Rites of Resistance: Urban Liturgy and the Crowd in the Patarine Revolt of Milan, c.1057–75

Abstract

This essay uses an unexploited liturgical source, a twelfth-century order book by the Milanese cleric Beroldo, to illuminate how processions shaped the practice of the largest and most radical popular movement of the central Middle Ages, the Pataria of Milan, during a pivotal moment of urban change. Religious processions had the power to project episcopal authority across a rapidly expanding urban population. They also sanctioned the redistribution of wealth and resources to city churches. At the same time, they provided a possible grammar of resistance to those who rose up against urban elites. The Pataria struggled at the pulpit and on the streets for the sexual and economic purity of the clergy. It first erupted in the city on 10 May 1057—during a liturgical parade. The conflict between supporters of religious reform on the one hand, and the archbishop’s aristocratic court and clergy on the other, persisted until the movement’s defeat in 1075. Until then, Patarine violence continually disrupted liturgical time, tearing priests from their altars and overturning solemn processions. The article introduces Beroldo and other Milanese liturgical sources in context, and their value as witnesses to later eleventh-century history. It surveys how episcopal processions responded to urban expansion and developed a growing but unstable social and political importance. With a picture of the urban and liturgical landscape in place, it then investigates how Patarine violence contested the ways that processions, on days such as Easter baptism or the Three Day Litanies, created civic community and communicated relations of power.