Chapter Two—
'na Rosa mmiste che
Between 1244 and 1246, at the hermitage of Greccio, about fifteen kilometers northwest of the cathedral city of Rieti, and within the diocese of Rieti, the Franciscan friars Leo, Rufino, and Angelo collected and wrote and then, as they had been asked, sent off to the minister general, Crescentius of Jesi, "striking examples" of Francis's "discourse."[1] The three men had, they wrote, "lived long in his company (secum . . . fuimus diutius conuersati )." They knew Francis well; but they did not, they wrote, intend to write a new legenda but only, if the Minister General saw fit, to add to earlier narratives, stories which surely the venerable composers of those narratives would have included had they known them.[2] The companions produced a string of clustered, concentrated points of didactic words free, for the most part, of the narrative of successive years of institutional development. The new stories are very personal, homely, full of convincing-sounding quotation, and also full of recreated localities and identified places. Among these places, not unexpectedly, Rieti, the nearby hermitage of Fonte Colombo (four kilometers to the southwest), and both the hermitage and castro of Greccio (plate 18) are prominent.[3]
Francis's Reatine activities, particularly as they reveal themselves in these Greccio stories, enchant the local places, give them something of the quality of the forests through which Lancelot moved, a quality appropriate enough for the new "round table." To choose perhaps the most obvious example, when Francis, on account of the disease of his eyes and his need for a good doctor, was staying in Rieti in the chamber
of the canon Teballo Sarraceno, he wanted one of the friars, who had played the guitar when he was in the world (Pacifico perhaps), to borrow a guitar and play for him a song in God's praise. The friar was ashamed to borrow a guitar particularly because the men of the city knew that he had been accustomed to play one and so would suspect his motives. To his objection Francis replied, "Ergo, frater, dimittamus," and dropped the matter. During the following night, however, when no one was in the streets, after the third ringing of the bell for curfew, and Francis lay awake, for a full hour "around the house where he lay he heard a sweeter guitar making music more delightful than he had ever heard in his life." It was the air over the city of Rieti that the music of this heavenly guitar, playing close and then moving away until it could barely he heard and then coming back again, filled.[4]
Among the stories which exposed the "holy will and pleasure" of Francis in Greccio, one, particularly and graphically local, displays a realization about religious enthusiasm, important because it is Franciscan, realized by these friars. Because the story also offers a general and true model of the normally transient nature of enthusiasm, it helps to explain to modern observers, or illuminate for them, the pious behavior, sometimes seemingly quixotic, sometimes unbearably intense, of the men and women who lived in the diocese of Rieti (and other places) during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[5] Francis often stayed at the hermitage of Greccio, or actually at a poor little cell connected with it but removed from it (cella una paupercula, que erat ualde remota ). He was particularly fond of the hermitage, the locus , of Greccio, because it was honestus and pauper , and because the men of the neighboring castro of Greccio (two kilometers to the south along the same eastward facing slope of the Monti Sabini) were pauperculi and simplices . Francis liked these people better than others de illa prouincia . Because of Francis's example and that of his friars, many men from the paese became religious, and many women although they stayed at home remained virgins and dressed in the clothes of religion.[6] Even those who did stay at home lived in common a life of fasting and prayer. "It seemed to men and to the friars that their life was not among laymen and their kindred but among the saintly and religious who had served God for a long time."[7] Francis himself used to repeat, "De una magna ciuitate non sunt conuersi tot ad penitentiam quot de Gretio, quid est ita paruum castrum (not from a great city have so many been converted to penance as from Greccio, which is just a little castro)."[8] In the evening when the friars prayed, the people of the castro (homines illius castri,
parui et magni ) would come out on the road before the castro (in via ante castrum ) and shout their responses to the friars' prayers: "Laudatus sit Dominus Deus"; and even little children, too young to talk properly, praised God, as well as they could, when they met the friars.[9] Because of all this, once when Francis was preaching to the people of Greccio, who had been suffering from a double disaster—huge wolves which ate people and destructive hail which devastated fields and vines—he promised them that if they made amends for their sins and turned to God with their whole hearts, the wolves and hail would cease to bother them. But if they "returned to their vomit," the wolves and hail would return and bring with them even greater tribulations.[10]
From that tune, even when hail ruined the crops of Greccio's neighbors (presumably those of the canons of Rieti and the Cistercians of San Matteo as well as those of the people of Contigliano) it left the fields of Greccio unharmed. And this blessed state of virtue so rewarded continued in Greccio for "sixteen or twenty years." But afterwards wealth made the people of Greccio proud; they began to hate, to fight with swords, and even to kill one another, to rob by night, and secretly to kill animals (occidere animalia occulte ). The wolves and the hail returned; moreover, the whole castro was burned.[11] The covenant was broken. The holy place on the side of the hill, the little Paradise of the third age, had become ordinary, or almost ordinary, again, as Francis's covenant itself makes clear that Francis knew it might.
The impermanence of conversion to penitence is illustrated a second time by the companions of Francis in a story of events which occurred within the diocese of Rieti, but this time at the very center of the diocese.[12] The act of conversion took place within the episcopal palace next to the cathedral church; and the convert was not an entire castro but a single man, Gidion, a cleric and perhaps a canon of the church of Rieti. Francis was staying in the bishop's palace because of the disease of his eyes; meanwhile Gidion was horribly ill with a disease of the kidneys or loins. Gidion was unable to get up or walk by himself, and even when he was carried his body was contorted by pain. Gidion was known to be a worldly man, although at least some part of his reputation may have come from his job as yconomo , steward and syndic in property management, for the church of Rieti, a position he can be seen to have been occupying, for example, in both 1213 and 1216; but in his pain Gidion asked that he be carried to Francis's presence, and there he prostrated himself before Francis and, in tears, asked Francis to make the sign of the cross over him. Francis was not predisposed in Gidion's
favor as he had been in favor of the people of Greccio.[13] He said to Gidion, "Quomodo te signabo, cum olim vixeris semper secundum desideria carnis, non considerans et timens iudicia Dei? (why should I make the sign over you who have lived a life of carnal desire, never thinking about and never fearing the judgement of God?)"[14] But Gidion's pain moved Francis. He made the sign of the cross over him, but at the same time he warned him, "But if the Lord pleases to free you, beware lest you return to your vomit, since I tell you in truth that if you return to your vomit, your last state will be worse than your first."[15] Cured (with a crackling noise) Gidion did, in the recurring biblical phrase, later return to his vomit. As Thomas of Celano continues the story, after having eaten one night at the house of one of his fellow (according to Celano) canons, Gidion spent the night at the house; and when, during the night, the roof fell, Gidion alone of the house's inhabitants died.[16]
Seen across and through the fields of Greccio and the person of Gidion, as they appear in this major, lonely literary monument from the thirteenth-century diocese of Rieti, those Christians of the diocese who are more briefly visible suggest their own complexity. They seem less simply frozen in their single moments of speech or action. They and their institutions become less incomprehensible. They are enlivened by the motion of potential change. Greccio and Gidion also make contrast with the permanent conversion of Francis and so help define sainthood. But, although the conversions of Greccio and Gidion were impermanent, there is no evidence that forces one to doubt their temporary intensity.
