Ut inde melius fiat: The commune of Parma and its religious personnel

For the most part, all Parmans, whether clerics or lay, men or women, nobles or non-nobles, have this characteristic and curse: they are forever lacking in devotion, hard and cruel towards religious and other servants of God, whether their own or outsiders. The Franciscan chronicler, Salimbene de Adam (1221–1288/9), surely felt justified in this stark condemnation of his native Parma, at least in the heat of memory. Of course, the accusation that the people of Parma were antifraternal (or, for that matter, anticlerical) does not match the evidence for the long-standing support they afforded to monastic foundations and confraternities. His assertion is nonetheless a useful starting point for this chapter. It reminds us that antifraternalism (not the same as hostility to religion) was by no means unimaginable. He also deploys a conventional way of categorising a population, evoking contrasting identities which prompt specific (mal)treatment. For Salimbene, ‘religious and other servants of God’, are self-evidently distinct, perhaps in the same way that clerics are not lay, men are not women, and nobles are not to be mistaken for non-nobles, or locals for outsiders.