Download PDF | Alexandra R. A. Lee - The Bianchi of 1399 in Central Italy_ Making Devotion Local-BRILL (2021).
300 Pages
Acknowledgements
It is strange for one’s research to suddenly become relevant, and it is perhaps little wanted when that research pertains so closely to pandemic disease. Nevertheless, this book was completed during the CovID-19 epidemic in 2020/ 21. I am indebted to those who have generously conversed and shared their work with me, especially in a time where library access has been scarce.
This research would not have been possible without my doctoral supervisors Catherine Keen and Bill MacLehose (+2020). I am very grateful for the collaboration between two departments Catherine and Bill offered me, and for their gentle guidance and support. I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Medium 7vum and the UCL Doctoral School and School of European Languages, Culture and Society for generously funding my research and archival trips.
I am grateful to all those who have encouraged me with my work, especially those who have given me such detailed and thoughtful feedback. Special thanks must go to David Bowe, Jane Gilbert, Glenn Kumhera, Patrick Lantschner, Tom O’Donnell, Miri Rubin, Nicholas Terpstra, Benedict Wiedemann, Agata Zielinska and the anonymous reviewers. I am indebted to David D’Avray and Marigold Norybe for their wonderful palaeography teaching and to my editor Marcella Mulder who has patiently answered all my questions, and guided me through this process.
Thank-you to all the wonderful librarians I encountered both in the UK and Italy. 1am particularly grateful to Giovanna Lazzi from the Biblioteca Capitolare in Pistoia and Valentina Simonetti from the Archivio di Stato in Lucca, for giving me maps and books and being particularly accommodating with my manuscript requests. Thanks too to those I encountered in the archives, especially Christine Meek for explaining sparkly colophons and passing on source material about the Bianchi she came across in her own research.
The Amici del Museo in Poggio Mirteto welcomed me for a two-day event on the Bianchi with boundless generosity—thank-you. Thanks in particular to Andrea Leopardi, the president of the society, who presented me with his own copy of Sulle Orme, Liliana Cultera for helping me secure image permissions and Natale Madeo for sharing his wonderful photographs and allowing me to reproduce them in this book.
The UCL community of historians has offered wonderful support throughout this process, and I would particularly like to thank Melissa Benson, Matt Griffin, Johannes Hartmann, Arendse Lund, Jack Sargeant and David Tiedemann. Thanks to my family, especially to my parents for taking me to the Nottingham Pageant where we saw the singing plague victims that started me down this path. Finally, thanks to my partner Will for his unwavering support throughout researching and writing this book.
Introduction
During times of epidemic disease, the populace of medieval Europe turned to religious devotion to find succour and hope. In the summer of 1399 people throughout northern and central Italy were drawn to participate in the Bianchi devotions with the promise of thereby preventing an impending outbreak of plague. The Bianchi processions are considered the last in a long line of medieval popular religious revivals. Such revivals are often examined from a broad perspective, whereas the approach here for assessing the Bianchi of 1399 will be local and comparative.! This reveals the intimate communal workings behind different stages of the processions. The book focuses on the Bianchi in central Italy, using a variety of municipal documents and visual materials to highlight areas of similarity as well as regional variation in the ways that the populace participated in these processions.
The Bianchi devotions began in Genoa and spread eastwards in the direction of Venice and southwards towards Rome, yet with no prescribed final destination. Participants in the nine-day processions would dress in white from head to toe, sing laude or hymns of praise, fast, and shout pace and misericordia: peace and mercy. Each procession would reach roughly four and a half days’ walk from the original location, and participants would proselytise other towns along the route, which would in turn begin their own circular, itinerant processions. These devotions were organised in order to counteract the threat of a pestilential annihilation, which would reportedly obliterate a third of the world. Satisfactorily completing the various tasks required of participants would ensure personal salvation. Consequently, the movement spread rapidly through the northern and central Italian peninsula as individuals and communities sought to protect themselves from the forthcoming epidemic.