Greccio and Gidion make a particular set of points, and for the understanding of the church and religion in the diocese, a particularly valuable set of points, but they are surrounded by other stories which try in different ways to tell what Francis and his effect were like. When, in the fall of 1225, both Francis and Honorius III's curia were staying in Rieti, Francis was lodged with the poor secular priest of San Fabiano outside the walls.[17] There many of the cardinals and great clerks came to visit Francis nearly every day. By the house in which Francis actually lived was a small vineyard, through which Francis's visitors had to pass to get to the single door of the house. As they passed, they ate or gathered or trampled the grapes and almost stripped the vines, and ruined, as the poor priest said, his little harvest. Francis said to him, "Do not be sad about it any more, speak no harsh words to anyone over it." And he promised the priest that if he trusted in the Lord he
would have at least his usual 13 salme of wine from the vineyard. In fact he had 20 salme .[18]
Again, during the same period of treatment for his eyes, Francis was staying at the hermitage of Fonte Colombo. One day when Francis's doctor, who was very rich, had been with Francis for about an hour and was about to leave, Francis asked one of the friars to give the doctor a good meal. The friar excused himself by saying that the house was so poor that they were unable to give the doctor even a decent meal. Francis scoffed at the friar's lack of faith, and the doctor expressed his preference for eating with the poor. As they sat and began to eat, they heard a knock at the door. There stood a woman (mulier ) sent by a lady (domina ) from a castro some miles away. She carried a large basket full of beautiful bread, fishes, pots of crayfish (mastillis gymarorum ), honey, and fresh grapes.[19]
Again, when a woman from Machilone (now Posta) came to Francis's doctor in Rieti, the doctor found that she was so poor that he would have to treat her out of charity. Francis was moved by the story and said to a friend, "Take this coat, and twelve loaves as well, and go and say to that poor sick woman, whom the doctor who is treating her will point out to you: 'A poor man to whom you lent this coat thanks you for the loan of the coat which you made him: take what is yours.'"[20] Although the woman was eventually very pleased, her immediate reaction (because she was presumably less aware of Saint Matthew and Saint Martin than were the Franciscans) was, "Dimitte me in pace ; I don't know what you are talking about."[21]
The hermitage of Greccio, "the new Bethlehem," where these stories and many like them were composed (and to which, after 1262, the Joachimite, spiritually rigorous, "resigned" Minister General John of Parma would "retire" and be visited by Ubertino da Casale) was within a fast half-day's walking time from Rieti.[22] Leo, Rufino, and Angelo make this clear in the story of a good and spiritual friar who was staying at the Franciscan house in Rieti, and who walked to the hermitage of Greccio in the hope of seeing Francis and getting his blessing. Unfortunately Francis had eaten and gone back to his cell where, because it was Lent, he remained the rest of the day. The friar had to return to Rieti, although through a gentle miracle he was able to see Francis and receive his blessing in the distance. The companions' story is not specific about the length of time the walk took, but it suggests that the friar from Rieti left for Greccio as soon as he could after rising in the morning and that he, who had to be back in Rieti the same day, left the hermitage
quickly after getting there.[23] That day's walk lay through, across, or around wet and marshy, but at least in places drying, land which was, in the first half of the thirteenth century, the site of a dispute between the canons of the cathedral church of Rieti and the Cistercian monks of San Matteo in Montecchio (or "on the island").[24] The stories of that conflict in the flat land make strange contrast with the companions' hillside stories of Francis's contemporary acts.
The convent of San Matteo requires some introduction. It was placed on a raised piece of land, then at least sometimes still an island, perhaps 100 meters above the surrounding marshy flatlands, about halfway, on a fairly straight line, between Rieti and the hermitage of Greccio. Believed to be a twelfth-century foundation, San Matteo was given new communal land and had a new church built early in the thirteenth century. It was a daughter of the house of Casa Nova in the diocese of Penne and a granddaughter of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio at Tre Fontane just outside Rome, the dominant Cistercian house in this part of central Italy. Like other Italian Cistercian houses, San Matteo was thus of the family of Clairvaux.[25]
San Matteo's connection with Clairvaux was in fact more personal, or so it has generally been believed, than this genealogy suggests. From 1130 to 1140, it is said, Balduino, son of Bernardo count of Marsi and friend of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, was abbot of San Matteo. To him was written Bernard's well-known letter "number 201" of which the effective message is: officium ergo tuum attende . This injunction was a response to the Cistercian contesino abbot who had apparently been lamenting his exile in the marshes and had written sadly to Bernard: "epistola quam misisti," Bernard wrote, "affectum tuum redolet movet meum." Bernard's responding affection encased his injunction to office within a characteristic torrent of emotional phrases; as a mother loves her only child, thus Bernard loved Balduino when he was clinging to his side, dear to his heart; thus also he loved him absent: "Sicut mater unicum amat filium, ita te diligebam, haerentem lateri meo, placentem cordi meo. Diligam et absentem."[26] So Balduino stayed at his monastery and came, dead, to be revered as a saint. He is remembered in the name of a hill, Colle San Balduino, another raised piece of land four kilometers to the north of Montecchio. Balduino's head, in an encasing silver shell, is preserved in the treasury of the Duomo of Rieti. At least by 1674, when a correspondent of the Bollandist Daniel van Papenbroeck wrote to tell him what friends at Rieti had been able to find out about the cult, Balduino's body was being revered in a chapel in the Duomo; his feast, a double, was celebrated on 21 August.[27]
Balduino is often, in a way mistakenly, called Balduino of San Pastore. This idcntification is easily explained. In the mid-thirteenth century (when the bad "air" of San Matteo's location had become too oppressive) the Cistercians moved their house from their island up the slope of the Monti Sabini to the site of their subject church of San Pastore, in the tenimento of Rocca Alatri, about seven kilometers to the west of Montecchio and three kilometers to the south of the castro of Greccio but lower on the slope than Greccio. The church of San Pastore had come to, and been kept by, the Cistercians of San Matteo in a rather odd way.
