issue contrasts strikingly with their general resistance to follow the church’s lead in the organization of their households. It is likely that many clerics found ways to work around ecclesiastical constraints on will making by distributing their goods and property to heirs during their lives, making do without a testament. While we cannot be sure that the clerics’ testaments that survive are exemplars of all clerical attitudes or household organization, the patterns of domestic life evident within them recur frequently enough to allow us to draw some useful conclusions. Just as the rate of will making among clerics varied from one place to another, so too did the structure and the content of wills themselves. Across the Italian peninsula, notaries were bound by certain rules in their creation of their records, but they also commonly interpreted law for their clients. As they drew up wills for their clients, notaries could also draw on some discretionary authority.15 Testaments were required to include certain fundamental details: the testator’s name, given as precisely as possible, his state of mind and whether he was physically ill, the date when the record was created, the place where it was made, the names of witnesses to the instructions given in the will and the name of the notary redacting it, and the delineation of testamentary instructions. However, the order in which those details were given could vary, and in some cases there were significant differences in the rules governing their content. Perhaps not surprisingly, these differences are most evident if we compare wills on the mainland with those created in Venice. On the mainland, testaments followed closely the tenets set down by manuals of the notarial arts written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Throughout, a will refers to the testator in the third person,

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

43

so the voice we hear is that of the notary. The protocol of these mainland wills contains an invocation of God, along with the name and status of the testator. Most then closely adhere to instructions set out in notarial manuals and Roman law, naming the testator’s universal heir and then delineating bequests for family, kin, friends, and religious groups and individuals.16 The universal heir was the individual whom the testator designated to receive the remainder of the estate after the testator’s wishes and obligations were carried out. The heir was also theoretically responsible both for fulfilling all of the testator’s obligations (such as paying his debts) and enacting his wishes. So, essentially, the heir was the “executor” of the testator’s desires, although unlike the modern testamentary executor, an heir was actually responsible for paying out all debts even if those exceeded the amount left in the estate.17 The wills conclude with an eschatocol, in which the notary names the date and place of redaction, followed by the names of seven or more witnesses, as well as his own name and, at times, the names of executors, usually called commissari or fideicommissari. In his treatise, Rolandino de Passageriis noted that these individuals could also be called executori, or “executors,” and this is the term most often used to describe them in scholarship, with the corresponding assumption that the executors were those who acted on behalf of the testator in a disinterested way, ensuring that the promises made in the will were kept.18 In early Roman law, the individual named as a fideicommissary could initially have been a recipient of a trust designated for him or her by a testator, to be paid out by a third party. But somewhat confusingly, the fideicommissary could also be the person who was charged with receiving and distributing that trust. By the fourteenth century on the Italian mainland, the principal role of the fideicommissary appears to have been that of carrying out the testator’s wishes. In Venice, both the form and content of wills were distinct from those on the mainland, but despite these differences, the intentions of Venetian and terraferma testators were very similar. The protocol of a typical Venetian testament began (after the standard invocation of God) with the date and place of its creation.19 It then gave the name of the testator, and from that point the testator normally “spoke” in the first person, referring to himself as “I” (ego). Sometimes the testator was



44 

N 

making records

indeed also the writer, since Venetians could draw up their own wills, usually writing in the vernacular, and then hand them over to a notary, who would add the necessary Latin formulas and witness names but preserve the vernacular descriptions of bequests.20 After naming themselves, Venetian testators named their fideicommissari or commissari in the place of their mainland counterparts’ designation of an heir.21 On the mainland, by the fourteenth century, the role of fideicommissaries was largely limited to their execution of the testator’s wishes, but in Venetian wills drawn up for the clergy, the fideicommissary normally acted more broadly as the testator’s postmortem representative while also receiving a portion (sometimes all) of that property.22 Essentially, then, the Venetian fideicommissary was also an heir.23 In many wills, the clerical testator made this clear by designating one or more fideicommissaries as recipients of the “remainder” (residuum) of the estate after other obligations were satisfied. In the case of clerics, this individual was often his female servant and companion. For instance, the priest Antonius, nicknamed Bagatinus, of the church of Santa Maria Formosa, named his companion Francesca as his fideicommissary in his 1363 will. He also promised her all of his property, and if she died before him, the property would go to her (their?) son Marcus. Antonius also stated explicitly that none of his kin (propinquis), either male or female, from either his father’s or mother’s side, would receive anything from his estate and that he commended his soul “faithfully” (fiducialiter) to Francesca.24 After naming his fideicommissaries, the Venetian testator might also name the site where he wished to be buried. He then listed his bequests. The eschatocol of Venetian wills includes, as we now know, the signatures of two witnesses as well as the notary’s signature and his signum. In this section of the record, the notary could also name other witnesses who were present but not required to sign. Finally, as I have already suggested, the testator would designate the person who was to receive the remainder of his estate when the obligations were satisfied. That person was essentially his universal heir, although the term was not common in Venetian wills. However, overall, Venetian wills did similar work to their mainland counterparts, as they set out to ensure that a

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

45

testator’s wishes would be respected and followed after death and that his intimates would receive the property and protection they required. Historians using testaments as sources for family history tend to elide differences in the structure of the records in their research. And yet testaments survive in various forms: paper drafts, brief summaries in bound protocols or registers, and complete fair copies on separate parchments or in bound registers. Careful reading can sometimes bring different versions of the same will to light in the archives. Since rough drafts of testaments often contain corrections, additions, and erasures, comparing the differences from one form of the record to the next can provide rare information about household dynamics and the process of the record’s creation.25 Two surviving copies of the will of Franciscus Seraphino, parish priest of the Venetian church of Santa Sofia, in the sestiere of Cannaregio, give a glimpse of the tensions between the priest’s household and his family members at the end of his life. In addition, they remind us that the final form of any testament was the product of negotiations between the notary, the testator, and his household and family, and that such negotiations might occur over a period of time. When Franciscus fell ill in July 1383, he called on a close colleague, the notary-priest Iohannes Campion of the nearby collegiate church of San Canciano (San Canzian), to write his will. The first version of the will comprised a draft about eighteen lines long, written on half a sheet of paper, which the notary then annotated and corrected extensively.26 The record begins with the date, written in Arabic numerals to facilitate Iohannes’ record-keeping.27 Franciscus’ name follows, along with a statement of his capacity to testate (he is ill, but his mind is clear). The notary then identifies the priest’s fideicommissaries: his “beloved” mother, identified in Venetian style as Zanana Seraphino, along with Franciscus’ nepote (a term that can mean nephew or grandson), identified initially as Zanebonus Tagliapetra, and his sisters Lucia and Genta. The record then states that the testator wants to be buried at the church of Santa Sofia, under the portico. The first recipient of a bequest is a woman called dona Caterucia, identified as the owner of the house in which the priest is living. The one hundred–ducat bequest to her is the largest specifically named in the will. The testament then states that Caterucia owes Franciscus one hundred ducats,



46 

N 

making records

so his legacy to her takes the form of the forgiveness of a loan, a framing that allows such a large legacy to be made and not contested by the fideicommissaries, who would likely receive much less from the estate once the specific legacies had been distributed. Other legacies follow: ten ducats to the priest Laurencius Contareno, one of the witnesses of the will, and a further sixteen ducats to Nicolaus, son of the doge ­Antonius Venier, to repay a loan. Then the priest names a bequest of thirty ducats for his “beloved” mother and promises ten ducats to each of his two sisters. He leaves the same amount to his nepote, identified at this point in the record in Latin as “Iohannes,” and twenty-five ducats to another Iohannes, whom he identifies as his “natural” son (filio meo naturali). The remainder of the estate is to be divided equally among the priest’s mother, his sister Lucia (but not his sister Genta), his nephew, and his son. The record ends with a final legacy: the priest’s breviary, left to his kinsman (consanguineo meo), the priest Antonius. At the bottom of the page, we find a list of the witnesses’ names: presbiter Nicolaus de Papo and presbiter Laurencius Contareno, both from the church of Santi Apostoli, and Ser Pelegrinus de Grecis, a layman, possibly a notary, from the parish of San Cassiano. Studying the content of this draft can help us reconstruct the priest’s bonds with his family, his household members, and his church community. Shifting our attention from the main text to the corrections in the document makes it even more illuminating. The corrections made after the draft was written suggest there was conflict between the priest’s household and his kin, and they also give a glimpse into the historical life of the testament itself. The two are frequently intertwined; that is, conflicts and changes among the priests’ kin and household members led the notary and the testator to make alterations to the record. For instance, the list of fideicommissaries originally included Caterucia, the woman with whom the priest lived (perhaps the mother of his natural son) and to whom he left a significant cash legacy. However, after he had first entered her name in the draft, the notary crossed it out, then added it again in superscript, with a further marginal note identifying her as the woman the priest lived with. Then at some later point he crossed out both of those entries. It is possible that the priest decided, after some consideration, that the large legacy he had named

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

47

for Caterucia and / or his intimate relationship with her would make it difficult for the other fideicommissaries to accept her among their number. No matter what the reasons behind them, the fact that the will was changed more than once to resolve the identities of the fideicommissaries reveals not only possible conflicts in the priest’s household and his extended family but also the time that the notary and the ill testator spent crafting the document. If we move on to compare the draft with the fair version of the will that was eventually set down in the parchment register, we discover not only how notarial professional practice shaped the record but also more about the ongoing family tensions during its creation and the time that was consumed in making it. The fair copy occupies the bottom half of one page of a large parchment register, with a line separating it from the record above.28 It begins conventionally with an elaborate initial capital “I” and ends with Iohannes Campion’s notarial signum. As we might expect, this text is much clearer and more legible than the draft version. In rewriting it, the notary expanded many abbreviations found in the draft and wrote out the date rather than use Arabic numbers, as he had done in the draft. He also excised much of its specifically Venetian character, translating all personal names from their Venetian forms into Latin (replacing “Zanana” with “Iohanna,” for instance). Formulaic additions to this version include the invocation of God (In nomine dei eternii amen) at the beginning of the record and the final lines, which describe the obligations on the fideicommissaries. But Iohannes did not simply tack on formulas to the information from the first version of the will. Instead, the content of this version of the will elaborates on that of the previous draft. For instance, Iohannes identified the fideicommissaries more clearly than in the draft. Lucia is latterly identified as the mother of the nepote now known as “Iohannes Bonus,” and Nicolaus, son of the doge, is identified as a “noble man.” The recipient of the breviary, the priest’s kinsman, is now identified as “beloved” Antonius. The notary also made a change to the list of recipients of the final bequest: his sister domina Lucia was no longer to receive an equal share of the estate after other legacies had been distributed; her name was omitted from this list. Perhaps she had displeased her brother in some way or she had died between the initial creation of the draft will and its recopying.



48 

N 

making records

The changes made to this will between its creation as a draft and its eventual recopying into the notary’s parchment register thus suggest that it was written over a period of time, but the will does not explicitly state when the notary finally created that fair copy. Clearer references to the passage of time during the preparation of a will can be found in another example, the testament of the priest Marcus Bortolo, pievano of the church of Sant’Agostin in Venice, who began dictating his will to the notary Bartolomeus de Recovratis on August 9, 1406, as he lay ill.29 That day, he thought of his sister and his nephew and niece (her children?), and he divided his estate among them. He also thought of the clergy closest to him, such as his apprentice, the “boy” (puer) called Franciscus who lived with him, and stated that when Franciscus became a priest, he was to recite (cantabit) the Gospels (Evangelium) and the Mass in memory of Marcus.30 When he did so, he would receive two and four gold ducats, respectively. A moralizing note crept into the testament when Marcus stated that if Franciscus “had been a better boy” (melior puer), he would have left him “much more” (the notary wrote multo nagis [magis] in the paper version of the will but substituted the phrase multum plus in the parchment copy). The fatherly tone here is difficult to ignore! Marcus also named members of his clerical congregation of the parish of San Canciano (San Canzian) as recipients of small bequests if they came to his funeral and prayed for his soul. He asked for his body to be buried at his church, near the door of the church closest to the bell tower (campanile). The names of two witnesses, the priests Franciscus de Trave and Madius de Vigilis, appear at the bottom of the paper will. The will appeared complete at this point, but two days later, the notary returned to the testator’s bedside and to the will, and he added details to the draft in different ink and using a sharper quill. In these additions to the will, he elaborated on the investments Marcus wanted his fideicommissaries to manage, and he promised his vestment (planeta) embroidered with gold to the church of Sant’Agostin. Marcus also noted that he wished to be buried wearing his “other” vestment and that he wanted his breviary to be sold, with half of the proceeds distributed for his soul and the other half absorbed into his estate (for his family members). At the bottom of the paper draft, the notary explained

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

49

that these changes had been made on August 11 and that the witnesses had returned on that day, as well. However, the final version of the will, in the notary’s parchment register, conflates this two-day period of decision making, dating the will August 11 and ordering the bequests more or less the way they appear in the paper version of the will (for instance, the instructions about burial, which appear in two places in the initial version, similarly appear in two separate places in the final version as well).31 Finally, while the two witnesses’ names appear on the paper version, neither their names nor their signatures are included in the parchment will, indicating that they were likely not present when the final version was prepared. Comparing versions of wills as closely as I have done here not only provides a detailed understanding of the evolution of these priests’ testamentary wishes but also gives the records themselves historicity.32 That is, considering the time it took to produce these wills locates them at specific moments in the past and reminds us that records are historical events and not simply witnesses to other events they depict. In the second example, the process of creating the will, visible in the paper draft, became invisible in the final version, since it identified only August 11 as the date of its creation. Unravelling the time that passed during the creation of these records invites us to treat them not as fixed portraits of daily life or static windows onto the world of the past but instead as contingent mechanisms, the product of time-consuming decision making that in their final forms articulate one version of the testator’s reality and set others aside. As Shannon McSheffrey has written, such records are “memoranda, things which are to be remembered (and by extension, things which are to displace other things which are to be forgotten).”33

Inventories and Lists of Household Objects The strategic decision making and adjudication of law and custom so evident in notaries’ creation of testaments is further visible in other written records they created in the fourteenth century. For example, household inventories and similar lists of objects prepared by notaries might first appear to be mainly descriptive, but on closer inspection,



50 

N 

making records

they are revealed to contain normative and negotiated aspects. Inventories of a testator’s movable, or portable, goods were not often drawn up in fourteenth-century Italian cities.34 Because they are so rare, inventories tend to be treated especially reverently as records of real lived experience. While they certainly reveal otherwise elusive details about household life, we need to move beyond considering them simply as transparent records of lived experience to think carefully instead about the relationship between inventories and the world they represented. The representation of household items in inventories reflects not only the organization of the household but also how those who created the inventories thought the household should be seen. As Giorgio Riello argues, inventories are “the result of strategies, biases, and representational intentions.”35 We know, for instance, that only some objects were included in these inventories. We can investigate why items were omitted and what the inclusion or exclusion of an object tells us about record-creators and their clients. Considering how the inventory came into being, a process that Riello terms “inventorying,” helps shed some light on these questions.36 Postmortem inventories were required in medieval notarial law in certain circumstances only, such as when a guardianship agreement was created. In the case of clerics, inventories could be created in the event of a dispute between the priest’s heirs and the cleric who took over his benefice, and, presumably, his house when he died.37 Relatively few such inventories survive in Italian archives for the fourteenth century. Instead, a variety of lists of household objects in testaments, in petitions from heirs, and from auction sales survive in notarial registers. All of these records, which I will call “inventories” throughout this book, pose similar challenges to the historian. First, the listed items are never a complete catalogue of the contents of a household, since they did not include items a testator had specifically directed to his heirs.38 Testaments sometimes include lists of movable objects from the household, although more often these are simply described as “household items” and are not enumerated individually. A further issue with such records is that they provide only one, fixed view of the household and its organization. Objects and people flowed in and out of the household over time, but inventories capture a single moment in the

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

51

household’s history.39 Still, if we read them critically, lists of household objects that do survive are doubly useful. They provide unusually detailed hints about the daily lives of our historical subjects, and they also allow us another opportunity to view the process of record creation in the fourteenth century. The process notaries employed to create lists of the goods in a household illuminates the historical contingency of these records and also challenges readings of them as straightforward depictions of reality. They are often simply presented, with no indications where the items named in them might have been found. By contrast, in later periods, inventories usually located objects in specific parts of a house. Giorgio Riello, working with inventories from the early modern period, argues that the room-by-room division of the inventory reflects the act of its creation, as the notary walked through the house and noted its contents and their locations.40 If this connection between the structure of the inventory and the real locations of objects in the house was the case in a later period, does the absence of such divisions in fourteenth-century inventories imply the absence of divisions of space within the house itself?41 There is evidence that mitigates this assertion, without entirely denying it. For instance, we know that kitchens in fourteenth-century dwellings could be separate from main living quarters.42 Furthermore, bedrooms (camere) associated with particular people are common in records such as testaments and inventories. The “room of the priests” is mentioned in a 1389 inventory from Treviso, and many records describe the room on top of the house belonging to Bergamasque canon Simone de Muzzo, as that “where his son Marchisinus customarily stayed.”43 The disparity between evidence of the organization of rooms in a house and the enumeration of household contents in fourteenth-­century inventories emphasizes the nature of those records as written texts. As texts, inventories reflected notarial practice and decision making as much as they did the households they described.44 For example, some inventories were simply lists of objects, organized in a column, with each new object prefaced by the Latin word item (“and”) and followed by the number of those objects, or, sometimes, their value.45 Others were lengthier and more detailed, such as the room-by-room description



52 

N 

making records

of a priest’s house from Treviso completed in 1389.46 Such distinctions could as likely be the result of notarial customs as of variations in household organization. Other lists of household goods with their own textual conventions can be found in the sales records of public auctions. In fourteenth-­ century Venice, the procurators of San Marco were a group of six civic officials, the most powerful in the republic after the doge. Their many responsibilities included acting as fideicommissaries for individuals who named them as such.47 During the fourteenth century, a few priests named the procurators as their commissari, and the records of the procurators’ payments to those men’s heirs and creditors survive. As a part of their activities, the procurators had to sell off all the items that were held in the house of the deceased. They kept records of their sales, and these are particularly detailed lists of household objects. Studying one such record provides an understanding of its structure and function for the historian. On August 5, 1373, the priest Iacobus de Soia, pievano of the church of San Felice, lay ill in his house, and he called the priest-­ notary Domenicus Peresemolo to his bedside and dictated a long set of testamentary instructions to him, naming the procurators of San Marco as his fideicommissaries. The resulting will survives in fair copy in Domenicus’ own registers and as a particularly fine extracted parchment in the records of the procurators themselves.48 The busta in which that parchment is found also contains much more worn and usedlooking registers and individual parchments in which the activities of the procurators in the years and decades after the priest’s death are recorded. These registers begin with the procurators’ statement that they had received goods from the priest’s house on August 7, meaning that he had died very shortly after dictating his will. The procurators then organized a public auction sale (per incantum) of the deceased priest’s belongings, which was held just over a month later, on September 13.49 At that event, which was overseen by their gastald, or steward, they sold household items and equipment to an assembled group of about 20 people, including men and women, clerics and laypeople. Most of the more expensive items were sold to clerics or noblemen. The archpriest of the church of San Felice bought a desk and an arcella, a wooden chest containing flour, and the priest called Conte,

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

53

who must have been a friend or relative of the deceased man, since he had been promised all of the testator’s clothing, beds, bedcovers, and linens, bought eleven silver spoons. Most of the more mundane and less expensive objects went to the women in the group, who bought basins, pans, buckets, and cauldrons in various states of repair. The order in which these items are presented in the list reflects the order in which they were sold, seen in the fact that multiple items were sold to the same individuals, who paid for them in cash on the spot. This list of items sold from the priest’s house might seem to give us a clearer picture of his domestic world than an inventory or set of bequests from a testament. Certainly the records are more thorough and specific than either inventories or testamentary bequests from this period. We see no mentions of vague “other things” or “some household objects” in these sale records. But at the same time, these records of the sale of the priest’s belongings are a carefully ordered text. The gastald in charge of the sale must have kept notes, or had someone else doing so, of the objects, names of the buyers, and money received for each sale. He then collected this information and wrote it into a lengthy list for his own needs. While the list might feel more immediate and spontaneous than the more obviously crafted inventories and related texts, it is still a written record created for the recorder, in this case to keep track of the amounts of cash received from each person who bought objects from the priest’s house. And of course the record is still only a partial version of the objects held in that house. Since Iacobus promised all of his personal items, including his bedroom furniture, to Conte the priest, these items do not appear in the list of objects for sale.50 The records of the procurators, valuable as they are, should not be taken as any more “real” than inventories or other records in which objects appear. Instead, they can be read alongside other similar records to fill out our understanding of the material culture of the clerical household. Inventories reprioritized household items to suit the needs of fideicommissaries and other interested parties. They also removed ownership from those items, presenting them as common household property. Items in inventories were given priorities that did not necessarily mirror those of their owners or users. For instance, the items that received the most attention in inventories tended to be those that could be resold,



54 

N 

making records

such as beds and other large furniture. Items that had little resale value, despite being prized by the owner, were given less attention. In particular, papers and notarized instrumenta were rarely described in any detail in inventories but may have been of great significance to their owners. The common category of “household items” also likely included objects that had been highly valued during the life of a household.51 Another issue with using inventories to write the history of the clerical household is that the owners of the items are never named. For instance, we know from priests’ testaments in Venice and Treviso that women brought household goods into priests’ houses, but we usually do not know what exactly those goods were.52 So as we look for objects and materials within these records, we need to consider how notaries and clerical testators shaped their descriptions to suit the needs of the record itself.

Visitation Records Finally, we come to records of so-called pastoral visitations, drawn up by notaries working for bishops or their representatives (vicars) in the wake of those officials’ visits to the churches, religious houses, and institutions within their dioceses. The purpose of the visitations was to examine the moral and educational backgrounds of clerics (and sometimes their lay parishioners), the state of their buildings, and the liturgical and pastoral care provided at them. The records of such visitations contain valuable information that is often not available elsewhere. Some include particularly graphic and detailed accounts of the furnishings of a church or the behavior of its clergy, as in a 1364 visit to the canons of Sant’Alessandro, in Bergamo, when the provost of the canons told the visitor that someone had written “evil words” about him in charcoal on the wall of the canonry. His colleagues’ response was that everyone hated the provost because he was incompetent and was not even capable of celebrating the divine office.53 These kinds of rare details about the daily life and habits of otherwise obscure people make visitation records extremely appealing as a source to scholars.54 However, these records need to be treated with a similar caution as must be afforded to testaments and inventories. They often reflect the point of

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

55

view of church officials as much as they do their clerical interlocutors. Further, the questions contained in visitation records also need to be examined with care, as they might not have been as meaningful as they first appear. Finally, the records of answers to some of the questions were sometimes very brief and unforthcoming.55 Despite the fact that most records of visitations from the fourteenth century onward were copied into separate registers titled Libri Visitationum, their usefulness to the diocesan community is unclear.56 Creating copies might have made it easy either to file them (and then forget about them?) or, perhaps, to consult them when organizing later visits. However, the records give little indication that subsequent pastoral visitors had any detailed knowledge of previous visits. Neither were the majority of these records in the fourteenth century structured to help a reader scanning quickly for information. For instance, unlike other types of records drawn up by notaries, records of pastoral visits rarely include pictorial devices such as pointing fingers, or manicules, to highlight specific information within the mass of text. Others seem constructed to dissuade future readers from consulting them at all. The visitation record from Ivrea in 1329, for example, was organized with questions presented separately from answers. Anyone wishing to refer to it would have to have the list of questions in front of them and then would have to cross-reference these with witnesses’ responses. The organization of many of these records became more reader-friendly in the middle of the fourteenth century. For instance, in Bergamo, ­Francescus Zenaglia organized his 1371 visitation records to separate each individual’s responses from others, and he numbered the responses and provided the answers to questions according to the order of witnesses he had set out in his initial list. But it was only in the fifteenth century that records drawn up after visitations included tables of contents and folio numbers, suggesting that those who created them might also consult them later.57 As Michael Clanchy has argued, “making documents for administrative use, keeping them as records, and using them again for reference were three distinct stages of development which did not automatically and immediately follow from each other.”58 In other words, while historians place great value on the survival of visitation records as containers for the memory of church organization in the



56 

N 

making records

medieval period, during the fourteenth century, the records themselves may not have been of much use or interest to contemporaries. Unlike with testaments and inventories, there was no pressing reason to consult a visitation record after a visit had taken place and any necessary penalties had been meted out to clerics or others not fulfilling their responsibilities. The planning that led to episcopal visitations followed a predictable pattern across the Italian peninsula. First, the bishop or his representative wrote letters to the individuals or bodies he wished to visit. When he had received responses, he then met with the individuals or bodies in a set location over a period of hours or days. From the records around these events, we learn that difficulties in organizing visitations were common. Visits were an important opportunity for bishops to assert their jurisdiction over corporate bodies in their dioceses. However, bishops and their officials sometimes sought, in vain, to be admitted to a chapter, hospital, or monastery in order to perform a visit.59 Episcopal letters sent before a visit might enjoin the recipients “firmly to obey” (firmiter obedire) his commands.60 A request to enter an institution might be either ignored or disobeyed because one result of a visit was correction. In some cases clerics’ female companions were told to leave their houses or to stop having contact with the priests after visits had “uncovered” their existence.61 Contextual details also sometimes emerge that indicate the visitor had done some research before the visitation itself in order to discipline that community more effectively. For instance, the visitor at Ivrea in 1329 departed from his set list of questions to ask one parish priest whether he had ever practiced medicine or given potions to any of his parishioners. The record shows that the priest answered in the affirmative, suggesting that the visitor already knew the answer to the question.62 While the organization of visitations was quite similar across the West, historians have argued that the questions asked during pastoral visits before the Council of Trent were generally characterized by “liberty of form.”63 A close comparison of the structure of several visits in northern Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries supports this statement. Even the same visitor and scribe / notary over a period of

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

57

years could adopt different approaches to the event.64 For instance, ­Francescus Zenaglia, in Bergamo, had at least two opportunities to work on his scribal skills in the creation of visitation records. The bishop and / or his vicar visited the canons of Bergamo’s cathedrals in 1364 and again in 1371, and both times Francescus acted as the redacting notary for the ensuing documents. The questions asked in 1364 have not survived, and in fact there may not have been any specific questions, since the record states that clerics provided information “freely” (sponte) to the visitor. It is striking that their recorded statements mainly involved complaints about their fellow clerics’ moral failings.65 Later, in 1371, Francescus adopted a more structured approach to the record of the pastoral visit, which may reflect the vicar’s visitation style.66 Francescus presented detailed lists of the names of the clerics present during the visitation in hierarchical order, with the provost and archpriest first, followed by a columnar list of the canons, then the chaplains (cappelani), dividing the group resident at the basilica of Sant’Alessandro from that resident at the cathedral of San Vincenzo, then listing the cruciferi and the custodians (custodes) of both churches. He followed that list in his register with a numbered record of the thirty questions that the visitor “intended” to ask. Elsewhere on the peninsula, notaries and visitors adopted different styles for asking and recording questions and answers during visits. Some were much more laconic than the examples from Bergamo; the 1346 visit to the canons at Udine by Bishop Guido de Guisis of Concordia involved only five questions.67 Other visitors asked many more questions. In Ivrea in 1329, the visitor posed forty-three questions, while in 1346, the visitor asked forty-seven questions.68 Visits in the fifteenth century tended to include even longer lists of questions.69 Just as the structure of their records and the questions asked varied from one place and visitor to another, so too did approaches to questioning. In many instances, visitors asked the same questions of everyone, which must have been very tedious for both interlocutors. In other settings, visitors determined the questions they wanted to ask individual clerics. The differences in the procedures followed are illuminating. In Ivrea, for instance, the formulary for questions in 1346 was



58 

N 

making records

clearly only a vague template, since the official, a canon named Uberto Dalpozzo, asked questions that were not on the original list. Uberto’s approach to the question-and-answer sessions was particularly successful. As he traveled from one church to the next and met with its priest or rector, he always began by asking who had placed the individual in his position. This seemingly innocuous question often elicited a stream of information from his interlocutor and led to subsequent questions about the cleric’s training, the state of the church, and other matters. Uberto’s predecessor was also a careful questioner. In one case, he asked a priest who the woman was who lived with him, and when he was not entirely satisfied with the answer, he returned to it after having asked other questions. This time the priest admitted that the relationship was sexual, and the couple had a child.70 These conversations were probably more informative for visitors than were the Bergamasque visitor’s dialogues with clerics in 1371, where clerics often answered that they did not know the answer to a question, or at most gave “yes” or “no” as responses. It is notable that all of the questions from Bergamo began with “if” (si), making yes / no answers more likely. By contrast, Uberto’s questions and three of the five questions asked by the Udine visitor began with “how” (qualiter), and the lengthier answers given in that context were likely due to the form of questioning. The longer and more detailed answers that clerics and laypeople gave to episcopal visitors also need to be treated with caution. As James Given and Mark Gregory Pegg have shown in their studies of heresy, witnesses interrogated by inquisitors commonly employed deception and evasion in their answers.71 Those called on to describe the behavior of their clerical colleague or the local parish priest, too, might provide answers that reflected not solely the realities around them but also their enmities or friendships. Some witnesses were careful to sift out what they really knew from gossip or hearsay. As one told a visitor in Como, he knew that the archpriest of his small community “had carnal knowledge of a young girl,” but other things he did not know for certain, since he had heard them only from angry gossip (ex vociferatione).72 Most, however, did not explain what lay behind the information they provided to the visitor, and in all cases, we must treat their statements and descriptions with care.

Records as Artifacts and Historical Events  

n 

59

Although the form of the questions used by pastoral visitors differed, the subject matter they addressed in their questions was quite similar. In most areas in the fourteenth century, questions about clerical morality, and specifically whether clerics lived with and / or had sex with women, were common topics.73 In Udine, one of the five questions the visitor of 1346 put to those he questioned was whether they knew of clerics who “cohabited” with women. In Ivrea, the visitor was given the opportunity to ask whether priests “publicly” lived with concubines, were “vagabonds,” or if they kept a (female) “lover” (amaxia). In Bergamo in 1371, the tenth question clerics were asked was whether any of their peers kept a concubine or other lover (amaxia / focaria). But while the mainland visitors were unanimous in their concern for this issue, in Venice, records contain fewer statements or questions about clerical morality in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. At a synod of 1420 held by the bishop of Castello, discussion focused on how clerics worked within their benefices, and nothing was said (or recorded) about their relationships with women. Similarly, at a 1374 synod in the diocese of Torcello, there was no mention of women in priests’ households.74 It was not until the middle of the fifteenth century, after the formation of the patriarchate of Venice, that ecclesiastical officials asked clerics (three times in the same record!) to respond to questions about their sexual activities and domestic arrangements.75 The disparity between concern about clerical morality on the mainland and in Venice found in visitation records gives rise to questions about differences in clerical culture between the two regions. It is, of course, possible that church officials in Venice did not care if clerics had sexual relationships with women, while those on the mainland were especially concerned about sexual morality. But such dichotomies are usually problematic; as we shall see, clerics of all ranks across the peninsula, including in Venice, had conflicting attitudes to clerical celibacy and the possibility that clergy had sexual relationships with women. Thus we should be cautious in drawing conclusions about religious culture based only on these records. A much fuller understanding of clerical households and their members within the church and community can be gained by comparing how they are portrayed across various records and not solely from those of pastoral visits.



60 

N 

making records

Conclusion This investigation of the expectations and experiences of clerics and their households through the records produced by notaries in the later Middle Ages is in part modeled on Robert Brentano’s humane perspective on archival records as markers of the lives of individuals and communities. Brentano’s nuanced literary and historically minded analysis of written records predated scholarly discourse on the archival turn by several decades. In a final chapter on wills in his book on the church in Rieti during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Brentano wrote, “in the diocese of Rieti change was restricted by syntax, by topography, including the shaping topography of memory and perception, of what men call the human heart.”76 Just at wills in Rieti were fundamentally the artifacts of human experience, the records we will examine throughout this book were crafted and negotiated emblems of lived realities. In the following chapters we will work toward understanding those realities, however imperfectly.

part 11

Nn THE CLERICAL FAMILIA

A

t the local levelof the parish and the diocese, the late medieval Christian church in northern Italy was a family enterprise.

The clerical familia was a dynamic group that could include female companions, children, kin (both parents and siblings), clerical apprentices, and slaves. Clerics adopted the role of paterfamilias and claimed the authority of patria potestas over their household members, even though they were legally barred from such privileges and responsibilities. Members of the familia and the notaries who worked for them not only acquiesced to clerics’ claims to act as patres familias, they also played active roles in assisting clerical patriarchs in maintaining that status and fulfilling their domestic and professional responsibilities. This organization of the clerical household benefited both local lay and ecclesiastical communities, since it provided income and assistance to the clergy and stability and continuity within the local church, both in cities and in the countryside. However, since clerics’ domestic arrangements were sometimes based on sexual relationships, and because their households often replicated the structures of the lay family, ecclesiastical authorities became increasingly suspicious of them in the later Middle Ages. The tension between ecclesiastical needs for a clearly defined and separate clerical ordo and clerics’ need to protect their kin and household members while retaining their patriarchal status shaped archival depictions of the clerical household during the later fourteenth century.

chapter three

Nn Priests as Patriarchs The Clergy and Their Households

T

he intimate domainsof clergy remain a marginal aspect of the historiography of the medieval and early modern Christian church,

despite the fact that clerics were a familiar presence across Europe in the premodern period.1 Certainly, their numbers varied; in Venice,

where the population numbered less than 100,000 in the mid-fourteenth century, several hundred clerics in major orders served the city’s seventy parishes.2 In other places, clerics were less numerous, but they were still noteworthy and visible members of their communities. For instance, on the mainland far to the west, the city and diocese of Bergamo included two communities of canons attached to the city’s cathedral of San Vincenzo and its basilica of Sant’Alessandro, as well as priests and other clerics who served the community’s seventeen parishes and played prominent roles in other civic organizations, as well.3 While local culture shaped and distinguished these men’s household arrangements and their domestic activities, they were also connected by their shared status as Christian clerics and their roles as heads of households. No matter where they lived, clerics experienced a similar life cycle, first in their early lives as young apprentices, then in their subsequent roles as middle-aged heads of households, and finally in the challenges they faced and benefits they enjoyed as aging patriarchs. The

63



64 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

written records in which clerics appear provide a window into how these men arranged their domestic lives in the face of increasingly coercive ecclesiastical authority in the later fourteenth century. Those records also provide glimpses into how clerics faced the privations of the later fourteenth century and how aging and need sometimes shaped their domestic and public lives.

Clerical Culture in Venice In this chapter, I will make a case for understanding the clergy and their domestic worlds in northern Italy as both heterogeneous and commensurable. To do this, I first reevaluate traditional scholarly perspectives on the clergy in Venice. Scholars examining the Venetian church tend to assume one of two opposing points of view on the clergy in the maritime republic: they were either more corrupt or more pious than their mainland counterparts.4 Despite their contrary views on Venetian clerical morality, both of these perspectives share an assumption that priests in the city occupied a substantively different status from those on the terraferma. These assumptions are based on significant evidence. Most importantly, because of the tradition of closeness between governing and ecclesiastical authorities common in the Byzantine Empire, a tradition that also influenced culture and politics in the Venetian lagoon, the Venetian clergy had closer bonds with their lay counterparts and secular civic authority than did their mainland counterparts.5 While bishops on the terraferma appointed clerics to their income-producing benefices, Venetian parishioners elected their own priests, who were only then consecrated by ecclesiastical officials.6 In addition, the archpriests (pievani) who served as the heads of the nearly fifty collegiate churches in Venice were a group with close ties to both secular and ecclesiastical authority.7 Many pievani were wealthy property-holders who also belonged to the republic’s patrician class. As we saw in Chapter 1, some pievani occupied other important ecclesiastical positions in the city and republic, suggesting that they could be both administrators and liturgical leaders. But some were not ordained as priests, and Maurizio Rosada posits that a pievano might have functioned more as the general

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

65

administrator of his church than as a spiritual or liturgical leader.8 In keeping with their high status, pievani in their wills sometimes demonstrated notable largesse to their churches; for example, the archpriest and notary Leonardus Cavazza left the huge sum of 1,500 gold ducats to his church of San Giuliano (San Zulian) to buy books “and other necessities” and to pay for his tomb to be constructed in the church.9 Others promised large legacies to the poor; for example, Lucianus Zeno, pievano of the church of San Canciano (San Canzian), in the sestiere of Cannaregio, instructed his testamentary fideicommissaries to give a house in the neighboring sestiere of Castello to three poor women upon his death.10 Many other aspects of Venetian clerical culture dovetail with the social and political institutions of the Venetian republic and with the republic’s own sense of its distinctive status relative to the cultures of mainland Italy. For instance, we have already seen that numerous clerics in Venice served their parishes as notaries with the approval of civic authorities, while on the mainland the church frowned on cleric-­ notaries.11 In addition, Venetian clerics’ tendency to openly acknowledge their domestic arrangements with local laywomen was in keeping with the general acceptance of concubinage in the republic.12 By contrast, on the peninsula clergy were more reticent about revealing their intimate relationships in written records.13 Finally, the names of Venetian clerics are characterized by a peculiar usage of conventional titles for clerics in major orders. In theory, across Christendom, priests (presbiteri) passed through minor clerical orders and the lower degrees of major orders (subdeacon, subdiaconus, and deacon, diaconus) to occupy the highest position available to the ordained clergy. In practice in Venice, the title presbiter could be an honorific assigned to men who actually occupied lesser orders, particularly deacons who served in churches in the capacity of priests even though they technically could not celebrate all the sacraments themselves.14 Given such substantial evidence of the idiosyncratic qualities of Venetian clerical culture and its close ties to the isolationist values of the Venetian republic, we might be tempted to assume that clergy in Venice was entirely distinct from that on the terraferma. However, just



66 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

as we found connections between the functions of mainland and Venetian notaries, and between lay and ecclesiastical notaries more generally, close comparison of clerical cultural practices in Venice with those on the mainland reveals significant common threads linking the clergy across northern Italy. First, we saw in Chapter 1 that although the papacy discouraged the practice, a significant minority of priests worked as notaries on the mainland, connecting the practice of clerical and notarial cultures across Venice and the rest of the peninsula. Furthermore, while Venetian clerics may have been more open in written records about their commitments to sexual partners and family members than their terraferma peers, we shall see that many clerics across the north of Italy participated in similar domestic and kinship arrangements, living with companions and acting as the patriarchs of their households. The differences between Venetian and mainland clerics’ self-presentation in written records thus do not always correspond to differences in their lived experience.

Naming the Clergy Basic commonalities in Venetian and mainland clerical cultures can be first seen in the way notaries from both regions set down the names of clerics in their records. In their form and their content, names reveal important aspects of social and cultural status, but we must consider the origins of naming practices in written records when we analyze them for evidence of lived experience.15 The form of clerics’ names in archival records from across northern Italy was marked by the practices of both notarial and ecclesiastical culture and by tension between ecclesiastical ideals and local norms. In the centuries after the papal reform movement of the eleventh century, the ideal clerical name emphasized the cleric’s title or the name of his church rather than the patronymic or “filiation” forms of names common along laypeople in this period.16 Historians have argued that the clergy were content to use these new forms of naming, which set clerics apart from the laity. Monique Bourin posits that by adopting names associated with the church, clerics expressed a “rupture” with their birth parents, thus separating themselves from lay society and becoming a cohesive group.17 Maureen

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

67

Miller argues that this name change was a choice made by clergy themselves and not an “ideological notarial position,” since multiple naming patterns could be found in the same notarial documents of the twelfth century, indicating that the names in those records were not determined by notaries but by their clients.18 Both of these scholars sustain that clerics alone—following the will of their ecclesiastical superiors—­ determined the form of their names. However, as notarial culture became more fully articulated through treatises and local practice during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, documents of practice were increasingly shaped by both ecclesiastical and notarial approaches to recording clerics’ names. Notaries were bound by certain rules as they set down personal names in their records, but they were also allowed a measure of freedom in determining exactly how to render an individual’s name. On the mainland, these freedoms were particularly evident in notaries’ adaptation of names from one type of record to another. The notarial manuals of the thirteenth century, as well as the statutes of organizations such as Bergamo’s College of Notaries, required individuals named in notarial records to be identified as precisely as possible, with at least two names.19 But these manuals did not stipulate that only one type of name had to be used at all times, and in practice, as François Menant has argued, “several systems of designation co-existed and influenced one another.”20 Shona Kelly Wray also argues that while they were required to use two names for each individual, notaries could exercise discretion in selecting the names to use in their records. Notaries usually identified people using a “core name” made up of two elements and then added other identifying details when required.21 Evidence of mainland notaries’ discretion in determining the form of clerics’ names is visible in differences between the names entered in records of property transactions and those found in testaments. Notaries in cities including Bergamo and Bologna always used two-element names without filiation to identify priests appearing as witnesses or participants in records of property transactions. By contrast, when they redacted clerics’ testaments, those same notaries blended clerical and lay naming patterns, identifying clerics with filiation as well as their clerical titles.22 A particularly striking example of this practice is that in



68 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

the will of the Bergamasque testator who was identified in that document as “dominus Vilanus known as (qui dicitur) Coleonus, son of the late (filius quondam) lord Paternionus Carpionum, cleric and benefice-­ holder (clericus et beneficialis) of the church of Santa Croce and San Nicolas of Vezanica (ecclesie Sancte Crucis et San Nicolai de Vezanica) in the diocese of Bergamo.”23 In other words, the notary recording the testament ensured that in that document, the testator was connected to both his natal family and his church. But in other types of records, his family connections were absent, and notaries usually referred to Vilanus simply as “Vilanus called (dictus) Coleonus Carpionum.”24 Notaries’ careful naming of clerics in their wills followed the traditions set down in manuals of the notarial arts, which emphasized that references to testators be as specific as possible. As a result, references to filiation for clerical testators and its absence in other records probably had little to do with the wishes of the client—such as their desire to re-create or reject a connection with blood kin—and more to do with notaries’ needs. While mainland notaries resisted ecclesiastical demands to create stable name forms for clerics in those regions, when they came to record the names of illegitimate men seeking ordination, the notariate on the terraferma did follow the wishes of the Christian church hierarchy. The usual form of the patronymic was to identify a man as the “son” (filius) of his father. But in both Bergamo and Padua, notaries more often identified illegitimate men seeking dispensations to allow them to take orders, as well as those who had received such dispensations, as “born” (natus) of their fathers.25 For instance, in Bergamo, the illegitimate son of a priest was referred to as “Iohannes, born of (natus) the priest ­Bertramus de Caversenio,” when he applied to the bishop for a dispensation to allow him to take minor orders and hold a benefice.26 The use of filius evoked a cultural and legal bond to a father with patria potestas, while illegitimacy prevented such bonds. The use of natus signaled only a blood relationship and suggests that mainland notaries worked in accordance with ecclesiastical law as they recorded these men’s petitions. Treatises on the notarial arts, ecclesiastical requirements, and local notarial work practices all influenced the form of clerics’ names on the

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

69

mainland at different moments, resulting in naming patterns for clerics that were contingent on the particular type of record being redacted. This flexibility was less common in Venice, where naming customs were more stable and clerics and laypeople were usually identified with the same name structure, no matter what type of record they appeared in. In testaments and other acts, Venetian priests were usually described with their titles, their first names, and the names of their churches, while wealthy pievani and other high-status clerics more often were identified with a first name and a second name, as well as their titles and churches.27 References to filiation were not common in any act; in almost no case do we learn the name of a Venetian priest’s father from his own name, even in his will. In one case where the priest’s father’s name was recorded, it is significant that the notary initially noted that the priest was called “presbiter Iohannes, the son (filius) of Ser ­ Bartolomeus the dyer (prestinarius)” but then crossed out that form and substituted the name of the priest’s church, Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola), following that with his father’s name.28 ­ Rather than being a distinct way of referring to clergy, this practice was consistent with Venetian notarial conventions more generally, since filiation was not a common form for names of the laity there, either. Of the nearly 900 individuals, mainly laypeople, named in the registers of Domenicus Peresemolo, for instance, only 38 were named as sons of their fathers, living and dead, while of the more than 500 people named in the registers of Iohannes Gazo, only 5 were named as filius or filius quondam / condam.29 Therefore, while the form of Venetian clerics’ names appears distinctive from those of their mainland counterparts, across the two regions differences in the form of clerics’ names were the result of distinctions in notarial practice more than clerical culture. While the form of clerical names in Italy did not necessarily reflect clerics’ desire to be identified with their ecclesiastical communities over their kinship networks, clerics’ names do provide useful hints about their common social status and geographic origins. For instance, both their first and second names indicate that men in major orders across the peninsula were of relatively high social status. In Padua, such status is evident from Paolo Sambin’s published lists of clerics ordained during the later fourteenth century. Those lists include the first names



70 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

of more than 1,100 men, who shared approximately 150 names, an average of about 7 individuals per name.30 This figure reflects the “name concentration” that existed in high-status circles at this time.31 That is, higher-status people tended to cluster around certain names rather than adopt unfamiliar or rare names. Even more significant is the fact that while the clerics’ names ranged from Christian names such as Iacobus and Matheus, to augurative names like Nascimbene (“well born”) or Bonusfilius (“good son”), to a few examples of names such as Lançarottus and Orpheus, bestowed perhaps by literary-minded parents, only five names were shared by nearly half of the men. These were all of Christian origins, with nearly 100 men called Antonius, about 80 called ­Bartolomeus, a similar number called Iacobus, and approximately 50 known as Franciscus. The most popular name, shared among nearly 200 men, was Iohannes.32 Many clerics’ second names, too, indicate that they were from high-status backgrounds, with origins in their own or nearby communities. Silvana Bianchi has argued that clerics’ second names, drawn from lists of ordinations in the Veneto, reveal their relatively high social status in that region and their origins in that region or nearby communities.33 Similarly, Francesca Magnoni has analyzed names and argues that about one-third of the canons of Bergamo’s two cathedrals were members of the most politically important families of the city.34 And we have already noted that Venetian pievani often came from the highest elites of the city. Dennis Romano notes that during the fourteenth century, perhaps one-fifth of all the archpriests of the city came from the noble class. Even clerics in Venice from the artisanal class were likely from the highest levels of that social group.35

The Clerical Life Cycle Just as naming constructs for the clergy had little to do with clerics’ personal identities outside written records, archival records containing information about the clerical life cycle further attest to the fact that the theoretical ideals of clerical life promoted by ecclesiastical officials at the end of the Middle Ages were in many instances significantly different from the realities of clerics’ lives. In theory, a cleric’s life after ordination was static for decades, since entrance into orders was ideally

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

71

accompanied by a distancing from the realities of a layman’s life—­ marriage, the birth of children, and so on—that defined life cycle stages in the lay community. This view of a clerical “life course” is largely based on evidence from church councils and synods. Since ecclesiastical officials with their own ideas about the ideal clerical life prepared these records, they largely denied the possibility that clergy would transition through life stages in a manner similar to the laity. In the church’s view, a cleric’s commitment to celibacy would prevent him from moving through the life stages familiar to married men who became fathers. Records prepared by notaries at the request of the clergy, their kin, and household members tell a different story. In practice, clerics in all regions of northern Italy moved from one life cycle phase to another as they aged.36 The clerical life cycle was defined not only by clerics’ intimate and illicit relationships with women and children but also by their changing connections with other clergy over the course of their lives. In fact, the public and domestic worlds of the clergy on the mainland and in Venice were intertwined from the first days of their training.