Central Italy offers a wealth of source material about the Bianchi, providing a substantial base for comparative analysis. The regions assessed in this book are Tuscany, Umbria and the northern half of Lazio, whereas Bianchi activities in Liguria and north eastern Italy will only be touched on briefly. A specific focus is drawn to two case study towns of Lucca and Pistoia due to the unparalleled combination of municipal records and chronicle accounts which discuss the Bianchi in the towns and beyond.” Lucca and Pistoia can also be considered hubs of Bianchi activity, hosting numerous processions as well as sending forth groups of itinerant participants who spread the devotions further afield. Incorporating other central Italian towns and regions creates a productive comparison of the chronicles, visual materials and laude connected to the Bianchi as well as an assessment of both regional and individual concerns.
The fleeting but convulsive rise of Bianchi fervour is often briefly mentioned in scholarly works treating Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Bianchi are often presented as a flagellant movement which swept the whole Italian peninsula and whose leader was burnt upon reaching Rome.’ These elements of the Bianchi movement have dominated historiography of the devotions until recently, but are problematic. Individual studies of the Bianchi devotions have sought to dispel these myths from a broad geographical perspective, but it must be underscored that the Bianchi devotions were neither a movement aiming for Rome nor a group whose leader was burnt at the stake. The issue of self-flagellation also requires a more nuanced approach. I deemphasise and clarify these more dramatic elements of the devotions, especially in Chapters 5 and 8.
Bianchi studies was established in modern scholarship in the 1960s,* culminating in Giampaolo Tognetti’s magisterial book-length article on the devotions.® His rich overview of the whole geographical spread of Bianchi left questions of the origins and legacy of the movement open for future discussion.
After Tognetti, Frank Morton presented the Bianchi devotions as a reasonably homogenous peace movement in the context of Herlihy’s notion of “civic Christianity.’° Diana Webb also connects the Bianchi with peace, suggesting that it was a “major function” of the devotions.’ Joseph Byrne’s Florentine focus provides insight into a single Bianchi participant: Francesco di Marco Datini, also emphasizing the brevity of peace achieved during the devotions.® These studies provide a useful level of detail and analysis about specific aspects and individuals, but these ideas cannot simply be extrapolated to the movement as a whole. The present study reinforces how the Bianchi cannot be considered homogenous due to the different regional interpretations and realisations of the processions.
Daniel Bornstein’s monograph brought the Bianchi more prominently into English-speaking scholarship, portraying the processions as a product of previous devotional movements.’ He also addresses the difficulties that the movement had with the authorities, especially at Venice.!° I continue Bornstein’s caution in extrapolating information about the Bianchi devotions in a particular location to the movement as a whole, and extend this to other aspects of the movement such as origin narratives. My approach is also more specific, focusing on two comparative case studies to allow a detailed examination of the Bianchi which reveals significant communal support.
Interest in the Bianchi gained renewed impetus from the sixth centenary of the devotions in 1999 with studies on Borgo a Buggiano and Assisi.!! The collected volume Sulle orme dei Bianchi assembled textual sources and introduced newly discovered visual evidence.'? Two decades later, scholarly interest is being reignited, although these studies continue to focus either on a single issue or a single location.! The importance of studying the regional variation of the Bianchi devotions is highlighted by Nicholas Terpstra’s placement of the movement within the “Misericordia tradition,’ connecting the processions with the image of the Madonna della Misericordia."* This is tenable in Bologna, where the Bianchi were connected to this particular trope; there is a painting of Bianchi participants being protected by a Madonna della Carita which was commissioned and painted shortly after the processions. However, this feature is not visible in the central Italian Bianchi tradition. Katherine Jansen addresses Bianchi peacemaking in Florence, suggesting that one consequence of the devotions was social reform.!6 This Florentine case cannot be extrapolated so easily to the rest of the spread of the devotions. Such studies of the Bianchi processions add crucial local details but sometimes do not appreciate the bigger picture. Many studies of the Bianchi underscore the peacemaking aspect of the devotions; while this is a crucial element, and will be explored further in Chapter 7, it was not the sole function of the movement.
These contributions established a chronology and a rich primary source base for examining the Bianchi. However, many aspects of the origins, nature and legacy of the Bianchi processions require further clarification. There is a tendency in the historiography to present this popular revival as the unique, coherent movement promoted by chroniclers contemporary to the processions. My scrutiny of a variety of primary source materials (including recent discoveries in Citta di Castello and Florence) in a comparative analysis teases apart the implications of the way that the devotions were realised in different locations in central Italy. Examining the movement at a local level through the precise details recorded by chroniclers and municipal records combined with other written and visual materials establishes a vibrant picture of how the processions unfolded in these locations. Uniting these different perspectives highlights the diverse forms of participation in the Bianchi devotions.