By an act of Pope Gregory IX, dated 5 October 1232, the Benedictine monastery of San Bencdetto de Fundis, in the diocese of Narni, had, at its own wish, been made Cistercian and also been made subject to San Matteo. Recompense to the bishop of Narni for his loss of the monastery to an exempt order was made by the grant to him, from the patrimony of Saint Peter, of San Vittore, Otricoli. "The spirit breatheth where it will," Gregory IX, or his chancery, later wrote, quoting John (3:8). On 26 April 1233 the Abbot of Tre Fontane was sent to San Benedetto to induct the monastery and monks into the order. The bishop of Narni, however, was reluctant. More important, the enthusiasm of the monks of San Benedetto, like that of Gidion and Greccio, weakened. By 18 February 1234 Gregory IX's chancery was forced to add Numbers to John, and to compare the monks of San Benedetto to the children of Israel "sighing for the melons and garlic of Egypt" (11:5). The pope revoked the union, but he sent the bishop of Rieti and a canon of Rieti, Berardo Moysi, to correct and reform the monastery of San Benedetto and to see that the monks who had actually promised to follow the statutes of the Cistercian order did follow them.[28] This movement by a house of monks into and out of the Cistercian order was certainly not unique. It was, however, unusually quick; and it threatened to deprive the house of San Matteo of the opportunely acquired neighboring high lands of San Benedetto's subject church of San Pastore.[29] Fortunately for San Matteo, by October 1236 a trade had been arranged which would allow it to keep San Pastore; and by 1255 it was building, or rebuilding, there.[30]
On 11 March 1244, when they were involved in a dispute with the Hospitallers of San Basilio in Rome, the Cistercians of Rieti were still identified by the curia of Pope Innocent IV as "of San Matteo Rieti."[31] On 13 January 1251 Innocent addressed the Cistercians' abbot as "of San Pastore."[32] The house had moved to a healthier place and to what must
have seemed in the thirteenth century an even more appropriate dedication fir communal lovers of the desert.[33] San Matteo itself became a grange of San Pastore and was, over the centuries, reduced to ruin; but another San Matteo (now San Pietro Martire), a church with a hospice, in the city of Rieti, was attached to San Pastore.[34]
Just before the time of their move up the hill on 1 July 1235, there were twenty-nine, or at least twenty-nine, of these Cistercians: an abbot, a prior, a cellarer, eleven other professed monks, and fifteen conversi or lay brothers.[35] A century later, on 6 March 1342, there would still be an abbot, a prior and a cellarer, at least six other monks, and eleven conversi. In 1342 most of the Cistercians were identified by place names, in this context almost surely indicative of their place of origin. Of the monks one (the cellarer) was from Narni; one from Rieti; one from Monte San Giovanni (in Sabina); three from Greccio; and one, named Pastore, from Terni. Of the conversi five were from Rieti; two (of whom one was named Francis) from Greccio; three from Contigliano; one from Rocca Alatri. They were very local.[36]
Beneath the hill on which the monks would rebuild San Pastore, near San Matteo, in the watery flatlands through, or by which, the friar from Rieti walked (or perhaps over some of which he was rowed) to and from Greccio, the Cistercians of San Matteo are to be seen in conflict with the canons of the cathedral church of Santa Maria, Rieti. Cistercians and canons were not, however, to remain habitual enemies. In 1251 the abbot of San Pastore was considered by Innocent IV's curia, and presumably by the bishop and chapter of Rieti, to be a figure neutral enough to protect the Reatine clergy from the harassment of two local clerics who had Hohenstaufen connections.[37] In 1268 Clement IV considered the abbot an appropriate executor of his mandate to protect the rights in Amiterno of the bishop and chapter of Rieti against the bishop of L'Aquila; and in 1261 Urban IV, prodded, the evidence suggests, by a canon representing the chapter, had entrusted to the abbot of San Pastore the supervision of the renewed division of the bishop's and chapter's mense .[38] In 1280 Bishop Pietro of Rieti, with the chapter consenting, gave the decayed church of Sant'Egidio in Vallonina(?) to the abbot and convent of San Pastore for them to reform, and he retained for the church of Rieti only an annual procuration of 4 lire provisini (of the Senate of Rome) to be paid each year by the Cistercians at Christmas.[39] More affectingly, at the time of the Chapter General at Citeaux in 1319, the abbot ofCiteaux, at the petition ofthe abbot ofSan Pastore, conceded to Bartolomeo da Rocca, canon of Rieti in life and death, all
the spiritual benefits of the order.[40] Such confraternity was possible and could seem desirable, as late as 1319, between the Cistercians and an important old canon of Riett. In 1294 and 1295 the bishop of Rieti himself had been the Cistercian Nicola, possibly elected by the canons from among the monks of San Pastore.[41]
These connections between the cathedral church and the neighboring Cistercians suggest an eventual and lengthily continued harmony between the two institutions. That they should have fought over the drying lands of the marshes, however, is unsurprising. The probably fifteenth-century inventory of San Pastore properties in Rocca Alatri and Terria, extracted from "certain instruments and the Registrum of the monastery," is dominated by holdings within and on the borders of the old marshland; and the 1307 reassignment of prebendal properties to the canons of Rieti is full of pieces of property from the marshland tenements of Fiume Morto, Collevaze (Collevasca), and Lacu Maggiore.[42] When it was wet, we know from a 1241 witness, the marsh provided fish, gamberi , and birds; when it was dry it produced wheat, beans, millet, spelt, hemp, and sorghum (saggina) .[43] Teams of oxen were brought in to work it quickly as it dried, but its value increased, surely, as the land grew less heavy and as it was able to be worked more easily. It was desirable and desired land: on 7 September 1257 Bishop Tommaso and Pietro, archpriest of San Ruffo and canon and syndic of the church of Rieti, were invested by the commune of Rieti with a large new tract of this swampland for a price of 400 lire provisini of the senate. The land was sold for the utility or good of the commune. This utility, or good, is explained in a document which records the discussion of the proposed action at a meeting of the consilium generale et speciale and the popolo of Rieti in the cathedral church earlier in the same year: the commune had been pressed by debts, particularly to the militibus Reatin' pro equuorum redditis ipsorum (to the knights of Rieti, money for their horses), and thus could pay them.
