The new urban spiritual movements, gathered around an ideal of the evangelical life, expressed the sensibilities and the complexities of the merchant class. It has been said that St Francis of Assisi’s choice of radical poverty as the gospel value was not solely the result (as it was in St Bonaventure’s biography of Francis) of a sudden inspiration while listening to the reading of scripture in church. It was in part a spiritual reaction to the growing wealth and power of urban society and to the characteristic sins of Francis’ own social class. Yet, at the same time, close ties grew up between the new mendicant orders and the new city political class in ways that gave birth to a kind of civic religion in which local city saints (not least members of the new orders themselves) were venerated and their love of the local commune was emphasized.
The gradual development of the great city piazzas of late medieval Italy owes much to communities of friars and their large preaching churches built for mass communication and opening out onto relatively large open spaces that could accommodate even bigger audiences. These provided a suitable urban setting for crowds to gather, drawn initially by the reputation of preachers. Florence has many examples, such as San Marco, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, and Ssma Annunziata. As the colonnades of ancient Rome gave birth to the monastic cloister, so in the new laicized city spirituality of the later Middle Ages the monastic cloister moved out into the city to give birth to the colonnaded piazza. What began as a functional space for preaching gradually led to a concept of public space where people could gather and intermingle for a variety of purposes and, particularly during the Renaissance, they also offered a means of enhancing and safeguarding the panorama of cities.
The new cities witnessed the foundation of lay spiritual movements in the same period, such as the groups of women known as Beguines, who came largely from the new city merchant class and flourished in northern Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France (although some scholars extend the term to Italy and also to England). These groups were thoroughly assimilated into the life and surroundings of the city. This is clear from their unenclosed existence and engagement with city life in running schools for girls, working with the poor and sick, and engaging in trade, for example of lace. Some continued to live with their families; others (for example in Cologne) lived in small groups in tenements. Where Beguines did occupy or build discrete buildings these either mimic a small walled city within the city (as in the Beguinage at Bruges) or consisted of one of the normal city squares as in Ghent.
laudes civitatis