Youth Young men who had been tonsured and who hoped to be ordained as priests usually apprenticed with senior colleagues, sharing a dwelling with those colleagues and becoming part of their familia.37 In notarial records from Treviso, Padua, and Venice, young clerics and their fathers drew up agreements to enter priests’ households as apprentices, where they would share both ecclesiastical and domestic duties for periods of several years. For example, in 1340, Iohannes, a young cleric in minor orders, contracted to live for five years in the household of Petrus, the rector of the church of San Lorenzo of Treviso, in order to learn “the clerical art and office.” The older man, in his turn, agreed to teach Iohannes and provide him with food and clothing in his home. Iohannes promised to serve Pre Petrus “day and night” and not to leave without permission or steal any of the priest’s goods.38 During that five-year apprenticeship, Iohannes would depend on the priest for his survival, since he had no benefice. Not only did the young man not receive a wage during his apprenticeship, but he or his father might pay the older



72 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

priest to train him.39 Paduan clerics in the mid-fourteenth century also took young men into their households to train them for ordination, as seen in names of clerics from the records of first tonsures and promotions in orders. The young men were identified as living with (literally “at the table of”—ad mensam) priests in Padua.40 The bonds of intimacy and dependence that young men cultivated with older priests during their early careers characterized the clerical experience across the peninsula. These ties were particularly evident in Venetian notarial records. For instance, witness names and signatures in those notarial documents suggest important ties of master and apprentice between senior and junior clerics. Studying the relationships among witnesses of different levels of experience provides a view of the parish as a vibrant and complex space for the clergy. It was a space where collegial relationships endured over decades, where inexperienced clerics could learn their profession from their older colleagues, and where older men might assert their authority over their younger counterparts. All these relationships had their foundation in the clerical familia. Pairs of witnesses signing Venetian notarial records were normally comprised of one older and one younger, or less experienced, man, and the form of the signatures of those in minor orders often indicated their youth and relative inexperience.41 For example, a comparison of the 1382 signature of the cleric Nicolaus, of the church of San Canciano (San Canzian), with that of the more experienced priest Iohannes of San Giovanni Grisostomo attests to the possibility that Nicolaus was a young and inexperienced man. While his signature was fairly well formed, suggesting that he had been taught some basic writing skills, his letters were larger and less elaborate than those of the priest.42 Even more marked is the contrast between the signature of the priest Antonius Francho, of San Canciano, and Daniel, cleric of the same church. While the priest manages to write his signature on a straight line, more or less, Daniel’s letters are large and painstakingly formed, with his initial “I” (Ego) sitting below the rest of his name, suggesting that he was very young and / or very inexperienced.43 In some instances notaries made explicit a younger clerical witness’s dependence upon his older colleague. For example, the notary D ­ omenicus Peresemolo identified two witnesses as the pievano Donatus Redulfo, of

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

73

the church of San Felice, and presbiter Simon, whom he named as “the cleric of San Felice who lives with (stat cum) the said pievano.”44 In another instance, the same notary identified his witnesses as Leonardus Basso, the priest of the church of Santi Apostoli, and Clemens, his nephew (eius nepos), a cleric from the same church.45 The priest Albertus Cham, from the church of Santa Maria Nova, also witnessed at least one transaction alongside his son Antonius, a cleric of San Canciano.46 These witnessing couples sometimes appeared in the records multiple times over the course of months or years, suggesting again that their relationships transcended the particular witnessing moment and that the older men who appear alongside these young clerics were likely responsible for introducing the younger men into the community and perhaps watching over them in their earliest years. The priest-notary Iohannes Campion, for instance, witnessed several transactions for his colleague Domenicus Peresemolo alongside Marcus, a (probably younger) cleric from their church of San Canciano. At least six times between 1364 and 1368, the older and younger men appeared together as witnesses, suggesting that there was a longstanding relationship between them.47 Marcus eventually became a priest of San Canciano and appears in records from the 1370s himself mentoring younger clerics.48 Other evidence of close ties between cleric masters and their apprentices is evident in testamentary legacies from the older to the younger men. The provisions for a cleric called Gervasius in the testament of the wealthy and powerful pievano Marinus, of the church of San Gervasio, reveal the older priest’s concern for his apprentice. Marinus left ­Gervasius income from his forced loans to cover the cleric’s expenses for clothing and food (pro victu et vestitu) for the rest of his life.49 Another priest and archdeacon of Grado, Iohannes Fuscarenis, left a donation of cash and eighteen ducats to the man he called “my cleric, Nicolaus,” to buy him a liturgical garment (paramentum) when he became a priest.50 Similarly, in the first extant version of his will, the pievano Lucianus Zeno left a bequest of liturgical items to the cleric named Pasqualinus, who lived in his house.51 The priest added an incentive to ensure that his cleric would control his behavior; if Pasqualinus misbehaved, the items would be given to the priest’s church or to the nephew of the priest’s companion.52



74 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

Since the priest’s house was a common site for training and education of young men, testators sometimes requested that priests accept their young dependents as potential apprentices. When a Bergamasque grandmother dictated her will in 1356, she left a bequest to the local confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore, asking that the company use the property to care for her orphaned grandchildren. She suggested that the best person to raise her grandson (but not her granddaughter) was the priest of her local parish church. It is likely that she expected the boy to be apprenticed to the priest.53 Clerics routinely honored these requests, as did the Bergamasque canon Magister Venture de Garganis, when he served as guardian, or tutor, for his young cousin in the 1350s.54 In Venice, too, priests housed and trained young orphans. A child called Marco Bon lived with the priest Michael, son of the late Marinus, until Michael’s death in 1335. Descriptions of Marco’s family connections in Michael’s testament make it clear that he was an orphan and not the priest’s biological son.55 Apprentices and “nephews” in the priest’s household were sometimes his own offspring.56 A Venetian woman called Marta, married to a sailor, requested in her 1380 will that the priest Franciscus Ferro of the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini, whom she identified as the father of her son, house and train the boy to become a priest. She left him forty gold ducats for the purpose.57 The importance she placed upon this bequest is evident in the form of her will. When the notary Luca de Orlandis revised it, probably with her input, he added a superscript note to stipulate that not only “was” (fuit) the boy the son of the priest, but he “remained” (est) his son. This addition underlined the testatrix’s conviction that the priest should take responsibility for her child’s education. Visitation records from northern Italy provide further evidence that a priest’s sons might live with him and, in many cases, serve as his apprentices. Clerics in Bergamo complained about their colleagues’ sons living with them during a visitation in 1364.58 In Ivrea, an episcopal visitor found several priests’ male children helping them in church.59 One witness told the visitor that their parish priest had four children, three girls and a boy, and while all of the children lived “at their mother’s house,” the boy often ate his meals and slept at the priest’s house and helped at the church when his father celebrated the

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

75

mass.60 Just as contracts of apprenticeship were drawn up for specific periods of time, these arrangements between a priest and his own children might not be permanent. Several priests in Ivrea told the bishop that their children sometimes lived with them and sometimes stayed at their mother’s house.61 The ambiguous distinction between the identities of a priest’s son and his apprentice was often evident in the choice of language that notaries used to refer to children living with a priest. These were sometimes identified as their famuli, a term for apprentices or servants that might also signify “son.”62 The priest Raymondus, pievano of the Venetian church of San Geminiano, named as his heir his young famulus, a boy called Nicolaus, stipulating that the boy should receive his Latin books as well as other property.63 The size of the bequest and the fact that the boy’s mother was made one of the priest’s fideicommissaries also suggests that the priest was not only the boy’s clerical supervisor and master but also his father. In another example, this time from the mainland, the Bergamasque canon Simone de Muzzo lived with his son, a young man called Marchisinus, who was alternately identified in documents of practice either as Simone’s famulus or his son. Marchisinus lived in rooms attached to Simone’s dwelling in the canonry of Sant’ Alessandro between the 1330s and his father’s death in the mid-1350s.64 He was a visible and helpful member of the canonical community of Sant’ Alessandro in those decades, taking minor orders, serving as a proctor for his father many times, and acting as a witness to records of property transactions, sometimes alongside his father and at other times by himself.65 The previous examples have shown that just as the sons of notaries frequently entered the notariate, and the sons of artisans followed their father’s trade, priests’ sons often took orders and became clerics. This was a longstanding tradition across the medieval West. For instance, Jennifer Thibodeaux has described the “numerous father-son dyads” who served in the cathedral at Bayeux during the twelfth century.66 In Italy, the clerical father and son were a visible presence in both rural and urban areas. For instance, the vicar general for the Trevisan bishop, Matheus de Boateriis, was present in the spring of 1350 when his son Cambius assumed a benefice at the church of Santa Maria de Zero



76 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

(Cero).67 Clerical sons also often remained in contact with their fathers after their apprenticeships were complete.68 Other notarial records also regularly document the presence of priests’ sons in the ecclesiastical community.69 In Bergamo, the priest Antoniolus and his father Iacobus de Bontatibus, also a priest, worked closely together during their lifetimes. When Iacobus died, Antoniolus ordered anniversary masses for his soul.70 And the two sons of the Bergamasque priest (Ray)Mondinus de Butanucho also became clerics with their father in the 1390s.71 The numbers of illegitimate sons of priests following their fathers into the priesthood probably increased in the later fourteenth century, when significant population losses from waves of epidemic disease ­created a need for more clerics in that period.72 In this period and context, the ecclesiastical appetite for clerical moral reform appeared somewhat tempered, as ecclesiastical dispensations allowing men of illegitimate birth to take orders seem to have been provided frequently and more or less automatically during the period.73 For instance, in Udine not long after the first wave of plague had struck the area, the papal legate agreed that clerics in Udine suffering from “defects of birth,” including the sons of priests, could be ordained and hold benefices in which they exercised the care of souls.74 This approach to staffing churches became entrenched during this period; after the worst waves of epidemic disease had ceased, illegitimate candidates for orders continued to seek and receive dispensations from ecclesiastical authorities. Ludwig Schmugge has argued that perhaps half of the requests for release from the “defect of birth” to the papal penitentiary in the fifteenth century came from the children of clerics.75 One reason that officials might have accepted this development can be found in the work of Kathryn Taglia, who claims that the process of admitting the illegitimate offspring of clerics into the ranks of the clergy themselves allowed ecclesiastical authorities “to triumph culturally in spite of the challenges to their ideals that the existence of these children presented.”76 Such dispensations of course allowed the church to maintain itself at a time of great demographic crisis. It is also notable that although dispensations may have been provided nearly automatically, they were always given on a case-by-case basis, and there is no evidence that the church questioned its stance on clerical celibacy more broadly as a result of the

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

77

crisis created by the onset (and recurrence) of plague in the mid-fourteenth century.

Middle Age Domestic Life

Returning to the clergy, we find that once a young cleric had completed his apprenticeship in his early twenties, he could be promoted to major orders, and from there he would move through the stages of subdeacon and deacon before finally becoming a priest. His domestic world and his public life remained entwined after this point, defined here for the sake of simplicity as “middle age.”77 Many priests became heads of their own households and authoritative participants in their communities at this stage of their lives. For many, one of their most significant concerns as they entered this stage was for their children. It seems to have been common for men in their thirties and forties to become new fathers. The priests Petrus de Urniano and Albertus de Petergallis were both about thirty-five when they were accused of keeping young children and their “concubines” in their houses.78 Others were even older: the notary and priest Gasparinus Dumottis was accused of living with a woman and fathering a child in 1374, when he was probably in his mid-forties.79 And the priest Georgius de Roariis was about the same age when he was accused of housing his young children and their mother in his house in the canonry of Bergamo’s cathedral in 1364.80 Similarly, the Venetian priest-notary Iohannes Campion was at least forty when his daughter Fornicta was born in the early 1380s.81 In the middle of their lives, many clerics’ domestic arrangements resembled those of the laity, as they sought ways to ensure the legal and financial protection of their children. These arrangements highlight the extent of the men’s resistance to the regulation of their households by ecclesiastical authorities in the later Middle Ages. Children born while a man was in major orders were visible proof of his inability to remain chaste.82 Clerics, we might assume, would therefore want to hide such children from view. However, around the northern Italian peninsula, clerics adopted several different strategies for supporting their children



78 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

through notarial contracts. At times, particularly in Venice and cities in its political and ecclesiastical orbit, priests named their children openly, both in written records and in their social interactions with their neighbors and colleagues. By contrast, some clerics in Venice and many on the mainland were more cautious about identifying the existence of their children in written records, although we can sometimes spot the children lurking between the lines of those records. These differences highlight not only the influence of local social and notarial customs on clerical cultures but also the importance of the flexible interpretation of the law by magistrates and indeed by notaries and their clients in late medieval communities.83 There was notable, inflexible consensus in canon law, local custom, and notarial formularies from every part of Italy and beyond about the status of the illegitimate children of the clergy. Any child born to clerics in major orders shared a profound illegitimacy that was seemingly insurmountable.84 They were not “natural” children—that is, offspring born to couples who were unmarried but legally free to do so—who could inherit property from their mothers and a more limited amount from their fathers. Instead, clerics’ children were grouped among those known as “spurious” offspring—and they had very few rights to inherit from their parents. Some spurii could still inherit from their mothers under certain circumstances, and in certain cases they also had access to “alimentary support” from their fathers.85 However, under this system of classifying illegitimacy, clerics’ children, born as the result of “illicit unions” (damnato coitu), had no inheritance rights at all. This reality was reaffirmed over and over in the civic statutes and legal consilia of the period. In the language of the Venetian statutes, such an illegitimate child “seems to be a son but is not” and was therefore not eligible to inherit.86 Just as their children had no legal right to inheritance because their fathers and mothers could not legally marry, neither did cleric-fathers have a claim to the legal status of pater familias over their children. As only de facto patres familias, clerics did not have the paternal authority of patria potestas—that is, the legal ability shared by lay patriarchs to administer property for their children during their lives and bequeath property to them after their deaths. As a result, clerics’ children could

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

79

not legally depend on their fathers for financial protection. The historian Thomas Kuehn has described children not under patria potestas as “of but not in the family.”87 However, despite these substantial legal limitations on their role as fathers, clerics acted as patres familias in their households.88 Their assumption of this status was evident when they helped train their sons for ordination or other careers, sought to determine their daughters’ futures, adopted children, and made testamentary dispositions for their offspring. Overall, then, fatherhood and patriarchal authority were familiar roles to some clergy on the Italian mainland and in the Venetian lagoon during the fourteenth century. Those clerics who fashioned a role for themselves as patriarchs necessarily rejected one of the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s fundamental desires for a celibate clergy living apart from lay culture. In Venice, clerics and the notaries who worked for them were generally more open about acknowledging their paternal status and claiming authority over their children than were those in other parts of northern Italy. However, even in the Venetian lagoon, there were significant variations in how clerics described and treated children in their testaments. Tracing these differences helps us understand their origins and how they affected children’s lived experience. Some Venetian priests’ testaments eschewed ambiguity and identified children as the priests’ sons and daughters (filii). For example, the priest Bartolomeus Miocato wrote a will in his own hand, leaving the bulk of his property not only to his living children, whom he identified by name and status, but to his unborn child and her mother.89 Similarly, in his testament, Iohannes Campion divided his movable and immovable property between his companion Benvenuta and their filia Fornicta.90 The priest Martinus of the church of Santissimo Salvatore (San Salvador) in like manner left bequests for his filius Iohannes and any other “sons” or “daughters” his companion Magdalena might have by him at a later date.91 It seems impossible that these children would be acknowledged as legitimate legatees after their fathers’ deaths, since they were legal nonentities and therefore not eligible to inherit anything. But these cases highlight both the malleability of the law and the common discrepancy between legal and cultural norms in the fourteenth century.92 It may be that the notaries who used the terms filius and filia to refer to these



80 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

children were looking beyond statutes to make a claim first and foremost about the parents’ domestic arrangements and hence about the children’s ability to inherit. Thomas Kuehn posits that that an illegitimate child might be called a filius (and therefore be understood as a “natural” child) if the identity of his father was “certain”—that is, if his parents were involved in a long-term relationship in a shared residence.93 In the cases mentioned in the previous paragraph, the priest, his companion, and their children all shared a house and likely had for some time. The notary may thus have been treating these offspring as “natural” children, hoping that fideicommissaries would treat them as such. On the other hand, notaries in Venice might also have devised bequests in wills knowing that if they were contested, Venetian magistrates could choose to disregard the law in their decision making. Evidence for such action is found in the work of Sally McKee, who has identified cases from fourteenth-century Venetian Crete in which magistrates recognized the children of slave women as free, despite written laws stating that they were slaves.94 Finally, these cases also resemble the situation Jutta Sperling has described in early modern Portugal, where illegitimate heirs were allowed to inherit because, she argues, “the lack of clear ritual and public markers celebrating the onset of marriage led to fuzzy boundaries surrounding the question of ‘legitimate’ descent.”95 These examples demonstrate that legal strictures around legitimacy were not always congruent, nor did they always shape the way priests behaved with their children. While they were legally denied the role of patres familias, clerics adopted and adapted the role for themselves as a model for their behavior within their families.96 The second approach taken by notaries and clergy in testaments containing legacies for children both in Venice and on the mainland was to avoid identifying a priest’s paternal relationship with his child. Such an approach probably made inheritance possible. For example, as noted in the Introduction, in the will of the priest-notary Francescus de Recovratis, the widow Beruzia and her son Incollelus were named as the recipients of significant amounts of property from the priest’s estate. The priest’s promises to the mother and son, as well as the fact that both were named as his fideicommissaries, strongly suggest that they

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

81

were his companion and child, although nowhere in the will was the relationship made explicit.97 Sometimes clerics identified their own probable offspring simply as children of their mother. The priest ­Antonius, nicknamed Bagatinus, of the church of Santa Maria Formosa, did so in his 1363 will, where he left his estate to his companion ­Francesca and stated that if she died before him, all of his property would devolve to “Marcus, son of the afore-mentioned Francesca.”98 Another notable example of how a priest-father avoided identifying his paternal status to the advantage of his child can be found in a record of a wedding ceremony held in Treviso during the winter of 1351. At that ceremony, Gregorius, the acknowledged son of the priest Petrus of San Zenone, married a girl called Malgarita at the house of a priest called Bonus. Malgarita was identified in the record by the notary Bianchinus de Arena as the daughter of the late dona Agneta. The use of a matronymic to identify her suggests that the father had no legal authority over her, although it is likely that Bonus was indeed her father and the wedding took place at their family home.99 Regardless of the strategies they employed in their testaments to ensure that their property passed to their children, priests and other clerics often acted as patres familias. We have seen their actions on behalf of their sons, housing them and training them for the priesthood in many instances. A priest with daughters was concerned to find her marriage partners or a position in a monastery, just as a lay father would. The Venetian pievano Raymondus, of the church of San Geremia, made a somewhat half-hearted attempt to plan for his daughter’s future in his testament, when he stipulated that if his son Nicolaus died before he reached the age of majority, or if he did not live honestly and well, then his property was to be directed to his sister, for her to either marry or become a nun (maritare vel monachare). Her mother, also named as one of the priest’s fideicommissaries, but not otherwise a legatee, was to decide which of these paths was best for her.100 There is no indication what should happen to her if her brother survived or lived a moral life. More enthusiastic efforts on behalf of his daughter can be found in the testament of the wealthy priest, notary, and moneylender Bartolomeus Pino, who sought an appropriate marriage partner from among local men for his daughter Orsa.101 In his testament, he asked that she be



82 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

given in marriage to one who “cannot be a foreigner, but rather a citizen of Venice and a good man . . . [who] must protect her from obligations (far segura dei deveri) and be an artisan and not a sailor.”102 The testament of Nicolina, daughter of the pievano Iohannes Bon, of the Venetian church of San Maurizio, and a woman called domina Benabia, whom she called “my beloved mother,” records that she was married to a goldsmith of the same parish, Marcus de Vidobono, suggesting that the marriage agreement was the result of her parents’ network of connections within the parish.103 Such networks were also evident in the marriage of the probable daughter of the priest Marcus Constantino, Magdalena, to a man called Antonius Taiapietra, where the closeness between her husband and father can be seen in their shared roles as fideicommissaries of her aunt’s estate in 1397.104 The marriage ceremony of the Trevisan couple Gregorius and Malgarita was a further example of a priest-father taking a paternal role without a legal claim on that role. The priest Bonus was not named as the girl’s father in the record, but he hosted the wedding ceremony and celebration at his house, as a lay father would have done.105 There, before six male witnesses and an indeterminate number of “others” (aliis), Malgarita accepted Gregorius as her “legitimate husband” (virum), and Gregorius similarly declared that he would take Malgarita as his “legitimate wife” (uxor). After a wedding lunch (prandium) that Bonus probably paid for, he and Malgarita together delivered a dowry of cash and goods with a value of 200 lire to Gregorius and his brothers Iohannes and Andrea. Bonus was probably able to exercise these paternal roles because the notary did not publicly acknowledge him as Malgarita’s father. This suggestion is supported by the fact that the priest-father openly mentioned in this record, Petrus, did not play an acknowledged role in the ceremony, although he may have been present among the “others” (aliis) mentioned by the notary as being present at the festivities. As fathers who acted with patria potestas despite their inability to claim that status in law, clerics resisted ecclesiastical attempts to minimize the impact of their children on the clerical household and the Christian church more generally. Their resistance benefited not only their own households but the church itself. Clerics’ sons living and serving in their fathers’ households allowed those households to

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

83

perpetuate themselves. This continuity of roles ensured that benefices would be staffed and the laity provided with the care of souls they sought. The rigid moral position taken by ecclesiastical officials during this period was much less responsive to the pressing realities that faced the church in the wake of crises caused by economic downturns and huge losses of population after the onset of the plague. By contrast, by seeking to provide for their children and by training their sons in the clerical office, clerics created opportunities for the church to grow. Professional Life

As patriarchs in middle age, clerics needed steady incomes to support themselves and their dependents. Many sought income through strategic benefice holding and by participating in commercial enterprises. These activities, too, involved the cleric’s household, both its inhabitants and its physical space. Clerics’ income-producing activities, both inside and outside their churches, further emphasize the extent to which legal constraints on clerical behavior only theoretically shaped their daily activities and those of their households. We begin this discussion with an exploration of the strategy of amassing multiple benefices, known as pluralism. Holding several benefices at a time was a common practice among the clergy, although by the fourteenth century papal officials had long discouraged it. The church’s main objection to the practice was that clerics holding benefices in more than one diocese would be subject to the authority of more than one bishop, thus undermining episcopal claims to independent power.106 However, canonists generally agreed that bishops could issue dispensations to allow the same person to hold multiple benefices in some situations. These included circumstances such as the possibility that a benefice did not come with the care of souls, or if its income was too small to support an individual independently.107 While it was theoretically prohibited, pluralism was probably common, and certainly clerics moved frequently from one benefice to another. Regular entries in the notarial registers of Bergamasque notaries such as Martinus de Ambivere show that benefice-­holding in that community was a fluid aspect of clerical culture. Clerics frequently resigned benefices in favor of other possibly more lucrative positions.108 In Venice, priests and pievani sometimes



84 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

held benefices not only in the city but also on the mainland, especially in Treviso. The Trevisan canon (and friend of Petrarch) Petrus de Baone was also pievano of the church of San Giuliano (San Zulian) in Venice in 1350.109 Another pievano of San Giuliano, Leonardus Cavazza, held land and a house in the mainland city in the 1340s, suggesting that he, too, had a benefice in the region.110 San Giuliano was not the only Venetian church whose clergy were also connected to Treviso; the ­ pievano of Sant’Agostino (Sant’Agostin), Gasparinus Favacio, was also a canon of the cathedral of Treviso in the 1370s and 1380s.111 Apart from rare examples, it is usually difficult to track multiple benefice holding in the written records, since notaries rarely listed all of a cleric’s benefices at once. One significant exception from Bergamo was the controversial and litigious canon and priest Iacobus de Anenis. He was identified by the notary Martinus de Ambivere in October 1353 as “canon of the church of Bergamo and also of the church of Santa Maria de Rivoletella de Arpinis, and cleric and benefice-holder of the church of San Iohannes Canon in Trescure (Trescore), and the church of San Fisini in Prezate, in the dioceses of Bergamo and Cremona.”112 Iacobus appears many times throughout the 1340s and 1350s in notarial records as a witness and participant to notarized transactions, but Martinus and other notaries usually identified him either simply as “Pre Iacobus de Anenis” or by association with just one of his churches.113 Iacobus’ possession of multiple benefices may have been the cause of his downfall. On the day after Martinus de Ambivere described his multiple benefice holdings, Iacobus was “detained in the jail of the lord bishop of Bergamo.”114 Other clerics earned income and developed public profiles by taking on significant and lucrative positions away from home. A striking example of such movement, as well as the family connections that supported it, can be found in the ecclesiastical activities of members of the prominent Boattieri family of Bologna. The family is known for its connection to its patriarch Pietro de Boattieri, a prominent jurist, civic official, and professor of notarial arts in the early fourteenth century.115 Pietro may have left Bologna for Pistoia in response to political turmoil in the city in the 1330s.116 Matteus, one of the sons of Pietro, also ­ventured away from Bologna, in his case during the 1340s, when he served the bishop of Treviso as vicar general. As we have seen, Matteus’

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

85

son also became a cleric in the Trevisan church.117 Matteus’ brother ­Bonincontrus took orders in Bologna in the early 1330s and then later became an abbot of two large Venetian monasteries, first San Cipriano on the island of Murano, and then San Giorgio, the monastery which still sits on the small island directly across from Piazza San Marco in the Venetian lagoon. Bonincontrus, also a legal scholar, cultivated important ties with the city of Padua, and in his 1380 testament, he named a bequest to help found a college for young scholars at the ­University of Padua.118 His will and the subsequent documents prepared by his fideicommissaries also identify Bonincontrus’ personal ties with other clerics and notaries in Venice, including the priest and notary Simone de Robertis, who received a codex from the will.119 A third brother of the same family, Petrus, may not have been a cleric but similarly left Bologna and eventually settled in Padua, where he aided ­Bonincontrus in setting up the scholarship. The reputations and the purses of the Boattieri brothers profited from the contacts they cultivated across the northern Italian peninsula, and their family connections supported and encouraged them over several decades.

Bonds with Extended Family Like Matteus, Bonincontrus, and Petrus de Boattieri, other clerics across the northern peninsula also remained connected to their brothers throughout their lives. Clerics’ brotherly relationships have been little discussed in medieval historiography, but anecdotal evidence suggests that siblings often shared important emotional and legal bonds with each other.120 For instance, brothers often shared a clerical profession. Records of first tonsures in Padua include siblings, and in Bergamo there are several examples of brothers becoming priests and canons of the same cathedral.121 Once they had taken orders, cleric-brothers could also support each other in multiple ways. Sometimes they worked together outside the church. The canons of the Bergamasque cathedral of Sant’Alessandro complained in a 1364 visitation record about their colleagues Tomaxius and Georgius de Roariis, who served in the cathedral together and sold wine and grain in the city.122 A rare example of a documented clerical exchange between two churches also involved



86 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

brothers. Dominus Raynerius, the rector of the parish church of San Cristoforo, in the suburb of Banchette, less than five kilometers from Ivrea, informed the episcopal visitor in 1346 that he held that position as the result of an exchange (permutacionis) he had made twenty-nine years before with his brother, dominus Percivallus. Percivallus had previously held the benefice, which included the care of souls, while ­Raynerius was a “simple cleric”—that is, in minor orders. When they made the exchange, the bishop hastily promoted him to the priesthood, and he stepped into his brother’s position to provide the community with pastoral care. His brother, in turn, took over Raynerius’ benefice in the chapel of Sant’Andrea in “the church [perhaps the cathedral] of Geneva” (ecclesia Gebenensi). The fact that dominus Raynerius remained in his position for such a long time suggests that perhaps he had not been happy in the city and looked to his brother to help him make a change.123 Evidence for the strong and continuing bonds between clerics and their brothers is also evident in a brief letter found among the testamentary drafts of a Venetian notary, Giulianus.124 The letter was sent from a priest in Padua to his brother in Venice in October of an unknown year, likely in the later fourteenth century. In it, a priest who signs himself Zimignanus writes to his brother to explain why he has not written for some time: he is in Padua, where he has found “wine and happy and healthy people.” He would like his brother to come and see him since in person they would be able to work out some business, the nature of which is not described. His other reason for writing is to ask his brother to ensure that two women or girls (perhaps their sisters) who had recently visited him return a cloak or robe (gausape) that they had taken from a wardrobe in his residence. Clearly the two brothers had regular contact with each other, were involved in each other’s affairs, and expected to travel to see each other when it was convenient. Some clerics’ brothers expended significant resources for their siblings, as their legal representatives and even for their physical protection.125 The priest Iacobus de Anenis became embroiled in a lengthy dispute with another cleric in Bergamo over a benefice, and his brother Lombardus, a layman, served energetically as his proctor, writing letters on his behalf to the episcopal vicar, appearing at the bishop’s court, and visiting local notables to try to convince them of the rightness of his

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

87

brother’s case.126 Another more scandalous instance of brotherly support for a priest is documented in a visitation record from fifteenth-­ century Como. In that document, a pastoral visitor noted the claims of several witnesses that a young unmarried (nubilem) woman called Andriola or Magdalena de Torzana had been caught and imprisoned by her father and other male relatives after she was found leaving the gate of the local archpriest’s house, located in the canonry (domum canonicalem) of the village of Nessio. The brothers of the archpriest were thought to have helped her escape from her father, who threatened to kill the priest.127 The long-lasting bond between many of these men is also demonstrated in how they remembered each other in their wills. Priests could be named fideicommissaries or executors for their brothers’ estates, as was the Trevisan canon Petrus de Baone by his brother Antonius, a notary. In that case, Petrus was also his brother’s heir.128 On other parts of the mainland, too, priests and their brothers could inherit from each other, following the laws of testamentary succession as well as strong family connections. In 1349, the Bergamasque priest Albertus de LaTurre made a will in his brother’s house in which he named his two surviving brothers heirs to two parts of his estate, and divided the third part among the children and grandchildren of a deceased brother.129 Extending the connection between clerics and their brothers, nephews were frequently recognized by clerics in their wills as surrogate sons.130 The longstanding tradition of clerics’ tendencies to grant these blood relatives special favors reportedly caused Pope Alexander III to remark that “the Lord deprived bishops of sons but the Devil gave them nephews.”131 The commercial and income-producing activities of middle-aged clerics, then, could depend on their family and household networks for support. Fathers, both cleric and lay, could also provide significant support to their sons in the clergy. For instance, Aristotilles de Lavate, a prominent notary in Bergamo, was the legal administrator of two of his sons, Iacobus and Bertolameus, both canons of the church of Sant’Alessandro. Aristotilles was an active administrator, selling land for his sons and collecting debts owing to them several times in the early 1350s, but his relationship to his sons was never made explicit in those records.132 Also in



88 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

Bergamo, Coradus de Muzzo was the administrator for Bertolameus his son, a beneficed cleric, and he also acted as the proctor for his son’s church, serving at least twice in that capacity.133 In Treviso, too, notaries appeared as proctors for their sons in the priesthood.134 And in Padua in 1378, the father of a priest acted as an intermediary for his son, the new holder of a benefice, in his quest to determine the income due to him from the benefice. Two witnesses before the episcopal court stated that they saw the priest’s father, Magister Guidus de Mereschalchus, enter the cathedral of the city and approach the priest who had formerly held the same benefice, saying that he wanted to ensure his son would be able to collect the income he had been told to expect from it. The exchange became acrimonious when the priest told the father that the income was less than he had expected it would be.135

An Aging Cleric: Graciolus de Sangervasio of Bergamo Having detailed some of the activities common to middle-aged clerics within their communities and the heavy reliance many placed on their natal families and their households throughout their lives, we can use extant records to trace the public and domestic activities of one such cleric over a period of decades. These show important transitions in his status across time, revealing his reliance on his extended familia and his strategic use of the archival record to memorialize and veil aspects of his intimate life. The Bergamasque canon, priest, and notary Graciolus de Sangervasio lived a long and active life in Bergamo during the fourteenth century. Although we cannot be sure of his date of birth, we know that he was a young cleric of less than twenty in 1331, when his father Rogerius died and left him an inheritance.136 In his early adulthood and middle age, he worked as a notary for the canons of Sant’Alessandro and lived among them, serving as a custodian of the church.137 During that time, he also had a companion, about whom no records survive. We do know that the couple had a daughter called Anexina, because she is mentioned in a dowry agreement of 1352, having married a man called Bertulinus, son of the late Iohannes Girardi de Villa. Bertulinus lived in the neighborhood of Borgo Canale, beside the canonry of Sant’Alessandro where Graciolus

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

89

resided, suggesting that Anexina had also grown up in the canonry with her mother. Graciolus likely provided his daughter her dowry of twelve and a half lire. However, since he did not have legal authority over her, the notary Martinus de Ambivere recorded the daughter, and not her father, delivering the dowry to her new husband.138 When he was in his early fifties, Graciolus began to take on positions of increasing responsibility in the confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore and his community of canons. He served as the titular head, or patronus, of the confraternity in 1364, and in the same year acted as the cellarer of the canons of the church of Sant’Alessandro, giving so much time to the confraternity that his peers in the canonry complained that he shirked his duties to them.139 Still in his fifties, he acted as a legal advisor and benefice-holder in other churches inside and outside Bergamo, and then, in his sixties, he held the important post of episcopal vicar general several times.140 These positions did not distance him completely from his birth family or his other household connections; instead, he retained and cultivated relations with his kin and family. In the early 1360s, a wave of plague struck Bergamo, possibly for the first time, and like many of his contemporaries, Graciolus made a will. In that document he demonstrated his concern for both his earthly and ecclesiastical relationships, including his parents and his siblings. He remembered the souls of his father and mother with anniversary masses, and he left land and household items to his nephews. He also directed his notarial registers (imbreviature) to the ecclesiastical notary Francescus Zenaglia, and one gold florin each to a long list of churches in Bergamo and its surrounding area. His list of executors included prominent local ecclesiastics such as the episcopal vicar general and also his brother-in-law, Iohannes.141 In the end, however, his testament of 1361 was premature. Graciolus lived more than twenty-five years after that, although he was not seen in public quite so much as formerly. He continued to live in the canonry of Sant’Alessandro and served as an occasional witness to legal transactions and to the elections of religious leaders in the city.142 He died in the canonry in 1387.143 Two honorific titles are found in references to Graciolus and his peers in the archival records in which they appear: venerabile (worthy of reverence) and discretus (distinguished). Notaries used these titles to



90 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

mark out more experienced clerics from their peers, leading us to believe that older men enjoyed high social status among the clergy. The definitions of these terms are not explicitly tied to chronological age, but they were (and still are) associated with respect for experience gained over time. In Bergamo, notaries identified priests with the titles discretus and, more often, venerabile only after they had spent some decades in the ecclesiastical community. Venerabile was often used to refer to those assuming ecclesiastical offices such as archdiaconates or episcopal vicariates, positions that were reserved for the older members of the clerical community.144 The titles given to Graciolus in archival records reflected changes in his life as he aged, since he became more publicly authoritative over the years. They also cloak the physical challenges he might have faced associated with aging, including frailty and illness. However, other records about aging clerics indicate that the passage of time and its effects posed physical challenges to many. Like their lay counterparts, aging clerics sometimes turned to family members, including their companions and children, for assistance.145 The difference between clerics and laypeople in these cases was that for clergy such assistance might come from illicit intimates and could be punished by ecclesiastical authorities. But communities, unlike bishops, might choose to turn a blind eye to such arrangements if they allowed an aging priest to continue to serve them. In Ferrara, during a pastoral visit in the mid-fifteenth century, a priest admitted that he lived with a woman but protested that the relationship was acceptable since she was there with the consent of the people of the parish, and she was very old (antiquam). Some of the parishioners thought she was eighty years old, which put her above suspicion (carentem omni suspicione). The priest and several others also mentioned that he was “weak” and “otherwise could not live,” suggesting that he, too, was elderly.146 In addition, both grown children and nephews helped priests in church. The nephew of Iohannes, priest of the chapel of San Marco in the church of San Salvador, in Ivrea, was granted a license to serve in the chapel in the place of his uncle, as the older man was too old (senex) to manage on his own.147 And the rector of the church of San Michele in the village of Perli, in the diocese of Ferrara, told the episcopal visitor that his two grown sons lived in a house next to his own

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

91

and that he could not live without their help since he was “old and often ill” (senex et sepe infirmus).148 His parishioners confirmed this and stated that they had no complaint with the arrangement. In this instance, the bishop seems to have accepted the arrangement since he did not scold the priest. The vulnerability of the cleric and the poverty of his household and community might have tempered the reforming zeal of the man’s superiors.

Aging Notaries While aging generally made clerics less visible in public and therefore in written records, one group of them is easily traceable in the archives. Priest-notaries remained in the public eye until their deaths, and many of them enjoyed long careers.149 This means that we can follow their aging process through the material remains of their work in the form of their registers and other written records that in many instances are available from the beginning to the end of their careers. We can also, in some cases, compare notaries’ texts to their descriptions of their households in their testaments. These indicate that while aging presented physical challenges to many clerics, they remained active members of their households and kin networks even in old age. Since their registers and individual acts are dated, and their handwriting is distinctive, notaries’ records serve as valuable sources for tracing the career and longevity of a group of privileged men.150 The priest Iohannes Campion served as both priest and notary at the Venetian church of San Canciano (San Canzian) from the early 1360s until his death in 1400.151 Iohannes was a particularly active notary who was responsible for the creation of hundreds of testaments and other acts for clients from many walks of life in the parish of San Canciano and nearby during his career.152 Several of his registers and hundreds of paper cedole that he stored on behalf of testators survive in both the fondi of the Cancelleria Inferiore and Notarile Testamenti in the Venetian state archive.153 An analysis of changes to the form of Iohannes’ handwriting in these registers over many years hints that aging was a significant physical challenge for him.154 His early records, which date from the 1370s, are characterized by precise, uniform lettering and fairly straight,



92 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

regularly spaced lines. His sign, or signum, too, is precisely rendered in these early records as a fairly elaborate capital “A” enclosed by a carefully drawn capital “C” and topped by a miter under a cross potent surrounded by four balls, similar to a Jerusalem cross.155 Each signum attached to the records from these years is substantially similar to the others.156 Twenty-seven years later, when Iohannes was probably at least fifty years old, his handwriting, while still very legible, had become larger and somewhat less regular. The capital letters of these later documents were larger and less precise than those of his earlier records, and at times his signum was less carefully rendered and more variable from one record to the next.157 The changes to the form of his written records suggest that Iohannes encountered some difficulties with speed and accuracy as he aged, and thus working to the pace he had previously maintained may have been difficult. However, he remained a popular notary in his parish and the wider community, which was just as well, since he was responsible for at least two dependents, his servant Benvenuta and their young daughter Fornicta. His “nephew” (nepos) Iohanninus may also have lived with him. In a fragment of a will written in his own hand dated February 15, 1395, Iohannes emphasized his obligations to his household. He left the residue of his estate to Benvenuta and their daughter Fornicta, noting that she was not yet of the age of majority (etatem legiptimam). If she died before reaching that age, Benvenuta was to inherit the entire estate.158 As he aged, Iohannes was challenged by the physical demands of his career even as he remained an active householder and patriarch.

Conclusion An exploration of the personal culture of the clergy in northern Italy, including those who lived and worked on the mainland and in the Venetian lagoon, requires us to think not only about the regulation of clerics’ morals and domestic circumstances but also about the arrangements that they made for themselves to allow them to manage throughout their lives. Notarial records from the terraferma and Venice reveal that like laymen, clerics made the transition from youth into adulthood through their occupational training and their changing relationships

Priests as Patriarchs 

n 

93

with their kin. Changes to clerics’ roles within their domestic and kin networks—and related changes to the clerical family and familia— would therefore have been a familiar aspect of life for most of the clergy in late medieval Italy. This conclusion points to yet another tension between ecclesiastical ideals for the late medieval clergy and clerics’ actual lived experience. Ecclesiastical theory held that clerics would live apart from the laity, and that idealized boundary between the two groups did exist, although it was unstable and porous. We see its fragility in the form of clerics’ names on the mainland, which sometimes identified them as separate from their lay counterparts. And, most notably, the ideal of a clerical “life course” distinct from the transitions that laypeople passed through during their lives was unsustainable in any part of the peninsula. Throughout the north, on the mainland and in the Venetian lagoon, clerics as well as laymen experienced both the gains and losses that accompanied the passage of time within a household.

chapter four

Nn “She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” Clerics’ Companions

T

he servants,slaves, and kinswomen who lived with clerics in the later fourteenth century come in and out of focus in archival

records, sometimes appearing prominently as named members of their households, and at other times so veiled or obscured that they are almost invisible. Notaries and clerics together crafted depictions of women in records to allow clerics to pass on property, protect their dependents without challenge, and otherwise manage the demands of their ecclesiastical superiors. Church officials’ depictions of the women in clerics’ residences, on the other hand, expressed growing anxiety about the gap between ecclesiastical ideals for clerical life and the practices of many clerics in their communities. Details about the women’s names, origins, and social networks are all embedded in these misshapen records. Like the “granular” texture that Ann Laura Stoler ascribes to the Dutch colonial archive, the records in which clerics’ companions and kinswomen appear highlight the “rough surface that mottles [the archive’s] hue and shapes its form.”1

94

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

95

Names Identifying details about clerics’ female companions could be manipulated, obscured, or suppressed in written records, just as the personal names of clerics might be shaped by the demands of written records and those who made them. The way the women were named and labeled often reflected the needs of the archive, its records, and their creators as much as the women’s actual identities. First, the women’s archival obscurity was in part a function of their gender. Since single and married women in medieval Italy did not enjoy independent legal status and could not serve as witnesses to legal transactions, in many records notaries were not required to identify them with the same precision as they did men.2 Only when the women were named as participants in notarial contracts do we find the name of their male kin appended to their personal names.3 For instance, a Bergamasque woman called Bonasia had a son, Antoniolus, with the priest Martinus Beltenoris of Treviso, priest of the church of Sant’Agatha. In 1352, she and the priest drew up an agreement naming her as the boy’s guardian. In order to make the agreement legal, she had to be identified with filiation, as the daughter of the late Henricus de Agazzis.4 For the same reason, when a priest in Treviso first deposited money with a woman, who then made an inter vivos (“between the living”) donation to their daughter, the records of those transactions identified the woman as dona Palma, daughter of the late Ser Iohannes de Fontanis.5 And a woman who claimed she was owed an inheritance from the estate of a pievano from Treviso was identified in court records as domina Iacobina, daughter of the late Laurencius, nicknamed Matana de Zolo.6 While two-element names for clerics’ companions give historians information about their paternity and their origins, such clear identifications of the women are rare. When they are identified thus, we must avoid falling into the trap of assuming that only those women were high-status or well-known members of their communities. That is, ambiguous or obscure references to clerics’ companions in the archives do not necessarily signify their low social status. For instance, Venetian records contain many women’s names, while those on the Italian mainland contain very few. But the absence of women’s names in mainland



96 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

records does not reflect the absence of the women from clerics’ homes. Instead, it is the result of distinctions in the types of records available to us and of different notarial strategies. In Venice, mainly wills survive, and notaries were more open about explaining clerical household arrangements. On the mainland, women are mostly found in episcopal visitation records, and notaries were much less open about the domestic circumstances of the clergy. Venetian clerical testators named their female companions to ensure that the women received legacies and acted as fideicommissaries, and as a result, the names of more than eighty women survive in those records.7 In visitation records, clerics had fewer incentives to name women specifically—in fact, they had more incentives to obscure women’s identities. As a result, their names were given only infrequently. In the diocese of Ivrea, the two mid-­ fourteenth-century visitation records name only a dozen or so women, all from the 1329 visitation.8 Studying women’s identities through their names is particularly challenging in Bergamo, where both visitation records and the few extant clerics’ testaments tend to obscure clerics’ companions’ presence more than do records from other areas.9 Those records include women who were possibly given nicknames, such as Femina (“woman”) and Cusina (“cousin”), and cases in which testators simply did not name their female legatees.10 These descriptions were intentional efforts to hide women’s presence in the household, not reflections of their shadowy status. A woman identified in visitation records simply as “a concubine” could have been a well-known figure in her community. Women identified in testaments only by their personal names could still be assigned meaningful and substantial responsibilities—for instance, as priests’ testamentary fideicommissaries. In Venice, the priest Iohannes Campion named three fideicommissaries in his 1394 will: Ser Iohannes Fabrum; Servodeus Mazor, priest of the church of San Moisè; and a woman he called “Benvenuta, my servant.”11 Similarly, Vitus, a priest of the Venetian parish of San Basso, identified his fideicommissaries as two men he described as Ser Matteus de Luciano and Angellinus Barone, and also “Christina, my servant.”12 And the priest Servodeus Mazor named two fideicommissaries: the priest Zanchan, identified as the son of Ser Francescus, and “Margarita, my servant.”13

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

97

In only one case in more than one hundred wills was a woman named a priest’s fideicommissary and identified with filiation.14 While the usual form of their names might indicate that the women in question were less socially valuable than their male counterparts, the duties assigned them instead suggest that the women were trustworthy intimates. The form of women’s names in testaments thus belies their role as intimates in the clerical household. Studying how names were recorded can also suggest a disjuncture between theoretical power structures in the clerical household itself and the real relationships between clerical patriarchs and their dependents. For instance, we might assume that the slaves who inhabited many Venetian priests’ households were the most marginal and vulnerable members of the clerical familia, but an analysis of the way notaries recorded their personal names in documents of sale and testaments complicates this assumption. Priests in Venice participated in the purchase and sale of people (mainly young women and sometimes their children) from eastern Europe and sometimes north Africa. When Muslim slaves were brought into clerical and other Christian households in Venice, as elsewhere, the person who had bought them often changed their names. This action symbolically absorbed the enslaved persons into the new culture and established their owner’s dominant position over them.15 For example, a teenage girl from Constantinople bought by the priest Fantinus Rizzo was known as “Casgathon” in her language and was renamed “Catherina” when she came to Venice.16 Another girl, called “Chochus” in her language, was renamed “Christina” when she was sold to the priest Iohannes Bon, pievano of the church of San Maurizio.17 Rather ironically, imposing Christian names on these people marked the change in their status from free to enslaved. A striking articulation of that shift and of the ideal of slaves’ total servility to their clerical masters can be seen in the name for the enslaved woman bought by the pievano of San Leonardo: she was called Leonarda, connecting her not only to her master but also to his church and removing her former identity in the process.18 While slaves were often manumitted in their masters’ testaments, enslavement was so powerful that it remained part of an individual’s named identity after she ceased to be a slave.19 When the former slave of the priest Stefanus Panipolo made her will, the notary called her “Christina Tartara, former



98 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

slave of the priest Stefano Panipolo, canon of San Marco, and now at liberty and free” (quondam sclava presbitri Stefani Panpalo canonici S Marci et nunc libera et francha).20 And when the priest Cosimus de Sclavis, pievano of the church of Sant’Eufemia on the Giudeccha, made his will, he left a bequest to one Cecilia, who he identified as his “former slave” (olim sclave mee).21 Slaves’ former identities were expected to be completely effaced when they were enslaved, but in reality some of the enslaved people in clerics’ households preserved aspects of their original identities and, perhaps, some sense of autonomy, through their names. In several instances, Venetian notarial records suggest that slave women’s original names continued to be used in their new households. For instance, the pievano Gasparinus Favazio paid twenty-five ducats for a girl identified only as “Mamocha” in the record of sale.22 In another instance, a thirteen-­ year-old girl called Agathenha[?] was sold by one priest to another in 1363. She apparently did not have a Christian name, since her name had not been changed in her original owner’s household.23 Other written records also suggest that slaves’ former names remained part of their identities in their Venetian households. For example, the priest ­Bartolomeus, making a will in which he named the mother of his children his heir, identified her as “Margarita called (nominata) Saracena.”24 The nickname probably referred to her former status as a Muslim slave. However, it also suggests that while she had been given a Christian name, this was not the name she was known by in her household or her community. Finally, the example of an enslaved mother and her young son reflects the fluidity of slave naming conventions and the agency of some enslaved peoples in Venice. The document of sale in which the pievano Simone de Robertis bought a mother and her three-year-old son names the woman as Marta and leaves a space for her former name. However, in the same document, the name of the child is recorded as “Isodorus in his language,” and a blank space that follows, intended for the boy’s baptized name, was never filled in by the notary. This absence suggests first that that the mother was known commonly by her Christian name (since the notary would have had to find out what her original name was) and also that her son was known by an “unbaptized” name. It is possible that the slave woman named her own child and

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

99

likely that she spoke her own language to him.25 The absence of a name in a record thus sometimes hints at realities that underpin the written artifact; in this case, the possibility that within some clerical households supposedly subjugated slaves could sustain their own cultural and social practices.