The parchment on which the 1257 sale of land is recorded strongly suggests the land's inherent difficulty as well as its value. To the account of sale and investiture, without explicit explanation, is added a transcription of the commune's pious gift of land in Montecchio to San Matteo in May 1205.[44] Complexity is further underlined by the documents recorded on the piece of parchment stitched to the bottom of the 1257–1205 parchment. The second parchment records the creation and findings, in 1240, of counselors for measuring and establishing the boundaries of the church of Rieti's properties in Fiume Morto, Terria,
and Portu Folicu, defining the boundaries between the properties of the church of San Matteo, and of others including certain specialium and consortium . On the same piece of parchment is appended a document which records the commune's 1209 investiture of San Matteo with its lands. To these two stitched-together pieces of parchment is stitched a third. The third is a 1222 document written by the prominent Rieti judge and scribe, and one-time podestà, Berardo Sprangone; it records the arbitration over marshland boundaries by arbiters (the priest Paolo and Berardo Assalonis, both canons of Rieti, and Giovanni de Ponte and Matteo Reat' de Necto) chosen by Rainallus bishop of Rieti and the canons and church of Rieti, on one side, and the monks of San Matteo de Monticulo (called de Insula elsewhere in the document), with the consent of Bartolomeo, abbot of Casa Nova, on the other. According to the arbiters' decision the properties were divided by a canal.
The difficulties of establishing and maintaining boundaries and divisions between the possessions of diferrent groups of property holders in these drying marshlands is further emphasized by three other pieces of parchment, again stitched together, which are preserved in the Capitular archives at Rieti.[45] The bottom of these pieces of parchment contains a 1304 copy of the record of a public reading on 2 September 1285 in platea leonis in publica arenga Comunis ciuitatis Reat' (in the Piazza del Leone where public announcements are made) after the Reatines had been summoned to hear it by the communal bell and the crier. What was read was a written statement by Giovanni Colonna, Romanorum proconsul, Reatin' ciuitatis cupitaneus et potestas (proconsul of the Romans, captain and podestà of Rieti), which begins with the invocation: In nomine patris et filii et Spiritus Sancti et Virginis Benedicte Marie, Amen. The document had been written, at the mandate of Raynaldo da Palombara, Giovanni Colonna's vicar in the city of Rieti, and of Don Pietro de Oderisciis, Giovanni Colonna's judge, by Giovanni Egidii, ciuis Romanus dei gracia Sancte Romane Ecclesie notarium et nunc notarium dicti domini capitanei (citizen of Rome, notary of the holy Roman church and now notary of the lord captain); and the document was read by the same notary before the assembled city, but also before specific, named witnesses, including Don Filippo Pasinelli. (The 1304 copy has among its three literate witnesses two monks of San Pastore, dompno Saluato and dompno Angelo.) What Giovanni Colonna's document has to say, after an impressive harangue about the duties of his office, which include the recuperating of unjustly lost communal rights and which duties he hopes properly to perform, is that he intends
to divide, distinguish, determine, and record the boundaries of communal possessions in marshland tenements, which he then proceeds to do.
This 1304/1285 document is stitched to the bottom of two pieces of parchment themselves held together, as they probably were in the thirteenth century, by a parchment strip woven through slits cut in their surfaces. These pieces of parchment contain a group of documents transcribed and notarized on 1 September 1284 by Giovanni Dati dei gratia sacri imperii auctoritate et Reatin' ciuitatis scriniarius . Among these documents is the record of the election of communal officials for the following year in the church of San Francesco on 28 May 1253. The elected councillors went, according to the form of the statutes, ad brisulos , and the brisulus for electing the syndic of the commune fell to the lot of the councillor Berardo di Nicola who immediately elected as syndie Berardo di Lorenzo, a man from his own porta or sestiere . This record, which Giovanni Dati copied from the records of Bonaventura once communal scriniario super maleficiis , is immediately followed by the account of the syndic Berardo di Lorenzo's being put in possession of extensive communal lands in the marshlands near Terria in 1253. The investiture was made by and at the decision of the communal judge Berardo Berardi, who was forced to deal with the problem of the possessions of Sinibaldo di domino Raynaldo Sinibaldi and his brothers; their lands bordered the possessions of the lords of Labro and ought not to be molested, as was clear from the sentence that the communal judge Gentile issued on 28 May 1241. Giovanni Dati, the 1284 notary, had copied not only this sentence protecting the rights of the sons of Don Rainaldo Sinibaldi but also the witnesses' testimony which allowed the 1241 judge, having taken counsel, to arrive at his verdict. These witnesses, the testimony of thirteen of whom survives intact, turn their readers' attention back again to the actual nature of the possessions which provoked this communal concern throughout the thirteenth century.
A 1241 witness, Ratino Taliatanus, who testified that for thirty years he had seen Don Rainaldo di Synibaldo di Raynaldo and his sons receive the profits of their marshland possessions, both when these were wet and when they had dried, when asked "quanta est terra et quanta aqua" (how much is land and how much water), said that he did not know. Giovanni di Giovanni Dati said that when he was a boy, he had gone to Grummulo, and a vassallus of Don Raynaldo's named Ugolino had said to him, "Jannuccio, rogo te ut uenias mecum quia uolo quod
deferas hoc ensenium domino Raynaldo domino meo (Jannuccio, I want you to come with me because I want you to carry this ensenium to Lord Rainaldo, my lord)"; Giovanni said that he often carried fish and gamberi to Lord Raynaldo. The voices of the 1241 witnesses for the sons of Lord Rainaldo are joined by those of eleven witnesses who testified in 1229 in the interest of the holdings of the cathedral church in the marshlands.[46] They make clear (as does Giovanni di Giovanni Dati who carried things in his boat) that the marsh waters, besides providing fish and gamberi , had to be crossed.