1 Nomenclature
The Bianchi devotions are so named due to the white attire of the majority of participants. Indeed, this is the only practice which features across all sources which describe the processions. For example, in the vernacular chronicles, the Lucchese Sercambi uses “vestiti di biancho” [dressed in white] and the Pistoiese Dominici uses “moltitudine del popolo bianco,” [multitude of people [dressed in] white] “Bianchi,” and eventually just “B.”!” The term brigata is also employed by both chroniclers, often in combination with the colour white.!® Other vernacular chroniclers also use the term “Bianchi,” such as the Orvietan Montemarte and the Anonimo Florentino, Montemarte stating that the groups used this term to refer to themselves.!9
The colour is also prominent in Latin chronicles, usually qualified either by an adjective meaning “wearing,” or the adjective “white” describes a noun such as “agmen” [movement] or “societas” [association]. Cerboni, from Citta di Castello, initially uses “Societas Candidatorum,’ and later just “candidatis,” which has the specific sense of the colour applied to clothing.”° The Florentine Bruni uses perhaps the simplest term, “dealbatorum agmina’ referring to a procession of people dressed in white.?! Unsurprisingly, all images which depict Bianchi participants, whether in Sercambi’s manuscript or the numerous frescoes, show them dressed in white. While practical in its use, this term “Bianchi” was nevertheless somewhat problematic in the late medieval Italian context.
The epithet “Bianchi” had numerous resonances by the end of the fourteenth century. Around 1300, the Guelph political faction had split into the “Bianchi” and the “Neri.”22 While the conflict between these parties had generally lessened by the turn of the fifteenth century, it remained a significant problem for both Lucca and Pistoia, whether between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, or the two factions of the Guelph movement. The fact that the term “Bianchi” was nevertheless still associated with the processions in 1399 highlights the enormous importance of the colour white as a unifying and identifying factor for participants. It was used despite the longstanding association with political, secular movements characterised by conflict and violence.
Numerous regular holy orders already wore white; taking on such robes marked a significant lifestyle change. The Cistercians, for example, were known as the “white monks” because of distinctive colour of their habits.?% White was not the only colour holy orders could wear however, as groups like the Benedictines wore black, and the Franciscans wore brown. Lay confraternities sometimes also wore white. Surveying the thirteen confraternities for which records survive in Lucca before 1399, one flagellant confraternity wore white, but other groups wore black, red and even yellow with a white cincture.24 While white was clearly important for some of these groups, the variety present among holy orders and confraternities suggests that the Bianchi were not signifying a connection to any single group through their dress. Moreover, the orders referenced in the sources related to the Bianchi processions are usually the Franciscans and Dominicans, neither of which wore solely white, but whose preaching activity was fundamental to the spread of the devotions.
Participants in previous popular religious revivals had also worn white, such as the flagellants of 1260. In 1335, a group referred to as “Bianchi” or “Columbini” followed Venturino da Bergamo.”> These “Columbini” dressed in white and marched to Rome, where enemies put their differences aside and shouted “misericordia, pace, penitenza.’2° However, it is unlikely that the Bianchi in 1399 were deliberately trying to create a connection to a previous revival, or a specific religious order. The colour white was also imbued with significance referring to purity and penitence. The attire of the Bianchi participants will be further explored in Chapter 4.
Convenience therefore seems to have been the deciding factor when chroniclers settled on a term for the devotions in 1399. The selection of “Bianchi” highlights white dress as a unifying factor, and potentially as the most important element for participants. The fact that there is parity among the chroniclers in naming the processions suggests that it was a relatively consistent feature. However, underneath this nomenclature, there was significant variation between methods of participation in different locations. Referring to the processions in 1399 as “the Bianchi” is problematic as it suggests that they can be considered as a coherent whole, which I will demonstrate is not the case. I will not be suggesting a new name for the devotions, as this would be counterproductive in the face of Bianchi scholarship. However, I will the need for qualification of the term either by “devotions,” “processions” or “participants,” or a toponym, such as the “Lucchese Bianchi.” This is an imperfect solution but it encompasses the definitions of previous scholars and is a practical way to refer to the Bianchi devotions in 1399.
