Piety and Charity in Late Medieval

Florence
Banker, James R., The Catholic Historical Review

Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence. By John Henderson. (New York: Clarendon
Press, Oxford University Press. 1994. Pp. xviii, 533. $85.00.)
John Henderson's book is a long-awaited contribution to the history of confraternities and
charity in Renaissance Florence. Many scholars have already consulted profitably his 1983
thesis at the University of London entitled"Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence: Lay
Religious Confraternities from the Middle of the Thirteenth Century to the Late Fifteenth
Century to the Late Fifteenth Century." Readers will not be disappointed with the range of
knowledge and the number of issues addressed and all treated from numerous original
sources from the Archivio di Stato and other archives of Florence. The author has pieced
together complex data from thousands of documents relevant to confraternities and lay
charity. Art, musical, and literary historians will henceforth consult this book with great profit
on a wide range of topics. Also, highly useful is the appendix of the "Confraternities Meeting
in Florence, 1240-1499," in which the author lists 163 Florentine confraternities (pp. 443474).
The author writes," [T] he organization of the book into two main parts (piety and charity)
reflects the dual nature of charity' (p. 9). Part I surveys lay piety in Florence from 1250 to
1500 by first establishing confraternities as one of many forms of corporate organization in
the High Middle Ages. Chapters 2 through 6 trace the evolution of confraternities primarily
through two forms, that of the laudesi and disciplinati, ending with a finely nuanced study of
the confraternity of Orsanmichele. Part II introduces the reader to the complex world of
Florentine charity and hospitals. Documents from Orsanmichele provide evidence for an
extensive discussion of the systematic poor relief by this confraternity and other Florentine
institutions. Noting the decline of large charitable confraternal institutions and the growing
role of state supervision by the late fifteenth century, the author concludes with a discussion
of the relationship of these corporate groups with other institutions and particularly with the
state.
In the introduction the author discusses a number of books on European and Italian
confraternities, which he organizes into the now conventional two schools, the religious-local
and social-historical. He states his intention of making historiographic progress by combining
the two schools, but does the book succeed in making a historiographic breakthrough beyond
the two schools and convey a fundamentally novel view of either Renaissance confraternities
or charity?

This book examines the relationship between the secular and sacred through the
vehicle of the religious confraternity, one of the most ubiquitous and popular
forms of lay association throughout Europe. Based on a wealth of new
documentation John Henderson provides a fascinating account of the
development of the major confraternities in Florence in relation to other types of
communal ecclesiastical institutions. Henderson discusses in detail their
devotional activities for living members, including the singing of lauds, selfflagellation, processions and dramatic presentations, as well as funerals and
commemorative services for the dead. He then provides one of the most detailed
analyses of poor relief in late medieval Europe, all against the background of
changing social, demographic, and economic regimes of the late medieval
commune. Taken together the two themes of this book, piety and charity, provide
new evidence concerning the complex relationship between religion and society
in both private and public life.

This volume encompasses nearly two books in one. In the first half, John Henderson provides
a comprehensive institutional analysis of 163 confraternities founded in Florence from the
mid-thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. In the second, he surveys the city's numerous
charitable institutions including, in a detailed case-study, one of its earliest, largest, and most
complex, the confraternity of Orsanmichele. The two parts of the book are bridged
thematically by the "Pauline" concept of charity (9), which for Henderson linked private
religious devotion to neighborly compassion over the course of this period. Challenging the
view that the Quattrocento was a "golden age" of Tuscan charity (354), he underscores the
medieval origins of these institutions. Emphasizing the fusion of "secular and sacred" (411) in
the confraternities' commixture of civic, social, religious, and ecclesiastical elements, he finds
evidence of increasing religious aspiration among the laity, rather than a form of laicization
often mistaken for Renaissance secularity. While stressing continuities, he also delineates the
two broad shifts in religious and charitable organization that occurred after the midfourteenth century, from laudesi to flagellant confraternities, and from omnibus charitable
institutions to specialized hospitals.
Florentine confraternities had their roots in the corporations, in consorterie, mendicantinspired devotions, and in ideals of caritas and the buon comune of medieval Italian cities.
Forty-five such institutions were founded from 1250 to 1350, 60 more in the following
century, and 58 again between 1450 and 1500. By the fifteenth century, civic and
ecclesiastical authorities were increasing their surveillance and intervention - the commune to
check their seditious potential, the ecclesiastics to curtail possible deviance and the neglect of
parish life. The bulk of the institutions founded in the first century were laudesi and
charitable confraternities. Unique to north-central Italy, the laudesi grew out of the Marian
cult promoted by the friars, and offered laymen more personal devotions that supplemented
the mass by incorporating into their meetings the singing of praises to Christ, Mary, the
apostles, and other saints and martyrs. But the elaboration of their public musical