Talking of Collevaze (or Collevasce), Giovanni Mercone (or Mertone), a significant witness, said that for the past ten years he had seen collectors gathering pedagium for the cathedral church. Rainaldo di Giovanni Romani had often seen collectors gathering pedagium for the cathedral church. Rainaldo di Giovanni Romani had often seen his own guests paying tolls, or he had paid for them, to be taken across the water from Collevasce (or Collevaze). Rainaldo had once given his own cloak to the canon Berardo Assalonis as a pledge for toll. The witness Pietro Rainerii said that he had watched collections being made for fifty years and had seen his own father, Rainerio, collecting for the cathedral church tolls of money, salt, and figs, and other things without any litigation, and he himself in his time had collected the church's major tolls. Other witnesses had seen merchants pay tolls in Portu Collevaze, and collectors collect tolls of money, salt, pepper, wax, cloth, leeks, and other goods. The witness Famulus had seen and heard when the major church, in the time of Bishop Dodone, bought the Collevaze (? Collevasce, here "Collevascorum") property from Rainaldo de "Lavareto" for one hundred pounds. The church had given Rainaldo fifty pounds of millet, which the witness himself had measured out for the greater part, and fifty lire provisini of the senate. And de illa hora to the present, the church had held and collected.[47]
In this wet and troublingly indecipherable place there ran two customs of Rieti, witnesses testified, which were sensible enough but which, like many sensible customs regulating the holding of property, also and quite naturally provoked dispute. The custom when swampland dried was for it to become the property of whoever had held its bank when it was wet; this custom must have derived from the belief that swamps dried slowly and that the new land formed would obviously be attached to a single identifiable shore.[48] The second of these troublesome customs was that if anyone built pens and sheds on property which was not his own, and if the true proprietor of the land wanted
to show that he refused to accept and acknowledge the intrusion, the proprietor destroyed the intruder's pens and sheds.[49]
About one of the fights between canons and monks in this water and land the voices of sixty witnesses can still be heard.[50] Although the witnesses are explicit and various in the things they have to say, their own statements are not dated. It has been assumed that they come from the 1240s, from approximately the time in which the Scripta Leonis was being written, but it seems much more likely that they come from the 1220s, approximately the time in which Francis himself was in the neighborhoods.[51] Although the preserved depositions or attestations are in a fond which includes a 1244 copy of a 1209 document, their hand does not preclude a date earlier than 1244. One of the witnesses speaks of the action of 1209 as ten years and more before his giving testimony.[52] Of the sixteen conversi of San Matteo of whom testimony survives, and of whom some clearly remember the incidents of 1209, only eight appear in the list of conversi preserved from 1235.[53] The protagonist monk does not appear in 1235; nor probably does the other monk witness.[54] Six canons of Rieti appear either as witnesses or as contemporary actors in testimony: Sinibaldo Mareri, Berardo Rainaldi Sinibaldi Dodonis, Berardo Salonis, Henrico, Berardo Moysi, and Rainaldo da Pendenza. Their other known active dates do not make them very helpful in dating the San Matteo dispute. Sinibaldo or Senibaldo Mareri, the most visibly active of the case's canons, is recorded as a canon in actions dating as early as 1218 (acting as syndic for the bishop and chapter) and as late as 1253, but a Siniballo Mar', who is probably he, is active as early as 1202.[55] Berardo Rainaldi Sinibaldi Dodonis is visibly active from 1225 (acting as an obedientiary of the church) to 1252.[56] Henrico (or a Henrico) is visible from 1201 to 1223.[57] Berardo Moysi is visible from 1230 to 1240.[58] If Rainaldo da Pendenza is the same as the priest Rainaldo, he is visible from 1230, or perhaps even from 1202, to 1240.[59] Berardo Salonis is visible from 1233 to 1261, but he is quoted as saying in 1246 that he had been a canon for twenty-four years, and in 1250 he remembers back thirty-eight years.[60] None of these bracketing dates excludes the existence of any canon at an earlier or later date. Certainly the named canons do not exclude for the dispute the 1220s date that the communal witnesses, the actual testimony, and the list of Cistercians suggest. The possibility of a date about 1225 would seem to be strengthened by the statement of one witness in the case, whose evidence probably should not be interpreted too precisely. Jai de Dodo seems to equate "before the church of San Matteo was built here" with "fourteen years ago."
If this church was built soon after the induction of 1209, then the dateof the testimony should be about 1225.[61]
The document of 1209, which was copied in 1244 and which in this copy now accompanies the testimony of the collected witnesses, was in fact important to the case, and two of the men who had acted for the commune in 1205 and 1209 are among the collected witnesses.[62] One of these, Don Matteo Sarracenus (or Sarraceno), was, he said, a consul of Rieti, with the other consuls, and also the consuls "de consilio multorum bonorum hominum de Reate" when they for the commune gave to Fra Balduino, for San Matteo, the commune's swamplands between Casamascara and Monticchiolo (or Montecchio) and within its other borders, including the lands of the lords of Labro, gave them, that is, conventionally saving the rights of third parties. He was also present and saw Matteo Reatino de Necto induct the monk Tedemario for his monastery, into possession of the property, at Fiume Morto, by mandate of Don Matteo Sinibaldi Dodonis, then podestà of Rieti.[63] Another witness who recalls the induction is Matteo Reatino de Necto (here "Nepto") himself.[64] The 1244 copy is of Don Matteo Sinibaldi's mandate to Matteo Reatino de Necto to put the church of San Matteo "de Insula" in perpetual possession of the marshland, once of the city, which had been given "per concexionem et donationem nostrorum antecessorum in regimine nostre ciuitatis residentium" and by precept of Pope Innocent III; the mandate was written on 17 May 1209 in the presence of the canon priest Raynallo and other witnesses.
These witnesses who were interrogated in the 1220s(?) certainly answered a series of questions more formally fixed and rigidly arranged than the implied questions which were answered by the companions' stories about Francis. The witnesses were able, however, to include a great deal of miscellaneous circumstantial evidence in their answers. Master Guglielmo, for example, said that he had seen Rainallo Merconis carrying a tub of fish, and he had asked him, "Why are you carrying that?" Rainallo answered, "I am carrying these fish to Santa Maria di Rieti for the rent (pro redditu ) which I have to pay for what I hold in the Fiume Morto from that church." And he said that he paid the rent three times a year. And at the church of Santa Maria he, either Guglielmo or Rainallo, often ate fish from that rent. And Master Guglielmo saw this in the time of Bishop Adenolfo.[65] Nicola Pectenal' (?the breeder, the tanner), who was a shepherd unius boni hominis of Rieti, said he had often seen many fishermen fishing in the water of Fiume Morto as he went to the shed where he kept his animals; he had asked
the fishermen for whom they fished in that water. They had said they fished there for the church of Santa Maria di Rieti.[66] Berardo Amabilis said that before the church of San Matteo was built he saw that the Mercones held the property ofFiume Morto; he wanted to go cut wood there, but the Mercones said that he could not and that they held the property for the church of Santa Maria Rieti. He said he did not know about "now" because he did not go there any more.[67] Pietro Deodati had seen that the Mercones had held the place for forty years, but now "those" of Santa Maria sent their boues there.[68] Gianni Petri said that when the place was water the Mercones held it, and that they had had a gate there; and once when he had been standing there they had come and opened it and cut some trees down, and afterwards had closed the gate. The Mercones themselves had told him they held the place of Santa Maria.[69]
