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Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325

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William M. Bowsky in "History: Review of New Books" 33.4

This brilliant, innovative, challenging, and often surprising book lays out every conceiveable aspect of the religious lives of citizens of the medieval Italian commune. It is also a fascinating exposition of the unexpected ways in which civic communes of central and northern Italy from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century were indeed "cities of God."

The golden age of free civic communes came to an end at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when many fell into the hands of lords and despots. While they might have retained the trappings of free republics, in reality those rulers were not interested in long-standing civic values. It was then that communal practices, interconnected values, and languages diverged from those of the church. The exception was Tuscany, where the change took place during the second half of the fourteenth century, when its civic communes also succumbed to princes and despots.

To understand the structure of this book and the reasons for the sequence of its ten chapters and their contents, one must very carefully read the brief eight page introduction, as it reveals Augustine Thompson's aims and principal theses far more clearly and succinctly than they appear within the individual chapters.

Church institutions and rituals were a major component of public life in the civic communes of medieval Italy. Thompson argues persuasively that far from being in conflict, religion and the medieval Italian civic republics were inextricably intertwined. He demonstrates that, surprisingly, very many allegedly purely civic practices (as well as civic language) were derived from religious ones. His contentions are supported by a variety of examples drawn from the histories of multiple cities.

Thompson poses and answers a host of important questions on the basis of a broad knowledge of published and archival sources. A trained theologian, he paints both a theological and an institutional picture of the world that he is examining, a world not restricted to a single city or region, but one that ranges throughout much of the Italian peninsula. He neither focuses primarily upon church-state relations nor upon the upper or ruling classes of the civic communes. Thompson successfully centers upon the laity, that overwhelming majority of people below the upper ranks of communal society.

Each chapter is separated into discrete subsections, although the connections between one sub-topic and the one that follows it are not always immediately apparent, which makes crucial a knowledge of the introduction. The book is enriched with numerous details unfamiliar to most readers, and Thompson offers explanations of their importance. If there seems to be less emphasis upon heresy and urban monasticism than one might expect, it is because Thompson wanted to maintain his tight focus upon the religious life of the laity.

Conversi, or lay penitents, appear widely in medieval historical literature. Thompson's fulsome treatment of their history and roles in urban civic life, particularly in the chapter "From Conversion to Community," is the best to date.

The myriad subjects that Thompson examines can barely be touched upon here. Included are the roles in civic religious life of processions, rituals, sanctity, marriage, hospitals, the Mass, and the divine office, to mention only a few.

This broad overview hardly suggests the richness of the contents of Cities of God and it is difficult to think of an important aspect of civic religious life not carefully and extensively considered within its pages. Cities of God should be read by anyone interested in the medieval church in Italy, and indeed, elsewhere in Western Europe.

Thompson's work is a great study of medieval Italian communes which revises previous assumptions about their poltical and religious character. Rather than early democracies which separated religious practices from local government, Thompson argues persuasively that civic and religious concerns were completely interwoven. The book provides a well researched and deeply detailed study of the daily lives of the lay people of the communes and the significant role of religious beliefs which permeated both their spiritual and civic activities. Thompson focuses primarily on the urban populations of cities which exercised actual or de facto autonomy from the empire.

It is a rare book that, having read it, one wonders why it was not written sooner. This is such a book. Thompson surveys religious faith and customs in 12th to 14th century Italy, looking at typical practices and beliefs. The book focuses primarily on the upper classes, perhaps due to a dearth of materials about other urban residents.
Like the author, this reader looks forward to similar books about medieval faith in England, France, and other parts of medieval Europe. This reviewer is moderately well-read in medieval history, but found new insights in nearly every chapter of this book.