Titles and Labels Names for the women living in clerics’ homes were sometimes accompanied by titles such as “lady” (domina / donna / dona) and “honest” (honesta). These were conventional titles ascribed to many laywomen in the later Middle Ages, used so often that they tend to become invisible to the historian.26 But given the implicit claims that they make about high social status and moral rectitude, the use of these titles for clerics’ companions bears examination. It appears that the choice to adopt or avoid these titles reflects anxiety about the presence of the women in clerics’ households. For instance, in the testaments of priests and their companions from Venice and Treviso, many of the women, including those identified only with their first name, were called domina or dona. For example, in her testament, the title domina was used to refer to the former servant Lucia de Methoni, who had worked for the priest Michael, of the church of San Polo.27 Domina functioned as a moral honorific for the women. This is particularly evident when it was omitted from a record. For example, ecclesiastical authorities never used domina to refer to the women they accused of having sex with priests. An episcopal letter in a formulary from Vicenza identifies one “Margarita,” a woman who was found by night in the house of a priest and was accused of being his concubine. The letter significantly does not refer to the women as domina.28 Similarly, when a case involving the companion of a pievano from the Venetian church of San Rafaele came before the city’s public prosecutors, the Avogadori di Comun, they recorded her name as “Catarina, the concubine (concubina) of the pievano of San Rafaele,” without using any other title to refer to her.29 In other instances, the use of the title honesta to refer to women in intimate relationships with priests hints at anxiety about the women’s moral status in the community. For instance, in Udine, the priest



100 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

Iohannes, son of the late Andrea Pelliparius, made a lengthy will in which he left multiple bequests to a woman he identified as “honesta domina Margareta,” daughter of the late Nicola Morasini and widow of Iohannes Bertossi, peliparius. Later in the will, the children of M ­ argareta were identified as the priest’s “nephews” (nepotes), which would presumably make Iohannes his brother. However, since their paternity was left ambiguous in the record, it is also possible that Margareta was the priest’s companion, and the children were theirs.30 The emphasis on Margareta’s honesty (honesta domina Margarita) could have been an attempt to make her seem a more acceptable heir. The Venetian pievano Lucianus Zeno used a similar title for the fideicommissary named in his 1368 will. She was “the most honest” (honestissima) domina ­Franceschina, widow of dominus Marcus Laurencius, son of the late dominus Paulus Laurencius. The redacting notary, Lucianus’ colleague Domenico Peresemolo, underlined the significance of the title by using it each time he wrote the woman’s name, although in those instances he simplified it to “honest” (honesta).31 Anxiety about women’s presence in the clerical residence on the part of both ecclesiastical officials and the clergy can further be seen in the language that those groups used to refer to the women’s identities in written records. At the highest levels of the Christian church, the labels affixed to women living in clerics’ households became increasingly sexualized over time. For instance, in the canons of the Lateran Councils, the women were initially called “wives and concubines,” while in at the third meeting of the council in 1179, they were identified as “mistresses” (mulierculas).32 More powerfully still, in the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, women living with clerics were not named at all. Instead, canon 14 of the Council discusses penalties for “clerical incontinence.”33 Similarly, in episcopal visitation records, descriptions of the women tended to avoid their names or other individual features and instead labeled them with categories such as “concubine” (concubine), “lover” (amasia), “hearth-tender” (focaria), and “suspect woman” (mulier suspecta). These terms assigned clerics’ companions identities as transgressive, sexual, and servile. Clerics, in turn, sought to control definitions of terms like concubina, as well as words meaning “domestic servant” (serviente, fameio, familiaris) in order to manage

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

101

the perception of their households, protect their dependents, and ensure that their memories would be honored after their deaths. It perhaps goes without saying that the women living with clerics did not use these terms to identify themselves.34 Concubina was a term with particularly fluid meanings in the clerical household. In Roman law, a “concubine” was any unmarried woman in a long-term sexual relationship.35 In other words, concubinage was “a secondary type of marriage,” and the concubine was a quasi-­wife.36 However, this vision of concubinage did not apply to all aspects of the relationship between priests and their female companions. Concubinage was a bond in which the legal quality known as “marital affection” existed. That quality encompassed several aspects, including the consent of both parties to the union, their stability, and their monogamous sexual bond.37 Ruth Mazo Karras sustains that “since a priest and his partner could not legally marry, it was not possible for them to have marital intent, and thus not possible for her to be a concubine in the stricter sense.”38 She posits that the status of a cleric’s sexual partner was closer to that of a meretrix, or whore, whose relationship did not provide her legal protection. Since meretrix was a powerful word, ecclesiastical court officials may have balked at applying it to the female members of priests’ households, who on the whole were as stable as their lay married counterparts. Karras thus interprets the continuing use of concubina to refer to clerics’ companions in ecclesiastical court records as an attempt to “accord [the women] some measure of respect under the law.”39 Supporting her argument is the fact that concubina was used to refer to women in records of episcopal visitations as well as church and civil courts in Bergamo, Padua, Treviso, Udine, and Venice.40 Concubina was also, in Jennifer Thibodeaux’s words, a term drawn from “the language of reform.”41 It placed restrictions on the women’s relationships, denying them the status of a wife (uxor).42 The label also came with obligations attached—most significantly, a woman’s faithfulness as a sexual partner. Therefore, if a priest called his companion his concubina, he established expectations on her moral life, especially the wifely requirements of sexual fidelity and constancy, while allowing her only a limited version of the legal protections enjoyed by an uxor. In



102 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

practice, these limitations included the fact that a cleric’s concubina did not necessarily live in his house, although she could expect that he would provide for her financially.43 The written records in which clerics’ “concubines” are named are replete with examples of women who did not share a roof with clerics but were financially dependent on them. A canon in Udine, asked about the domestic habits of his colleagues, told the episcopal visitor that one had a child with his married neighbour, but he did not know whether the priest “maintained her as a concubine.”44 A papal letter to a priest in Udine supported this definition of concubinage as a sexual relationship that might not include cohabitation when it prohibited him from keeping a concubine in “his own or another’s residence” (domo propria vel aliena).45 Two other canons in Udine were also accused of keeping concubines in a location separate from their own residences (extra domum), and several canons described how the canon Vivianus de Pulcinico, vice-deacon of the cathedral, kept a woman from Padua, but, as one canon explained, she lived “not in his house (domus) but in the village (borgo) of Aquileia.”46 A priest in Ivrea admitted to the visitor that he had a domestic and sexual arrangement with a woman, but he and other witnesses stated that she and their children no longer lived with him.47 In Bergamo, clerics could also maintain women who did not live with them. At the visitation to the cathedral chapters in 1364, the chaplain Lanfrancus de Assonica complained that his colleague Albertinus de Petergallis kept a woman who “sometimes” visited him in his rooms at the canonry.48 Finally, although concubinary couples did not necessarily live together, clerics expected that they would have authority over their female companions. In Ivrea, a witness described the household arrangement of a priest and his companion by noting that although the woman and her children lived separately from the priest, “he rules in her house.”49 Sexual availability and financial maintenance, but not necessarily a shared home life, were therefore at the root of a cleric’s definition of his relationship with a woman he considered his concubina. Some clerics also believed that a concubinary relationship ended when an older couple stopped having sexual relations, even when they remained intimately connected with each other. In Udine the priest Nicolaus, pievano of Turrida, told the bishop that two priests, Pax and Pasculus, lived with

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

103

women over the age of forty, and although the women had previously been their concubines, they no longer were, on account of their advanced age, and instead the priests kept the women to meet their “other needs” (aliis suis necessitatibus).50 But there was no consensus on this issue; some of the priest’s colleagues described the same women as “elderly concubines” (concubinas antiquas).51 When the visitor questioned him directly, Pasculus stated that his former concubine, a woman called Thomasina, had not lived with him for seven years and was no longer financially dependent on him. They had a (now grown) child together, but they had not had sexual intercourse for five years. Although ­Thomasina was no longer the priest’s concubine, their relationship continued, since she lived beside him with “a certain widow” and still came to his house “sometimes.”52 By these priests’ reckoning, concubinary relationships ended when sex and financial support were withdrawn and thus contact between the priest and the woman was no longer illicit.53 Clerics’ ecclesiastical superiors did not agree that concubinage was defined by sexual intercourse. For bishops, concubinary relationships continued as long as any type of intimacy between the couple remained. For instance, in statements after his 1346 visitation to the clerics at Udine, the bishop warned all clerics to stop seeing, eating with, sleeping with, or sharing homes with the women he called their concubines. His description of the “elderly concubines” of the priests Pax and Pasculus reflected his belief that concubinage, like marriage, continued until the death of one partner. The bishop warned the priests that they would be subject to the same penalty as their peers if they continued to see the women: suspension from their positions and the payment of a penalty of two Friulian marks.54 The term concubina was a rare example of a word used for women by both ecclesiastical authorities and clerics themselves, although the two groups defined it differently. Concubina could also be used to refer to women in relationships with both clergy and laymen. Similarly, amasia, which was usually employed alongside concubina in court records to emphasize the financial and sexual bond between an unmarried couple, could be used to name women in relationships with clerics or laymen. Court records from Orvieto reveal that a woman identified as an amasia might receive financial support from her lover but did not necessarily



104 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

share a residence with him.55 In northern Italian records, amasia was most often employed as an intensifier in conjunction with concubina. In court records from Bergamo, for instance, the terms concubina et amasia were used to describe a laywoman having a sexual relationship with a man of the same status.56 In Ivrea, the term was used in a similar way by ecclesiastical authorities, clerics, and laymen throughout the fourteenth century.57 Its stability and general applicability indicate that for some, the women who lived with clerics were of similar status to those who entered informal unions with laymen. A third term, focaria, was used only by ecclesiastical officials to articulate a distinction between the women who lived with clerics and those who shared homes with laymen. Focaria was employed widely by church authorities across western Europe to distinguish the women who were assumed to be clerics’ lovers from other unmarried women in sexual relationships.58 It is significant that of the three labels most commonly used to refer to women in “unmarriages,” the only one used solely by authorities to refer to the women in clerics’ residences was also the most base and servile of the three terms. Focaria had been formerly used to refer to the kitchen maids of Roman soldiers, who were often understood to be the soldiers’ sexual partners.59 In the Middle Ages, focaria was also a synonym for ancilla, the word for a female domestic servant or slave, and its evocation of enslavement and domestic drudgery was likely intentional.60 Many unmarried women seeking to make a living turned to domestic work, and priests often employed women to do these jobs. Just as Roman focaria were understood as servile and sexual, so too were the servants of priests described with this label by those seeking to minimize their influence in the clerical household.61 The uses of concubina, amasia, and focaria thus help us to understand how archival records establish the identities of women in the clerical household. Each of those terms was used by clerics and church officials for their own ends. While they distorted or reframed the identities of women living with clerics and emphasized their lower status relative to their companions, none of the previous labels carried the same negative connotations as terms such as “whore” (meretrix) or “dishonest” or “suspect” woman (mulier suspecta).62 Those labels were commonly

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

105

used in legal texts, court records, and occasionally visitation records. While only certain women could be concubines or focaria, these other terms were more malleable. Any woman, regardless of her social status or her relationship to a cleric, could be labeled as “suspect.” For instance, in the 1234 Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, the text known as the Liber Extra, clerics were prohibited from living with “women suspected of incontinence (incontinentia),” even if they were their mothers, sisters, or aunts.63 The suspect woman, then, could be any woman. Some clerics employed this language when referring to their colleagues’ companions. For instance, in the record of the visitation to the chapters of Bergamo’s cathedral in 1364, most of the canons questioned asserted that their peers had sexual relationships with “dishonest women,” although they usually refused to implicate themselves among this group.64 In other areas and contexts, clerics used the terms more judiciously. For instance, when he asked the cathedral canons of Udine about their female companions in his 1346 pastoral visit, the bishop of Concordia called them “suspect women.”65 In their responses, most of the canons instead described the women as “concubines.”66 Only dominus Vivianus de Pulcinico, the most unpopular of the canons, described his colleague’s companion as a “public whore” (unam publicam meretricem).67 The bishop’s words reflected the common views of ecclesiastical authorities that the women who lived with priests were morally deficient, but the canons’ choice of language appeared to reject that characterization. Clerics’ awareness of the power of language used to describe their companions and their consequent selection of terms to refer to them is particularly evident in their testaments. While concubina and related terms were ubiquitous in records of episcopal visitations across mainland Italy, they were noticeably absent in clerics’ testaments. The choice to avoid the word was probably deliberate. Avoiding such terms ensured that a woman could receive property from her clerical companion. As Ruth Mazo Karras has argued, if a priest admitted a sexual liaison with a woman, she could not receive anything from his estate.68 Therefore, instead of describing their companions as concubines in their testaments, clerics across northern Italy concentrated on other aspects of their relationships with the women. In Venice, for instance, priests often described their female companions as their servants, using



106 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

terms ranging from serviente and servitrix to fameio, famula, and familiaris.69 Some others concentrated on their shared living arrangements, describing the women as “living with” or “staying with” (morabatur /  habitat mecum in domo / que stat cum me).70 By contrast, on the rest of the mainland, clerical testators and the notaries who worked for them sought to obscure the women’s presence in the priest’s household as completely as possible, even as they made similar provisions for the women after their deaths.

Treatment of Women in Venetian Priests’ Testaments Behind the terms serviciale or familiaris lay a broad and fluid range of intimate and sexual bonds that are evident in the types of bequests the men left their companions.71 For instance, the will of the priest Martinus of the Venetian church of Santissimo Salvatore (San Salvador) named a series of legacies to the woman he called his servant, Magdalena, and the couple’s son Iohannes and their as-yet-unborn child.72 As he and his notary laid out those legacies for Magdalena, they imagined two possible outcomes for her future life: one as his “widow,” who would maintain his memory and raise his children, and the other as a single woman with no children who would seek to marry. If Magdalena agreed to raise their children herself, she would be treated in the same way as a layman’s wife (uxor), receiving a portion of all of the movable goods in Martinus’ house, as well as cash and clothing. But if she refused to take the children, she would lose these benefits. In that case, the children would go to live with the priest’s brother Bartholomeus, who was a priest in Padua. They would also receive most of his goods, and Magdalena would receive a bequest more commonly provided to a servant: 118 ducats toward a dowry, identified in the will with the Venetian term for that arrangement: carta securitatis repromisse.73 The bequests in Martinus’ will for Magdalena demonstrates the slippage between the roles she was expected to fill in his household. During his life, she was both an unmarried servant and a sexual partner, and theoretically she could choose which of those roles she might occupy after his death. Many clerics’ bequests to their companions suggest that they saw the women as quasi-wives and sought to persuade them to take roles as

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

107

quasi-widows in their testaments. For instance, priests in their wills often promised their companions personal items such as clothing and furniture. These promises were reminiscent of the content of the corredum, or trousseau, a gift to a groom from the bride’s family on the occasion of their wedding in the later fourteenth century, and often granted back to a wife in her husband’s testament.74 Winter and summer clothes, made from wool and linen, as well as domestic furniture and textiles commonly formed a priest’s bequest to his companion. For instance, Gracianus Graciani drew up a will for his colleague Dominicus Peresemolo in which Dominicus assured his servant (familiaris) Agneta that she could take her clothing from the house after he died, as well as a bed with its coverings.75 Similarly, Iohannes Vido, a canon from the island of Torcello, left clothing, a bed, and household equipment to a woman called Francesca, nicknamed Frescha, who lived with him.76 And the pievano Iohannes of the church of San Leonardo promised clothing to a widow called Benenasuta in two versions of his testament.77 Testamentary legacies from clerics to their female companions sometimes articulated the testators’ protection for the women by promising them even more valuable and symbolically loaded items, including belts and jewels.78 Belts or girdles named as testamentary bequests were items of potential value, practical use, and sexual significance for their recipients. They could be made of valuable metals (including silver) and since they were worn around the waist, they connected with ideas about sex and fecundity.79 Francescus de Recovratis named a silver belt among the possessions that his companion Beruzia could take from his house.80 Similarly, a servant in Udine told the ecclesiastical court that the personal possessions she was owed by a priest included a silver belt. That woman also claimed two more unusual valuables from the priest’s estate: sixteen ounces (uncie) of silver buttons (maspilorum) worth sixteen ducats and a string of paternoster beads worth eight ducats. Silver buttons were sold along with jewels and other valuables in the Venetian market in the area of Rialto and would have been highly valued. There were about fifteen buttons to one ounce, so this servant apparently owned more than two hundred buttons, making this a particularly valuable and unusual set of items.81 Testamentary bequests could also include valuable hair ornaments. In Venice, women wore stropoli, head



108 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

coverings made of silk or velvet and sometimes decorated with pearls and gold. Marta, former companion of the priest Francescus Ferro, named pairs of stropoli among the bequests she left to her female friends and relatives in her testament. It is certainly possible that she had received these as a gift from the priest.82 In exchange for their promises of protection, as we noted above, clerics in Venice expected that their companions would serve, alone or in a group, as their testamentary fideicommissaries. In Chapter 1, we saw that the role of the fideicommissary included significant responsibilities, such as identifying creditors and debtors, distributing the bequests on the testator’s behalf, ensuring that the redacting notary drew up receipts for those distributions, and taking on guardianship of minor children, all (in Venice) in return for the expectation of a share in the estate.83 Pax, a poor priest of the church of San Leone, made one domina Marina of the same parish his fideicommissary and also left her all of his possessions.84 The wealthy and powerful pievano of San Canciano (San Canzian), Lucianus Zeno, similarly named his companion, the widow domina Franceschina, as one of the fideicommissaries of his 1368 will.85 This role was a common responsibility for lay wives in Venice, but since a priest’s companion did not have the legal status of a wife, when she was charged with these responsibilities, she could find herself facing the hostility of the priest’s other kin.86 Other kin and interested parties did contest the ability of companions to inherit from clerics. Near Treviso, domina Iacobina, daughter of the late Laurencius, nicknamed Matana, from the village of Zolo, was named the heir of Pre Petrus, pievano of Zero (Cero), in 1354. Clerics from his collegiate church opposed her inheritance, stating that they were owed at least one-quarter (quartisium) of the estate. They based their claim on the fact that the priest had failed to obtain a license from the bishop to make a will and that the inheritance the women claimed was in reality ecclesiastical property. They also stated that she was only entitled to the priest’s own property (suis bonis propris). Their vigorous contestation of her rights to the estate is evident in the marginal notes on the surviving fragments of the notarial record of the dispute, which reject her claims completely.87 Also near Treviso, a priest called ­Gucelius, pievano of Montebelluna, left a woman called Francisca the

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

109

sum of ten lire in his will, but she was not able to collect since another heir, called Pax, who “had formerly lived with the priest,” challenged the inheritance.88 Priests in their testaments often instructed their companions to live a morally upright life. Such instructions were aimed at maintaining the priests’ honor and their authority as heads of upstanding households after their deaths and perhaps also arose from concern about the reception of their companions as fideicommissaries and legatees. For instance, in 1346, the Venetian priest Donathus Faliero made a will in which he left 16 shillings (solidi grossorum) to domina Agneta, who lived with him, on condition that she would receive the bequest only if she was a “good woman.”89 The priest Iohannes Trivisano cautioned his servant Marchixina that his other fideicommissaries would deprive her of her promised 200 gold ducats and household items if she did not live honestly and if she was not seen to live an honest life. The redacting notary included a superscript addition in the testament about an increased penalty to Marchixina in that case: she would also be ineligible to serve as the priest’s fideicommissary.90 This addition possibly reflected the priest’s desire to place a further consequence on the woman’s behavior, or it might have originated in the notary’s concerns about the trustworthiness of fideicommissaries.91 A priest might also place his female companion in a position to oversee the activities and morals of servants and children in the household, just as a lay widow and mother would be expected to do. The priest Vitus left a bequest for a woman called Dominica, who lived in his house with his other servant, Christina. If Dominica behaved well after his death, staying in his house and living quietly with Christina, she would receive thirty gold ducats and a bed as a dowry. If she did not comply, she would receive only eight ducats. Christina was tasked with the responsibility of assessing her fellow servant’s conduct.92 The relationship of the two women likely resembled that of Simone de Robertis, the notary and pievano of Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola), with the two female servants in his household, Margarita and dona Argenta. Margarita, Simone told the notary Petrus Corozatis, was the servant who had served him in his needs “continuously, obediently, and faithfully.” He rewarded her by naming her his fideicommissary and



110 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

heir to his estate. Argenta also was to receive property from the will in return for her “labor and service,” but Simone refused to commit to an amount, instead telling the notary that Margarita would decide “what is just.”93 The Venetian priest and notary Domenicus Peresemolo lived with a female servant-companion and a slave woman in the later fourteenth century. In his 1378 will, he left Agneta, his servant, the familiar legacies of “all of her clothing, both linen and wool,” in addition to cash, several items of furniture, and a painted icon.94 To his slave he left a smaller bequest of a bed, her clothes, cash, and her freedom. The discrepancy, while subtle, indicates that the two women occupied different ranks in the household. A few priests also left legacies for their companions and fideicommissaries contingent on the women’s care for the priests’ children.95 For instance, the priest Petrus Salpa, of the Venetian church of Santi Apostoli, named his servant Isabela one of his fideicommissaries and left her most of his goods, provided that she remained with their three children after his death.96 The priest Martinus, of the church of Santissimo Salvatore, mentioned earlier, left his servant and companion Magdalena a large bequest provided that she raise their children herself.97 Sometimes priests also gave their companions specific instructions about which aspects of the children’s lives they could control. For instance, the pievano Raymondus allowed his companion, the mother of his two children, to make the decision about whether their daughter would marry or enter a convent.98 Even if the cleric’s companion was not necessarily the children’s mother (or was not acknowledged as such), she might be assigned the role of guardian. The priest-notary Domenicus Diedo asked his fideicommissary Caterucia to care for four children he identified as “nephews” (nepotes) after his death in exchange for the remainder of his estate after other bequests were distributed. Caterucia was not identified as the children’s mother.99 Similarly, when the priest Bartolomeus Pino died in Venice, his teenage daughter was left in the charge of one of the priest’s servants, Caterina, who was paid to provide her with shelter and food. Whether Caterina was also the girl’s mother was never identified in the records.100 Although clerics treated their companions as wives when that arrangement suited them, we should not assume that they considered their

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

111

relationships as exactly the same as lay marriages. Other details from their testaments reveal that clerics distinguished their relationships from those of their lay peers when necessary. For example, in their testaments, clerics usually avoided references to emotional attachment. Lay testators in the later fourteenth century often referred to their “beloved” wives, but I have identified only one example of this language in a priest’s will. Pre Nicolaus Trivisino, making his will in Venice in 1362, included a bequest for the soul of a deceased woman, whom he identified as “my beloved (amada) dona Fosca.”101 The absence of references in their testaments to priests’ emotional bonds with living women is notable but not surprising, since such references would serve no purpose in the record. In fact, such inclusions might antagonize other heirs and ecclesiastical officials. The exclusion of such language from these records does not necessarily mean there was no affection in the relationship itself, but it certainly served to reinforce the women’s status as not-wives and also emphasized their lack of agency within their relationships. Further evidence of clerics’ perception of the difference between lay marriages and their own relationships is highlighted in several records of property transfer prepared by Venetian clerics for their companions. These records, promissory notes (cartae manifestationis) in which priests asserted that the women who lived with them could demand cash in lieu of their own property, underline the servile nature of the women’s status in their relationships even as they provided financial protection for the women. The records were predicated upon the claim that the women had brought property with them into the priests’ homes and could take it “back” with them when they left. The arrangements made for the women were sometimes quite generous. For instance, the priest Victor Ferro made such a pledge of 200 ducats to his companion Agneta in return for valuables that she had brought into their home, including clothes embroidered (fulcitis) with gold and silver, as well as jewelry (iocalibus).102 Similarly, the priest Pasqualinus from the church of San Leonardo promised a widow called Chaterina “all that I now have in this world and will have in future” because, he stated, she had brought household items (massariciis et arnexiis) and money into his household. He, “not wishing to be ungrateful,” was indebted to her for the items or their value, which he also estimated at 200 gold ducats.103



112 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

These amounts were essentially promises of financial security. They were equal to the stipulated value of the corredum in Venice and were much higher than the standard testamentary bequest for a servant or the average dowry for either artisans or women of middling status during this period.104 However, these promises also highlighted the temporary nature of the couples’ relationships in relation to legitimate marriages, which were expected to endure until the death of one or both partners. The records suggested that not only could the woman claim the property at any time, but similarly her companion could end their alliance when it was useful to him in exchange for the property named in the document.

Vulnerability and Invisibility The few testaments created by clerics’ companions reveal a group of women who perceived their companions as authoritative and powerful.105 For instance, the brief testament of Coleta, companion of the priest Bartholomeus of the church of San Barnaba, uses servile language to refer to Bartholomeus, calling him “my lord” (domino meo).106 Another Venetian woman, Cecilia, who was described in her will as “living with (habitans cum) the priest Antonius Davidi,” also called the priest domino. She made the priest her fideicommissary in her 1404 testament.107 The women’s subjugation to their clerical companions is also evident in the fact that while clerics usually promised other legacies to family and friends and before promising the residue of their estates to their female companions, this tiny group of priests’ companions left all of their possessions to the clerics they had lived with. Vendramina, the servant (serva et familiaris) of the pievano Franciscus de Cavazza of the church of Sant’Agatha, named the priest as her fideicommissary and left him all of her property.108 Often described in written records as master–servant relationships, the companionate bonds between clerics and women found in Venetian records actually comprised elements of both domestic service and lay concubinage or even marriage. As we have seen, these relationships mingled an emphasis on the women’s servility with expectations that they would fulfill wifely responsibilities when asked.

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

113

We might be tempted to assume that the near-complete absence of lengthy descriptions of female heirs or legatees in mainland clerics’ wills means that such relationships were largely confined to the Venetian lagoon and its subject territories.109 However, once again we must remember that archival invisibility does not always signify real absence. Court records and visitations indicate that some (perhaps many) clerics lived with female companions on the mainland, but for the most part, the women were not a visible presence in extant testaments.110 But if we look carefully, we can see that at times companions were hidden in plain sight in the testaments of mainland clerics. The most striking example of such a strategy can be found in a record from Bergamo dated August 1330, when the priest Mafeus de Albenio set his affairs in order in a number of acts redacted by the notary Gerardus Soiario while Mafeus lay dying in his house in the canonry of San Vincenzo, near the bell tower of the church. The first of these acts was his sale of land to a widow called Bonacosa, who paid him the large sum of forty lire for the property.111 On the same day, Mafeus dictated his will to Gerardo.112 Bonacosa was not named in that document, suggesting that the two were not close, and giving the impression that the sale of land to her was simply a business transaction designed to ensure that he had cash to distribute to his heirs in his will. However, Mafeus’ will also contains suggestions that the two shared an intimate relationship. After the priest had named several bequests of personal items to be distributed to his kin, he stated that there were a number of objects in his house, including a bed, bedcovers, furniture, and kitchen implements, that were not his property. He instructed that those items be given by the “nephews” who had shared his home “to that person or persons to whom they belong” (illi vel illis quorum sunt), stating that the nephews would “know the truth” about the identity of their owner.113 Less than a week later, Bonacosa herself appeared at the house of the now-­deceased Mafeus to collect “all of those utensils and that bed with its coverings which she had in the said house” (omnia illa utensilia et quemdam le­ctum cum aparatibus que et quam habebat in dicta domo).114 These transactions indicate that at the end of his life, Mafeus left property to Bonacosa or gave her back the property that she had brought into their relationship. The money that changed hands between them before his



114 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

death could also have been designed to ensure that she would be able to take control of the land after his death. In addition, the “nephews” might have been the couple’s children, charged with ensuring that their mother be taken care of in her widowhood. Bonacosa’s near-invisibility in her companion’s testament was likely a reflection of her insecure legal status and the fact that on the mainland, the women who lived with clerics were vulnerable to censure or even expulsion from their residences if ecclesiastical authorities were alerted to their presence and decided to act on it. Although the papacy in the thirteenth century had allowed bishops to simply fine clerics who kept concubines, the officials of the episcopal court in Bergamo sometimes demanded that clergy expel women from their houses.115 In extreme cases, the court also commanded that the women be banished from the city or town in which they had been living.116 Court records show that clerics sometimes heeded these demands, apparently leaving their women without any shelter or support. For instance, in Bergamo, the disgraced priest Belebonus de Cavazzis left the young woman he had lived with for several years and made plans to go to Bologna.117 Bishops’ registers from other centers on the mainland, including Padua and Treviso, and later Ferrara and Como, also contain records in which concubinary clerics were instructed to expel women from their houses, towns, or even dioceses.118 Records suggest that not only were they subject to the authority of church officials, women living with clerics on the mainland were also vulnerable to their neighbors’ censure. The notarial registers of Bergamo’s episcopal curia contain records hinting at hostile attitudes to clerics’ companions brewing under a surface of apparent tolerance. For example, neighbors sometimes betrayed the women to ecclesiastical officials when the clerics they lived with had displeased them in other ways.119 The “exposure” of priests’ illicit relationships to the court followed other accusations about their conduct. The results of such revelations could be particularly damaging to the women, more so than their clerical companions.120 I have found no instances of clerics losing their benefices over these issues, although church officials did sometimes threaten to remove them, but the women could and did lose their homes, access to their children, and their already-fragile standing in the

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

115

community. Some historians assert that legal scholars criticized priests’ concubines while community members accepted them. Instead, it appears that members of the community understood the women’s vulnerability and sometimes used it as a weapon to punish unpopular members of the clergy.121 In addition, the vulnerability of women living with clerics everywhere was compounded by the fact that if a cleric desired, he could simply assert, as did the Venetian canon Rodolfus de Sanctis about his former companion Franceschina, that she was “not his wife but a servant” (non est uxor mea vel serva).122 Rodolfus and Franceschina’s relationship was particularly fraught; he told friends in his letters that he was unsure whether Lucia, the daughter born to Franceschina during their relationship, was actually his, and in his testament, he called her “Lucia, my so-called daughter” (Lucie filie mee, ut dicitur).123 Many other relationships were probably based on stronger bonds, but the threat of such assertions must have always lurked in the background for most women. And any clerics who denied their quasi-marital relationships with women who had come to them as domestic servants could also refuse to pay the women their wages, leaving them doubly disadvantaged.124 The wealthy archpriest Hermolaus de Porte left his servant Agnes a bed and “the clothes on her back” since, he wrote, “she is not to receive any salary from me.”125 The choice of language in the will suggests the priest’s resistance to paying her rather than an agreement worked out between the pair. Sometimes the payments priests refused to make were substantial amounts that must have accrued over many years. Caterina, daughter of a Florentine immigrant to Udine, demanded payment of her wages and return of personal items and clothing equivalent to the amount of ninety-four gold ducats from a priest called Iacobus de Semerdenchia (Sammardenchia).126

Support While clerics’ companions were vulnerable to the loss of wages and even shelter if their relationships with their companions and employers soured, in some cases, they solicited and sometimes found support from those around them. Women who found themselves denied payments by



116 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

clerics sought support from friends, notaries, and the courts. In Udine, a married woman called Candida lived with a priest for twelve years as his servant but did not receive wages at the end of her service. She petitioned the episcopal court with her claim, and the notary she retained went to significant lengths to ensure that she would receive the disputed amount. In the petition he presented on her behalf to the court, he initially wrote that she had “stayed and lived with” (stetit et habitavit cum) the priest, but then he crossed out “lived with” and replaced it with “served as promised” (servit ut promititur). He also noted that the request was “honest” (honestum).127 In another case, domina Lucia de Methoni, the former servant of the priest Michael of San Polo, asked Margarita, her fideicommissary, to distribute the proceeds of her estate, an amount of twenty-one gold ducats less a loan of three ducats. She was owed the entire amount from her salary but had not received that salary at the time of her death, and so her fideicommissary would have to demand it from the priest or his estate.128 The example of the notary Luca de Orlandis and his efforts to assist women who lived with one Venetian priest in the 1380s also suggests that the notaries who worked closely with clerics and their companions perceived the women who lived with priests as vulnerable members of the community, and sometimes acted to support them. Luca redacted the testament of the woman called Marta, wife of the sailor Iacobus di Bonincontrus, who lived in the parish and confinia of San Vitale, in 1380. As noted in Chapter 3, not long before this and presumably before her marriage, Marta had given birth to a son called Iohannes with ­Franciscus Ferro, priest of the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini. In the testament she drew up with Luca, Marta promised a bequest of forty ducats to the little boy and asked the priest to bring him up until he reached age sixteen. If Iohannes died before that time, the bequest would remain with the priest, for Marta’s soul.129 This promise was unusual enough, but other details from the testament also stand out. Most significantly, her will reveals that Marta had probably not lived with the priest for long and that she relied on a network of ties with women in her community for physical and financial sustenance. She told the notary that her husband had left Venice, and she did not know if he was dead or alive. Perhaps out of need to provide for herself and her son, she

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

117

had developed a business as a pawnbroker. At the time of her illness, she had clients including at least one female doctor (medica), a woman called domina Lucia, from the confinia of San Moisè. Marta’s connection with Lucia must have been longstanding, since she named the doctor one of her executrixes and left her one ducat as a bequest. (Her other fideicommissary was a woman called domina Elena, from the confinia of San Barnaba.) Marta—and, we assume, her son—was also living with another woman, domina Colleta, wife of dominus Michael of San Vitale, at the time of her illness. She left her landlady’s daughter a bequest of ten gold ducats to serve as a dowry. The rest of her estate, an unspecified amount, she promised to her husband if he could be found. Marta had cultivated important connections to other women in her parish and beyond during her marriage and likely during her previous relationship with the priest. Her activities as a pawnbroker seem to have earned her a reasonable living, at least according to her will, with its several bequests of gold ducats and valuable ornaments to those close to her. She may have been forced into this position since her relationship with the priest and her subsequent marriage likely did not provide her with much security. Marta’s relationship with the priest Franciscus de Ferro resonated with Luca de Orlandis in the years after he redacted her will. His memory of Marta’s circumstances was evident in his own testament, dated nine years after Marta’s, where he displayed a rare awareness of the vulnerability of women in her position. In that document, he directed legacies to several women who lived with priests. Most notably, these included five gold ducats to “Ursa, the daughter of Zanina,” who was living with (qui moratur cum) Marta’s former companion ­Franciscus de Ferro at that time.130 Luca stipulated that the money was to be used to allow Ursa to marry. Unlike Marta, he ensured that his legacy would not go to the priest, stating that if Ursa died before she could marry, the money was to be given to her mother Zanina. The identification of Ursa and Zanina in the will is ambiguous; it is not clear whether Ursa was the priest’s companion or his daughter. But Luca’s concern for Ursa’s circumstances is clear, as is his understanding of the temporary nature of women’s tenure in the priest’s household. His legacy implicitly establishes lay marriage as the ideal for all women, including those living



118 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

with priests. Ironically, perhaps, Luca himself appears to have lived with a female companion. Rare among his Venetian colleagues, he did not identify his own household arrangement in his testament, naming neither servants nor slaves as recipients of legacies. He did, however, ask one of his fideicommissaries, the pievano Iohannes Gazo of the church of San Giovanni Battista Decollato (San Zan Degolà) to distribute twelve gold ducats in his name “to that person whom I mentioned specially in confession.” This statement, seen in the context of his careful and sensitive treatment of the women who lived with other priests, probably alludes to an intimate domestic arrangement that Luca did not want to make public, one that he felt he could reveal only to his confessor. His sense of the sinful nature of his own domestic circumstances and the possible vulnerability of women in similar situations may have shaped his testamentary decisions to support them.

Companions as Mothers So much information about the women who lived with clerics is presented to us through a filter of clerical or ecclesiastical needs that it can be difficult to disentangle the “real” lives of the women from the shaping language of notarial records. But those records do provide fragments of details about the stages of life the women experienced in their households. These indicate that their status was especially contingent on the age and gender of their children. Women of childbearing age were particularly subject both to the authority of their clerical companions and to the gaze of the community. But once their children were grown, and especially if they had sons who followed their fathers and became priests, these women could enjoy rare positions of honor in their communities as “priests’ mothers.” In addition, while the presence of almost all women in clerics’ households challenged the ecclesiastical ideal of a chaste and isolated clerical ordo, in reality the women’s presence sustained those households in meaningful ways. Their documented activities also reinforce the notion of the archive as memory-­ maker, since in crucial moments their legal and archival identities diverged from their social realities. Analysis of the women’s lived experiences thus provides another example of how the cleric’s domestic

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

119

world simultaneously resisted ecclesiastical strictures, protected its inhabitants, and affirmed a place for the cleric and his dependents between lay and ecclesiastical spheres. Many clerics’ companions first become visible in the archive as the mothers of priests’ children. They were usually named as such in circumstances where it was legally necessary. For instance, priests sometimes sought protection for their children by naming the children’s mothers as their legal guardians. This decision not only resulted in the women’s identification as mothers in the archival record, it also had legal ramifications for both members of a couple, since as guardian, a woman would be held responsible for the administration of her children’s property until they were of age. However, in practice, such arrangements had only minimal effect on the couple’s actual relationship with their children and did little to undermine the priest’s de facto role as pater familias. Nor did these arrangements provide women with more real authority or indeed visibility in their households or communities. For instance, in 1352, Bonasia, who as we have seen was identified in records as the daughter of the late Henricus de Agazzis, went to the church of San Vincenzo in Bergamo to draw up an agreement with the priest Martinus Beltenoris Trevisani, the father of her young son, Antoniolus. As the result of that agreement, she became the guardian, or tutrix, of Antoniolus, meaning that she would administer the property of their son until he was fourteen years old.131 Becoming her son’s guardian gave Bonasia a new legal role, but it did not have a marked effect on her domestic life. The priest, Bonasia, and their son continued to live together, and Bonasia remained financially dependent on the priest.132 Only in legal terms was she independent of him and the sole provider for their son. Thus, the notarial record naming Bonasia as tutrix reflected the couple’s understanding that their relationship had two aspects: its formal, legal manifestation, explicitly recorded by the notary and therefore visible in the archive, and the more informal, dayto-day version in which the priest continued his role as patriarch and Bonasia’s status was unchanged. In a similar manner, when Martinus came to draw up his will in 1358, he drew a distinction between the requirements of the legal record and the daily life of his household. Bonasia and the child were almost invisible in the record, but Martinus



120 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

promised a bequest of furniture and clothing to an unnamed “child” (puer) who was almost certainly his son. By not naming Bonasia and by obscuring the identity of Antoniolus in the record, Martinus and the notary could avoid the will being challenged by other kin, ecclesiastics, or civic authorities.133 The arrangements that Bonasia and Martinus made with the notary suggest that when illegitimate children were young, mothers were (apparently) willing participants in the creation of strategies to protect them. They also indicate that both members of a couple would have been aware of the need to use notarial records to ensure the protection of their children. Another striking example of the participation of a priest’s companion in such a transaction comes from Treviso, where in March 1366, the woman identified as dona or domina Palma met with a notary and two witnesses in the house of a priest called Alexandrinus, the father of her daughter, Beatrice. The notary stated that years before, in 1353, Palma and the priest had drawn up a contract stating that he owed her fifty lire. That earlier transaction was likely framed to allow later exchanges to take place. Certainly it allowed the priest to pay Palma his fifty-lire “debt,” thus canceling the earlier act in which it had been recorded and giving her “back” her money in the form of fifty gold ducats.134 Paying back the debt in ducats, rather than the original lire, meant that the actual sum that domina Palma received was substantially larger than her original debt.135 A subsequent record dated the same day as the first transaction indicated the reason for this arrangement: it allowed Palma to make a substantial donation of property, comprising thirteen pieces of land in the nearby villages of Vilorba and Fontanis, including a house with an oven (furno) and one piece of property bordering on land owned by the cathedral canons of Treviso, to her daughter Beatrice.136 The notary identified the total value of that property as fifty ducats, the exact sum that domina Palma had received from the priest.137 In this instance, not only the notary and the priest but also his companion likely colluded to devise a strategy to provide the daughter with a secure financial future. Like Palma, whose relationship with the priest traced back at least thirteen years, other women lived in intimate relationships with clerics for decades. Those women described in visitation records as “elderly”

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

121

concubines had likely entered their clerical companions’ households when they were young and had grown old there.138 In some cases, priests asked about their relationships in visitation records noted how long they had been with a woman, perhaps in an attempt to convince the bishop of the stability of their household arrangements. A woman called Iacobina lived with a priest in Ivrea as his concubine for fourteen years, and they had three daughters and a son together.139 A Bergamasque woman lived with the priest Mayfredus de Vicolungo for at least twenty-­ four years.140 A woman in Como called Francischa lived with a monk in the monastery of Santa Maria de Dona for eighteen years, and a priest in Ferrara told the bishop he and his female companion had been together for twenty years.141 Such stability was an important aspect of the definition of “marital affection,” and it is possible that these men were trying to establish their right to a quasi-marital relationship with assertions of the length of their relationships.