performances - along with festivals devoted to local saints, the development of sacred drama
(sacre rappresentazioni), and a growing emphasis on commemorative masses for their
members - left even wealthy, city-wide companies heavily in debt by the early fifteenth
century. Meanwhile, the number of artisan confraternities rose. But the most dramatic shift
was toward the disciplinati, whose foundations increased sharply after 1350. Henderson
emphasizes that flagellation was but one element in their penitential devotions, which
focused on a redemptive rather than wrathful Christ, and also included confession,
sacramental ablution, and preaching - much of which was undertaken by laymen as the
fifteenth century advanced. Less acquisitive than the laudesi, the flagellants did not become
entangled in the finances of commemoration, though they also provided vital funeral services
to their members. Attendance could be surprisingly slack; but from the mid-fifteenth century
new, more rigorous, and distinctively Florentine "companies of the night" were founded that
combined preaching, the production of sacre rappresentazione, and religious education for
boys.
Many confraternities required some form of charitable activity, but service to non-members
was central to companies like Orsanmichele. Originally founded as a laudese company to
venerate a miraculous image of the virgin in a uniquely combined shrine, church, and
granary, Orsanmichele's membership and endowments expanded dramatically in the early
fourteenth century. It soon acquired a semi-public character as a leading distributor of alms,
and became a locus of civic and guild religious identities. Henderson offers minute analyses
of its patchy records of alms-giving to refute "the old historiographical chestnut" (242) that
medieval Catholic charity served only stereotypical Biblical categories, while ignoring the
needs of the genuine poor. Though always favoring the "respectable poor" with fixed
addresses, Orsanmichele's captains adjusted distributions to meet changing circumstances,
shifting support early in the fourteenth century from the "voluntary poor" (religious) to
families with children as the economy declined, and after the Black Death to dowering
women who could facilitate repopulation. Moreover, Biblical groups such as women and
orphans often really were those most at risk.
Henderson confirms, however, the broader indictment of Florentine charity that often lies
behind these discussions when he writes that its solutions were never adequate nor meant to
provide more than the minimum palliative necessary to avert revolt and to maintain the social
and political order. Indeed, by the late fourteenth century Orsanmichele's captains were
regularly charged with embezzlement by communal officials who themselves raked off hefty
loans and taxes. What money remained went largely to building and decoration. Peers like the
Misericordia and Bigallo followed similar trajectories. Nevertheless, a new generation of less
amateurish institutions managed to be founded in this period. Large hospitals, amply
endowed by private individuals and shielded from direct communal interference, now
targeted specific groups such as poor women (the Orbatello, 1372), the sick (Messer
Bonifazio, 1377), and orphans (the Innocenti, 1419). The only Quattrocento charitable
confraternity founded on the old model was the Buonuomini di San Martino, and even it
offered little to the indigent poor.
Henderson supports his arguments with a wealth of graphs, tables, and statistics. He is

skeptical of vague theories and dramatic periodization in the extensive secondary literature he
canvasses. Linking mendicant piety to a new mercantile mentality is reductive, he writes;
tying the rise of confraternities to the penitential processions of 1260 is too simple. The
practical need for decent burial after the Black Death explains the surge in confraternal
foundations better than fuzzy appeals to grief and generalized guilt. He is most impatient with
historians who have constructed a "utopian" vision of a new direction in Quattrocento
Florentine charity shaped by "civic humanism" (354). Here, although Henderson offers a
variety of practical explanations for specific developments, I feel that his determination to
tone down earlier generalizations and to draw the foundations of Florentine charity back to
the buon comune of Remigio de' Girolami, made him reluctant, despite the results his study
yielded, to explore the possibility of a basic change in Florentine attitudes in the late
Trecento, from celebration toward penance, from ad hoc civic charity to coordinated
professional philanthropy. His argument for continuity might better have been supported by a
case study of a hospital with a continuous history over this period, like Santa Mafia Nuova.
Readers may challenge the strictly pragmatic and matter-of-fact key in which Henderson
registers many of his interpretations, but they will be doing so on a vast empirical terrain that
he has usefully mapped out.
DAVID S. PETERSON Newberry Library