More witnesses talked of the time before San Matteo was built; and one saw Adenolfo who had been bishop of Rieti come to Fiume Morto, but he could not remember whether he then was episcopus or electus .[70] Repeatedly, over and over again, the witnesses talk of the old days when Fiume Morto was water and a source of rent in fish and gamberi and then talk of more recent times since it had dried. A witness called Voneczo said that by the will of the Merconum he once, forty years before, had made a trap (vergaqam ) in the swamps that were then at Fiume Motto and taken crayfish, and that for twelve years he himself had fished in those swamps; but that for this he had not himself done service to the church of Santa Maria di Rieti.[71] Vetulo Morici could testify that the Mercones had held the place before and after its drying, for forty years, from the church of Santa Maria di Rieti, and that while it was water he had seen the Mercones do service to the church de piscibus et gamaris et de personis et aliis rebus .[72] Reatino de Cenzo, a familiaris of the church of Santa Maria had over forty years' time seen the Mercones do service to the church, and when the place had been water he himself had very often received the fish and the gamberi .[73] Another familiaris , Andrea Petri, whose memory stretched back thirty years, had seen the services in fish and gamberi , but also services of the Mercones' boats and persons.[74] Rainucius Petri had heard from the Mercones themselves (a Merconibus ) that they held the woods and swamps from the church of Santa Maria di Rieti; he had heard from the fishermen themselves that they fished for Santa Maria there, in Fiume Morto and Cespa, but of the exact boundaries of the place he was ignorant.[75] Girardo Nicolai, a fisherman, thinking back thirty-six years and more, remembered see-
ing the services in fish and gamberi ; and the witness Zaccaro also remembered the fish and the gamberi .[76] A witness named Aristante, remembering back as far as thirty years, knew of the services in fish and gamberi ; he was there and saw it when the fish was taken out of the house of the Mercones for the church, but he himself had not followed along and seen what the messenger who carried them away had done.[77]
The evidence of these witnesses, who are busy establishing the old tenure of Santa Maria, is filled with fish and gamberi and also with the Mercones. Some of these Mercones, who according to other witnesses held Fiume Morto as a feudum (or in Fiume Motto held a feudum ), speak for themselves.[78] Pietro Merconis, whose father and paternal uncle and cousins (fratres consobrini ) and brother with himself held the property in Fiume Morto which was in dispute, said that they had held it when it was water and when it had dried and to the present time in beneficium from the church of Santa Maria in Rieti; and they returned to the church seruitium de piscibus, gammaris, et nauigiis . He said that they had given some of the property to other persons to work it, but that they themselves held the property except for the part which the church of San Matteo had occupied in this dispute, which had now lasted two years.[79] Jai de Mercone said that his father and, after his father's death, he himself held in feudum from the church of Rieti property in dispute, and for it they had returned service to the church of Santa Maria, but that for the last three years those of San Matteo (illi de Sancto Matheo ) had opposed their working the land. He testified that the property was in Fiume Morto and next to the property of San Matteo, of Vetulo Morici and of Angelo de Iai de Lotheri. He said that when it was water they had held water and when it had dried he held land.[80] The neighbor Angelo (called here more conventionally Angelus Johannis Lotherii, so Angelo di Giovanni di Lotherio) said that he had worked a piece of land for two seasons for the Mercones (per Mercones ), and to the same Mercones (ipsis Merconibus ) he had returned part of his labor (partem laboritii ), which they received for the church of Santa Maria; later he had stopped working for them and in fact held his own inheritance.[81]
Dominant as the Mercones are in the testimony, the sharpest physical dispute between Santa Maria and San Matteo seems to have occurred on another tenement, that of Pietro di Rainaldo Montanagi (Rainaldi Montanagi ). As a witness Pietro said that his father, his grandfather, and he himself (and they appear in that order) had held and still held from the church of Santa Maria, lands de pede Monticuli de Terria usque
in paludem (from the foot of the hill to the marsh), and had held them without dispute.[82] But another witness Benencasa, familiaris of the church of Santa Maria, said that he had gone with the canons Sinibaldo Mareri (Siniballo Marerii ) and Berardo Rainaldi Senebaldi Dodonis, and "the son of Rainaldo Montanagi" to the land which that "son" had held, and held, in feudum from the church of Santa Maria di Rieti. They had begun there to make a bank or ditch (fossatum ) and mark boundaries.
At that point the son of Montanagi said that the Cistercians were coming, and in fact the priest and monk Filippo and a group of conversi from San Matteo advanced upon the canons. Filippo and Sinibaldo faced each other and both appealed against the depredations of the other side. Sinibaldo ordered Filippo to leave, but he came forward.[83] The resulting skirmish, which was described by several witnesses including one of its two principal protagonists, obviously startled and confused its observers and participants. Benencasa conversus of San Matteo saw the monk Filippo pull out a boundary stake (passillum ) which the canons had put in and then saw the canon Sinibaldo Mareri hit or push Filippo hard, as Filippo objected to his act and appealed against it; Sinibaldo himself put the stake back in the ground and began to hoe, holding the hoe in his own hands.[84] Another conversus (Rain') said that when Filippo told the canons to stop putting in the stakes, Sinibaldo Mareri pushed him so hard that he almost fell into the river.[85] The Reatine familiaris Benencasa said that Filippo pulled out the wood with such force that it drove Sinibaldo's knees into the bank—or ditch (or forced him to put them against the bank or possibly forced him into the canal up to his knees).[86]
Sinibaldo Mareri's own testimony is somewhat extended. He thought it had been three years since he and some other canons had come to their territory now in dispute and there had begun to work it, with oxen, for the church of Santa Maria di Rieti and since they had forbidden the people of San Matteo to work there; at the same time they had appealed for its protection to the pope. But the people of San Matteo had later made sheds and worked the place. Then "this year" after Easter, Sinibaldo himself had come with his co-canon Berardo Rainaldi Dodonis and certain familiares of the church of Santa Maria and had worked there, also putting in stakes. Sinibaldo, "ipse testis, stabat appodiatus ad unam salicem quam fixerat ibi"; he had stood by a willow tree that he had just planted, or more probably beside a willow stake or branch, una sargia , in the current dialect around San Pastore,
which he had fixed. Dom Filippo, the monk, with some conversi, had come angrily, or so he believed, toward him. Sinibaldo had appealed to the pope and put the church of Rieti under his protection so that neither the abbot nor the prior nor anyone else from the monastery would molest Santa Maria's property; but, instead of going away after this appeal had been made, Dom Filippo had seized the salicem (sargiam ) and pulled Sinibaldo by the cloak, and Sinibaldo would have fallen if he had not had strong legs. More generally, Sinibaldo went on to say that they, from Santa Maria, had done no violence to San Matteo or pulled down sheds on San Matteo's property, on its side of the canal (although he himself did not know all the boundaries of the disputed properties). Sinibaldo said, too, that in the past he had eaten the fish and the gamberi taken from Fiume Motto and sent to Santa Maria by those who) held it from the church in beneficium . The custom of Rieti, he then said, was that whoever held the land next to a swamp held the adjoining swampland when it dried.[87]