Clerics’ Companions as Priests’ Mothers As they aged, and in particular after their companions died, the women who bore male children with priests in northern Italy could experience a change in their own fortunes if their sons sought ordination. While in normative ecclesiastical records church officials increasingly painted all women in clerics’ households with the same brush, during the later Middle Ages in communities across northern Italy, priests’ mothers were routinely set above other women and given special treatment. Former priests’ companions seem to have been included in this category. We see the special honor done for all of these women first in the form of their names in notarial records. Women were normally identified in relation to men as their daughters, wives, or widows. However, in some records, notaries gave the bonds of priest-mothers with their cleric-sons precedence over the women’s other kinship ties. For instance, in the fourteenth-century membership list of the confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore of Bergamo, compiled by local notaries, a woman called domina Semperbella was identified not as wife or daughter but as the “mother of the priest of [the church of] Sant’Alessandro.” Another woman, domina Giulia, was similarly identified as the “mother of the



122 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

priest Ayalsus.”142 In some records, even the woman’s first name was effaced while her status as priest’s mother was highlighted, as in the example of “the mother of the priest Antonius de Adelasie,” recorded several times giving donations to the Bergamasque confraternity of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna.143 The title of priest’s mother is particularly evident in Venetian notarial records, where in the women’s own testaments, those of their sons, and of members of the community, they were identified as matres presbitorum.144 This naming practice probably originated in the respect the women commanded in the community. Antonio Rigon, drawing on examples from Padua, posits that association with clerical sons, nephews, and brothers was particularly honorable in the later Middle Ages.145 While such naming practices may have been intended to honor the women, they had other effects. First, by highlighting the women’s relationships to their sons, they effaced their relationships to other men, including their husbands, companions, and fathers. Once their sons became priests, women who were legally married, those who had been widowed, and even the companions of clerics could share the same status and be identified in the same terms. But while these practices might suggest that the women’s identities were entirely defined by their relationships with their sons, other notarial documents of practice, especially those from Venice, portray the lived experience of priests’ mothers as richer and more complex than that suggestion allows. Evidence from the testaments of a small number of priests’ mothers suggests that some of those women also enjoyed extensive social and kinship networks both inside and outside their parishes, while others were more isolated and dependent on their sons for support. Regardless of the nature of their social personae, all of the women were closely involved both in their sons’ development as clerics and in their later careers as priests. The honor that was shown to them as priests’ mothers gives us a rare insight into outsiders’ perceptions of the clerics’ kinship networks and underscores the prominence of the clerical household and familia in late medieval communities. Some women actively encouraged their sons toward ordination from childhood. They might begin by ensuring that their sons received a good basic education. While we have little direct information about

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

123

education among families of lower or middling status, evidence from very high-status families suggests that in those households, mothers were normally their children’s first teachers and spiritual guides.146 Giovanni Dominici famously encouraged mothers to help train their sons by having them play at celebrating the mass, with miniature altars decorated for the purpose.147 Then, as a young man entered minor orders, his mother could encourage him to move toward ordination in the priesthood. Some women provide explicit encouragement of this type in their testamentary bequests. A Venetian woman called Marta, mother of a young cleric in minor orders, made a will before she left on a pilgrimage “to follow the path of the apostles Peter and Paul.” In it, she instructed her fideicommissaries to use part of her dowry (repromissa) to make her son an embroidered liturgical garment, along with two kerchiefs (facitergia) and two cloths (tovalia), to be given to him when he was ordained. All of these objects were designed to be used in the ordination ceremony, with the kerchief or facitergium used to bind the priest’s hands and then, legend has it, given back to his mother so that she might be buried with it, to present it to Peter when she entered the gates of Paradise as evidence that she had given birth to a priest.148 The bonds between ordained priests and their mothers often endured, with some priests providing their aging mothers shelter and protection, especially once the women were widowed or otherwise alone. Fragmentary evidence describes priests’ mothers sometimes living in their houses. A parishioner in fifteenth-century Ferrara told the episcopal visitor that his priest lived an “honest life” with two women: his elderly mother (matrem antiquam) and a niece who was promised in marriage to a local man.149 Venetian evidence also points to similar arrangements for priests’ mothers in their homes. Back-to-back legacies for a priest and his mother in the will of the priest Iohannes de Sabloneda of the church of San Felice suggest that the two were living together.150 Financial arrangements between priest-sons and mothers also indicated the women’s possible dependence on their sons. Francischina, mother of the Venetian priest Bartolomeus Coroso, dictated her will to D ­ omenicus Peresemolo in 1370 before a pilgrimage to Rome. She named ­Bartolomeus one of her fideicommissaries, along with one of her daughters. Her financial involvement with her priest-son was of long standing. Seven



124 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

years before she made her will, Francischina had received one hundred gold ducats from Bartolomeus as partial repayment of her dowry after the death of her husband, and she was named among the priest’s household members in a record of his acceptance of a deposit of gold ducats in the following year.151 The close connection between some priest-sons and their mothers can further be seen in priests’ wills in which the men made their mothers their fideicommissaries. We have previously seen that laypeople often named their spouses to this role, while priests often named their companions.152 However, about 10 percent of the Venetian priests whose wills I examine in this book asked their mothers to serve in this role, either alone or with one or two other trusted individuals. In almost all cases, the clerical testators who named their mothers to these positions did not have female companions. For example, the archpriest Franciscus Galvanis, a highly educated man with a network of clerical and lay connections across the city, named his “beloved mother ­Magdalena” as his sole fideicommissary and commended his soul to her. Franciscus did not leave anything to a female servant or companion in his will.153 The priest Philipus, of the church of Santi Gervasio e ­Protasio (San Trovaso), named his adoptive mother Clara as his fideicommissary, along with the pievano of the church of San Vito (San Vio) and a smith from the nearby parish of San Barnaba. Like Franciscus Galvanis, Philipus lived without a companion, although he did mention a woman he called “my lady” (domina mea) who had left him some household items when she had died.154 Similarly, the 1371 will of the priest Franciscus of the church of Sant’Agata named the priest’s mother Sonia as his fideicommissary and promised her a chalice (which he told her she could dispose of it as she saw fit), his clothing, and the remainder of his estate after she had distributed other bequests to his few legatees. He does not seem to have had a companion, since no other household member was named in the will.155 Fideicommissaries frequently received the residue of an estate, so the mothers named to distribute testamentary bequests also received property from their sons. Presbiter Thomas, a canon of San Marco, also left the bulk of his estate to his presumably widowed mother, whom he also asked to serve as his fideicommissary, along with one of his brothers.156

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

125

Iacobellus Rosso, deacon of church of San Barnaba, also left his mother property in this way.157 Finally, the pievano Lodoycus Falconi of the church of Santo Stefano left 1,000 Venetian denari in his will for the purchase of a property in the area of Treviso where his mother ­Requiliana, also his fideicommissary, could live for the rest of her life. After her death, the property would pass to the church and clergy of Santo Stefano.158 The testaments of most priests in Venice thus indicate that mothers and companions normally did not live together at the priest’s house. Apart from their identification of mothers or companions as fideicommissaries, priests’ testaments usually include a bequest for either a mother or a companion—not both. Only in one case did a priest who named his mother as his fideicommissary also leave a legacy for a female servant. Iohannes, priest of the church of Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola), named his mother Benvenuta, his father ­ ­Bartholomeus, and his “dearly beloved” brother Luca as his testamentary fideicommissaries in 1389. The first bequest he named in the will was for his servant, a widow called Dominica, who had served him for the preceding three years. He promised her the salary due her (eight ducats for each year she had served him), as well as the small bed with its cover and sheets that she had brought to his house when she had come to live with him. And although he left the remainder of his estate to his parents after other bequests had been distributed, Iohannes also “recommended” Dominica to them, likely in the hope that they would provide her with further protection.159 The absence of a formulaic statement in this testament warning the family not to molest or bother Dominica is striking, since such statements were common in other clerics’ wills. This rare example of a priest including both his companion and his birth family in his testament suggests that in the majority of cases, priests kept their natal kin and their companions separate from each other during their lives and after their deaths.160 But of course not all relationships were as harmonious as those described above. Living together could strain the bonds between mothers and their cleric-sons. The mother of a priest in Treviso went before the episcopal court in 1392 to demand the usual amounts of grain and cash her son had been “accustomed” to providing her annually in



126 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

the past, probably because he had stopped providing them to her.161 Likewise, parishioners in fifteenth-century Ferrara complained to the episcopal visitor that chaplains did not normally stay long in the house of their local archpriest because of a “defect in his mother,” who presumably shared his house.162 A priest and his mother could be joined by ties of intimacy, if not affection, and the role of priest’s mother might confer on a woman some measure of public distinction and approval during her life. However, we should not assume that these women were a homogeneous group whose lives were entirely dedicated to serving their sons’ needs. The wills certainly indicate that regardless of their previous relationship status (either as legitimately married wives or clerical “concubines”), the women found new and honorable status in later life as priests’ mothers. They also demonstrate that priests’ mothers (both former clerics’ companions and legitimately married women) cultivated ties with a varied network of kin and friends throughout their lives. Some lived and worked with their sons and had few other social connections; others enjoyed a more autonomous social and religious culture.163 A close reading of a few surviving wills of priests’ mothers in Venice and Treviso can help us understand both how the women’s identities were reframed in later life and the relationships between those identities and their social networks. Some women appeared to embrace the effacement of their previous identities as they wholeheartedly adopted a role as priest’s mother. Such an attitude is evident in two testaments, one for a widow near Treviso and the other for a woman who was likely a cleric’s former companion in Venice. In these testaments, the testatrixes and their notaries described the close rapport between the women and their clerical sons. Domina Margarita, widow of Iohannes, called Zimma[?] and mother of the priest Zaninus, was from the town of Feltre but lived with her son in Villa de Trevigiano, where she fell ill and made her will in the summer of 1396. Her lack of social connections to her adopted community was evident in the identity of the crowd of witnesses who attended her deathbed, who were mainly called by the notary, not by Margarita herself. They included several clerics: the “venerable” priest of the church of San Hieronimo, in Falzè, on the road to Feltre some twenty

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

127

kilometers from Treviso, and two other priests from other communities. Only one of the witnesses had been requested by the testatrix herself (“he (illo) that the said testatrix wished to be present”).164 The content of her will also suggests that Margarita had few other social ties in Villa de Trevigiano, where she had spent her last years. Not only did she live with her son in her old age, but she had previously borrowed the substantial sum of 350 lire from him to build a house of wood and stone in Feltre. He had also loaned her an additional 100 lire to rebuild a garden outside the walls of the town. She returned both of those loans to him in her will, describing him as “an honest and venerable man.” Besides these promises, she also left her son the priest half of her estate, explicitly stating that no conditions were attached to the bequest. Her other son, a tailor, was to receive the other half of the estate, with the condition that if he died with no legitimate heirs, his brother the priest would inherit his share. The will suggests that aside from her connection with her sons, Margarita did not have a wide network of social contacts. When the notary asked her whether she would like to name other bequests in her testament, she answered that she “did not want to name anything, since she is old (senes) and does not have a husband (sine viro).” Margarita was a widow whose priest-son served as a bulwark of her domestic life in her older age. The testament of a Venetian woman called Agnes describes a working relationship between a mother and her priest son that was likely of long standing. Agnes served as custodian of the church of San Matteo Apostolo (San Maffio di Rialto), while her adopted son (figlio d’anima) Donatus served as priest and pievano of the same church.165 Her role as church custodian, along with her relationship with her son, seemingly defined Agnes’ life, suggesting that she had long been associated with the church. In her 1366 testament, Agnes asked to be buried at San Matteo and requested that her son say masses for her soul there. She further instructed him to light a lamp or candle in her memory on the porch of the church, specifying that it should be placed on the side of the church that led toward the buildings (cantinelle) belonging to the scuola called la Vecchia di Santa Maria della Misericordia in Cannaregio. Agnes also identified Donatus not only as her adoptive son but also as her spiritual advisor or confessor (parin), a



128 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

fact that intertwined their familial and religious lives even further. Her familiarity with the church building and surrounding neighborhoods and the fact that she required her son to take on spiritual responsibilities there located their family life within ecclesiastical space. The mother and son’s paired roles in the church suggests that it was his mother’s connection to the parish church, and perhaps an earlier relationship with its priest, that had led Donatus to ordination in the first place. The effacement of the preceding women’s previous social identities and their focus in their testaments on their sons and their parish churches might suggest that only women living in relative social isolation were strongly devoted to their roles as priests’ mothers. However, a contrasting view can be found in Venetian testaments describing women with strong networks of social connections and autonomous devotional lives who were also priests’ mothers. In these cases, too, the women’s earlier identities as wives or widows were largely effaced in their testaments, although the content of the legacies in those testaments suggests a more complex reality. The first testatrix was Agnes, the mother of the late priest Paulus of the church of San Canciano (San Canzian). Paulus probably died in 1361. In his testament from that year, he left Agnes fifty ducats and the usufruct of his estate during her lifetime.166 Agnes outlived him by more than a decade, making her will with the notary Domenicus Peresemolo, the pievano of San Canciano, in July 1375. Her self-description and legacies in that record reveal that although she was known in the community as the priest’s mother, her social network also encompassed connections to a multigenerational group of kin and a similarly broad set of religious and ecclesiastical communities.167 We never learn the identity of her former husband or companion in the testament, but it does describe ties to several other kin, including her late sons, her daughters, and three other young relatives, either grandchildren or nephews and nieces. (The term used to describe them is nepotes, which can refer to any of those relationships.) Her late son Iohannes had evidently been a wealthy man; Agnes described houses in far-flung parishes that she had inherited from him and planned to pass on to several of her young kin.168 One of those houses was located in the parish of San Geremia. Iohannes or her son

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

129

Bartholomeus may have lived there, since one of their children was identified in a canceled statement in the will as from the same parish. Agnes left this house to Antonius, whom she identified as her nepos who lived in the parish of San Canciano. In her daily life, Agnes navigated the alleys and canals of more than one parish, and similarly, her religious activities spanned a wide-ranging set of institutions across the city. Although her son Paulus had been a priest of the large collegiate church of San Canciano and in his testament he left bequests only to the clerics of that church, his mother chose to be buried not there but at the nearby Dominican basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo).169 In addition, the only bequests of a religious nature she named in her will were to three confraternities, or scuole, not associated with San Canciano. It is likely not a coincidence that these, San Leonardo, Sant’Orsola, and Santa Marina, all admitted female members, and further, that Sant’Orsola was housed at the Dominican church.170 Agnes’ only religious connection with San Canciano came through her relationship with the notary Domenicus Peresemolo, to whom she left one ducat for his work in drawing up her will and an additional two ducats to celebrate masses for her soul at San Canciano. In keeping with Agnes’ broadly ecumenical religious and secular culture, the witnesses for her will were priests from three churches, Santa Marina, Santi Apostoli, and San Felice. Not one came from her son’s former church of San Canciano. The presence of children, grandchildren, and friends among the testamentary administrators and legatees of women like Agnes suggests that for them, the status of priest’s mother was only one aspect of their public identities. They were connected by ties of obligation and affection to a wide circle of kin and friends during their lives, and those kin and friends were connected to each other in many different ways. Another example of such a well-connected woman was Vendramina, mother of the late priest Michael, of Santa Maria Nova. Her relationship with her son had been important to her. In her will, dictated to the notary Domenicus Peresemolo in September 1375, she alluded to her son’s memory three times, leaving small amounts for masses to be said for his soul in two separate parish churches (neither one the church where he had served).171 But her will also described a network of living



130 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

connections, including female relatives and friends, both young and old, and neighbors, including a tailor and two painters. Her own living situation also reflects her ties to a community outside the church where her son had served. Her testament concludes with a rough inventory of her most essential household possessions: a bed, bedcovers and two pairs of sheets, a table and benches, and clothing, all of which, she stated, were presently in the house of one of the painters, magister Vincenzo, also from the parish of Santa Maria Nova. Vincenzo was likely her companion. The fact that she also left bequests to another painter from the same parish underlines her connections to a group of artisans, and not just clerics. Those artisans might have had independent connections to the clerical community. Certainly, Vincenzo was a familiar face at the church of San Canciano, since he appeared there as a witness for Domenicus Peresemolo several times in the early 1370s.172 Her companion’s connection with Domenicus Peresemolo shows that Vendramina played several roles within the network of notaries and clerics in her section of the city. Reducing her identity to that of “the priest’s mother” would ignore these other important aspects of her experience. Finally, the testament of Lucia, mother of the priest Petrus, of San Moisè, depicts a priest’s mother at the nexus of clerical, religious, and notarial culture in Venice.173 Unlike several of the previous examples, Lucia’s former identity as a wife and widow was not erased in her testament. She was identified clearly in the protocol of the will as the widow of the Venetian notary Ser Bonincontrus, himself likely a prominent member of the community. Her legacies also balanced her support for all of her family members, including her son Thomas, a layman, and her two daughters who were nuns in the monastery of San Matteo de Constanziaco, on the island of Mazzorbo. She left the proceeds of the sale of a house on the island of Murano to her two sons, and household furniture (including a bed, sheets, and covers) and an additional six lire to Petrus. She also promised legacies to each of the four scuolae, or lay religious associations to which she belonged: San Moisè, Santa Helena, Spirito Santo, and San Girolamo. A final additional note on the paper copy of the will states that the testatrix left her books—given to her by her husband, the notary—to Thomas, all except for her psalter with glosses (salterium glosatum), which she left to Petrus. She further left

“She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 

n 

131

her veils (vellos) and her white cloths (fazolos albos) to her daughters the nuns. Lucia’s links to the notariate and the church (both parish and monastery), her balanced approach to her testamentary legacies, and the fact that she had received books from her husband after his death and perhaps also bought her own, suggest that she was the node around which the many religious and secular connections of her household turned. The diversity of roles open to priests’ mothers further historicizes and complicates our understanding of the intimate domain of the clerical household. Analysis of the lived experience of priests’ mothers suggests that some viewed the clerical household as a collective enterprise in which they and their sons could share roles. For others, their identities and lived experience ranged beyond their sons’ households, as they cultivated ties with a wide network of kin, friends, and companions.

Conclusion During their child-bearing years, clerics’ companions all labored under similar legal and cultural constraints and were similarly vulnerable, although those living in Venice were more evident in the written records than their counterparts on the mainland. By contrast, in their later years, all women whose sons were ordained found protection, visibility, and respect in their roles as priests’ mothers. Since many clerics’ companions had children, and many of their sons went on to become ordained, we can assume that a sizable number of the women across northern Italy who had formerly been reviled by ecclesiastical officials as suspect women were rehabilitated as priests’ mothers in later life. The changes to their roles over time complicate our understanding of the lives of clerics’ companions in Venice and on the mainland. Studying these changes suggests that in spite of the climate of growing ecclesiastical concern about all the women in the priest’s house, clerics and their dependents continued to shape their domestic arrangements in ways that suited them.

chapter five

Nn Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus

T

he placesclerics called home and the culture they made there shed light on the conflicting demands on their domestic lives in

the fourteenth century. The expectations of clerics’ ecclesiastical superiors, their own needs for companionship and assistance, and the local contexts in which they lived and worked also shaped the material culture of the clerical household and the work performed there by its inhabitants. And just as the relationships among the members of the clerical household come to us through the lens of written records, the same is true for information about clerics’ homes and possessions. Records of property transfer, inventories, and clerics’ testaments provide glimpses of the structure, location, and interiors of some clerics’ dwellings, as well as suggestions about the work that people did within those residences, in all cases filtered through the lens of notarial practice. While none of these records serves as a transparent window onto the intimate domains of the clergy, exploring their creation illuminates otherwise-unknown aspects of the domestic culture of the cleric’s household. In particular, these records demonstrate the prominence of the clerical household and residence in both urban and rural

­communities, as well as its role at the nexus of sacred, secular, domestic,

132

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

133

and community concerns at the end of the fourteenth century. They also highlight how the structure of the cleric’s domus and the domestic culture of his household were informed by a blend of ecclesiastical and lay priorities.1 One of the challenges with assessing the material culture of clerical households in Italy is the limited range of the extant evidence. The circumstances in which notaries were enlisted to draw up records, such as to resolve disputes, transfer property from one living person to another, and redact testaments, shaped the information those records contain about clerics’ residences. But reading both along and against the grain of these records—that is, analyzing how they were crafted and what they hide or obscure—reveals much about the culture of domestic life for clerics in this period. The records provide details about the ownership and location of clerics’ residences in the community, and they highlight tensions between ideal living situations for the clergy and the concerns of family, household, and community life that made those ideals unattainable. These examples suggest that just as the social composition of the clerical household was distinct from the ideals proposed by church officials, the practical considerations of life among laypeople in communities large and small also shaped the material culture of the cleric’s household.

Descriptions of Clerical Housing in City and Countryside In previous chapters we have parsed the social meaning of terms such as “servant” and “concubine.” In this discussion of home and household, language choices in the records also bear close examination, albeit for different reasons. The words used to describe clerics’ residences in notarial records from both mainland Italy and the Venetian lagoon are more fluid and less fixed than they first appear. For example, notaries frequently referred to dwelling places using the word domus. That term is usually translated into English as “house,” suggesting a dwelling set apart from others. In reality, domus was a more fluid term than the conventional translation might indicate. Just as Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen have argued that the term casa was used in early modern Rome



134 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

to describe a multitude of dwelling places, a domus could be a freestanding building with its own roof and perhaps a garden, but it could also be a room within a larger structure.2 Notaries also called such a space a camera (which moderns often translate as “room”) or a cella (“cell”). For instance, one notarial record from the island of Murano was drawn up in a “cella or domus” belonging to a priest.3 Similarly, a Venetian priest, writing a letter to his brother from Padua, described his residence alternately as a domus and a cella.4 The Bergamasque notary and priest Gasparinus Dumottis described his own residence alternately as a camera, habitacionem (“dwelling”), or domus.5 And a notary in Udine described a priest making his will in the bedroom (camera cubiculari) of the domus “of his usual dwelling” (solite habitacionis).6 The fluidity of these terms makes it difficult for us to tell whether clerics lived in freestanding dwellings separate from others or whether their residences were contained within other structures. Rather than attempt to resolve this ambiguity, I normally translate domus as “residence,” “dwelling,” or even “home” to encompass a range of possible structures. The previous chapters have shown that clerics shared residences with a variety of people, both clergy and lay. These dwellings could take many forms. The wealthiest clerics lived in accommodations with multiple rooms and floors. In some cases, a cleric’s household shared part of a building with co-residents, as in the example of the structure identified as a hospitium (an ambiguous term that could mean “inn” or “tavern,” but which was also used in Venice to refer to large private dwellings) situated in the Venetian parish and neighborhood (confinia) of San Bartolomeo, which the notary and priest Benedettus Michiel, then a deacon of Santa Maria Nova, agreed to divide among himself and several other people, including several of his siblings. The building included two upper stories, several private staircases, and a common cistern and latrine.7 In other wealthy households, some rooms in a cleric’s domus might be reserved for specific members of the household. For instance, legacies in the testament of Hermolaus de Porte, archpriest of the church of San Luca Evangelista in 1348, reveal that he lived in a large dwelling with at least two floors.8 He slept in an “upper room” of the building in the summer and apparently moved to a different room in the colder part of the year.9 His servants slept in smaller rooms, one in

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

135

a “lower room” that was beside the well or cistern (putheum) belonging to the household. The residence of the pievano Aloysius Maurocenis of San Pantalon also included multiple rooms, as detailed in a record of a shocking case that came before the Venetian public prosecutors, the Avogadori di Comun, in the 1350s. A woman who worked in the priest’s residence was accused of having lured another woman, identified only as Rosa, home with her under pretense of seeking help with some household tasks. Rosa was then kept prisoner in a room in the lower part of the residence (un albergo inferiore domus) and then, after she escaped, was forced up some stairs into another chamber, where the priest raped her.10 While we know that many clerics shared their homes with laywomen, some accommodations could also include clerics and laymen living together. The Bergamasque priest Petrus de Soare made his will in the camera cubiculari (a room for sleeping) of the home he shared with a layman, Bergaminus de Santo Stefano.11 And the archpriest ­Algisius de Clusone made his will in a residence belonging to dominus Marinus de Garganis, “where said testator lived”—that is, in Bergamo, rather than the community of Telgate, the site of the archpriest’s pieve, some 20 kilometers away.12 Finally, clerics and laymen sometimes lived together in accommodations that served multiple purposes. The priest Iohannes David, primicerius of the diocese of Castello, lived in a residence in Chioggia that was also used as a hospital. In his testament, he promised a bed, coverings, and sheets to a man called Michael, who lived with (moratur cum) the priest. The items, the testator noted, could be found “in his [Michael’s] room (camera) in the hospital.13 Locating clerics’ residences within their communities is straightforward on the mainland, where notaries working under imperial or episcopal authority were required to identify the exact sites where transactions took place. Therefore, the testaments of clerics who made their wills at home give brief indications about the locations of their residences. Such testaments suggest that many clerics lived in residences provided by the church, such as the priest of Bergamo’s ancient collegiate church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna, who lived in “the residences (domibus) of the church,” where he dictated his will in 1349.14 The priest of the church of Santa Maria in Curno, a suburb to the west



136 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

of Bergamo, similarly met with a notary to make his testament in the domibus of his church.15 In addition, in the testament of the parish priest Petrus de LaFornace, of the church of San Michele de Archu in Bergamo, we learn that the priest’s domus, which belonged to the church, was situated “near” (prope) San Michele.16 Such descriptions seem to set those residences apart from others, but we must always be aware of the possibility that such distinctions were as much shaped by the needs of the written record as they were a glimpse into real life. That is, while a testament might describe a priest’s domus as “of the church” and therefore distinct from others nearby, it is quite possible that members of the community would have seen little difference between that building and their own living quarters. The similarity between clerical and lay living arrangements was especially pronounced in Venice and Treviso, where lay parishioners, who took responsibility for the upkeep of churches and their furnishings, also provided housing and household items to benefice-holding clerics.17 This custom is evident in testaments in which priests outlined the property they could and could not pass on to heirs. For example, when the Venetian priest Lodoycus of Sant’Apollinare made his will in 1368, he noted that most of the items in his home, “both of wood and of stone,” did not belong to him but should be left there for the next clerical inhabitant.18 Such provisions did not always function well in practice. For instance, when a priest in Treviso made his will in 1390, he noted that the household items among his legacies belonged to him, since when he had taken on the benefice, he had found no household equipment (massaricias), beds, seats, or coverings (drapamenta) there, and he had instead obtained those things himself.19 And even when lay parishioners did provide housing to their parish priest, he did not always want to live in the dwelling that was offered to him. The Venetian priest Lodoycus Falchoni stated in his testament that he had spent forty-one gold ducats repairing and renovating his domus or cella near the church of Santo Stefano, and he asked for some part of that amount to be returned to his estate after his death.20 Another priest in Treviso in the mid-1350s refused to live in his parish because, he argued, the residence provided him there was not comfortable enough. His parishioners countered that their homes, constructed in the same way, suited them well.21

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

137

While parish priests’ residences across the peninsula and in the Venetian lagoon resembled those of their lay parishioners, the dwellings of cathedral canons were intended to be distinct in appearance and physically separate from those of the laity. Their physical location is also much easier to identify, since even today traces of medieval canonries have been retained in the built environments of many European cities. Cathedral canons lived, in theory, a common life in canonries attached to the cathedrals they served.22 In Bergamo, for instance, many canons of the city’s cathedral of San Vincenzo and its basilica of Sant’Alessandro lived in the canonries of their respective churches.23 The canon Simon de Muzzo, who died in Bergamo in 1355, lived for decades in the canonry of Sant’Alessandro, sharing a residence with one of his colleagues.24 After Simon’s death, another canon took over his prebend and his residence, called alternately his domus, camera, and hospitium in the records.25 The document recording the transfer of that property includes details about the structure of the canons’ homes. The notary, Gasparinus Dumottis, who was also a canon in the community, described the canonry as comprising both common and separate spaces. The common space included a hall (lobia) with a wine cellar or storage room (canepa) below it. There was also a cloister within the canonry, a refectory facing onto the street, and a “great door” leading to its cemetery.26 The canonry kitchen (coquina) was a common building set apart from the main residence, described as “contiguous” with it.27 The buildings of the canonry and church were surrounded by a meadow or field (brolium), in which there was a stable (stabulum) for horses shared among all the canons, as well as a storage room with an attached pergola, possibly a place for keeping (and drinking?) wine. The shared spaces were most likely built and maintained according to decisions of the community, and certain amenities were provided to everyone living there. For example, from time to time the canons had grass from their fields cut and brought into their rooms, likely to cover their floors.28 The canons’ shared spaces emphasized the ideal of common life that united them, but just as in practice parish clerics might share spaces with laypeople, individual canons also had access to separate spaces in the canonry for themselves and members of their families. Examples from notarial registers illustrate this tension between ideals of the



138 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

common life and canons’ actual living arrangements, sometimes with their family members. For example, Simon de Muzzo maintained within his living quarters a separate room on an upper floor (soltiolo /  solterolo) where he housed his son Marchisinus. After Simon’s death, Marchisinus was sent away, and the canons promised that room to Iacobus de Lavate, another canon of the basilica, for two years, until a separate dwelling could be prepared for him.29 Finally, a challenging moment for the community occurred in 1356, when some renovations to the canonry gave rise to a period of discord as canons fought about how they gained access to their separate dwellings. One canon of the community cut a gate into the wall of the canonry for the “exclusive” use of his sister, who had her own rooms in the building. “Angry words” were spoken over these issues of access, and the community feared that the tensions would escalate in the future. The solution they proposed involved two of the canons promising to build walls “of cement and stones” to separate their spaces from those of the others. Others agreed that their residences would be accessed only through the church of S. Petrus.30 The preceding descriptions of clerics’ residences come mainly from urban settings. How did the situation of clerics in the countryside compare? The countryside might be a more welcoming place for a cleric seeking to live peacefully with a companion, their children, and other family members. In the rural areas of the diocese of Cortona, Daniel Bornstein has argued, villagers were tolerant of or even receptive to their clerics’ living with women. It seems that these arrangements encouraged stability and “favored the regular performance of priestly duties.”31 Parishioners in rural areas in the diocese of Ferrara also noted to the bishop when he visited that they were “very” (valde) happy with priests who lived in their small communities, suggesting that they were simply pleased to have access to pastoral care and that they did not mind how the priest organized his household.32 In rural areas, the priest’s domus, like his household, was probably similar to those of his parishioners. Those parishioners might also have had ready access to the priest’s residence as a community gathering place. Throughout the northern Italian peninsula, visitation records confirm that rural parishioners treated the priest’s residence not only as a space where they might find necessary services but also as a place

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

139

where they could gather for conviviality. The priest of a parish church outside Ferrara reported to the bishop that members of a local family clan sometimes gathered “in the houses of the church” to play chess and checkers (schachos et tabulas).33 While that family might have been trying to assert their rights over a church they claimed to have founded, another report from a village outside Ferrara gave a different sense of the priest’s dwelling as a kind of social space when it described a group of women who routinely “conversed” (conversabantur) in the domus of their local elderly priest.34 Perhaps especially in areas such as these, with few other services, the priest’s residence could function as a meeting place for the entire community. Despite the possibility that clerics who lived in rural areas enjoyed more domestic freedom and closer ties with their parishioners, rural clerical households likely lacked some of the comforts common to urban life. Poverty was especially marked outside cities, in particular after the poor weather, grain shortages, and epidemics of the early to mid-­ fourteenth century. Rural clerical poverty can be seen in records of the possessions of churches themselves. Bornstein’s comparison of fifteenth-­ century church inventories in rural and suburban Cortona with those of the urban churches demonstrates that churches in the city usually held significant amounts of liturgical items and books, while in the countryside, particularly at the longest distances from the city, priests had access to very few such materials.35 Visitation records from other dioceses further to the north also document growing privation from urban to rural churches, tracing it back at least a century. In Ivrea, for instance, the 1346 pastoral visitor found that the city’s churches usually held more than one chalice, sometimes as many as four, and most of the necessary liturgical books, albeit some in poor condition. The three suburban churches that the visitor attended, however, reported fewer and poorer furnishings: chalices made of pewter or tin (in one case, no chalice at all), one liturgical robe (paramentum) at best, and books “of almost no value.”36 In Ferrara a century later, rural poverty continued to be a significant problem. During the pastoral visits of 1448–1449, the visitor found that many churches outside main centers were in disrepair, with few, if any, chalices, books, baptismal fonts, and other necessary liturgical items. In addition, many rural clerics complained that they could not survive on the tiny incomes that their benefices provided.37



140 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

The poverty of rural churches was reflected even more strikingly in the households of rural priests. Not until the development of comparatively lengthy visitation records of the fifteenth century did written records reveal significant details about the structure and condition of rural parish priests’ dwellings. These show that the rural priest’s domus varied in structure and size but was often marked by poverty and deprivation. In Ferrara, the ecclesiastical official undertaking a visit of the parishes of the diocese in the mid-fifteenth century heard that priests lived in residences set some distance away from their churches. Some of these structures were fairly large, with porches or porticos, and even, in one case, a podiolum, or balcony, on the exterior of the building. One residence had a second story, or solario, and walls enclosing it (seraleis), suggesting that the residence comprised both a dwelling and the land around it.38 But many of these dwellings were uncomfortable or in disrepair. As he traveled around the countryside, the episcopal visitor heard complaints about leaking roofs and dilapidated porches. In one case, a rural priest’s domus was missing a chimney, which the visitor noted meant the risk of fire; in another case, the priest’s accommodations were particularly dirty, with chickens in one of the rooms.39 Finally, in another case, the visitor described the “terrible” state of a church and the priest’s nearby dwelling and heard from a parishioner that there had been no mass celebrated at the church during Lent or at Easter because the church was so poor.40

The Material Culture of the Clerical Residence While visitation records, read with caution, sometimes allow us to venture inside the houses of the clergy in both rural and urban areas, because of its more fragmentary and curated nature, other extant evidence poses even more of a challenge to our understanding of clerical material culture. We have already seen that the problem with inventories and similar lists of possessions is that not only are they normative, they are also incomplete. They omit or pass over items that must have been present in these houses, they give us only partial information about the value of those items, and they tell us very little about their condition—details that could help us understand how often objects

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

141

were used. The selective nature of these records should also make us wary of drawing on them alone to tell the “real story” of the material culture of the clerical household. However, these types of records also reveal otherwise elusive details about the objects that clerics held in their houses, giving us a view of the connections and disconnections between clerical and lay cultures in the later fourteenth century. Read in tandem with other more common records, such as testaments, these sources indicate once again how clerical culture on the peninsula was defined by both lay and ecclesiastical needs and priorities. Two extant inventories from Treviso serve as springboards to a discussion of the relationship between material culture and lived experience in clerics’ households. The first was prepared in 1354, after the death of the parish priest Iohannes of Sant’Angelo, a suburb of Treviso, when his heirs sought to recover goods held in his house by petitioning the bishop of Treviso.41 The heirs argued that Gregorius, the priest who had received the benefice after their kinsman had died, had illegitimately taken possession of goods that actually belonged to Iohannes, and that they, as Iohannes’ kin and heirs, were entitled to them. They then produced a paper list (cedula) of those items. The notary who recopied the petition into his register presented the list in two columns covering one and a half sheets of paper in the register, enumerating more than eighty types of items— including furniture, clothing, food, animals, and books, with a brief description of most of the objects. The notary did not explicitly describe the locations of the objects in the house. Instead, he grouped the items into categories that perhaps corresponded to their value to the heirs, beginning with beds and bedcovers, then describing clothing, then furniture and food, and finally animals and other items usually stored outside. A second list, found in a register of Trevisan records dating from perhaps 1391, is briefer and more fragmentary, mainly focusing on the furniture inside a cleric’s house. Unlike the earlier list, it names the spaces in the house where the priest slept and worked.42 We can augment the information in these records with testamentary legacies to consider first the ways in which clerical material culture resembled that of laypeople and then we can investigate some notable differences between them. Records of clerics’ possessions mainly list mundane items, and at times when we read them, it is difficult to discern whether a cleric or a



142 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

layman was the head of the household that owned them. For instance, like many other people of middling status in this period, clerics prized their beds as items of value, and they were often mentioned before other goods in inventories and wills.43 The 1354 inventory of the possessions of the Trevisan priest Iohannes notes that his bed was an imposing piece of furniture, as wide as three people (de tribus tellis) and including sheets, a colorful blanket or cover, and three cushions. This was probably the bed he himself had slept in. The inventory also describes the other bed in his house as narrower and with a simple light-colored cover and two cushions. This may have been the bed the priest’s servant used.44 The 1389 list of priests’ possessions from Treviso identifies in the “room of the priests” (camera presbitorum) the presence of a large lecteria, a bed with a frame around it, as well as a small movable bed called a cariola, perhaps a sleeping place for a child or a young apprentice.45 At least ten Venetian clerics identified beds and their coverings as testamentary bequests for their female companions, underlining their value as intimate objects.46 For example, Hermolaus de Porte left his servant Agneta a bed and covers in his will. His role as the wealthy and munificent authority of the household was made clear in his stipulation that this should not be the small, simple bed that she usually slept in but another more elaborately furnished piece. The bequest provided Agneta with a place to sleep and an item that could form part of a dowry, and it also articulated Hermolaus’ role as the patriarch of their household.47 Another priest, Iacobus, pievano of San Giovanni Battista Decollato (San Zan Degolà), made both his role as patriarch and the function of the bed as a dowry item clear in his bequest to Catherina, who lived with him. He left her a bed with sheets and covers “so that she might marry or become a nun” (pro suo maritare seu monachare).48 In another instance, a bed became the basis for a dispute between a priest and a widow in Udine, when the priest would not return the bed and its coverings to the woman, who claimed they were owing to her.49 A final striking example of different sizes of beds and their relation to power dynamics in household is the bequest of beds that the priest Vitus of San Basso promised to his two servants, Dominica and Christina. Christina’s bed was larger and more comfortable than Dominica’s, since it was furnished with four cushions and two covers. Christina also owned three sets of sheets

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

143

for the bed. Probably not coincidentally, Christina was the priest’s main companion, and, as we have previously seen, the priest gave her responsibility over Dominica in his will. It seems likely that he and Christina had shared the bed that he promised her.50 The similarities between clerical and lay households are revealed not only in the beds used in those households but also in descriptions of the everyday clothing worn by priests found in inventories and testaments. For instance, the clothing identified in the list of the priest Iohannes’ possessions sounds like that worn by laymen. These were simple items such as a pignolatus, or linen garment, and several cloaks (mantellus)— one blue (de blavo), one gray (de griso), and one made of lambskin (agnellino), probably for the cold weather. He also had two blue tunics, three pairs of breeches (caligarum), two pairs of boots (stivalorum), two shirts, and just two pairs of underwear (mundade). In a list of expenses by a Trevisan priest called Bonus on behalf of his colleague, the priest Guecelone, we find similar (if fewer) items, including blue cloth to make a tunic (and a payment for shearing that cloth, cimatura dei panni), a pair of breeches, the headgear traditionally worn by a priest (bereta), and a tunic made of leather (pele).51 With the exception of the priest’s bereta, these items were similar to clothing worn by laypeople. At the same time, they were entirely appropriate for the clergy, contravening none of the rules about ecclesiastical apparel set out in the decrees of church councils over the centuries. Ecclesiastical authorities forbade clerics from wearing colors such as green or red, having elaborately cut sleeves, or wearing garments that were too short.52 Instead, they were expected to wear clothing with little decoration, made from rough fabrics like those identified here.53 Testaments, perhaps more than inventories, showcase the valuable items that could be found in both clerical and lay households, since testators often promised those items to select legatees. For instance, silver spoons were common objects in many middling-status households and were often promised in wills to particularly privileged heirs, such as parents and companions.54 Spoons were also prized because they could be pawned readily. Iohannes Campion of the church of San Canciano (San Canzian) noted that his nephew owed him twenty-four gold ducats and six silver spoons that he had pawned for six ducats with Ser



144 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

Iohannes Bation, in the parish of Santa Maria Nova. Iohannes forgave that debt on condition that his nephew retrieve the spoons and give them to his fideicommissaries within three months of his death.55 Other valuable items were the vessels for water and wine present in clerics’ households, which had good resale value. Among them were basins (lebetes) that were perhaps used to make broth or soup (sometimes they are described as such: de brodo) as well as copper buckets. In the list of the Trevisan priest Iohannes’ possessions, there is also a large basin or bath (caldera magna) and fully seven containers for wine, two of which were stored in other people’s houses. They were large vessels; four contained thirty liters or more of wine, while the smallest held about four liters when full. Other households held similar numbers of these types of vessels, including buckets, basins, and other containers for heating water.56 The list of items sold at auction after the death of the Venetian priest Iacobus de Soia includes eleven stone basins (lebetes) that were probably used for washing. There were also several vats or vessels called coldarollae, normally used to heat water, buckets (segle), and small washing basins (lavezoli).57 Devotional objects in the priest’s house both articulated its special status as a place of spiritual and religious solace and its connection to lay lived experience. Devotional items and materials could also unite the members of the household in shared religious observance. Clerics’ devotional activities at home are traceable in fragmentary texts from notarial registers containing prayers and related texts. For instance, among the loose papers found in the registers of the priest-notary Iohannes Campion is a sheet containing two separate texts. One is a famous prayer about the seven words Christ spoke on the cross and their connection to the seven deadly sins.58 Iohannes must have copied this prayer from another written text, as we can see in a few places on the sheet where he anticipated words and then had to strike them out.59 The other is a letter purportedly by Christ to King Abgarus of Edessa, in which Christ blesses Abgarus and sends his disciple Tadeus to heal him of an unnamed illness and baptize him. The story of this letter, which originated in Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica, was popular in the Middle Ages, especially in the East, but it clearly resonated in Venice as well, since other collections of manuscripts from the same period also

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

145

include the letter.60 Iohannes and his household members might have read these texts together. They are emblematic of conventional and popular ideas about Christian devotion, emphasizing individual reflection on the suffering of Christ and individual morality, common tropes at the time. Decorative devotional objects also brought clerics and their companions together in a shared religious culture. The common devotional life of the household is particularly evident in clerics’ testamentary promises of religious images or icons, known as anchonae, to their companions. These mainly depicted the Virgin but could also include Biblical scenes and were usually held in the home where the owner might pray before them. Such objects are rarely found in mainland testaments, but they are quite common in Venice. For instance, Pre Iohannes de ­Bernardo left his “large anchona” depicting an image of the Assumption of the Virgin to the daughter of one of his fideicommissaries. He left a small anchona “depicting Santa Maria” to his servant Maphia.61 The priest Dominicus Peresemolo similarly left an icon to his servant (familiaris) Agneta, and the priest Nucace of the church of San Polo left a gold icon to a woman he called domina Maria, “mother of my children.”62 Through their ownership of icons and their willingness to pass them on to their intimates—and not their clerical colleagues—these priests articulated their commitment to everyday Christianity and to Venetian devotional culture. While priests’ cooking pots, devotional objects, tableware, everyday clothing, and beds connected them to their lay contemporaries, a few items in their households set the clergy apart from both their communities and their co-residents. Some of those objects were specific to the clerical ordo, and others are noteworthy because clerics were normally prohibited from owning them. For instance, knives and swords posed potential problems to clerics, since they were not allowed to carry or use weapons unless they had received special dispensation to do so.63 Their presence in lists of goods therefore indicates again the tension between the ideals of clerical material culture and the practical concerns of daily life in a small community. Many of these items were everyday tools that any householder would require. For instance, one of the tools in the list of items belonging to the priest Iohannes was a knife



146 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

or small saw used to cut branches (corcellarius [sic] a cerpire).64 Another was a table knife. The fact that only one such knife was listed suggests that it would have been shared among diners at the table, a common practice in many households of the period.65 But two objects named among this group were probably weapons. One was identified as a cutellus a ferire—that is, a knife used to “injure.” The other was identified as an iron sword (spata de ferro). The inventory does not tell us whether the priest Iohannes used these weapons outside his home. It does state that he owned a case or shelf (armarollus) that stood at the head of his bed and contained “swords” (spatas).66 Another set of items that distinguished clerics from the laity both outside and inside their own households was their liturgical clothing. In contrast to the sober attire they wore every day, which could easily be exchanged with others of different status, garments that priests used during the liturgy were exclusively for the use of those who had been ordained. They could also be richly decorated in vivid colors, such as the “embroidered vestment (paramentum)” belonging to Domenicus Diedo and the “good vestment with red chasuble” (bonum paramentum cum planeta sanguinea) that Hermolaus de Porte left his church in his testament.67 While such expensive and rare items were normally stored in the sacristy of their churches, the vestments that priests wore while celebrating the Mass might also be found at home. For instance, the 1389 record of a priest’s household furnishings in Treviso describes two chests in the priests’ shared room in which liturgical robes (paramenta) were kept. In Bergamo and Venice, testaments indicate that clerics kept valuable liturgical items in their houses.68 The Venetian priest Iohannes de Bernardo stated explicitly that the chalice, patens, and liturgical robes he left to his church, Santa Marina, were located in his house (que omnia sunt in domo mea).69 The pievano Marinus, of the church of San Gervasio, described in his testament a chasuble (planeta) embroidered with gold thread that had been given to him by one Ser Marcus de Betis and that was kept in his house.70 Other testaments suggest strongly that priests kept their vestments in their houses. The pievano and notary Lucianus Zeno also stated in his testament that all of his vestments (paramenta), along with a large chalice and liturgical books, were in a “disorderly” state (inordinata), which suggests that they were

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

147

somewhere in his house rather than held in a specific location in the sacristy of his church. If priests’ vestments were stored in their residences, they would likely have dressed at home in preparation for the Mass. Dressing in liturgical garments required the repetition of “vesting prayers” and other preparatory rituals that normally took place in the sacristy of the church. As a result, storing such garments in the home would have underlined the distinctive nature of that place as a clerical space, setting it apart from the houses of lay parishioners.71 The extensive numbers of written texts, both loose papers and bound codexes, found in clerics’ residences also set them apart from most of their lay parishioners. Priests often stored papers, notarial records, and books of all kinds at home. These were often referred to in testaments and inventories, although they were only seldom catalogued in any detail. Instead, records usually indicated the way these objects were stored. For instance, the list of items claimed by the heirs of Iohannes, the priest from Treviso, mentions only a breviary and “other books,” whose titles are not provided. But the inventory does state that one of the smaller chests in that residence contained documents (actos) as well as—frustratingly vaguely for the curious historian—“other things” (alios res). The 1389 record from Treviso also describes a large walnut wardrobe (capsa de nogaria) in the priest’s room, in which he kept not only documents but also vaguely described instrumenta, “other documents,” and registers (quaderni) “to do with the house” in sacks or cloth bags (sachis). Even testators making their own wills focused more on the storage of their books and papers than on their content or titles. Raymondus, pievano of San Geremia, stated in his 1358 will that within his “wooden wardrobe” (capsa lignea) he had “many books,” and he wanted to give those in Latin to his cleric Nicolaus, but his “books, registers and letters” (libros, quaternos et litteras) written in Armenian he left to the Dominican brothers of the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo).72 These cases illustrate the problem with using records such as testaments and inventories to write the history of clerical culture. Because the records were not concerned with the content of the written documents, but rather with their location in the residence, they provide few substantive details about the documents. We are left with the suggestion that written culture was important to



148 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

clerics, but we have little understanding of the content of the texts that shaped the culture.

