4 - The bounds of community: commune, parish, confraternity, and charity at the dawn of a new era in Cortona

Summary

The statutes of the fraternity of Santa Maria in the church of San Vincenzo, redacted in 1481 “for the honor and greatness of the Holy Mother Church and the entire Christian faith,” are much like those of any other pious confraternity in late medieval Italy. Their fourteen clauses establish the procedures for electing the fraternity's prior, stipulate that he will be assisted by a treasurer and five counselors, regulate the expenditure of the fraternity's funds, and specify that each prior and treasurer promptly consign to their successors the financial records of their term in office. They require that all the men and women of the fraternity assemble on the first Sunday of each month, the major Marian feasts and all the pasque (Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost), and any other time the prior orders a procession. They insist that all the men of the fraternity make and maintain peace with one another. They instruct the prior to visit any sick member, look to his physical needs, and urge him to see to his spiritual condition by making a proper confession; and they remind dying members to leave to the fraternity half of the candles that are carried to their burial. They order every man and woman belonging to the fraternity to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary when they sit down to eat, and then make the sign of the cross over their food; to say fifteen Our Fathers and Hail Marys for the souls of any deceased members as soon as possible after their death; and to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary every time they pass the entrance of the cemetery as they go to church, for the remission of sins of all those who have passed from this life.