The sheds which appear in Sinibaldo's testimony are again referred to in the testimony of his co-canon and co-witness Berardo Salonis. Berardo had heard, both before and after he became a canon, per famam publicam in Rieti, that water and dry land and swamp in Fiume Morto were held by the Mercones from the church of Santa Maria di Rieti and that the Mercones did service for it in fish, gamberi , and nauigiis (services in tolls and portage). Three years before the time of the dispute, Berardo said, he had gone to the church's holding in Fiume Morto with other canons, Enrico, Berardo Moysi, and Rainaldo da Pendenza, and that then there were no animal pens or sheds in the place. The canons had forbidden the people from San Matteo to build any sheds on the place, and they had appealed to the pope and put their church's interest in it under papal protection. After that San Matteo had built the pens.[88]
It is these pens, and other buildings and works of San Matteo, and the custom they invoke, which are the subject of the other arm of violence—other than that of Sinibaldo Mareri standing by the willow, which is repeatedly talked about by the witnesses in the case. The priest Dom Filippo, the protagonist of the action against Sinibaldo Mareri, is first in the list of San Matteo witnesses. He testified that he was present, and observed, when, by mandate of the podestà, Matteo "Reatini de Nepto Reatinus ciuis" put the monk Tedemario and the witness Filippo himself in possession of the lands and water cultivated and uncultivated that lay between the holdings of the sons of the deceased Rain' Leonis
and the swamps of Casamascara and between them and the holdings of the lords of Labro. He said that he himself had seen the letter from the lord pope to the podestà which directed him to give the property to San Matteo. He said that more than ten years had elapsed before the time when the canons "Sen' Marerii" and "Ber' Rain' Dodonis," in April of the year in which he testified, occupied the possessions of San Matteo and forcefully expelled the people of San Matteo, themselves objecting and appealing and saying that the monastery had held the land peacefully and that the bishop and canons had not objected before. And after a few days Filippo had seen the sheepfolds dismantled and the land being plowed and hoed by men who said that they did it for the church of Rieti. He heard, moreover, that the familiares of the church of Rieti had begun to destroy the sheds and cut down the trees, to use the pastures, and to break down the hedges. Then Filippo with Fra Berardo, at the mandate of the prior and brothers, went to the bishop and chapter because, Filippo said, they had doubted that these things had really been done by them. In fact, Filippo also said, he had seen that beyond the canal the church of Rieti held a strip (lexcem ) of land.[89]
The conversus , Fra Rain', said that the monastery had been in quiet possession of the disputed land for six years and on it had had sheds, gardens, hedges, and pastures just as the monastery did on its other lands. Then Sinibaldo Mareri, Berardo Rain' Dodonis, Henrico, Berardo Salonis and some familiares of the church of Rieti had come and dismantled the sheepfolds and begun to destroy the pens; they had broken down the hedges, laid waste the pastures, cut down some of the trees, and plowed the areas .[90] Ratino de Cenzo, familiaris of Santa Maria di Rieti, told the same story of devastation, including that of the bladum , perhaps standing grain in the field. Ratino made clear the reason for the devastation; it was to demonstrate the fact that Santa Maria did not accept San Matteo's right to cultivate Santa Maria's land.[91] The familiaris Famulus, who gave bread and wine to the canons when they came, said that they had said that they came not to do violence but to defend the possessions of the church of Santa Maria. The familiaris Andrea Petri said he saw the other familiares of Santa Maria break the sheds of San Matteo to protect the property of Santa Maria because "illi de Sancto Matheo" said it was theirs.[92] The two monks, Filippo and Giovanni da San Giorgio, and the conversus Giovanni Martini remembered events in April.[93] The conversus Pietro could not remember in what month he had seen the destroyed pens and the broken hedges.[94]
Rainucelle Petri saw the destroyed sheds "this year" in the month of May, or the month of June; Henrico Oderisici, a familiaris of Santa Maria similarly remembered the month as "May or June," although he could be much more precise about boundaries: the "mountain," the lands of Vetulo Morici and Angelo di Giovanni Lotherii, and "mons ubi est ecclesia."[95] Pietro Merconis talked of the people of San Matteo insulting those of Santa Maria, and those of Santa Maria destroying a pen and climbing on top of a shed.[96]
The testimony may be confused and confusing but what happened is, in a general way, clear enough. Both Santa Maria and San Matteo had property in the marshland. As the swamp dried additional land became usable. Exact boundaries became necessary where none had been possible before. Each institution, aware of, and suspicious of, the acquisitiveness of the other, struck; and there resulted those sordid little scenes of petty violence which the witnesses remembered. The witnesses, or many of them, were asked to think to a more distant past. Although the subjects about which their memories were exact differed, the simple length of their memories is impressive. Aristante, Jai de Bonomo, and Famulus remember the behavior of the Mercones for thirty years and more: Ratino de Cenzo and Pietro Dodati for forty years.[97] Pietro Merconis remembers the way lands were worked for thirty-six years and more.[98] Although Benencasa had only been a conversus for three years, Giovanni Berardi for four, Rain' for six, and Rustico and Rainaldo for eight, another Giovanni had been a conversus for ten years, Pietro for twelve, and Girardo for sixteen.[99]
These memories stretching back, many of them to the crayfish caught in the swamps near Casamascara and Montecchio, and even more of them to the struggle over animal pens and boundary stakes, make sharp contrast with the memories of the companions of Saint Francis on the hills above. Sometimes the memories of the two groups of rememberers touch each other with almost explosive effect. Once when Francis, the companions recall, was staying at the palazzo vescovile in Assisi, he did not, in spite of the other friars' coaxing, want to eat. He said, though, that perhaps if he could have some of the fish, qui dicitur squalus (almost surely a cavèdano , in present Cicolano dialect squau ), he might be able to eat it. And suddenly someone appeared who had been sent by Gyrardo, the minister of the friars of Rieti and who carried a basket in which there were three large and well prepared squali with gamberi , things which were not available in Assisi then, in wintertime.[100] These gamberi perhaps knew in life those whom the Mercones guarded.
The sharpness of the contrast is seen in full relief if the story of the surprised woman of Machilone "getting back" her coat is put next to the scene of the Cistercian priest Filippo struggling with the canon Sinibaldo Mareri by the willow and the dike or ditch. In the two scenes very different things are being done to and with property, although one could argue that property itself was being similarly observed and appreciated. One must be struck, however, by the ease with which the contrast can be made and seen. The little boxes of recaptured time in the witnesses' depositions look oddly like those of the stories about the saint. They represent a commonly shared group of assumptions about how one tells a story, how one proves, how one creates verisimilitude.