Work in the Clerical Residence The material culture of the cleric’s household helps delineate the ways in which clerics’ domestic lives resembled those of laypeople and ways in which the two types of households differed from each other. Turning to the activities that went on within its walls, we see that the same hybrid identity for clerical domestic arrangements also applied. Moreover, the fact that clerics’ identities included elements of two worlds complicated the nature of the work performed by the cleric’s familia and the way that work was documented in written records. The work performed in the cleric’s household took two forms: work done at home to generate income for the household and work that sustained the household by taking care of the physical needs of its inhabitants. All these activities were inflected by the cleric’s status. Since he commanded a certain kind of authority in the community by virtue of his ordained status, his authority informed the work he did outside the church. And because his companion was not legitimately his wife, her questionable moral status also informed the work she could be seen to do inside and outside the household. Through records of the work they did at home, the inhabitants of the clerical household articulated the nature of the cleric’s domus as a prominent place in the community where questions of power, legitimacy, and intimacy intersected with issues of reputation and honor. Many clerics augmented the income from their benefices with work that drew on their literacy and numeracy skills. In previous chapters, we have examined at some length the work of clerics as notaries, exploring how the two fields were closely related not only in Venice but also on the mainland. Much less well documented was clerical involvement in moneylending, an activity associated with the clergy across the late medieval and early modern West. In Spain and port cities like Genoa, parish clerics were commonly involved in financial ventures.73 In Venice and Treviso (and probably elsewhere), parish priests accepted deposits of cash and also loaned money to their parishioners and others.74

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

149

In 1350, for instance, the priest Simoninus, rector of the church of Santa Maria in Paderno, a village outside Treviso, accepted one hundred lire “in deposit” from a woman called domina Catharina, an inhabitant of the village and promised to keep it safe from all harm and return it to her when she requested it.75 Not only rural priests but also high-ranking clerics in urban areas participated in this type of activity. For instance, in Venice, even the highest official of the basilica of San Marco, the primicerius, accepted liturgical books in pawn.76 While some have assumed that priests lent money to parishioners as a charitable act, Pamela Nightingale has argued that, to the contrary, parish clerics who lent at interest in Norfolk were as focused on their own profits as their lay counterparts.77 Moneylending and pawn broking also provided clerics with cash for the upkeep of their churches. One priest from the diocese of Treviso pawned liturgical objects worth more than fifty lire to another cleric so that he could “decorate and renovate” his church.78 The fact that clerics did not criticize each other’s involvement in such activities in visitation records suggests that they were integral to the financial survival of their churches. In Venice, a cache of records illuminates one priest’s activities as a moneylender and pawnbroker. Those activities took place in his residence, which served him as an office, a bank, and an archive. Bartolomeus Pino was a priest and notary at the church of Santa Maria Formosa in the last half of the fourteenth century. His substantial household included servants, a slave, and an adopted daughter. He may have also had a son who became a cleric.79 Kathryn Reyerson and others have argued that notaries were often important facilitators of credit transactions during the Middle Ages and early modern periods, and Bartolomeus’ work as a notary probably complemented his moneylending and pawnbroking activities.80 The connection between his moneylending and notarial responsibilities is suggested by a few of his lending agreements, which were drawn up using the same formulaic structure as any other notarial record, with the date, site of the transaction, and names of the parties described in the protocol, and witness signatures in the eschatocol.81 The slips of paper detailing his loans and pawns also suggest that moneylending was a regular feature of his professional life that provided him with significant income. When he died he left, among



150 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

many bequests, 1,000 lire held in forced loans (imprestiti) to the brothers of the Benedictine monastery of San Matteo on the island of Murano, on condition that they celebrate a daily mass for his soul.82 His records indicate that Bartolomeus received items in pawn and made loans to residents of his parish and others for nearly a decade, between 1377 and 1385. The amounts of these loans varied from small sums of one ducat or less to amounts as large as fifty gold ducats.83 He set aside space in his residence to store the items he received, which included clothing such as skirts (gonelle) and covers or dresses (sclavine). He also kept cash at home, since he accepted deposits of money (in deposito) from his parishioners.84 Like other colleagues who worked in similar fields, Bartolomeus kept an archive of his transactions in “sacks” (sachos), which he kept in a wardrobe (capsa) in his house. He noted the date and amounts he deposited in these sacks on rectangular pieces of linen paper and renewed these notes each time he made a new deposit. Bartolomeus’ work was intimately connected to the structure of his residence and the people who lived there, since he met clients at home and received letters from them there. In August 1384, for instance, he drew up a note for a payment to a debtor, noting that the client had come to receive the money “at the house of the priest Bartolomeus” (in chaxa de meser pre Bartolomeo.)85 His role as a community authority dovetailed with his authoritative household role. That role was evident in his relationship with his family members, as when he told his fideicommissaries how to select a fitting marriage partner for his daughter.86 Bartolomeus also played a paternal role with those who came to his house asking for loans. The language that would-be debtors used to approach the priest in his house was characterized by words appealing to his “fatherly” nature. In one instance, a debtor explicitly described the priest’s “paternal” attitude (paternitatem vestram), noting that he had been unable to leave his own house and asking Bartolomeus to take pity on him and lend him another two ducats. (He signed the letter vereconditer, “shamefully.”)87 Another debtor referred to the priest as “my intimate” (intimo mio).88 Such language was partially formulaic, since, as Dennis Romano notes, loans from clerics were legally acceptable because they were made “out of love” (causa amoris et dilectionis) for their parishioners and therefore could not include explicit interest

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

151

charges. Still, here we should recall Pamela Nightingale’s argument that moneylending priests were not operating charitable institutions. Instead, they were interested in augmenting their own incomes. Romano, too, believes that while the interest charges in priests’ loans might not be explicitly stated, they likely did include interest, hidden in the eventual payment made by the debtor.89 The language of love and charity served as a convenient frame for the profit-seeking activities of moneylending priests, and it acknowledged and was likely shaped by the domestic surroundings where Bartolomeus worked. It was in borrowers’ financial interest to approach a clerical moneylender using words that reflected the idea of the lender’s charitable intent, since according to the canonists, such an intent made the transaction honest, not usurious.90 But these language choices also went beyond legal expediency, as they reflected the close relationship between parish priest and parishioner, one that included expectations of trust and protection on the part of the supplicant. Such trust was reinforced by the space in which the priest and supplicant met. During the later Middle Ages, the house was a place where inhabitants and visitors alike exchanged “homely” words of familiarity and affection. Felicity Riddy has argued that such notions developed in late medieval England in step with the development of the house as an intimate space. Within that space, those who entered were treated with affection, even if they arrived for work-related reasons.91 As supplicants requesting loans came to find Bartolomeus in his house, the language they used to approach him reflected their understanding of his multiple roles as trusted spiritual guide, community authority, and munificent beneficiary.92 The items he held in his house similarly underscored his multiple identities and, by extension, the role of the priest’s residence at the nexus of financial need, legal provision, and spiritual solace. The work done by priests at home largely reflected their roles in the community as liturgical and social leaders and was thus relatively well documented. By contrast, the work done by women living in clerics’ houses was largely confined to the domestic sphere and was only occasionally described in written records. Sometimes those descriptions were notably vague and ambiguous. For instance, in a visitation record from fifteenth-century Como, the bishop instructed a priest to expel the



152 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

woman living in his house but allowed him to live with a woman over the age of fifty if she was required as an assistant for the “services to scholars” (servitiis scolarium) in the house.93 A priest from Como in the mid-fifteenth century identified his colleague’s female companion as a woman who “governs the house and goods of the archpriest well,” while another stated that he did not have a concubine but lived with one of his female relatives, who provided “service to his house” (servitiis domus sue).94 Similarly, a layman in Ivrea described a woman whom he identified as a “domestic of the house of the church” (domestica domus ecclesie).95 In Udine, a canon described his contemporary’s companion as a woman who went to his house “frequently . . . to prepare (ad parandum) necessary things for him.”96 Vague descriptions of the women in clerics’ residences as household managers might have been simply the product of these witnesses’ ignorance of or lack of interest in the specifics of female domestic work. But there is another option: that is, it may be that witnesses before ecclesiastical officials carefully selected the language they used to describe the women living in priests’ houses to emphasize the women’s work as honorable. By the fourteenth century, episcopal visitations were common enough that those who came before the visitor were aware of the potentially devastating consequences of the words they chose to describe their peers’ living arrangements. We saw in Chapter 4 that women identified as “suspect” could be expelled from the priest’s house, no matter what their relationship to him, and witnesses might have selected their words with this fact in mind. Women’s work in clerical households, like their bodies, was a subject of moral concern to both ecclesiastical officials and the clergy alike. The tasks that women accomplished at home that were most clearly described in written records were activities that had either neutral or positive moral connotations, such as cooking and sewing. Cooking was readily associated with priests’ companions in visitation records. In Udine, the priest Pasculus, asked if he kept a concubine, replied that he had not for several years. (Pasculus was the priest who asserted that since he no longer had sex with his former concubine, their relationship was not sinful.) Instead, he told the visitor that he had a female relative who lived beside him and cooked for him.97 The woman kept as a

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

153

concubine by the priest Vivianus did not live with him—instead, she lived in a house close to his—but she did cook his meals. According to several witnesses, Vivianus habitually went to her house with “meat and chickens” and could be seen returning to his own house with cooked dishes.98 In visitation records and court records in which women’s domestic activities were identified, witnesses also focused on their preparation of food and care for children. A witness in Cortona told the episcopal visitor that she had baked bread with the priest’s concubine, who owned a bread oven (cribanum).99 Sewing was another acceptable household activity associated with upstanding morality. In a number of cases, women received thread (filum) as a bequest from their clerical companions.100 Embroidery and other work with textiles were likely responsibilities of female members of the cleric’s household, as they were for laypeople.101 While cooking and sewing were openly described in some records, one set of tasks, the washing of clothing, sheets, and other textiles, was treated with more caution by those who described the work that took place in the clerical residence. Doing the laundry was probably the most physically demanding work in the premodern household. Someone, almost always a woman, had to soak soiled clothes, sheets, bedcovers, towels, and other linens, beat them with a wooden paddle or trample them underfoot, and then rinse them, wring them out by hand, and hang or drape them to dry.102 In cities where running water was easily accessible, many of these tasks took place at muddy, insect-infested riverbanks or streams, where workers could drown or catch diseases.103 In other places, somewhat safer public fountains were set aside for washing.104 Wherever it took place, the work remained burdensome and exhausting, and it posed practical and moral problems for authorities and households alike. The regulation of washing sites and water in fourteenth- and fifteenth-­ century communities was a common feature of written records. ­Statutes from cities and towns across northern Italy ordered local officials to ensure that fountains and “laundries” (lavanderie) were inspected monthly to ensure that they were clean and in working order.105 The mid-fourteenth-century statutes of Bergamo establish that the podestà was to ensure that all fountains and laundries were to be inspected



154 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

monthly to ensure that they were clean and in working order.106 A large fine was imposed on anyone who did anything untoward in the city’s fountains, including washing dirty clothing (pannorum).107 In Venice, where freshwater was always at a premium, washing was a particularly challenging task. The city’s canals ran with a brackish mix of freshwater and saltwater that could quickly become polluted with waste from houses and businesses. Water for cooking and drinking was thus carefully monitored by the republic. Dumping in canals was regulated from the early fourteenth century, and public cisterns, present in the main squares of many islands from at least the ninth century, were rebuilt and their number significantly expanded in the same period.108 Wealthy families had cisterns inside the courtyards of their residences, to give access to rainwater at all times. A few priests similarly had access to such luxuries.109 And industries and noble families could also afford to send their textiles to the mainland, where they could be washed in freshwater, but those without such resources had to make do with what was available in the city, possibly doing an initial washing in saltwater and then rinsing in freshwater.110 Because washing was equated with other “disgusting things,” such as tanning leather and slaughtering animals, it needed to be carefully controlled. Civic authorities were also concerned about the regulation of washing spaces because the task of washing had long been associated with threats to the social and moral order. Since it was marked with the traces of bodily emissions, laundry itself was associated with filth and disgust. And following the particular logic of premodern culture, it made sense that those who did the laundry should be already associated with filth in other forms. Thus, prostitutes could often find work as washerwomen and vice versa. For centuries, women who washed clothes supplemented their wages by selling sex, this cycle of marginality, poverty, and deprivation carrying down from one generation to the next.111 Preachers also worried about the morality of the laundress, perhaps because she moved freely around her community and worked half-clothed.112 All of the reasons I have previously detailed likely contributed to the special note of caution in written documentation dealing with those who did the laundry in clerics’ households. Many records simply

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

155

avoided mentioning them. Douglas Biow points out that although clean garments and sheets figure frequently in Renaissance literature and art, those sources seldom describe the people who cleaned them.113 In clerical communities, expense records mentioning payments for washing use verbs in the passive voice (“washing was done”), hiding the identity of the workers themselves. And yet a high value was placed on the cleanliness of church hangings and the priest’s own personal clothing.114 For instance, for years in the mid-fourteenth century, the canons of Bergamo’s basilica of Sant’Alessandro recorded payments for having the hangings and curtains (drappos) of the church washed.115 A century later, the bishop of Ferrara, in a visitation of parish churches in his diocese, repeatedly complained of the shame (vergogna) of filthy churches, and he warned clerics if their churches’ draperies or their own shirts needed cleaning.116 Laundry, then, was a necessary activity in both churches and clerics’ households, but association with it was damaging. For a group in a precarious social position—such as the servants and intimate companions of priests—the solution was to avoid all public association with laundry. In episcopal visitations, it was rare to find any mention of priests’ servant-­companions doing washing of any kind. In a rare example from Ivrea in 1329, a layman questioned by the episcopal visitor about the conduct of his parish priest described “a certain mataza” who washed his priest’s clothes (que lavat eius pannos) and lived in his house.117 Mataza is a dialectal term from the region that describes a very poor person. It contrasts starkly to the labels such as familiaris and serviente that clerics used to identify their own companions or those of their peers, which did not draw the same attention to the women’s poverty. Read in the context of other statements by the same witness, the term mataza, and the mention of laundry itself, emerges as a linguistic strategy designed to call attention to the priest’s shortcomings and the related needs of the parish. The witness stated that the priest was “not a good manager” of the church’s revenues, that he went to the tavern often, and that the church and the priest’s house were “greatly” (valde) in need of repair. The portrait he painted was one of need and desperation, and the poor woman in the house washing the priest’s clothes adds memorable detail to that image.118 If the witness sought to gain the visitor’s



156 

N 

t h e c l e r i c a l fa m i l i a

sympathy and perhaps action—for example, repairs to the church, a different cleric holding the benefice—he may have been successful. The case for witnesses seeking to protect some priests’ female servants by obscuring this aspect of their work is strengthened by related approaches to the moral problem of laundry in other parts of the premodern West. Debra Blumenthal has documented how female servants, seeking to protect their honor, refused to wash clothes in Valencia during the fifteenth century.119 Male guardians also attempted to safeguard women’s reputations by ensuring that they not wash clothes. ­Blumenthal cites examples from several cities in which fathers making contracts for their daughters to enter service specified that they not work on riverbanks or in bathhouses.120 Such concerns were widespread; Shannon McSheffrey has identified court records from fifteenth-century London in which witnesses described a man seeking to prevent his wife, a domestic servant, from being identified as a laundress.121 Given the continuing widespread resistance to doing laundry, the absence of references to it in episcopal visitation records in Italy seems significant. Clerics questioned by episcopal visitors were seemingly attempting to ensure that priests’ servants and companions were not associated with such menial work since that association could result in their expulsion from their homes. Did the linguistic strategies I have been describing actually obscure the work of priests’ companions as part-time laundresses? Did these women in fact normally congregate with others at fountains and rivers, lifting their skirts and rolling up their sleeves to scrub their clerical companions’ undergarments, shirts, and linen sheets, in the meantime perhaps exchanging gossip and news, and even passing on information learned from their companions in the confessional?122 Or did priests send their laundry out to be washed, saving their servant-companions from the moral and physical risks they might run at the washhouse or stream? It is most likely that washing happened in the priest’s residence, where all the buckets and basins we have previously noted being held in clerics’ households would have been put to good use. We also have ample evidence that many priests’ households contained more than one servant, and this task would likely have been reserved for the most lowly of them all. The evidence emerging from records about

Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 

n 

157

domestic work in the priest’s household thus suggests that the moral vulnerability of all the women living in the household might have led them to avoid association with tasks that might bring their honor into further question. The women who lived in households where they oversaw several other servants likely never touched laundry themselves. They probably aspired to the position of those of the upwardly mobile domestic servants in lay families that Dennis Romano has described in his study of service in Renaissance Venice.123 By contrast, the women below them, or those who lived with poor clerics, would have been particularly open to association with other “suspect” women in the community, and their domestic work would have had particularly dangerous moral qualities.

Conclusion This exploration of the material and work cultures of the clerical household once again highlights how church reformers’ ideal of a clear dividing line between the clergy and the laity in the later Middle Ages did not exist in practice. Clerics lived in similar residences to the laity and owned similar tools and household equipment. Their claims to the paternal authority enjoyed by lay household heads were also evident in their work roles outside their churches—for instance, as they loaned money to parishioners. But recorded aspects of clerical material culture and, perhaps most strikingly, the work culture of their households, not only underline the differences between clerical domestic arrangements and those of their lay neighbors, they highlight important differences in the status of members of the clerics’ household itself. On the one hand, clerics enjoyed prominent community status within the realms of ecclesiastical and literate culture. Their status as trusted authorities contrasted sharply with the precariousness and vulnerability of their female companions’ status within the same residences. The cleric’s domus, then, was a space between the lay and ecclesiastical spheres, whose hybrid nature benefited clerics even as it jeopardized their companions.

Nn Conclusion

T

he domestic arrangementsthat ecclesiastical officials sought to impose on the clergy in the fourteenth century were based on an

ideal of distance between clerics and laypeople. Officials were rarely willing to negotiate the terms of these arrangements, and clerics’ resistance to them was considered impure and immoral. And yet the ideal household life that those reformers envisioned was unsustainable within the walls of the cleric’s residence. In their overly rigid approach to clerical domestic life, reformers paid little attention to local contexts or individual need, such as the challenging circumstances of the clergy living in remote rural areas, the institutional church structures of cities as different as Venice and Bergamo, and the changing physical demands that accompanied aging and infirmity. To manage the unrealistic expectations placed on them, clerics navigated a course through the strictures set out by their superiors and their own worldly needs, creating domestic arrangements that suited their circumstances while taking care to record those arrangements in terms that could be acceptable to their ecclesiastical superiors and other members of the community.1 This view of clerics concerned with living quietly and respectably

while meeting their own needs for companionship and support contrasts with their portrayal as a corrupt, licentious, and scandalous

159



160 

N 

Conclusion

body, one seen too often in the writings of medieval reformers and modern historians. Studying clerics’ responses to the regulation of their moral and domestic lives reframes the actions of the clergy in their households as pragmatic rather than corrupt. It also illuminates the complex inner workings of clerical households and the contributions of those households to the stability of the late medieval church. Within their households, clerics negotiated identities for themselves in conversation with the limitations placed on them by canon law and their ecclesiastical superiors. In particular, they adopted the family and gender roles available to men in the later Middle Ages. For instance, they acted as patriarchs with patria potestas as they determined their children’s futures, treated their companions as wives and future widows while also considering them as servants, and devised strategies to leave property to their dependents. In other words, clerics embraced their authority over their familia. And no wonder: their households gave clerics stability, supported their physical and emotional needs, and also offered them a special hybrid status between ecclesiastical and lay culture. But the clerical household was not the construction of single individuals. Instead, it was a collective enterprise. The people who lived with clerics, especially their female companions, may have been of humble origins and dependent on clerics’ good will for their protection and security, but at the same time, they played essential roles in the household, assisting clerics in their daily lives with housework and their professional responsibilities and enabling their attempts to pass property to others in their testaments and related records.2 The compliance and complicity of the cleric’s familia in these actions bolstered his authoritative status in his household and also enabled churches to continue to function during a period of rapid demographic decline. Rather than harm the moral order of the late medieval church, the presence of women and their children in the clerical residence arguably buttressed the church against the damage wrought by plague and economic distress. While teamwork was essential to sustaining the clerics’ household and kinship network, its members did not all enjoy the same status either in the household or in the outside world. We have seen several examples of inequalities within the clerical household, as priests

Conclusion 

n 

161

enjoyed substantial security relative to their dependents. In the world outside, too, perceptions of members of the clerical familia varied according to their age and gender. For instance, priests’ brothers and fathers could have important relationships with their clerical siblings and offspring, and their connection to the clergy went almost unremarked by church officials. Since the relationships of clerics with their male kin could not result in the birth of illegitimate children who might inherit ecclesiastical property, those bonds were not particularly threatening to the church, and they were rarely a focus of community concern. By contrast, a growing climate of suspicion developed around all the female members of households and families in the fourteenth century. That suspicion, which originated in the concerns of ecclesiastical officials, was sometimes shared by neighbors and community members. But suspicion could give way to acceptance over time. Perceptions of the women who had children with priests were especially fluid, since they might be denigrated while their children were young but honored in later life if their sons were ordained. The hybrid nature of their relationships and the representation of those bonds in written records reminds us not only of the difficult circumstances of the women’s lives but of the complex relationship between lived experience and archival representation in the premodern period. That complex relationship is most readily evident in the categories and labels used to refer to the inhabitants of the clerics’ household in both normative sources and those prepared for clerics themselves. In many cases, these categories were only partially revealing of the lived realities of those peoples’ lives. If we study the work they were intended to do, we learn important information about the perspectives of their creators.3 For instance, ecclesiastical officials creating normative sources employed categories such as concubina and focaria to fix the moral and social status of the women living in priests’ residences. Clerics, too, tried to use language to control the perception of their household members, to protect both themselves and their dependents. In particular, clerics and their notaries described their familia using terms that encompassed a range of shifting and contingent roles for those individuals. As a result, the boys called priests’ apprentices (famuli) in their testaments could also be their sons, while the women



162 

N 

Conclusion

the priests called their servants could also be lovers, confidantes, and mothers of their children. Even within the same record, a cleric could assert that his female companion was his faithful servant while ensuring that she received property normally due a wife. The plasticity of these labels was intentional and strategic. First, it ensured that property could pass from the priest to his household members. It also established the preeminence of the cleric as head of his household, and it not only articulated the subjugation of household members to his authority but also reinscribed his authority over them in the record itself. The evidence presented in this book was the product of multiple deliberations among record-makers and their clients. Tracing and comparing the records’ physical qualities, the social etymology of their language choices, and their legal underpinnings illuminates those deliberations. This process also enriches our understanding of notarial records as negotiations with the law, allowing us to disentangle the claims made from the intentions that produced them. Because documents of practice were the end result of conversations between notaries and their clients, I have resisted describing them or any of their content as notarial “fictions.” Such a term would suggest that we need to look through some aspect of the record to get to the “real” story embedded within it. Instead, records reveal the notary and his client at work, making decisions about how to present the particulars of an individual transaction or case. Reading them in this way, we come to understand those records not as static and objective portrayals of a specific moment but as events themselves and, therefore, as part of the story we are telling. This approach to notarial records also complicates conventional ways of thinking about historical evidence. For instance, instead of summing up our evidence within convenient categories like “prescriptive” and “descriptive,” defining archival records as crafted artifacts highlights the need for multiple forms of analysis of our records. The excavation of evidence from archival records remains an important aspect of historians’ research methods, but such approaches need to be balanced with explicit discussion of the ways that records were made and what they were intended to do in the first place. Archival records concerning the clerics’ household invite us to consider its connection to the lay domestic sphere. The fact that clerical

Conclusion 

n 

163

household members were ultimately subject to the authority of their male head of household in practice, although not in law, points to the broad reach and applicability of lay domestic culture in the fourteenth century. And yet the need for the particular linguistic strategies found in clerics’ testaments and similar records also indicates that there were striking differences between clerical and lay households in the period. In records produced for the lay household, it was not usually necessary to veil relationships under legally acceptable language. The categories that applied to members of the lay household, especially “wife” and “widow,” could unproblematically encompass a range of affective ties and domestic duties. They also provided the women who lived under them with legal protection and support without compromising their honor. And while the material cultures of lay and clerical households were similar in many regards, the presence of liturgical items in priests’ residences, and the approach to the work performed within them, marks out those spaces as distinct from those of the laity. Finally, while the composition of the clerical household in practice resembled that of its lay counterpart, in theory it was constructed according to distinctions and priorities that were unrelated to those of the laity. As a result, the two types of households existed in tension throughout this period, and it would be inaccurate to assert that clerics simply lived like the laity in their communities. The domestic arrangements of clerics in the later fourteenth century took shape before a backdrop of economic crisis, epidemic disease, and political turmoil. The poverty and misery that affected most of the West in this period certainly also marked the lives of clerics and their intimates.4 The available evidence suggests that poverty was especially evident in the countryside during this time; descriptions of church furnishings and the simplicity and poor condition of clerics’ dwellings in rural areas indicate that clearly. While descriptions of city life suggest that there was relatively more wealth in urban than rural areas, there were significant inequalities of status among clerics living in cities. Some lived comfortably and even well, but others did not. The variety of housing arrangements for clerics in cities, their income-producing activities, and the sizes of their estates in their testaments all point to a range of wealth and status among urban clerics. Even relatively



164 

N 

Conclusion

high-profile clerics may not have been well off. For instance, the Venetian priest and notary Iohannes Campion, whose work life and household we have followed closely here, may have lived in relative poverty with his companion and young daughter in the later decades of the fourteenth century. Certainly his testament, in which he asked his nephew to retrieve pawned silver spoons as part of his inheritance, might suggest that his household was merely surviving, not prospering, in that difficult time. The likelihood that city and country clerics alike were affected by poverty and economic inequality blurs the conventional line of demarcation between urban and rural clergy. That line is further blurred by the fact that in both cities and the countryside, the clergy lived with companions and children. Rural communities in mainland northern Italy may indeed have been more willing than their urban counterparts to accept the priest who lived among them in a household similar to their own; however, in both places, a cleric’s companion and his children faced the same tenuous legal status. The fragility of their intimates’ status in the law had real ramifications for clerical households, evident in the efforts of clergy in both cities and the countryside to make records in which they carefully delineated the roles of their household members to ensure that those dependents would be protected after their deaths. Ultimately, then, while some households of clerics in cities and the countryside might have looked different to an observer, the urban and rural clergy were united by the vulnerability of their households under the law.5 Just as I have argued for more connections than disconnections between clerics in rural and urban areas, by examining the clerical and civic cultures of Venice together with those of mainland northern Italy, I have also sought to complicate the traditional tendency for Englishspeaking scholars to separate Venice from the rest of the peninsula. By tracing the domestic worlds of clerics in Venice and on the mainland, I have demonstrated that, for the most part, their lived experiences bridged the waters of the lagoon. It is certainly the case that in Venice many clerics were more open to describing their connections with women, children, and mothers than were their counterparts on the ­terraferma, where such arrangements were often obscure in written

Conclusion 

n 

165

records. But those archival differences did not extend to the household organization of clergy in Venice and the mainland. That is, everywhere in northern Italy, Venice included, clerics set up their residences with a range of intimates, from companions, to children, to apprentices. And everywhere some clerics were careful about how they recorded the nature of their domestic organization. These connections across the peninsula point to the need to bring Venice and the Venetian church into close conversation with terraferma culture and will, I hope, spur others to look for similar threads of continuity in other contexts. While some scholars still separate Venice and the mainland, discussions of the clergy on the post-plague peninsula are sometimes united in their assumption that clerics in that period were immoral, ill-educated, and incompetent. Such conclusions are largely based on the criticisms of ecclesiastical officials. Historians should beware of unreflectively adopting the language and perspectives of reformers in our analysis of clerical culture. Rather than serve as a framework for a modern historical understanding of the late medieval church, the views and words of reformers need to be located within the historical contexts that generated them. The regulatory efforts of bishops can be seen primarily as a response not to a corrupt or incompetent clergy but to a gradual shift in ecclesiastical culture. That is, centralizing tendencies in the later medieval church and the desire and ability of its officials to make stronger connections with the laity created a growing need for contact between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and clerics in their communities. That contact, coupled with reformers’ need to separate clerics from the lay world while clerics on their part sought companionship, security, and authoritative domestic roles, brought the two groups into more frequent conflict in this period. And a growing reliance at this time on written records among people of all social ranks meant that those conflicts and negotiations were more often recorded than they had been before. By historicizing the efforts of both ecclesiastical officials and the clergy themselves, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of clerical and ecclesiastical culture in the post-plague era. Rather than see the later fourteenth century as a period in which a corrupt clergy disavowed the reforming efforts of their superiors, I propose that we see it as a time when clerics participated in the ­



166 

N 

Conclusion

“self-fashioning” that was one of the hallmarks of the early Renaissance. With recourse to notaries and notarial records, some clergy in northern Italy articulated their own concept of a clerical ordo that reconciled their own needs with those of their superiors. Notarial records prepared by and for the clergy in Venice, Treviso, Udine, and Bergamo adjudicated legal and ecclesiastical culture, thus allowing clerics to resist the most unrealistic aspects of ecclesiastical regulation. Those clerics’ acts of self-definition through notarial records also had wider significance. Their acts reinforced the role of notaries as interpreters of the law at a time when growing numbers of people of all social ranks were turning to notarial records as tools and memoranda. Studying the intimate domains of the clergy reconstructs an underappreciated aspect of late medieval church history, providing a new perspective on a transitional moment in the social history of Italy and the rest of western Europe.

Notes

Abbreviations of Works Cited Elisabetta Canobbio, ed., La visita pastorale di Gerardo Landriani alla diocesi di Como (Milano: Unicopli, 2001) Ferrara  Enrico Peverada, ed., La visita pastorale del vescovo Francesco Dal Legname a Ferrara (1447–1450) (Ferrara: Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, 1982) Ivrea  Visite pastorali in diocesi di Ivrea negli anni 1329 e 1346 (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1980) Mansi  Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Florence and Venice, 1758–1798) Storia di Venezia  Gino Benzoni and Antonio Menniti Ippolito, eds. Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1992–2002), 14 vols. Udine  Visitatio ecclesie capituli utinensis (Udine: Istituto Pio Paschini, 1984) Como 

Archival Abbreviations bergamo

treviso

ASBg BCBg

ASTv

ACVBg

Archivio di Stato, Bergamo Biblioteca Civica “Angelo Mai,” Bergamo Archivio della Curia Diocesana, Bergamo

padua ASPd

Archivio di Stato, Padova

Archivio di Stato, Treviso

udine ASUd

Archivio di Stato, Udine

venice ASV Archivio di Stato, Venezia CI Cancelleria Inferiore NT Notarile, Testamenti PSM Procuratori di San Marco

167



168 

N 

Notes to Pages 1–3

Introduction 1. On the history of the archive of the Cancelleria Inferiore and the Venetian Archivio di Stato, see Andrea da Mosto, L’Archivio di stato di Venezia: indice generale, storico, descrittivo, ed Analitico (Roma: Biblioteca d’arte editrice, 1937), tom. 1, 225. On the Venetian archive in the nineteenth century and Leopold Ranke’s struggles to access it, see Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen, “Leopold Ranke’s Archival Turn: Location and Evidence in Modern Historiography,” Modern Intellectual History 5 (2008), 425–453, doi:10.1017 /S1479244308001753. 2. For the will, see ASV, CI, Busta 164, Recovratis, no. 2, 29 November 1367. Since the church of San Basso (now destroyed) was located opposite a side entrance of the basilica of San Marco, Beruzia, Incollelus, and Francescus himself must have lived very close together, if not actually in the same residence. 3. On spouses and children as testamentary executors or fideicommissaries, see Claire Judde de Larivière, “Procédures, enjeux et fonctions du testament à Venise aux confins du Moyen Âge et des Temps modernes, Le cas du patriciat marchand,” Le Moyen Age 108 (2002 /2   003), 539, doi: 10.3917 / rma.083.0527 4. The scholarship on the complexities of church reform from the eleventh century onward is vast. For a useful summary of some of the most salient concerns of the many groups and individuals involved in the effort, see Kathleen G. Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century: Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). R N. Swanson comments that the ideals for the priesthood that developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries “demanded almost superhuman clerics.” R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 237. On the importance of church reform in fourteenth-century Venice, see Antonio Rigon, “I problemi religiosi,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3, 933. On the resistance of some Norman bishops to enacting reform in the thirteenth century, see Jennifer Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 114–118. 5. Shannon McSheffrey made this argument for fifteenth-century Londoners creating false testimony about marriage. See Shannon McSheffrey, “Detective Fiction in the Archives: Court Records and the Uses of Law in Late Medieval England,” History Workshop Journal 65 (2008), 65–75. 6. I consider the activities of these men by drawing on Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen’s arguments for the usefulness of “process” rather than “norms” in representing the relationship between people and space in urban domestic contexts. Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen, “Open and Shut: The Social Meanings of the Cinquecento Roman House,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 9, 1 (2001 /2   002), 62.

Notes to Pages 3–4 

n 

169

7. My argument is different from that of Maureen Miller, who argues (from another body of evidence) for significant distinctions between clerical and lay cultures in medieval Italy. Maureen C. Miller, “Religion Makes a Difference: Clerical and Lay Cultures in the Courts of Northern Italy, 1000–1300,” American Historical Review 105, 4 (2000), 1095–1130. 8. This includes my own previous work. See Roisin Cossar, The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265–c.1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Studies on laypeople in the church in Italy include the essays in Il buon fedele: Le confraternite tra medioevo e prima età moderna (Verona: Cierre, 1998) and Fedeli in chiesa (Verona: Cierre, 1999) and the magisterial monograph by John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Also important are works by Daniel Bornstein, including Daniel Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) and Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, eds., Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). For the Renaissance proper, the work of Nicholas Terpstra is fundamental, beginning with Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and for Treviso, see David D’Andrea, Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–1530 (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007). For the religious culture of the laity in medieval and early modern England, see the work of Katherine French, including Katherine French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 9. For recent work on views of clerical sexual involvements and clerics’ children, see Laura Wertheimer, “Children of Disorder: Clerical Parentage, Illegitimacy, and Reform in the Middle Ages,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15 (2006), 382–407. 10. Kathryn Ann Taglia, “‘On Account of Scandal’: Priests, Their Children, and the Ecclesiastical Demand for Celibacy,” Florilegium 14 (1995–1996), 61. For an early and still-important study of the question, see Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Debates (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982). 11. Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church,” Viator 40 (2009), 221–253, and Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013), 166–214; Daniel Bornstein, “Parish Priests in Cortona,” in Preti nel medioevo (Verona: Cierre, 1997), 165–193; Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 115–164; Janelle Werner, “Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave, 2010),



12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

170 

N 

Notes to Pages 4–5

159–185 and Janelle Werner, “Just as Priests Have Their Wives”: Priests and Concubines in England, 1375–1549 (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009). Derek Neal, “What Can Historians Do with Clerical Masculinity? Lessons from Medieval Europe,” in Thibodeaux, ed. Negotiating Clerical Identities, 16–38; Jennifer Thibodeaux, “Man of the Church or Man of the Village? Gender and the Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy,” Gender & History 18 (2006), 380–399. Denis Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Maureen Miller, The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Duane Osheim, An Italian Lordship: The Bishopric of Lucca in the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Antonio Rigon, Clero e città: “Fratalea Cappellanorum” parroci, cura d’anime in Padova dal XII al XV secolo (Padova: Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Padovana,1988); George Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes (University Park: Penn State Press, 2005). However, Robert Brentano, the consummate historian of the Italian church, always paid careful attention to the civic context of his subjects’ activities. Robert Brentano, A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Megan McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). David Herlihy’s early article, “The Making of the Medieval Family: Symmetry, Structure and Sentiment,” Journal of Family History 8 (1983), 116–130, does not mention clergy within the larger category of family in the Middle Ages. More recent works, such as Sally McKee’s study of households on Crete, do treat the possibility of bonds of affection between clerics and their female servants and companions. See Sally McKee, “Households in Fourteenth-­ Century Venetian Crete,” Speculum 70 (1995), 27–67, reprinted in Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household and Children, ed. Carol Neel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 347–404. Adele Perry, “‘Is Your Garden in England, Sir?’ James Douglas’s Archive and the Politics of Home,” History Workshop Journal 70 (2010), 67–85, and Adele Perry, Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth Century Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). On the anachronistic split between public and private in the Middle Ages, see Shannon McSheffrey, “Place, Space, and Situation: Public and Private in the Making of Marriage in Late Medieval London,” Speculum 79 (2004), 960–990. Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” Journal of American History 88 (2001), 829–865.

Notes to Pages 5–7 

n 

171

19. Mary S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 9, 104. 20. Henry Charles Lea, An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 350–351. On the influence of Lea’s theories about “clericalism” in premodern Europe on later historians, see Richard L. Kagan, “Prescott’s Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain,” in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, eds. Anthony Molho and Gordon Wood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 331–332. 21. On the “corrupt” medieval clergy in Italy see, for instance, Mario Fois, S. J., “I religiosi: decadenza e fermenti innovatori,” in La chiesa di Venezia tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. G. Vian (Venezia: Studium Cattolico Veneziano, 1989), 147–182. On clerical corruption as a cause of the Reformation /  Catholic Reform movement, see Stephen Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). For an opposing view—that is, that the pre-Reformation church (at least in England) was not corrupt and that the split was not inevitable—see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 22. Christopher Harper-Bill, “The English Church and English Religion after the Black Death,” in The Black Death in England, eds. Mark Ormrod and Philip Lindley (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1996), 90–91. William Dohar, “Pastoral Care in the Later Middle Ages,” in A History of Pastoral Care, ed. G. R. Evans (London: Cassell, 2000), 193. For an argument against prevailing assumptions of the “ignorance” of clerics in England during the thirteenth century, see Jeffrey Denton, “The Competence of the Parish Clergy in Thirteenth-Century England,” in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R. B. Dobson, eds. Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), 273–285. 23. Elisabetta Canobbio, “Preti di montagna nell’alta Lombardia,” Preti nel medioevo, 243. 24. On developments in textual production over the course of the Middle Ages, see Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 29–59. 25. However, we need to be careful about imposing strict divisions on the transition from orality to written culture, since it occurred slowly and did not result in the complete eradication of oral culture. 26. See Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), for a similar approach to a different body of evidence. 27. This approach to the archive as subject differs from the earlier magisterial work of Natalie Zemon Davis on narrative in archival records. See Natalie



28.

29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

172 

N 

Notes to Pages 7–9

Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). For studies in the more recent vein, see Patrick Geary, “Medieval Archivists as Authors: Social Memory and Archival Memory,” in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar, eds. Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 106–113, and Filippo de Vivo, “Ordering the Archive in Early Modern Venice (1400–1650),” Archival Science 10 (2010), 231–248, and Filippo de Vivo, “Coeur de l’Etat, lieu de tension. Le tournant archivistique vu de Venise (XVe–XVIIe siècle),” Annales HSS 68 (2013), 699–728. On the gap between the theory and practice of historians’ research activities, see Herman Paul, “Performing History: How Historical Scholarship is Shaped by Epistemic Virtues,” History and Theory 50 (2011), 1–19. Carolyn Steedman, “After the Archive,” Comparative Critical Studies 8 (2011), 332. On the Foucaultian critique of the archive as a modernist space outside all other spaces, see Ben Hutchinson and Shane Weller, “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Archive Time,” Comparative Critical Studies 8 (2011), 134. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Stoler sees the colonial archive as made up of “documents of exclusion and monuments to particular configurations of power in themselves.” Ann Laura Stoler, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance: On the Content in the Form,” in Refiguring the Archive, eds. Carolyn Hamilton et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 89. Justin Steinberg, Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 10. Feminist scholars have long noted the importance of understanding the difference between textual constructs and social realities. For an example, see Nancy Partner, “Galbert’s Hidden Women: Social Presence and Narrative Concealment,” in Galbert of Bruges and the Historiography of Medieval Flanders, ed. Jeff Rider (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 109–125. Giordano Brunettin and Marino Zabbia, “Cancellieri e documentazione in registro nel patriarcato di Aquileia,” in I registri Vescovili dell’Italia Settentrionale (Secoli XII–XV), eds. Attilio Bartoli Langeli and Antonio Rigon (Roma: Herder, 2003), 339–340. They identify the quaderno as a “libro-archivio.” Kathryn Burns, “Notaries, Truth, and Consequences,” The American Historical Review 110 (2005), 357. For a survey of the language concerning clerical celibacy in ecclesiastical councils and synods from the fourth through the twelfth centuries, see Michel Dortel-Claudot, “Le prêtre et le mariage: Évolution de la législation canonique des origines au XIIe siècle,” Mélanges offerts a Pierre Andrieu-Guitrancourt, tome 17 (Paris: Faculté du Droit Canonique, 1973), 319–344. Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 82. On

Notes to Pages 9–10 

37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

n 

173

the argument that authorities in medieval Europe constructed anxiety about the “other,” see R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Catherine E. Boyd, Tithes and Parishes in Medieval Italy: The Historical Roots of a Modern Problem (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), 51–52. In the monastery, too, family ties remained significant despite the expectation that on taking their religious vows monks and nuns would move away from their earthly families and join a new, spiritual clan. Fiona Griffiths has argued for the continuing importance of the bond between siblings (especially brothers and sisters) in monasteries in the West after the eleventh century. See Fiona Griffiths, “Siblings and the Sexes in the Medieval Religious Life,” Church History 77 (2008), 26–53. Fernanda Sorelli, “Il clero secolare a Venezia. Note per I secoli XII e XIII,” Preti nel Medioevo, 39. See recent work on the status of fatherhood and patria potestas in essays in Men at Home, a special issue of Gender & History, ed. Raffaella Sarti, 27 (2015). Brian Patrick McGuire, “In Search of the Good Mother: Twelfth Century Celibacy and Affectivity,” in Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 86. Perhaps for other reasons, some recent works on the clergy and their families continue to downplay the role women played in those families. See Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Marie A. Kelleher, “‘Like Man and Wife’: Clerics’ Concubines in the Diocese of Barcelona,” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 350. Since Kelleher wrote that pioneering article, a few studies of clerical concubinage have been published which treat both members of the clerical couple with sensitivity. In particular, see Werner, “Promiscuous Priests,” 159–185. Historians have sometimes omitted discussion of clerical concubines alongside the concubines of laymen because of the differences in the men’s status. See James Brundage, “Concubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law,” in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, eds. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 126. On these women, see Roger Reynolds, “Virgines Subintroductae in Celtic Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 61 (1968), 547–566. For a slightly different view, see Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, 33. On female ordination in the eastern Christian church in its early centuries, see Valerie A. Karras, “Priestesses or Priests’ Wives: Presbytera in Early Christianity,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51, 203 (2007), 321–45. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 316.



174 

N 

Notes to Pages 10–13

46. Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100–1700 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 33. 47. Augustin Fliche, La réforme grégorienne, vol. 1 (Louvain, 1924–1937), 32–34, cited in Boyd, Tithes and Parishes, 105. 48. On the range of opinions about sexual continence among Jews and early Christians, see Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 15–57. 49. Megan McLaughlin, “The Bishop in the Bedroom: Witnessing Episcopal Sexuality in an Age of Reform,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2010), 21. On Peter Damian’s views on clerical marriage, see Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 100–106 and Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, 50–64. On the labels used to describe the women in this period, see Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, 43. 50. Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), vol. 1, 191. 51. Ibid., 198. 52. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 220. 53. On an early fourteenth-century synod in Bergamo, see Mansi, vol. 25, col. 483. 54. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 57, 111. Also see Leidulf Melve, “The Public Debate on Clerical Marriage in the Late Eleventh Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, 4 (2010), 688–706, Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 221, and Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, 105–155. For a discussion of several texts on this question in twelfth-century Normandy, see Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 86–111. 55. See the contrasting presentations of Thomas in Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 402, and Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 177. 56. James Brundage also notes that decretals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did not all agree about the severity of penalties for clerical fornication, and some taught that only those most “notorious” fornicators should be punished. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 403. 57. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 191. For discussion, see Griffiths, “Siblings and the Sexes in the Medieval Religious Life,” 39, and Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 112. 58. McGuire, “In Search of the Good Mother,” 94. 59. Mansi, vol. 25, col. 483. 60. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 75. One mechanism for scrutiny of clerical living arrangements is found in a statement by the bishop of Ferrara, who in 1332 stipulated that no cleric in the diocese could live with a woman, even one he claimed was his relative, without an episcopal license. Mansi, vol. 25, col. 917. 61. On these ideas, originally offered by Karl Schmid and later championed by Georges Duby, see Constance Brittain Bouchard, Those of My Blood: Creating Noble Families in Medieval Francia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 162.