2 Popular Religion and Civic Religion
The church and state had a complicated relationship in the medieval period.?” Two useful frameworks within which the Bianchi can be assessed with regard to this relationship are “popular religion” and “Civic Religion.” While neither term is without its issues, both are productive when considering medieval popular religious revivals. The Bianchi processions are best described as a popular religious revival, suggesting that they fall into the category of popular religion.”8 This term is the least problematic available, avoiding the dichotomy of lay and ecclesiastical in the term “lay piety.’29 The Bianchi participants cannot be classed as “lay penitents” due to the numerous levels of clerical involvement in the processions.?° “Religion” rather than “piety” makes sense too, as it encompasses the broad range of activities undertaken by Bianchi participants. Popular religion understands “popular” in the literal sense of appealing to the masses, which the Bianchi devotions did.*! This term is fluid, and therefore appropriate to describe the various activities of the Bianchi participants.
The term “lived religion” has come to be used more recently to describe the role that theology and the structures of religion had in daily life.2 However, the focus here is more on the relationship between these daily religious experiences and the role of structural authorities in responding to them. Indeed, Derek Rivard describes popular religion as a symbiotic relationship between the laity and the clergy; the laity drove rituals which were eventually governed and overseen by the church.?3 R. Scribner also suggests popular religion is “practical religion,” the religion enacted by ordinary people.** Popular religion is a malleable category which describes the dynamic relationship between laity and church, where religious activities were innovated and the church negotiated its relationship with each new practice. This is particularly relevant for the Bianchi, as ecclesiastical authorities played a role in shaping and managing the devotions.
“Civic Religion” is a complex issue when considering the Bianchi. The term and its implications for this movement will be more fully defined and explored in Chapters 6 and 7. Civic religion has long been associated with medieval Italian communal culture and is most often discussed specifically with reference toa single location.*° It encompasses the possibility of communal involvement in ecclesiastical matters. The fact that the Bianchi processions moved will provide a unique new insight into the concept. Civic religion usually takes an intra-urban view on religious phenomena, such as processions and confraternities. Intra-urban encompasses the variety of spaces where Bianchi activities were performed that did not involve walking from town to town. However, that view must also be turned outward to also encompass the itinerant aspects of the devotions. The role of communal authorities in the orchestration of the Bianchi processions is undeniable, providing support not only to their own inhabitants but also those arriving from elsewhere. The “souplesse conceptuelle” of civic religion will be tested here to explore how it can describe the numerous methods of participating in the Bianchi devotions.?6 These manifestations of religious devotion are not confined solely to Italian cities, and these discussions consequently have a bearing beyond the immediate focus of this study.
These terms are both necessarily elastic to encompass a broad range of phenomena. This does not reduce their productivity however, rather it reveals the complex and multifaceted nature of medieval religion, and provides a way to navigate it. Popular religion provides a focus on the populace at large and their devotional needs, and civic religion emphasises the actions of communal authorities in facilitating religious endeavours. Both terms ultimately encompass both laity and clergy, offering insights from each of these perspectives.
3 Popular Religious Revivals
Periods of increased spiritual awareness among the general lay population were a regular feature of the Middle Ages. These popular religious revivals were centred on collective devotion; Gary Dickson refers to the crowd as “the indispensable incubator of medieval revivals.”?’ The term “revival” suggests an episode of renewed religiosity. Indeed, while the movements in question often provoked a significant fervour, they were usually short lived. These revivals included processions referred to as crusades and flagellant processions, as well as movements centred around preaching.
A series of so-called Crusades began in 1212 with the Children’s Crusade. Where knights had failed, these pueri hoped to succeed in seizing the Holy Land. A plethora of narratives survive claiming to explain the origins of this movement, but all were composed after its demise, with the aim of explaining its failure.3° Another “crusade” began in 1251, this time involving “shepherds.”