These storytellers and answerers of questions have relatives in many times and places but they also behave in a way particularly characteristic of the early thirteenth century. Their way of thinking and proving has perhaps been best examined in its most important place, in the process of canonization, during the period from 1200 to 1240, and within that process, in the growing rigor concerning rules of evidence and in the preference for "the simple unvarnished speech of the witnesses."[101] This way of thinking obviously echoes, or is echoed by, the Parisian emphasis, particularly that of Peter the Chanter and his circle and successors, upon the confessor's necessary concern with "pertinent circumstance."[102] The anecdote of sermon, inquest, saint's life, and confession are closely related. Sometimes the sermon has been thought to be the cause, at least in the final sense of cause, of this way of thinking and writing; but that explanation is too simple, and in its simplicity wrong. The use of these anecdotal containers of carefully reproduced evidence offered to lots of serious people in the early thirteenth century the most compelling way of establishing truth and of seeing reality.
This fortunately apparent similarity of techniques of seeing and telling in seemingly diverse places, at Greccio and in the depositions of the San Matteo and Santa Maria witnesses, is a lens through which should be viewed the Reatine church in the thirteenth century. Through that similarity should be seen the very striking dissimilarity of what people are doing in the two sets of stories, of the actions that the two sets of witnesses witness. The similarity of the frame helps the viewer to realize that both sets of actions were integral parts of the Reatine church in the thirteenth century, both were at home in it, and any definition of it should include both.
Within the two sets of actions there is further complexity and further contrast. This is of course obvious in the dispute over property because
a significant part of its action is seen from two opposing points of view. The complexity within the companions' group of stories is, however, more obviously interesting. One sees it quickly in a story they tell about Francis when he was staying at the Reatine hermitage of Fonte Colombo. Fonte Colombo is near the road from Rieti to Sant'Elia Reatino. Sant'Elia is about two kilometers farther from Rieti than Fonte Colombo, but it is the village nearest Fonte Colombo. While Francis was staying at Fonte Colombo a particularly virulent disease of cattle, which was called basaboue , spread to Sant'Elia. At the time when the disease was beginning to kill the cattle of Sant'Elia a pious man in the village had a dream in which he was told to go to the hermitage and to get some of the water in which Francis had washed his hands and feet and then to throw it on the cattle—thus they would be cured. The man in fact did get up early and go to the hermitage to tell Francis's sociis what had happened. The socii saved in quodam uase the water in which Francis had washed his hands when he ate. Then in the evening, without telling Francis why, they asked him to let them wash his feet. The socii , the companions of Francis, gave the water in which Francis's hands and feet had been washed to the man from Sant'Elia. He sprinkled it on the cattle. The cattle were cured. This box of story ends with the final clause: "in illo tempore habebat beatus Franciscus cicatrices in manibus et pedibus et latere (at that time Saint Francis had scars in hands and feet and side)."[103] Perhaps the most primitive of all the early stories of Francis's wonder working is concluded with a brief, and here very pertinent, reference to the most startlingly exalted wonder of his whole life, his reception of the stigmata, his becoming almost frighteningly like Christ.
Clearly the story of the stigmata itself is not told in the Scripta Leonis because it had been fully told in the Vita prima of Thomas of Celano, although no telling of it seems more effective than the companions' passing reference. Similarly, although the companions are writing at Greccio, they do not again tell the story of the Greccio presepio , with which Francis set before the eyes of the people there a real manger with a real ox and a real ass, so that they could more physically partake in the birth of Christ and in the meaning of Incarnation and so that Greccio would become the "new Bethlehem"[104] (see plate 32). The Greccio Christmas story that the companions tell has a very different tone. In it too Francis is staying at Greccio. A minister of friars has come to see him. In order to celebrate Christmas with their special guests the friars at Greccio have set the table (raised on some sort of dais) particularly carefully with beautiful white table cloths that they had gotten (de pul-
cris et albis toalleis quas aquisiuerant ) and with drinking glasses (uasis uitreis ad bibendum ). Francis comes down from his cell and sees the table raised and elaborately set (ita curiose paratam ). He goes secretly and takes the hood (capellum ) and staff of a pauper who has come that day. He then acts the part of a poor pilgrim who comes and knocks at this "rich" house and begs food and sits upon the ground to eat what he is given.[105] He thus performs a rebuke to his brothers in order to teach them again the importance of physical poverty. They respond with shame and tears. It is a bitter little Christmas story. It rips apart the sense of quick, blessed agreement produced by the presepio story. But in didactic method the two stories are similar.
These compounded complexities and similarities are brought together here to make something like that kind of mirrored kaleidoscope through which the seen shapes and colors of nature are rearranged into other patterns, and the potential revolutions within what have seemed immutable natural forms are revealed. This is done not just "to reveal unknown depths of strangeness," but to encourage a viewer to discard in part all preconceptions about what things do and what things do not go together, particularly within the church, and thus to look more freely and perhaps creatively, at what is present. One who looks should expect, if anything, strange mixtures, strange contingencies and appearances, and accept the fact that they are not in reality strange.
In an unexpected letter of 1312 Gregorio, the abbot of the enfeebled abbey of Farfa, writes to Nicola son of the discreto man Francesco da Greccio to present Nicola with one-fourth of Sant'Angelo and all of San Casciano of Greccio, churches within the diocese of Rieti vacant through the death of Pietro, Nicola's paternal uncle.[106] The churches pertained to Farfa, and the abbot wished to reward a family to which it was, for various reasons, obligated. The presentation occurs in an area tense with Cistercians and Franciscans, to the son of a man named Francesco da Greccio. Its record is preserved in the archives of the church of Rieti, and the action occurs some time after one might expect the Benedictines of Farfa to have retired from the area. The land around Greccio was oddly macchiata . The observer should not be surprised to find similarly but spiritually macchiati , as well as incompletely revealed, the characters of Reatine bishops, like Adenolfo and Tommaso Secinari, and the attitudes of the body of Rieti canons and of the other visible Christians of the diocese of Rieti.
In the later nineteenth century a man named Lorenzo Mascetta Caracci went about the countryside of the Abruzzi east of Rieti collecting
examples of the peculiar uses of Church Latin in everyday speech. He discovered a generally unknown language, but a common one, which brought to his ear and mind strange associations of ideas and a new understanding of how the idiom of the liturgy penetrated and was penetrated by the matters of ordinary physical life. His work revealed the strange mixture of concepts surrounding the church and its language and so uncovered the strange mixed substance that the church, the actual church in real life, was. He found, for example, that when people wanted to say "to make a soup (fare un minestrone )," they sometimes said "fa' 'na Rosa mmiste che ."[107]