Notes to Pages 13–16 

n 

175

62. On the canon law of marriage at this time, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 325–389. 63. David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 83. 64. David D’Avray, “Marriage Ceremonies and the Church in Italy after 1215,” in Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650, eds. Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 107–115. 65. Karras, Unmarriages, 4–5. However, for a different argument on the impact of marriage, or at least marriage symbols, in later medieval society, see David D’Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 66. The classic overview of Venetian history in English is Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). However, on its contributions, see the still-useful critical review by Julius Kirshner and Eric Cochrane, “Deconstructing Lane’s Venice,” Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), 321–334. 67. An early and still important study is James Grubb, “When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), 43–94. Also see Elizabeth Horodowich, “The New Venice: Historians and Historiography in the 21st Century Lagoon,” History Compass (2004), 1–27. 68. Giorgio Cracco, Tra Venezia e Terraferma: per la storia del Veneto regione del mondo (Roma: Viella, 2009). For a perspective on the connections between Venice and the mainland in the earliest history of the city, see Juergen Schulz, “The Origins of Venice: Urbanism on the Upper Adriatic Coast,” Studi Veneziani 61 (2010), 15–56. Also see Michael Knapton, “Venice and the Terraferma,” in The Italian Renaissance State, eds. A. Gamberini and I. Lazzarini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 132–155, and John Law, “Relations between Venice and the Provinces of the Mainland,” Venice and the Veneto in the Early Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 77–85. 69. Lane, Venice, 226–228; Tom Scott, The City-State in Europe: 1000–1600: Hinterland, Territory, Region (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 37, 79–80. 70. Knapton, “Venice and the Terraferma,” 140, and Giulio Silano, Acts of Gubertinus de Novate, Notary of the Patriarch of Aquileia, 1328–1336 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 46. 71. Claudia Storti Storchi, Diritto e istituzioni a Bergamo: Dal comune alla signoria (Milano: Giuffrè, 1985). 72. Paolo Prodi, “Structure and Organization of the Church in Renaissance Venice,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 419. 73. Catherine Boyd remarks that these clerics “simply preserved some form of capitular organization, not necessarily involving real community of property or of life.” Boyd, Tithes and Parishes, 159. Also see Daniela Rando, Una chiesa di



176 

N 

Notes to Pages 16–22

frontiera: Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI–XII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 84–85, for more on the early organization of pievi in Venice. 74. Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera, 246. 75. The study of household objects and the domestic interior will be important for this discussion. For an overview, see Raffaella Sarti, Vita di casa: abitare, mangiare, vestire nell’Europa moderna (Bari: Laterza, 2003). 76. However, see Werner, “Promiscuous Priests,” 169, for a discussion of priests as husbands and householders alongside their female sexual partners. 77. For a definition of intimacy in medieval contexts, see Felicity Riddy, “Authority and Intimacy in the Late Medieval Urban Home,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, eds. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 212–228. On intimacy in the scholar’s household, see Gadi Algazi, “Scholars in Households: Refiguring the Learned Habitus, 1480–1550,” Science in Context 16 (2003), 9–42.

part one: Making Records 1. In a provocative study, Carolyn Steedman argues that the archive doesn’t actually contain our subjects, nor did the past “happen in the way it comes to be represented.” Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 154.

chapter one: Notaries, Registers, and Archives 1. Notaries as creators of registers (imbreviature and quaderni) can be compared to medieval monk-authors organizing cartularies for their religious houses. See Patrick Geary, “Medieval Archivists as Authors: Social Memory and Archival Memory,” in Archives, Documentation and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar, eds. Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 106–113. On the importance of seeing the notaries of Rieti as shapers of diocesan boundaries, see Robert Brentano, A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 118–141. 2. Influential studies of the notariate in Italy include Armando Petrucci, ed., Notarii: documenti per la storia del notariato italiano (Milano: Giuffrè, 1958), and Giorgio Tamba, Una corporazione per il potere: il notariato a Bologna in età comunale (Bologna: CLUEB, 1998). A recent comprehensive study is Maria Luisa Lombardo, Il notaio romano tra sovranità pontificia e autonomia comunale (secoli XIV–XVI) (Milano: Giuffrè, 2012). English-speaking scholars of the notariate often locate their subject within a broad political, social, and historiographical context. See David Foote, “How the Past Becomes a Rumor: The Notarialization of Historical Consciousness in Medieval Orvieto,” Speculum 75 (2000), 794–815; Laurie Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust:

Notes to Pages 22–23 

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

n 

177

Notaries in Early Modern Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); and Shona Kelly Wray, “Instruments of Concord: Making Peace and Settling Disputes through a Notary in the City and Contado of Late Medieval Bologna,” Journal of Social History 42 (2009), 733–760. Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 23. On the development of the notarial record as a probative instrument in the Middle Ages, see John Pryor, Business Contracts of Medieval Provence: Selected Notulae from the Cartulary of Giraud Amalric of Marseilles, 1248 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), 36. On the notary as truth-teller, see Laurie Nussdorfer, “Lost Faith: A Roman Prosecutor Reflects on Notaries’ Crimes,” in Beyond Florence: The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy, eds. Paula Findlen, Michelle M. Fontaine, and Duane J. Osheim (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 101–114. On notaries and publica fides in Italy, with a focus on Orvieto, see David Foote, Lordship, Reform, and the Development of Civil Society in Medieval Italy: The Bishopric of Orvieto, 1100–1250 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004), 128–130. On notaries and the patriarch of Aquileia, see Giordano Brunettin and Marino Zabbia, “Cancellieri e documentazione in registro nel Patriarcato d’Aquileia. Prime ricerche (secoli XIII–XIV),” in I Registri Vescovili dell’Italia Settentrionale (secoli XII–XV), eds. Attilio Bartoli Langeli and Antonio Rigon (Roma: Herder, 2003), 327–372. Alberto Liva, Notariato e documento notarile a Milano (Roma: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1979), 89. On the connection between the status of the notary and the status of his records in the central Middle Ages, see Petra Schulte, Scripturae publicae creditur: Das Vertrauen in Notariatsurkunden im kommunalem Italien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Max Neimeyer, 2003). Carol Lansing, Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 54–55. Shona Kelly Wray, Communities and Crisis: Bologna during the Black Death (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 157. And sometimes notaries became leaders of political movements with communal overtones. On the figure of Cola di Rienzo, the Roman notary and political revolutionary who sought to reinstate Rome as a commune in the mid-fourteenth century, see Ronald Musto, Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). G. Scarazzini, ed., Statuti notarili di Bergamo (secolo XIII) (Roma: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1977), rub. 24 and 25, 84. Ibid., rub. 30, 86. Ibid., rub. 121, 113. Laurie Nussdorfer also suggests that there may have been “an informal seepage of authority to [the] physical presence, utterance, and gesture . . .” of the notary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nussdorfer, “Writing and the Power of Speech: Notaries and Artisans in Baroque Rome,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, eds. B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse



11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

178 

N 

Notes to Pages 23–24

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 110. On notaries’ political conservatism, see Attilio Bartoli Langeli, Notai: Scrivere documenti nell’Italia medievale (Roma: Viella, 2006), 238. On the localism of the notariate, see Laurie Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust, 4–5. On the assumption that notaries in Venice differed from those on the peninsula, see F. Parcianello, Documentazione e notariato a Venezia nell’età ducale (Padova: Imprimitur, 2012), 67. For a comparison and contrast of Venetian and Genoese notaries, see Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “Una differenza: notai veneziani, notai genovesi,” in Notai, 59–86. Perhaps three-quarters of the men working as notaries in Venice were priests. Fundamental works on the Venetian notarial tradition include Giorgio Cracco, “Relinquere laicis que laicorum sunt. Un intervento di Eugenio IV contro i preti-notai di Venezia,” in Bollettino dell’istituto di storia della società e dello stato veneziano 3 (1961), 179–189, and Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, “Veneta auctoritate notarius”: storia del notariato Veneziano (1514–1797) (Milano: Giuffrè, 1996). See the comments by Marco Pozza about the questionable professionalism of Venetian priest-notaries in Marco Pozza, “La Cancelleria,” in Storia di Venezia vol. 3, 366. On the persistence of early medieval forms in Venetian notarial documentation, see Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “Documentazione e notai,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 1, 851, 861. For a discussion of the singularity of the Venetian legal tradition, see James Grubb, Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Cracco, “Relinquere Laicis,” 186. Gasparini, “Ego notarius complevi et roboravi. Venezia, notai, medioevo,” in Documentazione e notariato a Venezia, 7–29. Also see Langeli, “Una differenza,” 65. Also see Bartoli Langeli, “Genova, Venezia, il Levante nei secoli XII–XIV,” Atti della società ligure di storia patria 41 (2001), 73–102. As we shall see, in practice, priests and priest-notaries in Venice were often heads of households that included their companions and dependent children. Pedani Fabris, “Veneta auctoritate notarius,” 12. On imperial authority to create notaries on the mainland, see Liva, Notariato e documento notarile, 150. Dennis Romano sees cleric-notaries acting as a foundation for Venetian stability, arguing that they were “fully integrated” into secular society. Dennis Romano, “Venetian Exceptionalism?” in Churchmen and Urban Government in late medieval Italy: Cases and Contexts, ed. Frances Andrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 231. Sac. Vittorio Piva, Il patriarchato di Venezia e le sue origini (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1938), tom. 2, 150–151, and Cracco, “Relinquere laicis,” 182. Marco Pozza, “La Cancelleria,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3, 366, but compare Daniela Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera: le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI–XII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 140. Paolo Cammarosano, Italia medievale: struttura e geografia delle fonti scritte (Roma: Carroci, 1991), 267–269; Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust, 9–13.

Notes to Pages 24–26 

n 

179

19. Gaetano Cozzi, “La politica del diritto nella Repubblica di Venezia,” Repubblica di Venezia e stati Italiani (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), 221–224. Also see Grubb, Firstborn of Venice, 31–35. 20. Challenges to the view of Venetian legal exceptionalism can be found in Ken Pennington, “Learned Law, Droit Savant, Gehertes Recht: The Tyranny of a Concept,” Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 20 (1994), 213–214, and Andrea Padovani, “La politica del diritto,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 2, 303–318. The Venetian statutes of 1242—and their glosses—also display many of the preoccupations of Roman law. Roberto Cessi, ed., Gli statuti veneziani di Jacopo Tiepolo del 1242 e le loro glosse (Venezia: C. Ferrari, 1938). 21. Guido Ruggiero, “Law and Punishment in Early Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 69 (1978), 246. 22. Marco Ferro, “Notai,” in Dizionario del diritto comune e Veneto (Venezia: Santini e figlio, 1845–1847), vol. 2, 329. 23. Many historians who have worked in and on the Venetian archives view the political culture of the republic in a similarly top-down way. For a critique of this approach, see Filippo de Vivo, “Coeur de l’Etat, lieu de tension. Le tournant archivistique vu de Venise (XVe–XVIIe siècle),” Annales HSS 68 (2013), 705. 24. Historians of medieval Provençal notaries have effectively described the important differences between the normative sources describing how notaries should work and the actual practice of those notaries. See John Drendel, “Notarial Practice in Rural Provence in the Early Fourteenth Century,” in Urban & Rural Communities in Medieval France, Provence, and Languedoc, 1000–1500, eds. Kathryn Reyerson and J. Drendel (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 214. 25. On the process in Udine and Provence, see Giulio Silano, Acts of Gubertinus de Novate, Notary of the Patriarch of Aquileia, 1328–1336 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 72; Pryor, Business Contracts of Medieval Provence, 42–42. On Venice, see Bartoli Langeli, “Una differenza,” 62–63. 26. Attilio Bartoli Langeli suspects that diplomatists have developed “a too-­ absolute concept of publica fides,” Bartoli Langeli, “Una differenza,” 80. On the loss of publica fides, see Julius Kirshner, “Custom, Customary Law, and Ius Commune in Francesco Guicciardini,” in Bologna nell’età di Carlo V e Guicciardini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 166–167. Also see Carlo Carosi, “Il tradimento della Fides: il falso,” in Hinc publica fides: il notaio e l’amministrazione della giustizia, ed. Vito Piergiovanni (Milano: Giuffrè, 2006), 128–150. 27. Gasparini, “Ego notarius complevi et roboravi,” in Documentazione e notariato, 20. 28. Martina Cameli, “Notai vescovili, notai chierici, notai con duplici nomina della chiesa ascolana del XIII secolo,” in Scrineum 2 (2004), 26. 29. Scarazzini, ed., Statuti notarili, rub. 34, 87 30. This was the oath commonly sworn by notaries across the West. Kirshner, “Custom, Customary Law, and Ius Commune,” 167.



180 

N 

Notes to Pages 26–27

31. Scarazzini, ed., Statuti notarili, rub. 109, 142. 32. Francesco Scipione Dondi Dall’Orologio, Dissertazioni sopra l’istoria ecclesiastica di Padova (Padova: Presso il seminario, 1807), 224. 33. For instance, in Bergamo, several prominent men in the later fourteenth century, including Iacobus de Ambivore, Gasparinus Dumottis, and Graciolus de Sangervasio, were both priests and notaries who mainly served the ecclesiastical and canonical communities of the city and diocese. For the acts of Iacobus, see ASBg, Notarile, Buste 17b, 247. For Gasparinus, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44. For acts drawn up by Graciolus, see ACVBg, CAP 426. In Treviso, the bishop created licenses that allowed clerics to work as notaries. For examples, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 34v, 38r, 39v. For registers of priest-notaries in Treviso, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 17, P. Zelo; Busta 28, Pre Michele de Glauxino; and Busta 158, Pre Leonardo piovano de Postioma. For the registers of a priest-notary in Udine, see ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5142, Pre Domenico. On episcopal creation of notaries and ecclesiastics as notaries on the mainland, see Cameli, “Notai vescovili, notai chierici,” 1–34; Antonio Olivieri, “Per la storia dei notai chierici nel Duecento: il caso del Piemonte,” Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria Nuova Serie. vol. 43 (117) fasc. 1, 701–738. On notaries, ecclesiastical and lay, working for the church in Milan, see Christina Belloni and Marco Lunari, eds., I Notai della curia arcivescovile di Milano (secoli XIV–XV) (Roma: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, direzione generale per gli archivi, 2004); Marco Lunari, “‘De mandato domini archiepiscopi in hanc publicam formam redigi, tradidi, et scripsi’: notai di curia e organizzazione notarile nella diocese di Milano,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 49 (1995), 486–508; and the fundamental study of Giorgio Chittolini, “‘Episcopalis curiae notarius’: cenni sui notai di curie vescovili nell’Italia centro-settentrionale alla fine del medioevo,” in Società, istituzioni, spiritualità: studi in onore di Cinzio Violante, 2 vols. (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994), 221–232. 34. For Salviolus’ will, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 134, Vianova, 363, 408–410 November 1396. 35. In Bergamo, sons of prominent notaries included Graciolus de Sangervasio, son of the well-known notary Rogerius de Sangervasio, and Iohannes Soiario, son of the prolific Gerardus Soiario. See Iohannes’ surviving register from 1361 in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 25. 36. On a dispute involving this notary’s household, especially his children, and the bishop, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, da Clarello, January 1359. 37. ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 64, 2 October 1364. 38. For a further discussion of the place of home in a priest-notary’s work life, see Chapter 5. 39. On the importance of interpretation of the law in the later Middle Ages, see Thomas Kuehn, “A Late Medieval Conflict of Laws: Inheritance by Illegitimates in Ius Comune and Ius Proprium,” Law and History Review 15 (1997), 245, and on notaries’ active role in that interpretation, see Julius Kirshner,

Notes to Pages 28–30 

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55.

n 

181

Marriage, Dowry and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 15. However, cleric-notaries were not a homogeneous group, as Giorgio Chittolini has shown. The method of selecting them for their positions varied from place to place, for instance. Chittolini, “‘Episcopalis curiae notarius,’” 226. On the heterogeneity of notarial culture on the peninsula also see Dino Puncuh, “Notaio d’Ufficio e notaio privato in età comunale,” in Hinc publica fides: il notaio e l’amministrazione della Giustizia (Milano: Giuffrè, 2006), 267–290. Shona Kelly Wray, “Notarial Families and Households in Trecento Bologna,” (paper presented at “Le scribe d’archives” / “The Archival Scribes” Colloquium, Namur, Belgium, May 3, 2012). For more on Venetian notaries’ social status, see Roisin Cossar, “Venetian Notaries, Space, and Sociability in the Trecento,” I Tatti Studies in the Renaissance 19 (2016), 23–39. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 56, 15 October 1393. ASV, NT, Busta 541, Ferro. ACVBg, CAP 854, 6r. See his registers in ACVBg, CAP 43–53 and ASBg, Buste 56, 57. His brother and son were canons themselves. On his career, and the close relationship between notaries and cathedral canons in Bergamo, see Francesca Magnoni, Due canoniche, un capitolo, un vescovo: la cattedrale di Bergamo nel periodo avignonese. Una storia urbana? (Ph.D. diss., Università degli Studi di Milano, 2010–2011), 45–46. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 49, della Costa; ASTv, Notarile, Busta 130, B. da San Zenone. Also see the registers of Covolettus da Corte di Semonzo, ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43 (1389) and Georgius fu Zeno, who described himself on one register as the episcopal chancellor (cancelliere Vescovile), ASTv, Notarile, Busta 45. See Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, 65–69. On this argument for the registers of New World notaries, see Carolyn Dean, “Beyond Prescription: Notarial Doodles and Other Marks,” Word & Image 25 (2009), 293–316. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 84a. ACVBg, CAP 67, Cazzulonibus. On the meaning of pointed shoes for men, see Michelle A. Laughran and Andrea Vianello, “Grandissima Gratia: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, ed. Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 253–292. Translation from Luke Roman, Poetic Autonomy in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 228. My thanks to Luke for sharing his thoughts about this passage. The next and last line of the poem, “anger begets fierce enmities and deadly war,” would seem to indicate such a concern. Dean, “Beyond Prescription,” 300–301. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 67, da Nepote, 1347.



182 

N 

Notes to Pages 31–34

56. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 45, G. fu Zeno. n.d. 57. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 17, Crespano, 1r, n.d. 58. On the same practice in Provence, see Drendel, “Notarial Practice in Rural Provence,” in Urban & Rural Communities in Medieval France, 230. 59. See, for instance, the manicules in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 134, Vianova, 35, 5 February 1408; Busta 10, Soiario, 259, 15 July 1348; and Busta 11, Soiario, 270, 29 January 1354. 60. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 248, 10 July 1352. See a similar marginal note in the same notary’s registers, ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 446, 24 November 1353, which reads “Iacobe et Iohanni.” The document deals with a transaction in which a married couple, Iacoba and Iohannes, were the participants. 61. Robert Brentano, Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 299. A few Venetian notaries did draw on their registers. For a particularly striking example of such pictorial elements, see the register prepared by the notary Nicolo Natale in ASV, CI, Busta 130, with its doodles of flowering branches and the elaborate renderings of dates and initial capitals. Also see the drawing of a deer with a flower in its mouth in ASV, CI, Busta 17, Bellancini. 62. On the form of notarial signs in twelfth-century Venetian notarial records, see Parcianello, Documentazione e notariato a Venezia, 105–110. Bartoli Langeli notes the essential formal similarity of all Venetian notarial registers. Bartoli Langeli, “Una differenza,” 62. 63. ASV, CI, Busta 144, Peresemolo. 64. Giambattista Lorenzi, ed., Monumenti per servire alla storia del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia ovvero serie di atti pubblici dal 1253 al 1797 parte 1, dal 1252 al 1600 (Venezia: Visentini, 1848), 10. 65. For Iohannes Campion’s parchment testamentary registers and calendars, see ASV, CI, Busta 36. For the draft paper copies of testaments, see ASV, NT, Buste 457, 458, 459. 66. A testament from 1389 was inserted between a record dated June 1396 and one from October 1395. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, 10r, no. 37, no. 38. 67. See, for instance, the loose chronological organization of testaments in the registers of Domenicus Peresemolo: ASV, NT, Busta 793; Iohannes Gazo: ASV, NT, Busta 466, and Cosimus de Sclavis: ASV, NT, Busta 918. 68. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, 73v / 74r, nos. 248–250. 69. Shona Kelly Wray noted the same practice among the notaries responsible for copying acts into the Libri Memoriali of Bologna. In some cases she found notaries copying testaments from the 1348 outbreak of plague into the registers in 1362! From a personal communication, February 2012. 70. Unlike on the mainland, where witnesses attended the bedside of the ill person as they dictated their wishes to the notary, in Venice, witnesses probably did not attend the initial meeting between testator and notary. Witness signatures are almost never found on the paper drafts of these wills, and nothing in the formulae of Venetian wills states that witnesses were

Notes to Pages 34–37 

n 

183

present at that moment. On the numerous witnesses at the bedside of the ill testator on the mainland, see Wray, Communities and Crisis, 53. 71. ASV, NT, Busta 919, de Robertis. 72. Filippo de Vivo, “Ordering the Archive in Early Modern Venice (1400–1650),” Archival Science 10 (2010), 236. On the creation of the Cancelleria Inferiore in Venice and its regulations about notarial imbreviature, which notaries were expected to store in their houses during their lifetimes, see Marco Pozza, “La Cancelleria,” Storia di Venezia, vol. 3, 367. 73. Marco Bigaglia, Capitulare legum notariis publiciis Venetiarum (Venezia: Apud Andream Poleti, 1689), cap. 10, 12. 74. Lorenzi, ed., Monumenti per servire alla storia del Palazzo Ducale, 10. 75. Francescus de Recovratis provides an example. See his notes about this in ASV, CI, Busta 162. For the decision by the Great Council to allow notaries to complete the work of their deceased peers in that period, see Marco Pozza, “La Cancelleria,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3, 380. Notaries in Como and Brescia were similarly instructed. Schulte, Scripturae publicae creditur; Patrizia Merati, “Il mestiere di notaio a Brescia nel secolo XIII,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome. Moyen-Age 114 (2002), 332. 76. ASTv, NT, Busta 17, Zello. 77. See examples of the process in Ivonne Zenarola Pastore, Atti della cancelleria dei patriarchi di Aquileia (1265–1420) (Udine: Arti Grafiche Friulane, 1983), 81, 84, 85. 78. Lo Statuto di Bergamo del 1353, ed. Giuliana Forgiarini (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1996), 63–64. 79. Giorgetta Bonfiglio-Dosio, “Padua Municipal Archives from the 13th to the 20th Centuries: A Case of Record-Keeping System in Italy,” Archivaria 60 (2005), 96. 80. Andreas Meyer, “Hereditary Laws and City Topography: On the Development of the Italian Notarial Archives in the Late Middle Ages,” in Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 226. 81. Ibid., 228. 82. Magnoni, Due canoniche, 17–18. The register is found, somewhat ironically, in Bergamo’s Biblioteca Civica and not in the diocesan archive: BCBg, AB 247. 83. For inventories of the holdings of diocesan archives across the peninsula, see the series Guida degli Archivi diocesani d’Italia, 3 vols. (Roma: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1990–1998). And for capitular archives, see the series Guida degli Archivi capitolari d’Italia (Roma: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 2000). For a description of working in Italian ecclesiastical archives in the 1950s, see Brentano, “Bishops and Saints,” in Two Churches, 366–367. For a view of ecclesiastical notaries and their work in central Italy, see Robert Brentano’s essay “The Bishop’s Books of Città di Castello,” Traditio 16 (1960), 241–254, and his discussion of ecclesiastical notaries in Brentano, Two Churches, 295–301.



184 

N 

Notes to Pages 37–41

84. ACVBg, CAP 43–53 and ASBg, Notarile, Buste 56, 57. 85. Guida Generale degli Archivi di Stato (Roma: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1981), vol. 1, 543. 86. On the development of this culture and a comparison of practices across Europe, see Michel Duchein, “The History of European Archives and the Development of the Archival Profession in Europe,” American Archivist, 55 (1992), 20. 87. Jason Hardgrave, “Parishes and Patriarchy: Gender and Boundaries in Late Medieval Venice,” Viator 41 (2010), 253. 88. http://asbergamo.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/145/atti-dei-notai. 89. http://archiviodistatotreviso.beniculturali.it/ 90. Finding aids prepared for ecclesiastical archives in Italy are sometimes more forthcoming about the content of these buste. See, for instance, the guide published by the Archivi e Biblioteche di Piacenza: Luca Ceriotti et al., eds., Guida alle Fonti: Archivi e Biblioteche di Piacenza (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2004).

chapter two: Records as Artifacts and Historical Events 1. Venetians were enthusiastic testators. On wills and will-making among the laity in Venice, see the essays in Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), and Linda Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia nel XIV secolo: uno studio sulla loro presenza nella società e nella famiglia,” Studi veneziani 35 (1998), 15–88. On will-making more generally across medieval Europe, see Shona Kelly Wray and Roisin Cossar, “Wills as Primary Sources,” in Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe, ed. Joel Rosenthal (London: Routledge, 2012), 59–71. 2. Linda Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 434, and Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia nel XIV secolo,” 16. The sheer volume of records led the Venetian chancery to create a separate section of the archive to deal with testaments. 3. Robert Brentano, Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth Century Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 272. 4. On the identities of those who could and could not make a will, see the notarial manual of Rolandino de Passageriis, Summa totius artis notariae (Venezia: Giunta, 1546), pars. 2, cap. 8, 233–240. 5. E. Friedberg, ed., Decretum Gratiani (Leipzig 1879–1881), vol. 2, 715–716. 6. Ibid., 1173. 7. Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), vol. 1, 201. 8. Rolandino, Summa totius artis notariae, pars. 2, cap. 8, 239–240. 9. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 219. The Liber Extra contains similar stipulations. See Decretales d. Gregorii papae IX, at UCLA Digital

Notes to Pages 41–43 

n 

185

Library Program, Corpus Juris Canonici (1582), http://digital.library .ucla.edu/canonlaw, cap 5. tit. 26, col. 1168. 10. On the patriarch of Aquiliea’s requirement of testamentary licenses for clergy, see ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5120, da Novate, Protocollo 1348, 28 June 1348. His suffragan, the bishop of Treviso, also enforced the requirement of a license for testating clergy. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, Covolettus da Corte de Semonzo, 26 May 1390. 11. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 11, 30 September 1386. 12. On the low rate of clerical testation in Venice, see Marco Folin, “Procedure testamentarie e alfabetismo a Venezia nel quattrocento,” Scrittura e civiltà 14 (1990), 17. The situation was similar in Bologna; see Shona Kelly Wray, Communities and Crisis: Bologna during the Black Death (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 24. 13. Fernanda Sorelli, “Il clero secolare a Venezia. Note per i secoli XII e XIII,” Preti nel medioevo, 33, with examples of thirteenth-century priests’ testaments on 34–37. 14. I examined more than one hundred priests’ wills drawn from a survey of over thirty buste in the Venetian State Archive dating from the 1340s to 1400. These buste comprise about 10 percent of the extant materials in the fourteenth-century Venetian notarial fondi. Since notarial archives have suffered significant destruction over time, the contents of this archive comprise only a fraction of all the notarial documents created during this period. Their sheer volume means that most Venetian testaments are still unedited. One valuable source collection is Sally McKee’s three-volume edition: Sally McKee, ed. Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete: 1312– 1420 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Collection, 1998). 15. On the tendency for notaries to interpret the manuals of notarial arts differently from one community to another, see Wray, Communities and Crisis, 13, n. 4. 16. Rolandino de Passageriis is very clear that without the identification of an heir, a testament had no value (unde sine haeredis institutione non valet testamentum). Rolandino, Summa totius artis notariae, pars. 2, cap. 8, 232v. Also see Wray, Communities and Crisis, 223. 17. R. J. R. Goffin, The Testamentary Executor in England and Elsewhere (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1901), 1–3. These responsibilities made some heirs refuse their inheritance. 18. Rolandino, Summa totius artis notariae, pars. 2, cap. 8, 233. In Bologna, for instance, commissarius is normally translated as “executor.” See Wray, Communities and Crisis, 232–238. 19. The site of creation was usually given as Rialto, the standard statement for the place of redaction given by all notaries who took their authority from the doge. On the meaning of Rialto in this context, see Roisin Cossar, “Venetian Notaries, Space, and Sociability in the Trecento,” I Tatti Studies in the Renaissance 19 (2016), 25–26.



186 

N 

Notes to Pages 44–49

20. On the capacity of Venetians to make their own (holograph) wills, without input from a notary, see Marco Ferro, “Testamenti,” Dizionario del diritto comune e Veneto (Venezia: Santini e figlio, 1845–1847), vol. 2, 788. 21. The 1242 Venetian statutes and their glosses, which may have been prepared by terraferma scholars, also use the term commissarius. See Roberto Cessi, ed., Gli statuti veneziani di Jacopo Tiepolo del 1242 e le loro glosse (Venezia: C. Ferrari, 1938), 191–200. 22. On the history of the fideicommissarius, see Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), 470–471. Also see Ferro, “Commissario” and “Fedecommesso,” Dizionario del diritto comune e Veneto, 439–441, 704–716. Finally, see Ferdinando Treggiari, Minister Ultimae voluntatis: esegi e sistema nella formazione del testamento fiduciario (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002). Many thanks to Giulio Silano for helping clarify this complicated feature of testamentary procedure. On guardianship, see Anna Bellavitis, “‘Et vedoando sia donna et madonna’: Guardianship and Remarriage in Early Modern Venice,” in Favoured and Less Favoured in Law and Legal Practice: Gender, Power and Authority (12th–19th Centuries), ed. G. Jacobsen et al., 2. 23. The same was sometimes true in the Roman period. See Treggiari, Minister ultimae voluntatis, 86–87. 24. ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 7, 27 April 1363. 25. This illuminates what Ann Laura Stoler calls “archiving-as-process rather than archives-as-things.” Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 20. 26. This version of the will is in ASV, NT, Busta 457, Campion, 21 July 1383. 27. On notaries’ use of Arabic numerals for more efficient record-keeping, see Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “Il numero delle righe, Raniero (Perugia, 1184–1206),” Notai: Scrivere documenti nell’Italia medievale (Roma: Viella, 2006), 89. 28. This record is found in the notary’s parchment registers, held in ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 59, 21 July 1383. 29. ASV, NT, Busta 850, Recovratis, no. 90, 9 August 1406. 30. This was a common responsibility of deacons in the Roman rite of the church. 31. ASV, NT, Recovratis, no. 93, 11 August 1406. 32. Other examples of multiple forms of the same priest’s will can be found in mainland archives, as well. See, for instance, ASTv, Notarile, Busta 17, Zello, the testament of Pre Zaninus Salomono, which exists both as notes on a piece of paper and as a more complete (but not entirely finished) version in the paper register. Researchers looking at laypeople’s wills would likely find many more examples of this kind. 33. Shannon McSheffrey, “Detective Fiction in the Archives: Court Records and the Uses of Law in Late Medieval England,” History Workshop Journal 65 (2008), 73.

Notes to Pages 50–52 

n 

187

34. By the sixteenth century, such inventories had become more common, and they form the foundation of many studies of material culture in the Italian Renaissance. See, for instance, Alison A. Smith, “Gender, Ownership, and Domestic Space: Inventories and Family Archives in Renaissance Verona,” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998), 375–391, and Margaret A. Morse, “Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the Renaissance Venetian casa,” Renaissance Studies 21 (2007), 151–184. 35. Giorgio Riello, “‘Things Seen and Unseen’: The Material Culture of Early Modern Inventories and Their Representation of Domestic Interiors,” in Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800, ed. Paula Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2013), 127. 36. Ibid., 130. 37. One example of a list of goods created as the result of such a dispute can be found in ASTv, Busta 81, Clarello, 18 February 1354. 38. For examples of inventories created for the estates of clerics by the procurators of San Marco, see ASV, PSM, Misti, Busta 126 (for the estate of the priest Bartolomeus Pino in 1388) and Busta 147 (estate of the priest Amizinus de San Moisè, 1359). 39. Riello, “‘Things Seen and Unseen,’” 136. 40. Ibid., 133–134. 41. This is a common view, although some scholars argue for the “spatial and temporal differentiation of activities within the home,” in the fourteenth century. See Felicity Riddy, “‘Burgeis’ Domesticity in Late-Medieval England,” in Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing, and Household in Medieval England, eds. Maryanne Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 21. 42. See references to houses with separate kitchens (coquina) in Bergamo: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 41b, Cazzulonibus, 29, 13 February 1372, and ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 202–203, 9 October 1355. 43. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 112r, ?April 1389, and ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 202–203, 9 October 1355. 44. Riello, “‘Things Seen and Unseen,’” 140, notes that most historians, intent on analyzing large numbers of inventories at the same time, have neglected to consider their textual qualities. 45. For instance, see ASV, NT, Busta 269, Cavazza, no. 47, 9 February 1382. 46. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 112r, ?April 1389. 47. On their responsibilities as executors, see Daniela Rando, “Nel nome del patrono, al servizio della comunità: l’opus e i procuratori di S. Marco di Venezia nei secoli XII–XIV,” in Opera: carattere e ruolo delle fabbriche cittadine fino all’inizio dell’età moderna, eds. M. Haines and L. Riccetti (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1996), 91. On the procurators in the early modern period, see D. S. Chambers, “Merit and Money: The Procurators of St Mark and Their Commissioni, 1443–1605,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 60 (1997), 23–88.



188 

N 

Notes to Pages 52–56

48. See ASV, PSM de Citra, Busta 88 (comm. Presbiter Soia (de) Giacomo quondam Giacomo). For the fair copy of the will, see ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 5 August 1373. 49. On the organization of such sales see Evelyn Welch, “From Retail to Resale: Artistic Value and the Second-Hand Market in Italy, 1400–1550,” in The Art Market in Italy: 15th–17th centuries, eds. Sarah Matthews-Grieco, Marcello Fantoni, and Louisa Chevalier Matthew (Modena: F. C. Panini, 2003), 285. 50. The list of goods sold does include a few items we see mentioned only rarely in inventories, including a banderella, or flag, with an image of (the lion of?) San Marco displayed on it. ASV, PSM de Citra, Busta 88 (comm. Presbiter Soia (de) Giacomo quondam Giacomo). 51. Riello, “‘Things Seen and Unseen,’” 137. 52. A Trevisan priest who stated that the house provided to him was not furnished also noted that his companion, dona Almengarda, had brought some objects into the house with her when she came to live there. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 27 March 1390. 53. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 190v, 200r. 54. A substantial number of finding aids and complete visitation records themselves have been published. See, for instance, Don Livio Sparapani et al., Atti visitali conservati negli archivi diocesani del Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Veneto, Trentino (Città del Vaticano: Associazione Archivistica Ecclesiastica 1998); Visite pastorali in diocesi di Ivrea negli anni 1329 e 1346 (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1980) (abbreviated hereafter as Ivrea); Visitatio ecclesie capituli utinensis (Udine: Istituto Pio Paschini, 1984) (abbreviated hereafter as Udine); Elisabetta Canobbio, ed., La visita pastorale di Gerardo Landriani alla diocesi di Como (Milano: Unicopli, 2001) (abbreviated hereafter as Como); Enrico Peverada, ed., La visita pastorale del vescovo Francesco Dal Legname a Ferrara (1447–1450) (Ferrara: Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, 1982) (abbreviated hereafter as Ferrara); Noemi Meoni, “Visite Pastorali a Cortona nel Trecento,” Archivio Storico Italiano 129 (1972), 181–256. 55. Angelo Turchini has argued that the lists of questions posed during visits in the fifteenth century across northern and central Italy included some that were merely conventional or traditional and did not really reflect the particular ideas of the visitor or the bishop of the day. Angelo Turchini, “Per la storia religiosa del ‘400. Visite pastorali e questionari di visita nell’Italia Centro-Settentrionale,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 13 (1977), 280. 56. Ivrea, xi. 57. See, for instance, the Tabula for the 1447–1449 visitations of churches in the diocese of Ferrara, listing each church by name and providing the folio number in the volume where the visitation record was to be found in Ferrara, 169–173. 58. Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 125. 59. See, for instance, Robert Brentano, “The Bishop’s Books of Città di Castello,” Traditio 16 (1960), 253.

Notes to Pages 56–63 

n 

189

60. Consider the statement by the bishop of Bergamo to the canons of that city before a visit in 1371: ACVBg, CAP 47, Zenaglia, 137r, 30 June 1371. 61. See examples of these actions from Udine in 1346, Udine, 100–101, and in Como a century later, Canobbio, “Preti di montagna nell’alta Lombardia,” Preti nel medioevo, 234. 62. Ivrea, 18. 63. Pascal Vuillemin, “Pro reformatione dicte ecclesie: Visites pastorales véniti  (2006), 222. ennes à la fin du Moyen Âge,” MEFRM 118 /2 64. Michelle Armstrong Partida also contributes a valuable—and rare—­ description of the process notaries followed as they created visitation records in fourteenth-century Catalunya. See Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013), 185–186. 65. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 189r–208r. 66. Ibid., 138r–170r. 67. Udine, 43. 68. Ivrea, 103–104. 69. Vuillemin, “Pro reformatione dicte ecclesie,” 232. 70. Ivrea, 99. 71. James B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Mark Gregory Pegg, The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 72. Como, 133. 73. On parishioners’ gossiping about these questions, see Canobbio, “Preti di montagna,” 235. 74. Vuillemin, “Pro reformatione dicte ecclesie,” 225. 75. Ibid., 232, 237. 76. Robert Brentano, A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 319.

chapter three: Priests as Patriarchs 1. Studies of the clergy on the Italian mainland mainly focus on the institutional activities of priests and cathedral canons. They also tend to assume that there was a clear distinction between clerics and laypeople. See George Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); John Benjamin Yousey-Hindes, Living the Middle Life: Secular Priests and Their Communities in Thirteenth-Century Genoa (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2010); Francesca Magnoni, Due canoniche, un capitolo, un vescovo: la cattedrale di Bergamo nel periodo avignonese. Una storia urbana? (Ph.D. diss., Università degli Studi di Milano, 2010 /2   011); and essays published in the annual volumes of Quaderni di storia religiosa,



2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

190 

N 

Notes to Pages 63–64

including Preti nel medioevo (Verona: Cierre, 1997) and Chiesa e notai (secoli XII–XV) (Verona: Cierre, 2004). The few studies of the domestic world of the clergy on the mainland complicate a notion of a clear divide between clerics and laity in their communities. See Daniel Bornstein, “Parish Priests in Late Medieval Cortona: The Urban and Rural Clergy,” Preti nel medioevo, 173–174. For an overview of recent publications (mainly in English) on the subject of civic religion in Italy, see Mary Doyno, “Urban Religious Life in the Italian Communes: The State of the Field,” History Compass 9 (2011), 720–730. Bruno Bertoli, “Le parrocchie veneziane,” in Archivi e chiesa locale: studi e contribute, ed. F. Cavazzana Romanelli (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1993), 121–160. Also see Antonio Rigon, “I problemi religiosi,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 3, 942. On the Venetian parish as a space in the city, see Pascal Vuillemin, “L’espace urbain Venetien: Un enjeu entre chapitres paroissiaux et ordres mendiants (XIIIE–XV siècles),” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 63, 1 (2009), 49–71. Fernanda Sorelli argues that Venetian clerics exercised “a preeminent position” in the society of the period. Fernanda Sorelli, “Il clero secolare a Venezia. Note per i secoli XII e XIII,” Preti nel medioevo, 35. For observations on the overly secular nature of Venetian historiography, see Daniela Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera: Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI–XII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), esp. 8, 135. Francesca Magnoni has identified 189 members of those cathedral chapters in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Magnoni, Due canoniche, 234. However, see the balanced perspective offered by Rigon in his essay “I problemi religiosi,” Storia di Venezia vol. 3, 933–956, esp. 942. Also see Paolo Prodi, “The Structure and Organization of the Church in Renaissance Venice: Suggestions for Research,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 409–430, esp. 411, 419–421; Pierre Daru, Histoire de la Republique de Venise (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1819), 6, 215. On the argument for Venetian clerical decadence see Mario Fois, S. J., “I religiosi: decadenza e fermenti innovatori,” in La chiesa di Venezia tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. G. Vian (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1989), 147–182. For an argument about Venetian clerical piety, see Thomas Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 24. Sorelli, “Il clero secolare a Venezia,” 27–28. Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 91–95. On the role of parish clergy in mainland Italy as representatives or vicars of their bishops, see Michele Maccarone, “Cura animarum e parochialis sacerdos nelle costituzioni del IV concilio lateranense (1215). Applicazioni in Italia nel sec. XIII,” in Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso Medioevo (secc. XIII–XV) (Roma: Herder, 1984), 81–195. The evolution of the parochial system in Italy is traced in Catherine Boyd, Tithes and Parishes in Medieval Italy: The Historical Roots of a Modern Problem (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), 54–57.

Notes to Pages 64–65 

n 

191

7. Collegiate churches housed six or more clerics at a time. Vittorio Piva, Il patriarcato di Venezia e le sue origini (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1938). 8. Rigon, “I problemi religiosi,” Storia di Venezia vol. 3, 933–956, but compare Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 92–93. Maurizio Rosada, S. Maria Formosa (Venezia: Il comitato editore, 1972), xxv. 9. ASV, NT, Busta 729, Diedo, no. 49, 13 July 1348. This sum was equivalent to three average patrician dowries in the same period. Stanley Chojnacki, “Getting Back the Dowry,” in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 97. 10. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 25 September 1368. Priests could also be wealthy and powerful. The priests Francescus de Recovratis and Petrus della Torre were both chaplains, or cappellani, of the basilica of San Marco. ASV, CI, Busta 164, Recovratis, no. 2, 29 November 1367 and ASV, NT, Busta 729, Diedo, no. 51, 15 July 1348. There was also a long tradition of notaries serving as chaplains of the basilica. Dennis Romano, “Venetian Exceptionalism?” in Churchmen and Urban Government in late medieval Italy: Cases and Contexts, ed. Frances Andrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 226. And Bartolomeus Pino, a priest and moneylender at Santa Maria Formosa left 1,000 lire in his will to a monastery on the island of Murano. ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 6 July 1388. 11. See Chapter 1. 12. Guido Ruggiero long ago described “informal living arrangements” among Venetian couples of low social rank; Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 30, 100. Also see Jana Byars, “The Long and Varied Relationship of Andrea Mora and Anzola Davide: Concubinage, Marriage, and the Authorities in the Early Modern Veneto,” Journal of Social History 41 (2008), 667–690. For a study of marriage and family through the dowry in Venice, see Linda Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 430–473. 13. In his many essays, Stanley Chojnacki has sustained that Venetian laywomen were unusually influential within their families. A contrary perspective on that argument can be found in Isabelle Chabot and Anna Bellavitis, “A proposito di ‘Men and Women in Renaissance Italy’ di Stanley Chojnacki,” Quaderni Storici 118 (2005), 1–22. 14. For instance, in his testament Presbiter Iacobellus Rosso was further identified by the notary Petris de Corozatis as “deacon of the church of San Barnaba” (ecclesie San Barnabe diaconus). ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 26, 2 July 1389. Also see the 1403 testament of the man identified as “Presbiter Petrus Visto, diaconus ecclesie Sancte Margarite,” ASV, NT, Busta 556, Galvani, and descriptions of witnesses such as “presbiter Antonius diaconus . . . ecclesie Santi Apostoli” in ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 14 August 1373.



192 

N 

Notes to Pages 66–68

15. For an argument in favor of names as a source for social history, see Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe (London: UCL Press, 1998). On the practice of reusing names for children within the same family and generation, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Name Remade,” in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 283–309. For discussion of the same individual named in multiple ways across many records, see Thomas Kuehn, “Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna,” Journal of Modern History 61 (1989), 522, n. 43. For a sensitive treatment of the significance of names in early modern Italy, see James Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 42–47, 225. 16. Using the filiation form of a name, a layman would be identified as “Iohannes the son of (filius) Iohanni.” 17. Monique Bourin argues that one important difference between clerics and laymen in that period was the rare use of “direct indications of filiation” for clerics. Monique Bourin, “L’anthroponymie des clercs en Bas-Languedoc: le cartulaire du chapitre d’Agde,” in Genèse médiévale de l’anthroponomie moderne (Tours: Rabelais, 1992), 135. 18. Maureen Miller, “Clerical Identity and Reform: Notarial Descriptions of the Secular Clergy in the Po Valley, 750–1200,” in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. Michael Frassetto (London: Taylor and Francis, 1998), 310, 314. 19. François Menant, “Comment s’appellaient les habitants de Cremone vers 1300?” Mélanges de L’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Age 11 (1998), 184. 20. François Menant has also argued that written documents “express the compromise between the real designation habits and their adaptation by the specialist of writing.” François Menant, “What Were People Called in Communal Italy?” in Personal Name Studies of Medieval Europe: Social Identity and Familial Structures, eds. G. Beech et al. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), 103–107. 21. Shona Kelly Wray, Communities and Crisis: Bologna during the Black Death (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 13. 22. In Bologna when clerics made their wills, they were named as both sons and clerics, and, in the words of Shona Kelly Wray, “when they appear as witnesses, legatees or executors they were usually [identified] without filiation.” Wray noted that in the testaments she had read from fourteenth-century Bologna, she had found eight priest testators who were in all but one case identified with filiation, while “in 300 or more references to priests in testaments [as witnesses, etc.] less than 10% of them had filiation in names, most were simply [identified with their title (dopnus) and first name.” From a personal communication. 23. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 248–250, 22 July 1353. 24. See the document in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 344–345, 11 October 1353.