Again, the goal was to reach the Holy Land, and the movement was spurred on by narratives involving the Virgin.3° This purpose remained unfulfilled when the sea did not part once the crusaders had reached the coast, and upon reaching Paris, the participants turned to anticlerical violence.*° A second “Shepherds’ Crusade” took place in 1320, although this revival was seen more as a riot than a crusade.*! The pope condemned the movement on account of the horrific violence, particularly against Jewish communities.*? All three of these crusades reportedly began in France, supported by a heavenly origin story. This impetus moved certain strands of the population. Although pueri and “shepherds” are not neat categories for the participants, they do demonstrate a clear separation from society at large. These “crusades” all failed to reach the Holy Land.
The first flagellant revival began in Perugia in 1260, when Raniero Fasani, a Franciscan hermit, reportedly had two visions of the Virgin.*3 Raniero was left a letter which apparently detailed instructions to promote public selfflagellation, so he began and led the movement in Perugia.*+ The processions also spread peace, and left behind a legacy of flagellant confraternities.45 A second flagellant revival sprang up after the Black Death in 1348-50, although its precise beginnings are harder to pinpoint.4© The movement was condemned by the pope due to violence, and can be connected to a desire to perform religious devotion in the face of epidemic disease. Both of these revivals were exclusive, maintaining a divide between participants and onlookers.
The Great Hallelujah began in Parma in 1233. This movement of lay preachers was centred around peacemaking.*” Anxieties around lay preachers were allayed thanks to a strong political undercurrent connected to the mendicants.*® As discussed above, in 1335, Venturino da Bergamo led a group to Rome, wearing white and promoting peacemaking.t9 Another movement was sparked by Vincent Ferrer, a Valencian Dominican who was famed for his preaching and peacemaking skills. At the turn of the fifteenth century, he took his preaching from Spain to Italy, France and Switzerland, gaining a following of “companions.”°° Finally, similar to 1335, Manfredi da Vercelli led an apocalyptic preaching movement in 1417-19, foretelling the coming of the Antichrist.5! These movements underscore the importance of preachers in reaching the populace at large, especially in encouraging them to engage with peacemaking.
All of these movements benefitted from at least one charismatic leader. Max Weber applies the term charisma to people with an “individual personality by virtue of which [they are] set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman [...] powers.”5? Katherine Jansen and Miri Rubin reinforce this superhuman element, suggesting that such a leader would be inaccessible to “ordinary people,” which is why they might be recognised as a leader and gain a following.°? Such individuals were instrumental in spreading these revivals, particularly in engaging the populace and converting them to their cause. Each movement had a key aim, whether it was freeing the Holy Land, stopping the impending destruction of humankind or peacemaking.
These popular religious revivals set the context for the Bianchi devotions. There are many parallels with the processions in 1399, such as an emphasis on peacemaking and reportedly divine origin stories. A key point of difference is the lack of a single, charismatic leader, although this may have contributed to the successful spread of the Bianchi, as discussed in Chapter 7. While each of these movements had its own unique aspects, previous revivals had comparable origins and aims, providing precedent for the Bianchi devotions, especially within the northern and central Italian peninsula.
4 Book Outline
This book situates the Bianchi devotions in their regional context, moving from the broad, traditional focus on the processions to comparative, local studies. My analysis of central Italy, in particular Lucca and Pistoia, reveals the communal intervention in and support for the devotions, as well as a reliance on pre-existing communal structures. It considers both itinerant and intra-urban processions; those who were able went on itinerant processions, but for those who could not, towns staged processions within their own territories. This problematizes the homogeneity with which the Bianchi are usually presented.
Understanding the local nature of the Bianchi devotions demonstrates the importance of regionality in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy more broadly. These patterns of individual responses to disease, especially from a devotional perspective, highlight the unique reaction of each location and government, according to local norms and traditions. Even though towns were in political turmoil and often subject to larger powers, their individual civic identity remained paramount, and was publicly realised, especially in religious processions.
Any political or societal differences wrought by the devotions were largely temporary. While peacemaking was undoubtedly a key focus, enmities that were laid aside to fulfil this Bianchi requirement frequently came back in full force once the devotions were over. This was particularly the case in Pistoia. The cultural impact of the devotions is also revealed most keenly at a local level. While there was no broad impression on the Italian peninsula as a whole, each individual town remembered the devotions in its own way: crucifixes, confraternities or frescoes. This comparative approach underscores the importance of considering regional individuality when approaching premodern Italy.
