60

Studies on the role city institutions played in inhabitants’ religious life focus on collective expressions, such as processions or divine offices commemorating key moments of city history. This paper, however, looks at the individual practices of piety in Regensburg in the 14th and 15th centuries. It appears that the city council protected its citizens’ memoria, but also that it tried to restrict the expenses they devoted to their memoria and even that it directed their donations toward the churches and convents to which it felt close. In fact, citizens’ pious donations to the city prove that the council succeeded in constructing an urban religious identity and in putting itself at its center.