Notes to Pages 68–71 

n 

193

25. To name two prominent examples from Bergamo: Pre Tomaxius de Roariis, natus quondam domini Viviani de Roariis, a canon of cathedral of San Vincenzo in the 1360s (BCBg, MIA pergamene 763), and Graciolus de ­Sangervasio, natus domini Rogeri de Sangervasio, similarly a canon in the same period. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 35, de Ambivere, 103, 5 March 1349. For examples from Padua, see Paolo Sambin, “Chierici ordinati a Padova alla fine del Trecento,” Rivista di storia della chiese in Italia 2 (1948), 381–402. 26. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 30c, de Pilis, no. 251, 15 September 1347. 27. Similarly, in the wills of Venetian Crete edited by Sally McKee, clerical testators appear using the same naming pattern as other male testators—a first name and surname, with their clerical title appended to that name. Sally McKee, ed., Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete: 1312–1420 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Collection, 1998). See, for instance, wills numbered 210 (Presbyter Marcus Cavalcante, 15 April 1349), 324 (Presbyter Petrus Dandulo, capelanus ecclesie Crete, 15 January 1347 /1   348), and 335 (Presbyter Lucas Mudacio, canonicus Archadiensis, 27 April 1349). 28. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 123, 16 September 1389. 29. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo; ASV, NT, Busta 466, Gazo. 30. Paolo Sambin, “Altri chierici ordinati a Padova nella seconda metà del secolo XIV,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 6 (1952), 386–407. 31. Wilson, The Means of Naming, 20. 32. The popularity of the name Iohannes in the fourteenth century continued into the fifteenth, as James Grubb has found that it was the most popular male name in Vicenza from 1453 to 1505. Grubb, Provincial Families, 225. 33. Silvana Anna Bianchi, “Chierici, ma non sempre preti. Itinerari clericali nel Veneto tra la fine del XIII e gli inizi del XV secolo,” Preti nel medioevo, 60, 72. 34. Magnoni, Due canoniche, 235. 35. Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 92–93. 36. Pat Cullum, “Life Cycle and Life-Course in a Clerical and Celibate Milieu: Northern England in the Later Middle Ages,” in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, eds. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riano (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 273. Janelle Werner notes that one of the consequences of Cullum’s argument is the notion that clerics never became “fully socially adult.” Janelle Werner, “Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 162. 37. Bianchi, “Itinerari clericali,” 70. 38. We know Iohannes’ approximate age, since he assured Petrus he was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 69, 8 August 1340, cited in Giampaolo Cagnin, “Reclutamento e formazione del clero a Treviso,” in Preti nel Medioevo, 95, 113–114. In Venice in 1322, a boatman (barcharolus) drew up an agreement with a priest to ensure that the boatman’s son could remain in the priest’s house, serving him and learning to read and write over a four-year period. Felice de Merlis: Prete e notaio in Venezia ed



39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

194 

N 

Notes to Pages 72–74

Ayas (1315–1348) (Venezia: Il Comitato Editore, 1973), no. 580, 12 November 1322. The contract was for instruction in ecclesiasticis documentis et cantis (ASTv, Notarile, Busta 68, A. Vendremini de Nepote, 1331, cited in Cagnin, “Reclutamento e formazione del clero a Treviso,” 112). Antonio Rigon also describes clerics living with other clerics as apprentices. Rigon, Clero e Città: ‘Fratalea Cappellanorum, parroci, cura d’anime in Padova dal XII al XV secolo (Padova: Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Padovana, 1988), 151, and see examples from Padua in ASPd, Notai di Curia Vescovile, reg. 1 and 2. Also see entries in Sambin, “Altri chierici ordinati a Padova,” 386–407. Many such witnessing couples were named by the notaries Iohannes Campion and Domenico Peresemolo, both of the church of San Canciano (San Canzian). ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion; Busta 144, Peresemolo. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 56, 20 January 1382. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 88, 13 July 1385. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 4 September 1373. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 22 May 1377. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 28 October 1374. On longstanding relationships between clerics and their parish churches in Venice, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 94. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 14 August 1376. ASV, NT, Busta 108, Boninsegna, 8 October 1393. Marinus was careful to state that the income could only be used for those expenses. ASV, NT, Busta 447, Falchonis, 8 November 1360. Pasqualinus was probably his apprentice and, therefore, young. ASV, NT, Busta 888, Decani, no. 15, 28 February 1359 /1   360. The companion, domina Flor, was not mentioned in the priest’s later will: ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 25 September 1368. Will of domina Venturina filia quondam domini Mayfredi de Primolo and uxor quondam domini Michele Zezunonum, ASBg, Notarile, Busta 12, Soiario, 83, 13 April 1356. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 257, 26 July 1353. He was identified as the son of the late Albertus de Padua. ASV, CI, Busta 88, Decani, 19 June 1335. Other examples from Venice can be found at Felice de Merlis, vol. 1, no. 580, 269. Thibodeaux speculates that nepos was a euphemism for son (filius) in Bayeux, where, she notes, in the twelfth century, “clerical sons of the elite seemingly disappeared overnight, while at the same time a large number of nephews appeared on the ecclesiastical stage.” Jennifer Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 82. ASV, NT, Busta 361, de Orlandis, no.5, 26 February 1379 /1   380.

Notes to Pages 74–76 

n 

195

58. Graciolus de Sangervasio complained that the priest Petrus de Urniano housed his son in the canonry, as did Gisalbertus de Collionibus. ACVBg, CAP 44, 190r, February 1364. 59. A cleric from Oglianico told the visitor that the sons of the Pre Obertus helped during the mass. Ivrea, 34. 60. Ivrea, 53. 61. See, for instance, the statements by the priest Obertus, rector of the church in Oglianico, in 1329. He told the visitor that his companion “came and went” from his house, and, similarly, that their three children were “sometimes” with him. Ivrea, 27. The priest Iohannes, rector of the church at Ceresole, told the visitor that the child he had with a woman sometimes stayed with him for periods up to a month. Ivrea, 44. Similar arrangements prevailed in other regions of Europe at the time. On priests’ family members in Catalunya, see Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013), 175. 62. Famulus is used to mean “son” in ASV, CI, Busta 141, Paolo, 31 July 1340. One notable example of its use as “apprentice” is found in a record of the famulus of the Trevisan priest dominus Petrus de Baone, in ASTv, Notarile, Busta 31, da Romano, 3v, 28 September 1349. 63. ASV, NT, Busta 586, G. San Heustadi, 8 August 1358. 64. See his appearances throughout ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, reg. 1352 and 1353 and Busta 27a, A. Capitani de Scalve, 188. For a description of the rooms after Simone’s death, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 305, 29 January 1357, and on the division of the house after Simon’s death, see the same register, 202–203, 9 October 1355. Simone probably had another son, Persevalinus, who was also in minor orders (he may have died as a young man). See ASBg, Notarile, Busta 27a, A. Capitani de Scalve, 225. 65. In one witness list he is identified as part of a group who are “all clerics” (omnibus clericis), and elsewhere in the same notary’s register he is described as “Marchisinus, clericus . . .”; ASBg, Notarile, Busta 25d, Sangervasio, 18, 16 April 1348, and 23, 23 July 1348. His appearance as a witness to legal transactions identifies Marchisinus as a legally capable male, not subject to his father’s authority. For another case from Bergamo, see that of Zenolus, son of the late (filius quondam) priest Iohannes de Roariis, who served as a witness for the notary Iacobus de Facheris de Caversenio in 1375. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 106, 8 and 14. In ASBg, Notarile, Busta 134, Vianova, 137, 23 December 1391 Zenolus de Roaris is also named as a witness to a document involving canons. 66. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 69. 67. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 18 March 1350. 68. Ivrea, 27. Also see pages 45, 87, 88, 89, and 92 in the same volume. 69. As young men, they often served as witnesses for records created on behalf of the ecclesiastical community. For instance, see the appearances of Silvestrus



70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

78.

79.

80.

196 

N 

Notes to Pages 76–77

de LaCrotta, identified as a “cleric of Bergamo” (clericus Pergami) and as the son of Guidottus de LaCrotta, archpriest of the church of Bergamo, in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 146, 22 March 1355, and Busta 36, de Ambivere, 160, 25 March 1352. The two held benefices at the church of Nimbro in the 1360s. ACVBg, CAP 46, Zenaglia, 76r, 12 October 1369. For the masses, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 114, Adelasio, 179, 1381. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 134, Vianova, 537 and 538, 25 August 1399. On such solutions for the demographic crisis in England after the first wave of plague, see Christopher Harper-Bill, “The English Church and English Religion after the Black Death,” in The Black Death in England, eds. Mark Ormrod and Philip Lindley (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1996), 87. Harper-Bill also notes a drop-off in ordinations in the decades after 1348. See, for instance, the license granted to Iohannes, son of the priest Bertramus de Caversenio, by the bishop of Bergamo. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 30c, de Pilis, 251, 15 September 1347. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5119, G. da Novate, 3v–4r, no. 105, 11 January 1351. For other similar agreements, see ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5119, G. da Novate, 7v, no. 107ter, 14 January 1351, and 8r, in the same register and on the same date. Also see Ivonne Zenarola Pastore, ed., Atti della Cancelleria dei Patriarchi di Aquileia (1265–1420) (Udine: Arti grafiche friulane, 1983), 175. Ludwig Schmugge, Marriage on Trial: Late Medieval German Couples at the Papal Court, trans. Atria A. Larson (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 174. Kathryn Ann Taglia, “‘On Account of Scandal’: Priests, Their Children, and the Ecclesiastical Demand for Celibacy,” Florilegium 14 (1995–1996), 58. In some places, men had to be twenty years old to take orders; in other places, a few years older. In 1350, the bishop of Lucca stipulated (following a papal decree) that parish clerics had to be at least twenty-five years old. Mansi, vol. 26, col. 259. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 189r, 1364, exact date illegible. Exact ages are rarely given in these records. Instead, I calculated ages by assuming that a cleric’s first appearance in the records in major orders meant that he was twenty years old. Petrus first appeared in the records in 1349 (ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 43, 16 November 1349), and Albertus’ first appearance was in 1346 (ASBg, Notarile, Busta 30c, S. de Pilis, 30, 22 May 1346), making Petrus at least thirty-five and Albertus at least thirty-eight when the accusations of concubinage were made against them. Of course, many clerics might have been well over twenty when they first appeared in the records, so Petrus and Albertus might have been even older than this. For that case, see the registers of Salviolus de Cazzulonibus, in ACVBg, CAP 74, 210–215 (1374). He first appeared in the records as a notary in 1348, meaning that he was at least forty-six when he was accused of concubinage. ACVBg, CAP 44, 191r, 1364, exact date illegible. His first appearance in the records was in 1336 (ASBg, Notarile, Busta 15a, Brolo, 88, 24 February 1336),

Notes to Pages 77–79 

n 

197

meaning that he was probably at least forty-eight at the time of these accusations. 81. He was working in the 1360s, so he must have been born c. 1340, and she was probably born in the early 1380s, since she was not of the age of majority when he made his will in 1395. ASV, NT, Busta 567, Bartolomeo, 15 February 1394 /1   395. 82. Jennifer Thibodeaux further argues that in Normandy and England, twelfthand thirteenth-century church reformers saw a priest’s children as evidence that their fathers were “softened men who were sexually dominated by women.” Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 65. 83. Thomas Kuehn makes this argument against the views of Manlio Bellomo in his “A Late Medieval Conflict of Laws: Inheritance by Illegitimates in Ius Comune and Ius Proprium,” Law and History Review 15 (1997), 245. Jennifer Thibodeaux also notes that some sons of priests in Normandy were openly named as such in the twelfth century. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 85. 84. Legitimacy was divided into several degrees in the Middle Ages. See Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 160, and Thomas Kuehn, Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 36–45. 85. Marco Ferro, “Naturale,” Dizionario del diritto comune e Veneto (Venezia: Santini e figlio, 1847), vol. 2, 316. Also see Kuehn, “A Late Medieval Conflict of Laws,” 248. 86. Roberto Cessi, ed., Gli statuti veneziani di Jacopo Tiepolo del 1242 e le loro glosse (Venezia: C. Ferrari, 1938), 201, n. 139: “qui videtur esse filius et non est. Et omnes tales illegittimi ab honoribus repelluntur et in nullo succedunt. . . .” On the challenging legal status of the children of clerics, see Ferdinando Treggiari, Minister Ultimae Voluntatis esegi e sistema nella formazione del testamento fiduciario (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002), 462–466. 87. Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women, 160. Also see Laura Wertheimer, “Children of Disorder: Clerical Parentage, Illegitimacy, and Reform in the Middle Ages,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15 (2006), 392–395. Clerics’ children’s lack of legal status in relation to their fathers is clearly stated in notarial law. See, for instance, the notarial handbook compiled by Salatiele, who states that those born ex dampnato coitu could not be instituted as their parents’ heirs. G. Orlandelli, ed., Salatiele: ars notariae (Milano: Giuffrè, 1961), bk. 3, 189. 88. The assumption of patria potestas without its explicit mention was common in other communities at this time, as Lucie Laumonier points out for medieval Marseille in Lucie Laumonier, “Meanings of Fatherhood in Late Medieval Montpellier: Love, Care, and the Exercise of Patria Potestas,” Gender & History 27 (2015), 653. 89. ASV, NT, Busta 895, Seneti, 21 March 1379 /1   380. 90. ASV, CI, Busta 567, Bartolomeo, 15 February 1394 /1   395. 91. ASV, NT, Busta 850, Recovratis, no. 12, 10 August 1382.



198 

N 

Notes to Pages 79–84

92. Thibodeaux emphasizes this discrepancy in Normandy and England for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, positing that illegitimate sons could be “socially accepted as legitimate.” Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 85. 93. Kuehn, “A Late Medieval Conflict of Laws, Inheritance by Illegitimates,” 248. 94. Sally McKee, “Inherited Status and Slavery in Late Medieval Italy and Venetian Crete,” Past and Present 182 (2004), 36–37. Flexible approaches to the inheritance of clerics’ illegitimate children might also have drawn on legal texts such as Clement III’s decretal letter of the thirteenth century, which stated that all children, regardless of their legitimacy, were owed protection and sustenance from their parents. Richard Helmholz, “Support Orders, Church Courts, and the Rule of Filius Nullius: A Reassessment of the Common Law,” Virginia Law Review 63 (1977), 434. 95. Jutta Gisela Sperling, “Marriage, Kinship, and Property in Portuguese Testaments (1649–1650),” in Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property and Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300–1800), eds. Jutta Gisela Sperling and Shona Kelly Wray (New York: Routledge, 2010), 162. 96. The same situation prevailed in earlier periods, such as in twelfth-century Normandy. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 84–85. 97. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 164, Recovratis, no. 2, 29 November 1367. 98. ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 7, 27 April 1363. 99. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 16 Jan. 1350 /1   351. 100. ASV, NT, Busta 586, Heustadi, no. 51, 8 August 1358. 101. ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 6 July 1388. 102. Ibid. 103. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 90, 21 July 1363. 104. ASV, NT, Busta 731, Malumbri, no. 3, 17 September 1397. 105. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 16 January 1350 /1   351. 106. Ken Pennington, “The Canonists and Pluralism in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 51 (1976), 41. 107. Ibid., 38. 108. For some examples, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, Register 1352, 4–8, 51, 53, 313. 109. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 31, da Romano, 5 and 16 June 1350. The priest Nicolaus de Baone, also a cleric at San Giuliano (San Zulian) in the same period, was likely his kinsman. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 10, 19 April 1350. Perhaps that fact that canons did not have pastoral care responsibilities made such pluralism more acceptable. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest, 72–73. 110. See his testament in ASV, NT, Busta 729, Diedo, no. 49, 13 July 1348. 111. His testament is in ASV, NT, Busta 448, Fructis, 27 August 1382. 112. ASBg, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 347, 15 October 1353. 113. He is identified only as holder of a benefice in the village of Prezate in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 19, 8 January 1353, and as canon of the church in Cremona on page 68 of the same register. He appears as “Pre Iacobus” in the registers of Gasparinus Dumottis: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 45, 17 December 1349.

Notes to Pages 84–87 

n 

199

14. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 349, 15 October 1353. 1 115. I first began looking at the Boattieri family when Shona Kelly Wray alerted me to their prominence in Bologna and then shared valuable information about them in our subsequent discussions and sessions in the Venetian archives. Thanks, too, to Sarah Blanshei, for sharing details about the early-fourteenth-­ century members of the family among the Bolognese civic officials of the period. 116. See Gianfranco Orlandelli, “Boattieri, Pietro,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 10 (1968), 803–805. 117. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, (1350). Also see his appearances in the acts of the Aquilaeian notary Gubertino da Novate. Giulio Silano, Acts of Gubertinus de Novate, Notary of the Patriarch of Aquileia, 1328–1336 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), no. 52, 276. 118. For documents in which Matteus appears as the vicar general of the Trevisan bishop, and in which his son Cambius is identified as a cleric of the church of Santa Maria in Cero / Zero, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena. For Bonincontrus, see the management of his estate by his fideicommissaries (including his testament) in ASV, PSM, Misti, Busta 7 (9 October 1382) and for documents regarding the college in Padua, see ASV, Mensa Patriarcale, Busta 187, which includes the statutes of the college and records surrounding its foundation in 1366. On his position as a legal scholar see L. Gianni, Le note di Pietro dell’Oca da Reggio Emilia, 1360–75 (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per il medioevo, 2006). 119. ASV, PSM, Misti, Busta 7, 9 October 1382. 120. However, see Fiona Griffiths, “Siblings and the Sexes in the Medieval Religious Life,” Church History 77 (2008), 26–53. 121. For records of first tonsure, see the registers of ASPd, Notai di Curia Vescovile and Paolo Sambin, “Chierici ordinati a Padova,” 381–402. For instance, three brothers of the de Roariis family, Iohannes, Georgius, and Tomaxius, all joined the church in Bergamo around the same time. See BCBg, MIA pergamene 763, 26 June 1361, for the testament of Pre Tomaxius de Roariis with support for his nephew Iohannes, son of his late brother Iohannes, also a priest. 122. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 193r. 123. Ivrea, 155. 124. ASV, NT, Busta 545, Giuliani, no. 15. The letter is not dated, but other records in the busta date from the 1360s and 1370s. 125. Sometimes this energy was misplaced. On a decision by the Council of Ten (11 March 1360) to discipline the brother of a priest who had attempted to force his election as pievano, see Consiglio dei Dieci, Deliberazioni Misti Reg V (1348–63), ed. Ferruccio Zago, Fonti per la storia di Venezia, Archivi Publici (Venezia: Comitato per la pubblicazione delle fonti relative alla storia di Venezia, 1993), 243. 126. ACVBg, CAP 20, Anenis, 26r–28v, 43r–45v, 62r / v. Daniel Bornstein has also described a priest’s brother outside Cortona, accused of pawning large amounts of grain, linen, wine, clothing, and liturgical books after the death of



27. 1 128. 29. 1 130. 131. 132.

133.

134.

35. 1 136. 137. 38. 1 139.

140. 41. 1 142.

143. 144.

200 

N 

Notes to Pages 87–90

his sibling. Daniel Bornstein, “Spiritual Culture, Material Culture: Church Inventories in Fifteenth-Century Cortona,” Medievalia et Humanistica 28 (2001), 108–109. Como, 105–106. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 31, da Romano, 10r, 16 June 1350. The document records Petrus taking possession of his brother’s house. BCBg, MIA pergamene 893. Pre Tomaxius De Roariis named his brothers and nephews as heirs in his will. BCBg, MIA pergamene 763. Constance Rousseau, “Pope Innocent III and Familial Relationships of Clergy and Religious,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 14 (1993), 121. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 16, 31 December 1352 and 423, 9 November 1352. Aristotilles was a peripatetic and experienced administrator attached to the church; in the late 1340s he traveled to Vicenza to act as proctor for two other canons, perhaps his relatives. See Archivio Capitolare, Vicenza (ACV), Atti dei Notai, CAP 19, Nicolo da Castelgomberto, reg. 1347–1352, 45r / v, 46r. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 259, 3 August 1353, and 442–443, 23 November 1353. He was noted again in Busta 36, de Ambivere 306, 31 August 1353, and again in Busta 36, 397–398, 11 November 1353. For examples of notaries acting as proctors for their clerical sons in Treviso, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 56, da Corona, 3r, 4 September 1340, and ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 17 January 1359. ASPd, Notai di Curia Vescovile, reg. 2, unfoliated. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 7, Soiario, reg. 1331–1332, 59–62. On his work as a notary, see ACVBg, CAP 426, and on his status as a custodian (custodes), see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 30c, de Pilis, 46, 16 June 1346. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 56–58, 21 January 1352. He is named as patronus of the Misericordia Maggiore in ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 189v and as cellarer for the canons of Sant’Alessandro in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 57, Zenaglia, 171. For instance in 1366: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 31, Zandobbio, 49, and in 1374: ACVBg, CAP 48, Zenaglia. ACVBg, CAP 43, Zenaglia, 82r–85r, 22 August 1361. For his name as a witness to a notarial document, see ASBg, Notarile, Busta 41b, Cazzulonibus, reg. 1357, 151. See his appearance at the election of the abbess of Santa Grata just before his death in 1387: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 134, Vianova, 8, 15 June 1387. For a discussion of filling his place after his death, see ACVBg, CAP 78, 131v–134r. See the examples of dominus Lanfrancus de Collionibus, archpriest and venerabile vir, ACVBg, CAP 4, 129v; Stephanus de Lanternis, archdeacon and venerabile vir ASBg, Notarile, Busta 98, Poma, 321; Federicus de Garganis, vicar general to the bishop and venerabile vir: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 27a, A. Capitani Scalve, 200.

Notes to Pages 90–92 

n 

201

145. However, see the example from Parella, in the diocese of Ivrea, where a coadiutor was found to assist the aging priest, who, according to witnesses, could not manage his responsibilities on his own. Ivrea, 82–83. 146. Ferrara, 298. 147. Ivrea, 140–141. 148. Ferrara, 351. 149. For instance, the Bergamasque notary Francescus Zenaglia worked at least from 1347 until 1374. See his registers in ACVBg, CAP 43–59, and ASBg, Notarile, Busta 57. In the same city. Bergaminus Zandobbio was active from 1338 until 1387: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 31; Teutaldus de Casteniate from 1354 until 1396: ACVBg, CAP 28–33; and Gasparinus Capitani de Mozzi from 1355 until 1417: ASBg, Notarile, Buste 84a / b, 85. 150. On a similar approach to the work of a different notary, see Roisin Cossar, “Portraits of Aging Men in Late Medieval Italy,” The Gerontologist 52 (2012), 553–560, doi:10.1093 / geront / gnr149. 151. The earliest document of his I have found is dated 1365: ASV, NT, Busta 458, paper cedola. The latest date is from the spring of 1400: ASV, NT, Busta 457. However, he appears as a witness (identified as a priest) in the registers of his colleague Domenico Peresemolo beginning in 1361. ASV, CI, Busta 144, Peresemolo, 1r, 9 April 1361. 152. In the early 1370s, he also worked on ships in the eastern Mediterranean. See ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, 3r, 1371–1372. On the economic and social composition of San Canciano, see E. Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra Le Acque Salse” Espaces, Pouvoir, e Société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge (Roma: Istituto Storico per il Medio Evo, 1992), vol. 1, 208, 749. 153. See ASV, CI, Busta 36, and ASV, NT, Buste 457, 458, 459. 154. Studies of modern individuals’ self-perception as aging adults suggest that handwriting changes are most evident in those who have absorbed negative ideas about aging, and thus we might assume that aging people—including those in the past—who remained active and engaged in their communities would not display significant declines in their handwriting. B. Levy, “Handwriting as a Reflection of Aging Self-Stereotypes,” Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 33 (2000), 81–94. 155. See, for instance, the earliest pages of his parchment register in ASV, CI, Busta 36, dating from the early 1370s. 156. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 14, 8 January 1371, and no. 15, 6 June 1373. 157. ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 29, 7 September 1398, and ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, no. 33, 16 September 1398. 158. If Iohannes was using the legal definition of majority taken from Venetian statutes of the thirteenth century, this meant that Fornicta was not yet twelve years old. ASV, NT, Busta 567, Bartolomeo, 15 February 1394 /1   395. On the age of majority in Venice, see Stanley Chojnacki, “Measuring Adulthood: Adolescence and Gender,” in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice, 185–186.



202 

N 

Notes to Pages 94–96

chapter four: “She Is Not My Wife but a Servant” 1. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 53. 2. On women’s legal status in late medieval Italy, see Thomas Kuehn, “Daughters, Mothers, Wives and Widows: Women as Legal Persons,” in Time, Space and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, eds. Thomas Kuehn, Anne Schutte, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 99. Among witnesses to legal transactions, for instance, women might have been hidden among the “others” (alia) sometimes mentioned by notaries. One testament from Bergamo, for instance, mentions “several [unidentified] women (plures feminarum)” among the witnesses gathered at the testatrix’s bedside. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 9, Soiario, 105, 22 August 1347. Another testamentary record from Venice describes a deathbed scene; it names the men carefully and then notes the presence of a “fairly old woman,” whose name the witness did not know. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, 181 and 181 bis, 20 January 1371. The elision or effacement of women’s identities in written records suited a particular aspect of the medieval worldview. Nancy Partner has argued that the notary Galbert of Bruges suppresses women’s names in his otherwise realistic record of the assassination of Count Charles, out of his desire to preserve the “bureaucratic ideals” of his world. Nancy Partner, “Galbert’s Hidden Women: Social Presence and Narrative Concealment,” in Galbert of Bruges and the Historiography of Medieval Flanders, ed. Jeff Rider (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 114. 3. This is contrary to the conventional form of women’s names across Italy, which normally included references to their fathers. For Florence, see Tovah Bender, “Their Fathers’ Daughters: Women’s Social Identities in Fifteenth-­ Century Florence,” Journal of Family History (2013), 1–16, doi: 10.1177 /0363199013491209. 4. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 248, 12 June 1352, 254–55, 25 June 1352. 5. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 130, B. da San Zenone, 17r, 12 March 1367. 6. On the other hand, nicknames for men might have indicated their lower social status, as in the example of ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, July 1354. 7. In a group of nearly eighty names of clerics’ female companions taken from more than one hundred Venetian priests’ testaments, we find forty-seven different names. The most popular names for this group were Caterina /  Catherina / Caterucia (ten), Maria (seven women), Margarita / Malgarita (six), and Agnes / Agneta (five). 8. Ivrea, 27, 26, 42, 51, 53, 63, 77, 78, 86, 88, 87, 89, 92, 93, 99. 9. Most of the clerics’ companions identified in the visitation records were simply described as concubine, or sometimes as either laywomen (secularem) or nuns (monialem). For instance, see ACVBg, CAP 47, Zenaglia, 1371, 140r, 145r, 151r.

Notes to Pages 96–100 

n 

203

10. For example, the testaments of Pre Tomaso de Roariis named a married laywoman as one of his executors but did not describe their relationship. BCBg, MIA pergamene 763, and Pre Algisius de Clixione (Clusone), who promised a woman called Sibilia a piece of land but again did not explain the nature of their relationship. ASBg, Busta 9, Soiario, 106–107, 22 August 1347. 11. ASV, NT, Busta 567, Bartolomeo, 15 February 1394 /5  . 12. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 199, 25 October 1373. 13. ASV, NT, Busta 993, Mazor (1399, month and day left blank). There are many similar examples of this practice. See, for instance, the testament of Pre Ugolerius of the church of Santi Apostoli, who named “Beta, who lived with me” as his fideicommissary. ASV, NT, Busta 1115, Zeno, 7 June 1348. 14. She was the companion of the priest Antonius of the church of Santa Maria Formosa, identified as Francesca “Ab Auro,” daughter of the late Ser Petrus Vim, formerly of the confinia of San Pietro di Castello. ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 7, 27 April 1363. 15. On the meaning of Christian names for slaves in Italy, see Steven A. Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 24–33, and for discussion of the significance of name changes for slaves in Spain, see Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 139–141. 16. ASV, CI, Miscellanea, Busta 134bis, Contratti di Schiavi, no. 9, 1366. 17. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 19, Bianco, 4r, 23 October 1364. 18. ASV, NT, Busta 108, Boninsegna, 2 March 1382. 19. See specific bequests for slaves in priests’ wills, such as ASV, NT, Busta 541, Ferris, 24 July 1376. 20. ASV, NT, Busta 731, Malumbri, no. 42, 26 July 1403. 21. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 56, 15 October 1393. 22. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 166, Rizzo, reg. 1363, 25r. 23. Ibid., 32r. 24. ASV, NT, Busta 895, Damiano, 21 March 1379. 25. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 17, Bellancini, 15v. 26. Domina, in particular, was used quite commonly in Italy during this period. Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe (London: UCL Press, 1998), 179. 27. ASV, NT, Busta 545, Giuliani, no. 1, 8 February 1378. 28. Gilda Mantovani, ed., Il Formulario Vicentino-Padovano di Lettere Vescovili (sec. XIV) (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1988), no. 184, 150–151. 29. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe, 3642, reg. 1354, 2r. 30. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5142, Pre Domenico, 29 August 1412. The use of the title to describe Margarita is striking, but it might also be customary for this notary, since he identified the priest-testator himself as “venerable and honest” (venerabile et honestus). 31. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 25 September 1368.



204 

N 

Notes to Pages 100–102

32. Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), vol. 1, 191, 217. 33. Ibid., 242. 34. Later records provide some hints about the women’s self-identification. For instance, in seventeenth-century Münster, women in sexual relationships with clerics and religious (that is, monks) called themselves “prelatesses” and “abbesses” and claimed the same rights as widows for themselves when their partners died. Simone Laqua, “Concubinage and the Church in Early Modern Münster,” Past and Present Supplement 1 (2006), 93–95. 35. As James Brundage notes, by the third century CE, a concubine was “a woman whom a man kept in his house in place of a wife.” James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 40–41. On the changing meanings of concubina from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, also see Ruth Mazo Karras, “Marriage, Concubinage and the Law,” in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Anne Matter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 119. 36. James Brundage, “Concubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law,” in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, eds. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 122. 37. But compare Marie A. Kelleher, “‘Like Man and Wife’: Clerics’ Concubines in the Diocese of Barcelona,” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 357–358, on the possibility of marital affection existing in some clerical relationships. 38. Karras, “Marriage, Concubinage and the Law,” 120. 39. Ibid., 129. Karras tracks differences in the use of the term “concubine” from one territory to another in her recent work. Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 155–156. 40. For Bergamo, see the questions asked in the episcopal visitation record of 1371: ACVBg, CAP 47, Zenaglia, 138r. For Padua, see ASPd, Notai di Curia Vescovile, Register 1, 8r and 10r. Also see questions in Udine. From time to time in court records, notaries referred to priests’ companions as concubine instead using their personal names, such as in a marginal note by the notary Bianchinus de Arena, from Treviso, identifying one of the participants in a transaction as the “concubine of the pievano of Quinto.” ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 26 March 1354. For Venice, see the woman identified as a priest’s concubina in ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe, 3642, reg. 1354, 2r. 41. Jennifer Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 63. 42. James Brundage notes that in the Roman definition of concubina, the women had “most of the obligations, but none of the rights, of a legitimate wife.” Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 43. 43. Extra-domestic relationships were common in other areas, too, including in England. See Janelle Werner, “Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children:

Notes to Pages 102–104 

44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

54.

55.

56. 57. 58.

n 

205

Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 169. Udine, 47. On financial support or maintenance as a commitment in records concerning Parisian clerics and their companions, see Karras, Unmarriages, 159. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5125, Articuzio, 15 July 1377. Udine, 45, 46, 49. Vivianus himself did not admit this relationship when he was asked about the moral lives of the canons. The many accusations against him may have originated partially in his lack of popularity with the other canons, which perhaps stemmed from his role as their superior. One stated that Vivianus was “not a very temperate man,” while another said that “when he is in the church no one has peace,” and it seemed to the witness it would be helpful for the community if Vivianus was no longer the vice-deacon. Udine, 50–51, 85, 95. Ivrea, 87–88. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 190v. “. . . regit ipse presbyter in domo materna . . .” Ivrea, 53. Udine, 88. The decrees of church councils frequently cite age forty, or sometimes fifty, as the boundary between illicit and licit female presence in a cleric’s household. Menopausal women, that is, were less threatening to the ecclesiastical hierarchy than were women of child-bearing age. Udine, 96, 99. Udine, 88–89. Another priest, Leonardus Gandaleonis, told the bishop that the priests in question kept “elderly concubines” (antiquas concubinas) in their homes. Udine, 99. It is also clear that the word antiqua is used in reference to chronological age and not to mean “in the past” or “former” because when the bishop wanted to note that a concubinary relationship had ended, he used the expression “she was formerly his concubine” (olim fuit sua concubina). Udine, 100. On the uses of amasia in Orvieto, see Carol Lansing, “Gender and Civic Authority: Sexual Control in a Medieval Italian Town,” Journal of Social History (1997), 59, n. 110. On the term amasia used to describe a woman in a nonmarital sexual relationship in fifteenth-century England, see E. D. Blakiston, “Two More Medieval Ghost Stories,” The English Historical Review 38, 149 (1923), 86. ACVBg, CAP 47, Zenaglia, 15r–28r. See its use in Ivrea, xxvii, 22, 23, 29, 93, 95, 103, 118, 123, 161. On the use of focaria in medieval Castile, see Marjorie Ratcliffe, “Adultresses, Mistresses, and Prostitutes: Extramarital Relationships in Medieval Castile,” Hispania 67 (1984), 347. The term was also used to refer to the women living with priests in France. See Jennifer Thibodeaux, “Man of the Church or Man of the Village? Gender and the Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy,” Gender & History 18 (2006), 388, and Françoise Autrand, “Naissance illégitime et



59. 60.

61.

62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

206 

N 

Notes to Pages 104–105

service de l’Etat: les enfants naturels dans le milieu de robe parisien XIVe–XVe siècle,” Revue Historique 267 (1982), 301. The term was also used in Ivrea, but apparently only by ecclesiastical authorities. It can be found in the record of the synod of 1290 (Ivrea, xxvii) but not in the visitation records of 1329 and 1346 or responses to them. Sara Elise Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 204–207. Charles Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887), vols. 2–3, 532. For discussions of the meaning of ancilla, see Susan Mosher Stuard, “Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery,” Past and Present 149 (1995), 3–28. On the sexual exploitation of poor women and female servants in particular, see Ruth Mazo Karras, “‘Because the Other Is a Poor Woman She Shall Be Called His Wench’: Gender, Sexuality and Social Status in Late Medieval England,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, eds. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 216–218. For example, a court record in Treviso named “Romana, a young suspect woman” the woman accused of spending time with a priest. The priest was fined 10 lire for harboring the woman in his house and was told to send her away. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 24 July 1350. In mid-thirteenth-­ century Spain the bishop of Girona also decreed that clerics in that diocese should not welcome “young or suspect women” into their houses. Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church,” Viator 40 (2009), 238. For the text of the Decretales d. Gregorii papae IX, see UCLA Digital Library Program. Corpus Juris Canonici (1582), http://digital.library.ucla.edu. /canonlaw tit, and De cohabitacione clericorum et mulierum, col. 1001 /1   002. On the development of the “massive” text of the Liber Extra, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 327. ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 195r. “Item si sunt aliqui de incontinentia vel cohabitacione mulierum suspectarum infamati, aut de alio enormi vel famoso crimine notati.” Udine, 43. See, for instance, the response of dominus Nicolaus de Pola, Udine, 48–49. Udine, 51. Karras, “Marriage, Concubinage and the Law,” 126–127. Ecclesiastical officials became increasingly adamant about defining the cleric’s concubine as an illegitimate heir during the fourteenth century. In 1350, a synod at Padua dwelled on the issue of clerics in the diocese leaving property to their concubine and children in testaments or any other written record. Such statements likely dissuaded many clerics from making written promises to their household members. Francesco Scipione Dondi Dall’Orologio, Dissertazioni sopra l’istoria ecclesiastica di Padova (Padova: Presso il seminario, 1815), 174.

Notes to Pages 106–107 

n 

207

69. For fameio, see ASV, NT, Busta 993, Mazor, 1399 (no month or day); for famula, see ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 10, 19 April 1350; for servitrix, ASV, NT, Busta 435, N. de Ferrantibus, no. 240, 16 January 1378; for serviente, ASV, NT, Busta 729, Diedo, no. 27, 3 May 1348; for serviciale, ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 11, 30 September 1386. A few other terms for domestic servants, such as pediseca, were also used in visitation records from time to time to refer to particularly low-status women in priests’ houses; for instance, a parish priest in the diocese of Ivrea was accused of having had children with a pedissequa called Iohanna. Ivrea, 51. 70. Among many examples from Venice, see ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 162, Recovratis, f15r–16v and f. 47v, 2 June 1348; also ASV, NT, Busta 731, Laurencius, no. 7, 8 April 1332. For Treviso, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 27 May 1390, and ASTv, Notarile, Busta 152, A. de Adelmario, reg. 1362–1363, f84v. For similar examples from late medieval England, see Werner, “Promiscuous Priests,” 168. 71. The figure of the “servant-concubine” was a common presence in Italian clerics’ households throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period. Lucia Ferrante, “Legittima concubina, quasi moglie, anzi meretrice: Note sul concubinato tra Medioevo ed età moderna,” in Modernità: definizioni ed esercizi, ed. Albano Biondi (Bologna: CLUEB, 1998), 128. Employers sometimes justified the generosity of their bequests with reference to the women’s long service. The pievano Simone de Robertis praised his servant Margarita in his will, since, he stated, she had served him “continually, obediently, and faithfully” for a long time. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 11, 30 September 1386. Of course such a relationship was also intimate, and possibly also sexual. 72. ASV, NT, Busta 850, Recovratis, no. 12, 10 August 1382. 73. Repromissa was the term used in Venice to refer to the dowry. See Linda Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 472. Bequests for fifty gold ducats or more from priests to their companions could also have been intended to serve as dowries. See the bequest for this amount, with household goods, from the priest Petrus to his longtime companion Beatrix in ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 163, Recovratis, 17bisv, 22 October 1373. This suggestion originally came from Shona Kelly Wray. 74. Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-Century Venice,” 437. Sometimes these bequests of household items and furniture were made alongside payments that constituted the women’s salary, as in the testament of the priest Iohannes of the church of Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola), who in 1389 left his servant Dominica a salary of eight gold ducats for the three years she had been working for him, as well as household furnishings she had brought to his house “when she came to live with me.” ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 123, 16 September 1389. 75. ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, f. 35v no. 45, 9 September 1378. 76. ASV, NT, Busta 1154, de Bruttis, f. 34r no. 72, 24 September 1338.



208 

N 

Notes to Pages 107–109

77. ASV, NT, Busta 963, Trivisani, 8v, 11 July 1356, and 9v, 20 July 1356. See similar bequests from the priest Olivarius Anciano of San Pantalon to his female companion Thomasina in ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 162, Recovratis, 47v, 2 June 1348, and the priest Servodeus Mazor, of San Moisè, to his companion Margarita in ASV, NT, Busta 993, Mazor, 1399. 78. Patricia Allerston describes the lively trade in used Venetian garments in a later period in Patricia Allerston, “Reconstructing the Second-Hand Clothes Trade in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Venice,” Costume: The Journal of the Costume Society 33 (1999), 46–56. 79. See Katherine French’s discussion of the function of belts and their connection with women’s sexuality in Katherine French, “Genders and Material Culture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds. Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 201. 80. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 164, Recovratis, no. 2, 29 November 1367. 81. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5125, Articuzo, 21 January 1377. On maspillos, see Pietro Sella, Glossario latino italiano: Stato della Chiesa, Veneto, Abruzzi (Roma: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1944), 354. On restrictions on the use of buttons in Venetian sumptuary laws of the fourteenth century, see Bartolomeo Cecchetti, La vita dei Veneziani nel 1300 (Venezia: Tipografia emiliana, 1886), 76. 82. ASV, NT, Busta 361, Orlando, no. 5, 26 February 1379 /1   380. On the form of these decorative headdresses, see Cecchetti, La vita dei Veneziani, 62. 83. On the myriad responsibilities of the commissaria, see Linda Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia nel XIV secolo: uno studio sulla loro presenza nella società e nella famiglia,” Studi veneziani 35 (1998), 56. 84. ASV, NT, Busta 819, Pellegrino, no. 75, 8 July 1372. 85. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 25 September 1368. For further examples of servants / companions named as executrixes, see, among others, the testaments of the priest Petrus Fuscolo in ASV, NT, Busta 729, Diedo, no. 27, 3 May 1348; the priest Franciscus de la Costa in ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, 33r / v, 23 June 1390; Antonius Bondi in ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, 49v–50r, 13 August 1390; Raymondus, pievano of San Geremia, in ASV, NT, Busta 586, San Heustadi, no. 51, 8 August 1358, and Antonius of Santa Maria Formosa, in ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 7, 27 April 1363. 86. Claire Judde de Larivière, “Procédures, enjeux et fonctions du testament à Venise aux confins du Moyen Âge et des Temps modernes, Le cas du patriciat marchand,” Le Moyen Age 108, 539 (2002 /2   003), 527–563, doi: 10.3917 / rma.083.0527; and Fernanda Sorelli, “Capacità giuridiche e disponibilità economiche delle donne a Venezia. Dai testamenti femminili medievali,” in Margini di libertà: Testamenti femminili nel Medioevo, ed. Maria Clara Rossi (Verona: Cierre, 2010), 188–189. 87. Her proctor was the notary Bartholomeus de Crespano. See ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 27r, 12 August 1354. 88. Pax might have been a cleric living with the priest as his apprentice or a former servant. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 12 February 1350.

Notes to Pages 109–113 

n 

209

89. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 162, Recovratis, 15r–16v, 10 May 1346. 90. ASV, NT, Busta 679, de Monacis, no. 20, 30 April 1366. 91. Such concerns are articulated in detail in the Venetian statutes. Roberto Cessi, ed., Gli statuti veneziani di Jacopo Tiepolo del 1242 e le loro glosse (Venezia: C. Ferrari, 1938), 191–200. 92. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 199, 25 October 1373. 93. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 11, 30 September 1386. 94. ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, 35v, no. 45, 9 September 1378. 95. In Venice, as we have seen, one of the responsibilities of the fideicommissary was the care of children, and so it was likely assumed in most cases. Anna Bellavitis, “‘Et vedoando sia donna et madonna’: Guardianship and Remarriage in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” in Favoured and Less Favoured in Law and Legal Practice: Gender, Power, and Authority (12th–19th Centuries), eds. G. Jacobsen, et al. 96. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, 29 August 1379. 97. ASV, NT, Busta 850, Recovratis, no. 12, 10 August 1382. 98. ASV, NT, Busta 586, Heustadi, no. 51, 8 August 1358. 99. ASV, NT, Busta 919, Simiteculo, 1 July 1361. Children identified as nepotes could have been sons, but in law, uncles could also have legal authority over their nephews. Manlio Bellomo, Problemi di diritto familiare nell’età dei comuni (Milano: Giuffrè, 1968), 6–7. 100. ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 6 July 1388. 101. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 84, 14 December 1362. On laymen’s increasing use of affectionate language to describe their wives in Venetian wills of the fifteenth century, see Stanley Chojnacki, “The Power of Love: Wives and Husbands,” in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 162–163. 102. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 35, Corozatis, 16v, 8 January 1371. At the end of the record was a final statement that the priest was obliged to return the items or their equivalent value in cash “without exception” whenever the woman asked for them. 103. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 17, Bellancini, 5r, 6 January 1372. 104. On the value of dowries for laywomen, see Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-­ Century Venice,” 436. 105. Few of these women appear to have created testaments, even though Venetian women were more likely than men to make their wills in the fourteenth century. Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia,” 20–21. 106. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 254, 19 October 1391. 107. ASV, NT, Busta 447, Fructis, no. 90, 22 May 1404. 108. ASV, NT, Busta 269, Cavazza, no. 184, 28 July 1369. 109. The absence of women from terraferma clerics’ records has been noted as early as the twelfth century. Maureen Miller has shown that the women formerly mentioned as inhabitants of priests’ households began to disappear from notarial records in Verona during that period. Maureen Miller, The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 55.



210 

N 

Notes to Pages 113–114

110. Clerics in Bergamo who were known to have had children did not name the mothers of those children in their testaments. See, for instance, the wills of Graciolus de Sangervasio, ACVBg, CAP 43, Zenaglia, 82r–85r, 22 August 1361, and Pre Martinus de Beltenoris, BCBg, MIA pergamene 1253a. 111. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 6, Soiario, 107–108, 5 August 1330. 112. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 6, Soiario, 110–115, 5 August, 1330. 113. “prout dixerint nepotes suprascripti domini Pre Mafei qui habitant secum quia de predictis sciunt veritatem.” ASBg, Notarile, Busta 6, Soiario, 113, 5 August 1330. 114. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 6, Soiario, 119, 11 August 1330. 115. On Innocent IV’s substitution of fines for expulsion or worse punishments, see Kelleher, “Like Man and Wife,” 352. 116. As in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 57, Zenaglia, 118. In another case, a priest in the village of Petrengo was told to “repel” a woman “at least from the said place of Petrengo” (de dicto loco de Petringo minime). ASBg, Notarile, Busta 57, Zenaglia, 124. 117. In some cases, it is not clear whether the court followed through on its threats to have women expelled, since in a subsequent record Belebonus was fined ten lire for keeping the woman as his concubine. Belebonus also did not leave the city; he died in Bergamo in 1375. See ASBg, Notarile, Busta 98, da Poma, 5, for the record in which his place in the chapter was filled. For further discussion, see Roisin Cossar, The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265–c.1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 153. James Palmer has questioned whether highly public ceremonies in which Roman clerics’ concubines were expelled from their houses were a “sincere act” or “pro forma theater,” since in several cases women expelled as concubines could later be found working in the clerics’ houses as servants. He also argues that the women were “acting of their own free will” in these circumstances. Palmer, Gold, Grain, and Grace: Piety and Community in Late Medieval Rome (Ph.D. diss., Washington University in St. Louis, 2015), 190–191. 118. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 24 July 1350. ASPd, Notai di Curia Vescovile, Register 2, 10, 1385. On demands to expel women from priests’ houses in Ferrara during the fifteenth century, see Ferrara, 302, in which a woman called Lucia, the supposed concubine of a cleric, was told to leave her village and the diocese of Ferrara and not to return there under threat of excommunication. Priests were also told to expel women from their residences in fifteenth-century Como. Como, 146, 151 (where a priest was threatened with “perpetual imprisonment” if he continued to house a woman), 161, 166, 175, 179, 181, 186. 119. Neighbors and parishioners of the priest and notary Gasparinus Dumottis of Bergamo revealed his relationship to a woman to the episcopal court during a dispute with the priest. ACVBg, CAP 74, Cazzulonibus, 210–215. 120. Michelle Armstrong Partida sees the same reality in Catalunya. Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’

Notes to Pages 115–121 

121.

122.

123.

124.

25. 1 126. 127. 128. 129.

30. 1 131.

32. 1 133. 134. 135. 136.

137.