The first chapter establishes the fractured political context for the Bianchi in central Italy, as well as emphasising the continual onslaught of plague throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century. Chapter 2 assesses the origins of the devotions, bringing the three narratives together in their different textual and visual iterations for the first time. This analysis demonstrates significant points of commonality and difference between these narratives, and between the numerous witnesses of the same stories. This narrative divergence paved the way for the different realisations of the Bianchi devotions in each location they reached.
The third chapter focusses on the role of further miraculous events in maintaining the momentum of the processions. These visions occurred in towns where Bianchi processions had already begun, or at least where word of the devotions had already spread. Regulations are the focus of Chapter 4, assessing the way that Bianchi participants engaged with the requirements set out for them. It is easy to assume that participants in a popular revival all adhered to the same rules, and yet this was demonstrably not the case in different towns across central Italy during the Bianchi devotions. Ultimately, while there are some generic instructions, it remains impossible to state what any given participant in a Bianchi procession might have been doing at a particular juncture in their devotional activities.
The fifth chapter examines two key elements of the Bianchi processions which were also common in lay religious confraternities: singing and selfflagellation. Comparing the laude which were recorded as being sung during the Bianchi devotions in Umbria and Tuscany reveals regional variation. Selfflagellation is a thorny issue when assessing the Bianchi. Some scholars still present the devotions as a flagellant movement, but by closely re-interrogating the sources, my analysis suggests that the practice was confined not only to specific groups of people, but also to certain spaces.
The issue of civic religion is scrutinised in Chapter 6 in the context of the ecclesiastical endorsement that was so fundamental to the success of the Bianchi processions. Tasks such as saying mass and hearing confession required the involvement of the clergy, who also played leading roles. Chapter 7 continues the discussion of civic religion in relation to the secular, communal organisation that facilitated the processions. While popular religious revivals are often portrayed as spontaneous, the Bianchi enjoyed significant support from local authorities. The way that these authorities reacted to the devotions varied greatly; while some towns bent over backwards to accommodate the arriving Bianchi participants, others were not so generous. The concept of civic religion is problematized throughout these two chapters, demonstrating its relevance for a fleeting, itinerant popular revival due to a reliance on secular and ecclesiastical infrastructures.
The final chapter considers the legacy of the Bianchi. Starting in an immediate context, the regional tendencies towards different types of commemoration are revealed. The discussion then takes a longer view, examining the remnants of the processions in central Italy today, including crucifixes, confraternities and frescoes. The Bianchi devotions provide a fascinating snapshot of popular religious life in medieval central Italy. This analysis exposes the actions of individuals and communities as they participated in remembering this moment of collective religious devotion.
This work provides significant new insights into Bianchi studies, as well as the devotional landscape of the medieval Italian peninsula and Europe more generally. An examination of the processions provides a snapshot into religious life in these towns. Studies of plague tend to focus on the Black Death,** and I extend this into the later fourteenth century, providing an overview of plagues after 1348 and focusing especially on the Moria dei Bianchi in Chapter 1. I analyse manuscript illustrations and frescoes alongside a variety of other source materials to consider the origins, practices and legacy of the Bianchi, incorporating the most recent discoveries of frescoes, texts and crucifixes. I assess the way images may have been used, as well as their importance as historical sources to provide key information about the Bianchi processions, especially in locations where no textual sources survive. My evaluation of the Bianchi laude in Chapter 5 combines literary and musicological approaches, although in the absence of any surviving melodies. This combination of traditional disciplinary paradigms creates a richer perspective on the various different facets of the Bianchi movement.
The spread of the Bianchi devotions was swift and fervent, inspiring large swathes of the populace to abandon their daily activities for nine days. These participants performed certain tasks, and were supported by a variety of frameworks, both secular and ecclesiastical. Each town dealt with the Bianchi devotions according to its religious traditions and the attitude of the communal authorities. As a result, processions in each location took on a regional character and were shaped by traditional norms and expectations. It is these instances of local context which shaped the Bianchi, each town fitting in as a unique cog in the machine of the processions as they spread across the northern and central Italian peninsula.
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