38. 1 139. 140.

n 

211

Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013), 202. For an opposing point of view, see Karras, “Marriage, Concubinage and the Law,” 129. Similarly, Marie Kelleher argues that in Spain, “status as a cleric’s concubine per se was not automatically cause for censure within the community.” Kelleher, “Like Man and Wife,” 355. George Dennis, “The Correspondence of Rodolfo de Sanctis, Canon of Patras, 1386,” Traditio 17 (1961), 299. On this possibility across Europe, see Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages, 164. He did leave her a bequest of one hundred gold ducats, as long as she did not share it with her mother, Franceschina, or any of her kin. ASV, PSM, Busta 62, parchment, 9 July 1388. Domestic servants were usually not paid until the end of their period of service. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Female Celibacy and Service in Florence,” in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 174–175. Also see Piero Guarducci and Valeria Ottanelli, I Servitori domestici nella casa borghese toscana nel basso medioevo (Firenze: Salimbeni, 1982), 45–58. ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Cavazza, no. 35, 8 June 1348. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5125, Articuzo, 21 January 1377. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5125, Articuzo, 27 January 1377. ASV, NT, Busta 545, Giuliani, no. 1, 8 February 1378. My thanks to Joanna Carraway Vitiello for helping decipher this record. ASV, NT, Busta 361, de Orlandis, no. 5, 26 February 1379. I noted in Chapter 1 that the notary underlined the nature of the relationship by adding “and is” to her statement that Iohannes “was the son of the priest.” ASV, NT, Busta 448, Fructis, 1389. She did so by renting land that would eventually belong to her son over a period of at least two years. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 248, 12 June 1352, 254–255, 25 June 1352; ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 428, 17 November 1353. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 36, de Ambivere, 239, 240, 9 July 1353. BCBg, MIA pergamene 1253a, and ASBg, Notarile, Busta 12, Soiario, 98. ASTv, Notarile I, Busta 130, B. del fu Rugo da San Zenone, 17r / v. Thanks to Daniel Bornstein for this observation. For the first part of the transaction, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 130, B. del fu Rigo da San Zenone, 18r. The rest of the document is found in an unfoliated section about 50 folios later. ASTv, Notarile I, Busta 130, B. del fu Rigo da San Zenone, unfoliated. See another appearance by Alexandrinus in the records at ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, January 1351. Udine, 96, 99. Ivrea, 53. ACVBg, CAP 47, Zenaglia, 112r–114r.

41. 1 142. 143. 144.

145.

146.

147. 148.

49. 1 150. 151. 152.

53. 1 154. 155.

156.

212 

N 

Notes to Pages 121–124

Como, 126, and Ferrara, 289. BCBg, MIA archivio 938, 21v, 1r. BCBg, AB 394, 1v–2v. For instance, a testatrix left legacies of clothing to two women: “dona Margarita, mother of the priest Geminianus of Santa Sophia,” and “dona Lucia, mother of the priest Gabriel” of the same church. ASV, NT, Busta 108, Boninsegna, 20 March 1381. Antonio Rigon, Clero e Città: Fratalea Cappellanorum, parroci, cura d’anime in Padova dal XII al XV secolo (Padova: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1988), 98–99. Michael Clanchy, “Did Mothers Teach Their Children to Read?” in Motherhood, Religion and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400, eds. Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 129–153. Also see Audrey-Beth Fitch, “Mothers and Their Sons: Mary and Jesus in Scotland, 1450–1560,” in The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 161. Conduct books emphasized that even women whose children were taught by tutors should carefully oversee those tutors. Tracy Adams, “Medieval Mothers and Their Children: The Case of Iseabeau of Bavaria in Light of Medieval Conduct Books,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, eds. R. Eckardt, K. von Heusinger and C. Schwarze (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 271. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Holy Dolls: Play and Piety in Florence in the Quattrocento,” in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, 321. ASV, NT, Busta 541, Ferro, 15 July 1374. The tradition of giving a cloth used at ordination to the priest’s mother has been revived in recent decades. Several priests have blogged about the experience. See, for instance, http://blog.adw .org/2010/06/lost-liturgies-file-the-maniturgia/http://blog.adw.org/2010/06 /lost-liturgies-file-the-maniturgia/. Ferrara, 254. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, 26 June 1371. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 144, Peresemolo, 4v; ASV, CI, Busta 36, Campion, 2r, 16 June 1364. In the thirteenth century, laymen in Genoa similarly chose their wives as executrixes more often than they chose other kin. Steven Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150–1250 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 223. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 357, 17 July 1399. ASV, NT, Busta 541, Ferro, 24 July 1376. ASV, NT, Busta 269, Cavazza, no. 83, 20 July 1371. Although the testator’s name is Franciscus, and he identifies himself as a priest of the church of Sant’Agata, where the notary Franciscus Cavazza was pievano, a comparison of this testament with that of the pievano Franciscus Cavazza demonstrates that this was not the pievano’s will. ASV, NT, Busta 435, de Ferrantibus, no. 266, 20 August 1382.

Notes to Pages 125–130  57. 1 158. 159. 160.

n 

213

ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 26, 2 July 1389. ASV, NT, Busta 416, Favacio, 22 July 1364. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 123, 16 September 1389. A case from central Italy supports this conclusion. In a visitation record from the diocese of Cortona in 1337, a parishioner of the priest Simon, of the church of San Giorgio in that diocese, told the episcopal visitor that he had heard the priest had expelled his mother from his house in order to live with his concubine. Noemi Meoni, “Visite Pastorali a Cortona nel Trecento,” Archivio Storico Italiano 129 (1972), 248. 161. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. de Corte de Semonzo, 18 November 1392. 162. Ferrara, 241. 163. Francisca, mother of the priest Bartholomeus, had four daughters besides her priest-son. Bartolomeus was given a prominent role in her will, but he was expected to act alongside his sister Christina as their mother’s executor, and although he was to receive the remainder of her estate after her death, she named no specific legacy for him, while she promised two of her daughters 10 gold ducats apiece. 164. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 150, B. de Matteo de Villa, 46r / v, 6 July 1396. 165. In her 1366 testament, she named him as one of her two fideicommissaries. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 186, S. di San Giacomo dall’Orio, 6 April 1366. On the origins and subsequent history of the church, which was founded in the twelfth century under the Patriarch of Grado, underwent several renovations (including one in 1310) and then demolished in 1820, see Sac. Vittorio Piva, Il patriarchato di Venezia e le sue origini (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1938), tom. 2, 120. Adoptive parents were fairly common in Venice, with another priest, Philipus from the church of Santi Gervasio e Protasio (San Trovaso), naming his adoptive mother Clara as one of his fideicommissaries in his 1376 will. ASV, NT, Busta 541, Ferro, 24 July 1376. 166. ASV, NT, Busta 1115, Zeno, 28v, 10 April 1361. 167. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 144, Peresemolo, 1v and 3v and ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, no. 15, 17 July 1375. 168. Her intent in leaving her grandchildren these properties was in part to benefit herself; half of the rent from each house was to be used to pay for masses for her soul for ten years after her death. 169. Only 300 meters away, but across the rio dei Mendicanti, which divides the two sestieri of Canareggio and Castello. 170. Similarly, Vendramina, mother of a priest of Santa Maria Nova, left testamentary legacies to priests not from that church but from two other nearby parishes: San Canciano / San Canzian and San Severo. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, no. 183, 16 September 1375. 171. ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo, no. 183, 16 September 1375. 172. His appearances are scattered throughout the register found in ASV, NT, Busta 793, Peresemolo. 173. ASV, NT, Busta 456, Fuschis, no. 64, 2 October 1364.



214 

N 

Notes to Pages 132–136

chapter five: Material Culture and Work in the Clerical Domus 1. Some historians assume that the idea of domesticity as a separate culture was not a feature of late medieval life, but Felicity Riddy argues that assumptions that there was no concept of “domesticity” in the Middle Ages are anachronistic. Felicity Riddy, “‘Burgeis’ Domesticity in Late-Medieval England,” in Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing, and Household in Medieval England, eds. Maryanne Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14–17. 2. Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen, “Open and Shut: The Social Meanings of the Cinquecento Roman House,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 9, 1 (2001–02), 65. 3. In England during the same time, a domus could also be a hall or living room. See an example of this usage in Riddy, “‘Burgeis’ Domesticity in Late-­Medieval England,” 23. 4. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 31, da Romano, 12 December 1357; ASV, NT, Busta 545, Giuliano, no. 15 (the register includes records from between 1352 and 1380). For examples of the same usage from Bologna, see Renzo Zagnoni, “Domus, cella, e grange nelle dipendenze monastiche della montagna Bolognese,” Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le Province di Romagna, 55 (2005), 209–235. 5. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 10 November 1353 and 10 January 1357. Another word found in the notarial records of the period is hospicium. 6. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5142, Prete, 47v, 29 August 1412. 7. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, 10r, 16 February 1367. 8. ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Corozatis, no. 35, 8 June 1348. 9. Ibid. 10. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe 3642, 66v, 22 June 1358. 11. ASBg, Busta 10, Soiario, 220–223, and BCBg, MIA pergamene no. 600, 20 September 1349. 12. The parchment copy of the will is at BCBg, MIA pergamene 750, while the paper draft is in ASBg, Notarile, Busta 9, Soiario, 106–107, 22 August 1347. 13. ASV, NT, Busta 448, Fructis, 4 January 1396. 14. BCBg, MIA pergamene no. 757, 24 June 1349. 15. BCBg, MIA pergamene no. 599, September 1349 16. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 25d, Sangervasio, no. 19, 27 April 1348. For an example of a dwelling owned by a parish priest in Bergamo, see the 1380 testament of the priest of San Salvatore, written in his domus in the same parish: ASBg, Notarile, Busta 41b, Cazzulonibus, 130–132. For a dispute about the payment of rent between a priest and a laywoman in Treviso, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 49, Clarello, 5 March 1342. For a Trevisan priest’s inheritance of a domus previously belonging to his brother, see ASTv, Notarile, Busta 31, da Romano, 10r, 16 June 1350. The few studies on priests’ living situations in other parts of the West suggest that there may have been more consistency to these arrangements. In Ireland, for instance, priests’ houses were often physically

Notes to Pages 136–141 

n 

215

attached to their churches. See Helen Bermingham, “Priests’ Residences in Later Medieval Ireland,” in The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland: Community, Territory, and Building (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), 165. 17. On the Venetian parish, see Bruno Bertoli, “Le parrocchie veneziane,” in Archivi e chiesa locale: studi e contribute, ed. F. Cavazzana Romanelli (Venezia: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1993), 121–160. 18. ASV, NT, Busta 1039, Corozatis, no. 169, 6 May 1368 (from a draft cedula dated 13 April 1368). 19. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 27 March 1390. 20. ASV, NT, Busta 416, Favacio, 22 July 1364. 21. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, Clarello, 41r, 9 January 1355. 22. On the Italian mainland, canons normally received their accommodations as donations from their bishops when their communities were instituted. The same was not true for Venice, where the bishop of Castello maintained ownership of the canonry as late as the fourteenth century. Daniela Rando, Una chiesa di frontiera: Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI–XII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 219–222. 23. Francesca Magnoni, Due canoniche, un capitolo, un vescovo: la cattedrale di Bergamo nel periodo avignonese. Una storia urbana? (Ph.D. diss., Università degli Studi di Milano, 2010–2011). 24. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 102, 19 April 1353. 25. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 25d, Sangervasio, no. 20, 10 May 1348. 26. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 4; 114, 7 November 1355. On the location of the refectory, see ACVBg, CAP 44, Zenaglia, 163r, n.d. in which two canons were described fighting within it. 27. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 35, de Ambivere, 103, 6 March 1349 also describes the common living arrangements of two canons of S. Vincenzo. 28. ACVBg, CAP 425, May 1337. 29. ASBg, Busta 44, Dumottis, 202–203, 9 October 1355. 30. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 44, Dumottis, 278, 27 September 1356. 31. Daniel Bornstein, “Parish Priests in Cortona,” in Preti nel medioevo (Verona: Cierre, 1997), 174. 32. Ferrara, 346. 33. Ibid., 256. 34. Ibid., 296. 35. Daniel Bornstein, “Spiritual Culture, Material Culture: Church Inventories in Fifteenth-Century Cortona,” Medievalia et Humanistica 28 (2001), 109. 36. Ivrea, 103–162. 37. Ferrara, 201. 38. Ferrara, 250, 260, 271. 39. Ibid., 329. 40. Ibid., 230, 248. 41. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, B. de Arena, 18 February 1354. 42. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte de Semonzo, 111r–112r.



216 

N 

Notes to Pages 142–144

43. Rafaella Sarti notes that throughout Europe, it was common for beds to be itemized in inventories before other belongings, denoting, probably, their value. Rafaella Sarti, Vita di casa: abitare, mangiare, vestire nell’Europa moderna (Bari: Editori laterza, 1999), 149. On the symbolic significance of beds, see Sandra Cavallo, “The Artisan’s Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, eds. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006), 73. 44. Sandra Cavallo, describing the artisan’s household in Genoa and Florence, argues that we need to “re-think the forced cohabitation often attributed to the pre-industrial home.” Cavallo, “The Artisan’s Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, 75. 45. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 43, C. da Corte di Semonzo, 112r,date illegible, but a related record on 111r included a reference to another record created on 14 May 1391. 46. See the bequests of such beds to his companion and his slave in the testament of the priest Dominicus Peresemolo: ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, 35v, no. 45, 9 September 1378. 47. ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Corozatis, no. 35, 8 June 1348. 48. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 243, 16 August 1380. 49. ASUd, Notarile, Busta 5125, Articuzo, 23 February 1377. 50. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 199, 25 October 1373. On the number of people to a bed in the early modern period, see Sarti, Vita di Casa, 151, although she relies heavily on literary sources for her findings. 51. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 17, Crespano, n.d. 52. On this rich subject, see Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). 53. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 17, Crespano, n.d. See examples of clothing from inventories in Ferrara (five pairs of underwear, three shirts), Ferrara, 323; and the inventory of the priest Iohannes’ possessions in Treviso (two pairs underwear, two shirts), ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 18 February 1354; and in a testament from Venice, ASV, NT, Busta 993, Mazor, 29 September 1395. 54. On tableware typical of the Renaissance Italian household, see Reino Liefkes, “Tableware,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, 254–265. The Venetian pievano Hermolaus de Porte left fifteen silver spoons to his father, ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Corozatis, no. 35, 8 June 1348, while Iohannes, priest of San Leonardo in Venice, left a dozen silver spoons to his fideicommissary and companion, a widow named Benenaxuta. ASV, NT, Busta 963, Trivisani, 8v, 9v, 11 July 1356. 55. ASV, NT, Busta 567, Bartolomeo, 15 February 1394 /1   395. 56. See also the buckets and basins named in the testament of Vitus, the priest of San Basso. ASV, NT, Busta 380, Benedetto, no. 199, 25 October 1373. 57. ASV, PSM, Busta 88, 13 September 1373.

Notes to Pages 144–148 

n 

217

58. For both prayers see ASV, NT, Busta 459, Campion, undated loose sheet. On the ubiquity of the prayer on the seven words of Christ in the later Middle Ages, see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 249. 59. For instance, he wrote “ut q-” too early in a sentence and had to cross it out and write it in a few words later. 60. For the tradition, see Glenn Peers, “Art and Identity in an Amulet Roll from Fourteenth Century Trebizond,” in Religious Origins of Nations? The Christian Communities of the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 167–174. 61. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 260, 1 August 1389. 62. ASV, NT, Busta 369, Graciani, 35v, no. 45, 9 September 1378; ASV, NT, Busta 679, Bellancini, 8v, 14 March 1378. 63. On the canons of church councils barring clerics from participating in war and bearing weapons, see Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 77–78. 64. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 18 February 1354. 65. See Sarti, Vita di Casa, 189–190. 66. Jennifer Thibodeaux cites examples of priests in thirteenth-century Normandy carrying and using weapons such as swords. Jennifer Thibodeaux, “Man of the Church or Man of the Village? Gender and the Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy,” Gender & History 18 (2006), 394. 67. ASV, NT, Busta 919, Simiteculo, 1 July 1361; ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Corozatis, no. 35, 8 June 1348. 68. The Bergamasque priest Iohannes de Roariis was forced by the bishop to return them all when he fell into disgrace. ASBg, Notarile, Busta 27a, A. Capitani de Scalve, 88, 5 June 1339. 69. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 260, 1 August 1389. 70. ASV, NT, Busta 108, Boninsegna, 8 October 1393. Marinus told his fideicommissaries to give the garment back to Ser Marcus. On the significance of the chasuble as a marker of priestly status, see Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 248. 71. On these prayers, see Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 77–79, 188. 72. ASV, NT, Busta 586, Heustadi, 8 August 1358. 73. Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Conflict in the Parish: Antagonistic Relations between Clerics and Parishioners,” in A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 173–212. For the possibility that clerics in England loaned and borrowed money, see Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 80. On Norfolk clerics as creditors, see Pamela Nightingale, “The English Parochial Clergy as Investors and Creditors in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century,” in Credit and Debt in Medieval England, c. 1180–c. 1350, eds. P. R. Schofield and N. J. Mayhew (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2002), 89–105, reprinted in Trade, Money, and Power in Medieval England (Aldershot: Variorum, 2007), XI. On Genoese clerics as moneylenders, see Benjamin Yousey-Hindes, “Living the Middle Life: Secular Priests and Their Communities in Thirteenth-Century Genoa” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2010), 66.



218 

N 

Notes to Pages 148–152

74. On moneylending by priests in Venice, see Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 99–102. Fernanda Sorelli also notes that such economic activities were very commonplace in Venice during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Fernanda Sorelli, “Il clero secolare a Venezia. Note per I secoli XII e XIII,” in Preti nel medioevo, 29. 75. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 4 August 1350. 76. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 36, Campion, no. 123, 16 September 1389. 77. Nightingale, “The English Parochial Clergy as Investors and Creditors,” 100–101. 78. ASTv, Notarile, Busta 81, de Arena, 25v, 1354. 79. ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 6 July 1388. It is possible that the cleric called ServusDeus Pino, who served as an archdeacon at Santa Maria Formosa in the 1350s, was his son. See ASV, NT, Busta 819, Pino, 8r. 80. On notaries’ involvement in credit transactions in the Middle Ages, see Kay Reyerson, The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier (Leiden: Brill, 2002). For the early modern period, see Philip T. Hoffman et al., Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). My thanks to Erik Thomson for this reference. 81. See the agreement of 10 August 1384, in which Pre Bartolomeus loaned a merchant twenty-five gold ducats for expenses on a voyage to Patras. ASV, PSM, Busta 126. 82. The will is dated June 6, 1388. 83. One example was a loan to Petrus Lombardo in January 1384. ASV, PSM, Busta 126. 84. One example was eight gold ducats from a widow, dona Filippa Sappa, identified as relicta de Ser Vido Sappa, ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 22 June 1381. 85. Ser Iacomo Sapa, ASV, PSM, Busta 126. 10 August, 1384 86. See Chapter 3. 87. Petrus Bon in ASV, PSM, Busta 126, n.d. 88. Martinus di Sasso in ASV, PSM, Busta 126, 15 March 1377. 89. Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 99–100. 90. Nightingale, “The English Parochial Clergy as Investors and Creditors,” 89. 91. Felicity Riddy, “Looking Closely: Authority and Intimacy in the Late Medieval Urban Home,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, eds. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 212–228. 92. See the observations about the nature of the relationship between female borrowers and Jewish moneylenders in William Chester Jordan, “Jews on Top: Women and the Availability of Consumption Loans in Northern France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978), 47. 93. Como, 147. 94. Ibid., 171. 95. Ivrea, 53.

Notes to Pages 152–154 

n 

219

96. Udine, 46. 97. Ibid., 88. 98. Ibid., 85. 99. Noemi Meoni, “Visite Pastorali a Cortona nel Trecento,” Archivio Storico Italiano 129 (1972), 253. 100. Amizus de San Moisè, for instance, left “all of the thread in my house” to his servant Sophia. ASV, NT, Busta 1023, Corozatis, no. 19, 10 February 1357. 101. In Catalunya visitation records about clerics’ concubines did describe them doing laundry and mending the priests’ clothing. Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum (2013), 166, 180. 102. Carole Rawcliffe, “A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and Her Work,” Gender & History 21, 1 (2009), 152–154. 103. Katherine Rinne, “The Landscape of Laundry in Late Conquecento Rome,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 9 (2001), 42. Laundresses in Britain and northern France worked for institutions such as hospitals, washing copious numbers of sheets and other items, often in difficult conditions by the sides of rivers. Rawcliffe, “A Marginal Occupation?” 154, and John Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 209–210. 104. The statutes of Rezzo punished anyone who washed laundry “or did any other disgusting thing” in the fountains of the city. Sandra Macchiavello, ed., Liber iurium ecclesiae, comunitatis, statutorum Recii, Fonti per la Storia della Liguria XIV (Genova: Assessorato della Cultura, 2000), 71. There are surviving examples of medieval stone laundry basins at Bevagna in Umbria and Cefalù in Sicily. 105. Giuliana Forgiarini, ed. Lo Statuto di Bergamo del 1353, (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM, 1996) 15. 24, 311. In fourteenth-century Bologna, for instance, officials responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the city fined women who washed clothes in a canal “contrary to the statutes.” Archivio di Stato Bologna, Comune, Capitano del Popolo, Busta 806, ff. 18–21, cited in Trevor Dean, The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 54. 106. A fine of five soldi was levied on any servant of the podestà who did not fulfill this duty. Lo Statuto di Bergamo del 1353, 15. 21, 309–310. 107. Ibid. 15.24, 311. 108. E. Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra Le Acque Salse.” Espaces, Pouvoir, e Société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge (Roma: Istituto storico per il medio evo, 1992), vol. 1, 244–245, 297. On cisterns, see Paolo Squatriti and Roberta Magnusson, “Technologies of Water in Medieval Italy,” in Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource-Use (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 243. 109. Victoria Avery, “The House of Alessandro Vittoria Reconstructed,” Sculpture Journal 5 (2001), 7. 110. On noble families in Venice having laundry done on their mainland estates, see Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, “Housework,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy,



220 

N 

Notes to Pages 154–156

156. Washing in saltwater and rinsing in freshwater is a common practice among modern sailors, who have developed soaps that allow clothing to be cleaned in saltwater but who recognize that the hydrophilic tendencies of salt make clothing rinsed in saltwater always uncomfortably damp. My thanks to Bev Ford, a sailor in Nanaimo, British Columbia, for personal communication about washing on board an offshore sailboat. 111. Rinne, “The Landscape of Laundry in Late Conquecento Rome,” 35. On laundresses selling sex in Paris, see Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 138–139. On the association between prostitution and latrines, see Martha Bayless, Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: The Devil in the Latrine (London: Routledge, 2012). 112. Rinne, “The Landscape of Laundry,” 46. 113. Douglas Biow, The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 103. 114. Institutions such as hospitals and monasteries set aside separate quarters for washing clothes and sheets. On the separate areas for laundry in Florentine hospitals, see Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, 209–210. The convent of Corpus Domini, in Venice, had “sheds” for washing and drying clothing and sheets. Daniel Bornstein, Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1436 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 8, 44. 115. Regular washing of those hangings cost ten denari, and cleaning all of the textiles (pannos) in preparation for Easter cost three times as much (thirty-two denari). ACVBg, CAP 428, January and May 1337. 116. Ferrara, 205, 219, 259. 117. Ivrea, 37. 118. By contrast, another witness from the same church simply named the woman who lived with the priest as Alaxina, daughter of Guillelmus Bieste. He does not mention her work or her status at all, and he also seems to not have had the same concerns about the priest or the church. Ivrea, 36. 119. Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-­ Century Valencia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 94–95. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber has identified Florentine masters in the fifteenth century agreeing to exempt certain servants from washing the family’s laundry. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Women Servants in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 60. 120. Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars, 95. 121. London Metropolitan Archives, MS DL / C / A / 001 / MS09065: 10r–12r in Shannon McSheffrey, ed., Consistory Database, http://digitalhistory .concordia.ca/consistory/index.php. Many thanks to Shannon McSheffrey for this evidence. 122. In Cortona, a priest’s concubine let her neighbors know that her companion had told her about their confessions. Daniel Bornstein, “Parish Priests in Cortona,” 175.

Notes to Pages 157–164 

n 

221

123. Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 186.

Conclusion 1. As James Grubb has written about a different group of households in premodern Italy, “higher culture . . . set ranges of options but seldom possessed coercive mechanisms to impose orthodoxy.” James Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 217. 2. On the economic and moral support clerics’ concubines offered their partners in late medieval Catalunya, see Michelle Armstrong Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013), 168. 3. As Robert Brentano writes, “no matter how the historian plays with categories . . . they remain as categories, artificially secure in their defining of individual men.” Robert Brentano, A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 182. 4. On growing economic inequality in Italy from the later Middle Ages to the early modern period, see Guido Alfani, “Economic Inequality in Northwestern Italy: A Long-Term View (Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” Working paper no. 61, Carlo F. Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (2014), ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it/WorkingPapers/Dondena_WP061.pdf. 5. Cecilia Hewlett reminds us that there was significant movement back and forth from city to countryside throughout the premodern period, and these links between urban and rural areas and inhabitants would have had an impact on the church as well as the economy. See Cecilia Hewlett, “Locating Contadini in the Renaissance City: Food Circulation and Mobility in the Marketplace,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 19 (2016), 96.

Acknowledgments

As I come to the end of this project, nearly ten years after I first began, it’s a great pleasure to thank all of the colleagues, friends, and family members who have made the work possible. Archivists across Italy have helped me navigate many new and familiar places over the past several years. I wish to thank in particular Andrea Zonca, Sandro Buzzetti, and Giulio Orazio Bravo in Bergamo, as well as staff at the Archivi di Stato in Padua, Treviso, Udine, and Venice, especially Michela dal Borgo at the ASV. Exemplary researchers Francesca Magnoni and Leah Faibisoff made Venetian archival work possible even when I was at home with other commitments. And in Canada, research assistance from Antony Tomlin, Andrew Rampton, and Michelle Arentsen was invaluable to many aspects of the work. I hope that the end result is of some interest to all of them, and of course I claim all the remaining inaccuracies as my own. So many colleagues and friends have listened to me talk about this project at conferences, over lunches, dinners, and cocktails, and occasionally in dress shops and hair salons! Others have read my work, asked and answered challenging questions, and suggested sources. You have all served, in person and virtually, as examples of great scholarly enterprise and collegial support. Thanks to Frances Andrews, Megan Armstrong, Anna Bellavitis, Carrie Beneš, Daniel Bornstein, Montserrat Cabré, Erin Campbell, Marta Caroscio, Tina Chen, David Churchill, Jeffrey Cohen, Libby Cohen, Tom Cohen, Filippo de Vivo, Paul Dyck, Sarah Elvins, Kit French, Alexandra Guerson, Cecilia Hewlett, Sally Ito, Giles Knox, Carol Lansing, Dana Wessell Lightfoot, Lester Little, Heidi Marx, Shannon McSheffrey, Francine Michaud, Derek Neal, Christina Neilson, Judith Owens, Nancy Partner, Adele Perry, Luke Roman, Guido Ruggiero, Miriam Shadis, Giulio Silano, Nick Terpstra, Dario Tessicini, Jennifer Thibodeaux, Erik Thomson, Joanna Carraway Vitiello, Janelle Werner, David Watt, and the Sunday Writing Group (Brenda Austin-Smith, Shawna Ferris, Krista Johnston, Susan Prentice, and Vanessa Warne). A very special thanks to Tina Chen, a consummate department head, for encouraging me to apply for an I Tatti fellowship and for her

223



224 

N 

Acknowledgments

support and friendship over many years. And my warm thanks to Kate Lowe for her willingness to take the project to the press; to the two anonymous reviewers for ­Harvard University Press, who asked just the right questions to improve the project in its final months; and to the editorial staff at the press, who worked efficiently and with good cheer to get the project completed. Students in my seminars between 2012 and 2016 have heard me talk about this book perhaps too often, and my Premodern Material Culture class read draft chapters in 2016. Their questions and interest in the project have made the work stronger and clearer. And thanks to the colleagues (Francine Michaud, Frank Klaassen, Sharon Wright, Chris Carlsmith, and Daniel Bornstein,) who invited me to speak about the research at the University of Calgary, at the University of Saskatchewan, in Bergamo, and at Washington University at St Louis. Research for the book has been generously supported by several granting agencies. A teaching release from the Centre on Aging at the University of Manitoba, a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a year-long Deborah Loeb Brice fellowship at the Villa I Tatti in 2011– 2012 all made it possible and pleasurable. My deepest thanks to Lino Pertile and Anna Bensted for the support and friendship they offered our group of I Tatti fellows that year. Friendships outside academic life have also sustained me. Beth Collin, Margo Shaw, and Mariana Aitkin, and more recently Andrew Morican, give me stimulating opportunities to think about Borodin, Mozart, Schubert, and even Shostakovich instead of writing most Saturday afternoons. Christie Macdonald and Phil St. John are always up for dinner conversations about books, dogs, and family life in the present day. In Italy, time spent with Fabio Valenti and Annalisa Bruscoli and their family makes archival trips even more of a joy. Maggi Kelly and I met in difficult circumstances, but I am very lucky to know her and her family, and I hope they will appreciate the book and Shona’s role in it. My family, including my husband, Len; our children, Anna and Eamon; my parents, Olive and Doug; and my mother-in-law, Darlene (and the memory of my fatherin-law, Leo), are uppermost in my thoughts as I finish this project. My kids deserve huge praise and thanks for their willingness to uproot themselves and face their eleventh year in a new culture while I worked on the research. Len is consistently supportive of my work, even when Eyjafjallajökull made an early research trip much longer than we had anticipated. Later, spending a year in Florence together made the whole experience much more memorable. More recently, his careful reading and trenchant insights have improved the book immensely. My parents have done so much to help me and my family over the years. Not only do they love and nurture our family unconditionally, but my mother has read this manuscript several times over its life, asking important questions that helped focus the analysis and clarify my prose in many places. I dedicate the book to the memory of Shona Kelly Wray, whose excellent historical scholarship, warmth, and humor were an inspiration to all those who knew and loved her. Shona’s ideas pervade this book. Her insights on notaries and notarial culture and her friendship and scholarly generosity were of great value to me as I planned

Acknowledgments 

n 

225

this study, and they remained in my mind constantly as I wrote it. Over the years, we talked often about our mutual love of archival research, and I frequently called on her great Latin and paleography skills to help decipher my most challenging records and consider their meaning. Our interest in medieval households developed in parallel; at the time of her death in 2012, she was planning to write a book on the households of notaries and professors of law and medicine in Bologna, exploring connections between the men’s careers and their family relationships and status as householders. She was fascinated by figures such as Bettina, one of the daughters of the jurist Giovanni di Andrea, and her role in cementing social and perhaps scholarly ties within his household. My own ideas about the interdependence of clerics and their household members were shaped by Shona’s interest in how professors worked within their households. In her memory, I challenge others to consider the place of the household and its members in their own historical projects and to appreciate and nurture our own collegial and scholarly relationships.

Index

Adopted children, 79, 124, 127, 149 Affection, 111, 121, 129, 151 Agapetae (subintroductae), 10 Aging, 88–92, 103, 123–124, 139 Amasia / Amaxia, 59, 103–104 Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 10 Archival turn, 7–8, 60

Basilica: of Sant’Alessandro, Bergamo, 57, 63, 137, 155; of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo), Venice, 129, 147 Beds: as testamentary bequests to male heirs, 53, 135; resale value of, 54; as testamentary bequests to women, 107, 100, 113, 115, 125; as dowry items, 109; in inventories,130, 141, 142–143; provision for priests in Treviso, 136 Belts, 2, 107 Bergamo: synod of 1311, 13; Visconti rule in, 15; cleric-notaries in, 26, 31–32; lay notaries in, 28–29; notarial records in, 37–38; clerics’ testaments in, 42; visitation records in, 54–59; names of clerics in, 67; priests’ legitimacy in, 68; priests’ children in, 74; fathers of priests in, 76, 87–88; priests as fathers in, 77; pluralism in, 84; priest-siblings in, 85–86; aging

priests in, 88–91; clerics’ companions’ names, 96; clerical concubinage in, 102, 105, 113–114; guardianship agreements in, 119; clerical housing in, 135–136; canonry of Sant’Alessandro, 137–138; contents of clerics’ residences in, 146; water fountains in, 153. See also Canons of Sant’Alessandro, Bergamo; Cathedral of San Vincenzo, B ­ ergamo; Churches, parish; College of Notaries, Bergamo; Confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore, Bergamo Boattieri family, 84–85 Breviaries, 46–47, 48, 147

Calendar records, 25, 32–34 Cancelleria Inferiore, 1, 24, 33, 35, 42, 91 Canonries: graffitti on walls, 54; children living in, 75, 77; scandalous relationships in, 87, 102; aging clerics in, 89, 113; structure of, 137–138 Canons of Sant’Alessandro, Bergamo, 54, 63, 70, 88, 155 Cathedral of San Vincenzo, Bergamo: clergy in, 57, 63, 137; canonry, 113; church, 119 Chalices, 124, 139, 146

227



228 

Churches, parish: San Cristoforo, Ivrea, 86; San Michele, Perli (Ferrara), clergy in, 90–91; San Salvador, Ivrea, clergy in, 90; Sant’Agatha, Bergamo, clergy in, 95; Santa Maria, Curno, (Bergamo), 135–136; San Michele de Archu, Bergamo, clergy in, 136; Santa Maria, Paderno (Treviso), 149 Church reform, 3–6, 13, 15, 76, 157, 158, 164; and clerical naming practices, 66 Clerics: as heads of households, 3, 63–64, 77, 109, 157, 159–160; seen as corrupt, 5–6, 64, 158–159; composition of familia, 9, 61, 97; celibacy among, 10–12, 59, 71, 77; as notaries in Venice, 23–25, 28, 32–34; as notaries on Italian mainland, 25–26, 31–32; and children, 68, 74–76, 79–80, 120; and apprentices, 71–76; and brothers, 85–87; and fathers, 87–88; housing, 133–140, 162; as moneylenders, 148–151 Clerics’ companions, 17, 31, 44, 66; expulsion from clerics’ houses, 56, 114, 151–152, 156; as support for aging clerics, 90–91. See also Amasia; Bergamo; Concubina; Domina / Dona; Dowry; Fideicommissaries; Focaria; Ivrea; Meretrix; Mothers; Mulier suspecta; Notaries; Padua; Servants; Testaments; Treviso; Udine; Venice; Widows Clothing: for women, 2, 107, 110; liturgical vestments, 48, 73, 139, 146–147 College of Notaries, Bergamo, 22–23, 67 Concubina, 100–105, 160 Confraternity of the Misericordia Maggiore, Bergamo, 29, 74, 89, 121 Conversa, 13 Cooking, 152–153

N 

Index Corrections (to records), 45–47 Corredum, 107, 112

Devotional objects, 144–145 Domina / Dona, 99–100, 124 Domus, 133–134 Dowry: for clerics’ daughters, 82, 88–89; for clerics’ companions, 106, 109, 112, 142

Episcopal notaries / scribes, 26, 28–29

Facitergium (kerchief), 123 Famulus, 75, 160 Fideicommissaries, 43–44, 108–109 Filiation, 66–70, 95, 97 Focaria, 59, 100, 104–105, 160

Gratian, 40–41

Handwriting, 72, 91–92 Household equipment, 52–53, 107, 111, 113, 136

Icons (anchonae), 110, 145 Intimacy, household: as intimate domain, 5, 63, 131, 148, 151; as replacement for sex, 17; among clerics, 72; between clerics and their companions, 103; between clerics and their mothers, 126 Inventories, 49–54, 130, 139, 140–148 Ivrea: visitation records from,14, 55–59; clerics’ children in, 74–75; clergy in, 86, 90; clerics’ companions named in, 96; definitions of concubinage in, 102, 104; duration of clerical relationships in, 121; poverty in rural churches,

Index  139; work by clerics’ companions in, 152, 155

Lateran Councils, 11–13, 40–41, 100 Laundry / washing, 144, 153–157 Letters: papal and episcopal letters, 56, 99, 102; from priests, 86, 115, 134, 144–145, 147, 150 Liber Extra, 105 Liturgical clothing. See Clothing Liturgical objects. See Chalices; Patens

Marginalia, 29, 31–32, 46–47, 108 Marital affection, 101, 121 Material culture, 53, 132–148 Meretrix, 101, 104–105 Monasteries: San Cipriano, Murano (Venice), 85; San Giorgio, Venice, 85; San Matteo de Constanziaco, Mazzorbo (Venice), 130; San Matteo, Murano (Venice), 150 Mothers: of priests, 12, 45–46, 89, 105, 121–131; support for priests’ children by their mothers, 74–75, 119–120; living with priests and their children, 77; identification as sole parent of children, 80–82, 145; enslaved, 98; moral responsibility for household, 109–110; potential loss of access to children, 114 Mulier suspecta, 100, 104

Notarial archives, 8, 24–25, 34–38; in Venice, 34–36 Notarial records: doodles within, 7, 29–32; instrumenta, 22, 26, 37, 54, 147; drafts, 25, 45–47, 48–49, 86; fair copies, 26, 47–48, 52; treatises on notarial arts, 27, 40–41, 43, 67–68; registers, 29–38, 45, 69, 83, 89, 91–92

n 

229

Notaries: adjudication of law, 21, 27, 38, 42, 49, 78, 165; culture, 21–29, 67, 130–131, 161, 165; signa, 22, 44, 47, 92; households, 26–27, 81–82, 96, 143–144, 163; support for clerics’ companions, 116–118

Padua: political history of, 15; penalties for cleric-notaries working without licenses in, 26; civic chancery creation in, 36; dispensations for illegitimacy among clerics in, 68; names of clerics in, 69; apprenticeship agreements among clerics in, 71–72, Boattieri family in, 85; siblings among clerics in, 85–86; dispute among clerics in, 88; descriptions of clerics’ companions in, 101; expulsion of clerics’ companions from, 114, 122, 134 Paper, 1, 35, 141, 149–150 Parchment, 35, 37–38, 48–49 Patens, 146 Pater familias, 3, 61, 78–81, 119 Patria potestas, 9, 61, 68, 78–79, 82, 159 Patriarch of Aquileia, 15, 36, 41 Peter Damian, 11 Pievani, 64–65, 69–70 Pievi, Venice: San Basso, clergy in, 2, 96, 142; San Barnaba, 28, 112, 117, 124, 125; Sant’Eufemia, clergy in, 28, 98; San Canciano (San Canzian), notary in, 33, 45, 91–92, 143, 144, 163; San Canciano, clerical congregation of, 48; San Canciano, pievano of, 65, 108; San Canciano, clergy in, 72–73, 128–129; San Canciano, witness for notary from, 130; Santa Maria Formosa, clergy in, 44, 81, 149–151; Santa Sofia, clergy in, 45–47; Santi Apostoli, clergy in, 46, 73, 110, 129; San Felice, clergy in, 52, 73, 123, 129; San Giuliano (San Zulian), church, 65;



230 

Pievi, Venice (continued) San Giuliano, clergy in, 84; Santi Ermagora e Fortunato (San Marcuola), clergy in, 69, 109, 125; Treviso, San Lorenzo, clergy in, 71; San Giovanni Grisostomo, clergy in, 72; Santa Maria Nova, clergy in, 73, 129–130, 134, 144; San Gervasio, clergy in, 73, 146; Santa Maria Mater Domini, clergy in, 74, 116; San Geminiano, clergy in, 75; Santissimo Salvatore (San Salvador), clergy in, 79, 106; San Geremia, clergy in, 81, 147; San Geremia, parish, 128; San Maurizio, clergy in, 82, 97; Sant’Agostino (Sant’Agostin), clergy in, 84; San Moisè, confinia, 27, 117; San Moisè, clergy in, 96, 130; San Moisè, scuola, 130; San Leonardo, clergy in, 97, 107, 111; San Leonardo, scuola, 129; San Polo, clergy in, 99, 116, 145; San Rafaele, clergy in, 99; Udine, Turrida, 102–103; Montebelluna, 108–109; San Leone, clergy in, 108; Sant’Agata, clergy in, 112, 124; San Giovanni Battista Decollato (San Zan Degolà), clergy in, 118, 142; Santi Gervasio e Protasio (San Trovaso), clergy in, 124; San Vito (San Vio), clergy in, 124; Santo Stefano, clergy in, 125, 136; San Matteo Apostolo (San Maffio di Rialto), female custodian, 127–129; Santa Marina, scuola, 129; Santa Marina, clergy in, 129, 146; San Luca Evangelista, clergy in, 134; San Pantalon, clergy in, 135 Plague: debate about effect on clerical corruption, 5–6, 76–77, 164; responses to, among notaries in Venice, 35; damage to economic and social order, 77, 83, 159; late arrival in Bergamo, 89 Pluralism (of benefices), 83–84 Poverty, 65, 91, 108, 139–140, 154–155, 162–163 Procurators of San Marco, 52–53

N 

Index Promissory notes (cartae manifestationis), 24, 111–112 Publica fides, 22–23, 25

Rolandino de Passageriis, 40–41, 43 Roman law, 3, 9, 24, 43, 101

Sant’Alessandro in Colonna, Bergamo: confraternity, 122; church, 135 Scuolae, Venice: la Vecchia di Santa Maria della Misericordia, 127; Sant’Orsola, 129; San Girolamo, 130; Santa Helena, 130; Spirito Santo, 130 Servants: as members of clerical familia, 9, 11–12, 149; female servants as intimate / sexual partners of clergy, 10, 44, 92, 115, 125; famuli as possible sons, 75; companions named as servants in wills, 96–97; “servant” as testamentary term, 100–101, 105–112, 161; payment of wages to, 115–116; sleeping arrangements in clerics’ residences, 134–135, 142; housework performed by, 155–157 Sewing, 152–153 Silver spoons, 53, 143–144, 163 Slaves: in the clerical household in Venice, 9, 97–98, 149; records of manumission, 24; status of slaves’ children on Crete, 80; focaria as “slave,” 104; clerics’ testamentary bequests for slaves, 110 Swords, 145–146

Testaments: language choices in, 1–2, 50, 159 archives of, 25, 32–36, 91; freedom to create, 40–41; rates of clerical testation, 41–42; forms of, 42–49; Procurators of San Marco as fideicommissaries of, 52–54; large bequests by pievani, 65; personal names in, 67–69, 96–97; clerics’ treatment of their

Index  apprentices in, 73–74; clerics’ treatment of their children in, 79–83; support for scholars in, 85; clerics’ brothers in, 87; clerics' testaments on mainland, 89, 113–114, 119–120; concern for ecclesiastical and birth family in, 89; testaments by notaries, 92, 107, 117–118; of slaves, 97–98; titles and labels in, 99–100, 105–107, 160–161; precious materials as bequests in, 107–108; responsibilities for clerics’ companions in, 108–111; of clerics’ companions, 112, 116–117; of clerics’ mothers, 122–124, 126–131; clerics’ treatment of their mothers in, 124–125; residences described in, 134–135, 136; sites of redaction, 134–136; devotional objects as bequests, 145; liturgical objects as bequests, 146; books as bequests, 147; thread as bequests, 153. See also Beds; Bergamo; Fideicommissaries; Servants; Slaves; Treviso; Udine; Venice; Widows Thomas of Chobham, 12 Treviso: political and ecclesiastical organization, 15; notaries in, 26, 29, 31, 88, 165; clergy in, 27, 95, 108, 120; archiving in, 35–38; bishop of, 41, 85, 141; licenses required for clerical testators in, 41–42; inventories from, 51–52, 141–147; clerics as apprentices in, 71–72; marriage of clerics’ children in, 81–82; pluralism in, 84; titles and labels for clerics’ companions in, 99–101; clerics’ companions in, 108–109, 120; expulsion of clerics’ companions from, 114; clerics’ mothers in, 125–127; clerical housing in, 136; moneylending in, 148–149

Udine: sources from, 14; political and ecclesiastical organization in, 15; clerical notaries in, 26; licenses

n 

231

required for clerical testators in, 42; visitation records from, 57–59; legitimacy of clerics in, 76; titles and labels for clerics’ companions in, 99–101; definitions of concubinage in, 102–103, 105; clothing for clerics’ companions in, 107; (non)payment of wages to servants in, 115–116; clerical housing in, 134; clerical household goods in, 142; work by clerics’ companions in, 152 Underwear, 143

Venice: relationship with mainland, 15, 163–164; ecclesiastical organization in, 16; relationship between mainland and Venetian notariate, 21, 23–27; notaries in, 23–29, 32–34; relationship between mainland and Venetian archival practices, 34–38; testaments in, 41–49, 92, 96; relationship between mainland and Venetian testating practices, 43–45; household goods in, 52–53, 142–146; synods in, 59; population of clergy in, 63; clerical culture in, 64–66; relationship between mainland and Venetian clerical cultures, 65–66; naming of clerics in, 69; status of clerics in, 70; apprenticeship of clerics in, 71–74; clerics’ children in, 74–75, 78–82; pluralism in, 84; names, titles and labels for clerics’ companions in, 95, 99, 101, 105–106; fideicommissaries in, 96, 108, 124; slavery in, 97–99; servants as clerics’ companions in, 105–106; treatment of clerics’ companions in testaments from, 106–111; clothing in, 107–108; clerics’ companions as guardians of children in, 110; promissory notes for servants, 111–112; vulnerability of clerics’ servants in, 113; priests’ mothers in, 122–131; clerical housing in, 134–135,



232 

Venice (continued) 136; liturgical items, 146–147; books, 147; moneylending in clerics’ homes, 148–151; laundry in, 154. See also Cancelleria Inferiore; Monasteries; Pievi; Procurators of San Marco; Scuolae Vicenza, 99 Visitation records: as sources and texts, 54–59; complaints about clerics’ children in, 74; complaints about clerics’ commercial activities in, 85; complaints about sexual scandals in, 87, 102; obscuring of women’s identities in, 96, 100; descriptions of aging “concubines” in, 102–103; warning letters from bishops after, 103; descriptions of stable relationships in, 120–121; praise for rural clerics in, 138–139; absence of complaint about moneylending in,

N 

Index 149; ambiguous descriptions of women’s work in, 151–156

Wardrobes, 147, 150 Widows: as clerics’ companions, 2, 80; of notaries, 27; as recipients of clerics’ bequests, 100, 111, 113; as landladies for clerics’ “concubines,” 103; companions as de facto widows of clergy, 106–109, 159; clerics’ mothers as, 122–124, 126–127, 130; servants as, 125; disputes with clergy,142 Witnesses: in notarial instrumenta, 22, 42–43, 67; signatures of, 23, 34, 72–73, 149; in court records, 28, 88; to testaments, 46, 48–49, 126–127, 129; in visitation records, 55, 58, 87, 152–153, 155–156; to notarial contracts, 75, 120, 130; to marriage, 82; women barred from acting as, 95