Counter-Reformation & Papal Baroque State

The temporal realm of the papacy and the sovereign Vatican.

1 chapter

1400 - 1530

The communal republics gave way to signorie — lordships ruled by powerful families — who poured wealth into architecture, art, and the spectacle that became Central Italy's festival vocabulary. In Florence, the Medici transformed the Baptistery and built the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, creating a model of humanist patronage that spread across Tuscany. In Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro built the Ducal Palace — now a UNESCO World Heritage Site — as a Renaissance ideal city that attracted scholars and artists from across Europe. Orvieto's cathedral, positioned on the processional route, became the focal point for Corpus Domini observances after the 1263 Bolsena miracle, though the current Baroque processional form dates to later overlay. Perugia passed from communal government to Baglioni family rule, then to papal control. Monteriggioni's fortified walls, built by Siena in the 13th century as a frontier outpost against Florence, still crown the hill — a material reminder that the boundaries between Siena and Florence shaped everything, including whose saints were celebrated and whose processions dominated the streets.

1798 - 1946

The Risorgimento dismantled the Papal States — the institutional custodian of ritual for most of Central Italy — and reframed local traditions as national Italian heritage. Central Italy was annexed in stages: Tuscany and Umbria in 1860, the Marche in 1860, and Rome in 1870 when it became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom both revived old festivals and invented new ones as nation-building tools. The Carnevale di Viareggio, founded in 1873, used papier-mâché floats as satirical commentary on the new Italian state — a tradition that continues today. The Marino Sagra dell'Uva, Italy's oldest grape festival (founded 1925), celebrated the Castelli Romani grape harvest on volcanic slopes above Lago Albano — a timing determined by viticulture, not liturgy. Offida's Historic Carnival, with its Vlurd fire procession (bundles of reeds and straw set ablaze on Shrove Tuesday) and the Bovindo fake-ox farce, preserved a community ritual form with roots in 16th-century propitiatory peasant rites. The abolition of six Sienese contrade by Governor Violante Beatrice of Bavaria's edict in 1729 is attributed in the official Book of Bilia to poor organization; within contrade oral tradition, the abolition is linked to disorders from a disputed 1675 Palio. These accounts are not easily reconciled, but the six abolished contrade are still commemorated in the Corteo Storico by six riders with lowered helmets.

1100 - 1400

Between 1100 and 1400, Central Italy's cities seized self-governance from imperial and papal authority, forming communal republics that invented the institutional structures still visible in today's festivals. Lucca became an independent commune in 1160, controlling a key passage on the Via Francigena and building its wealth on silk trade. Siena's contrade — originally 59 neighborhood districts — crystallized into self-governing micro-communities, each with its own church, baptismal font, and archive; 17 survive today. The Palio di Siena, run on July 2 and August 16 in the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, is the contrade's ritual of self-governance, not merely a horse race. At Gubbio, the Corsa dei Ceri — documented since the 12th century as a devotion to Saint Ubaldo — races three towering wooden structures (ceri) from Piazza Grande through the city gates and uphill to the Basilica di Sant'Ubaldo on Monte Ingino. Some scholars note that the ritual shares features with the pre-Roman Umbrian rites described in the Iguvine Tablets (3rd–1st c. BC), inscribed at the same site; the Fisian Arx described in the tablets has been placed on Monte Ingino, where the Ceri race ends. Neither position excludes the other: a pre-Christian ritual structure could have been absorbed into saint devotion. Meanwhile, Francis of Assisi launched a popular religious revolution that reshaped how Central Italians practiced ritual — shifting from institutional to affective devotion. The Calendimaggio at Assisi, while formally a lay event of the Parte di Sopra and Parte di Sotto, operates in the shadow of the Franciscan sacred space; both the official festival narrative and local tradition acknowledge its timing corresponds to the Kalends of May and links to pagan spring customs. Arezzo's Giostra del Saracino, documented by Dante in Canto XXII of the Inferno, established the joust tradition that would be revived in 1931.

From 1946

The Italian Republic inherited a landscape of living ritual traditions, some unbroken for centuries, others consciously revived. The Calendimaggio at Assisi took its current form in a 1954 revival of medieval factional competition between the Parte di Sopra and Parte di Sotto; both the official festival narrative and local tradition acknowledge a deeper layer — the timing corresponds to the Kalends of May, and the festival's own website describes its origins as linked to pagan spring customs. The Giostra del Saracino at Arezzo was revived in 1931 and runs twice yearly in June and September. Gallicano's Palio di San Jacopo, with origins in the 1950s and current form since 1972, shows how small towns create new festival structures using the same contrada-competition grammar as Siena. The Festa dei Ceri at Gubbio — run every May 15 without interruption — is the ceraioli's devotion to their patron saint; the race from Piazza Grande through the gates and up Monte Ingino follows the same vertical topography that dictated the pre-Roman Atiedian Brotherhood's lustration route. Siena's Palio, run on July 2 and August 16, remains the contrade's ritual of identity — baptisms, marriages, and funerals happen within the contrada, not just the race. The Roman Jewish community, after the Ghetto walls came down in 1870, returned to public ritual space; the modern public Menorah lighting in Piazza Barberini during Chanukah marks a community continuous since 161 BCE. Grottaferrata Abbey still celebrates the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in Greek, following the Eastern calendar — a living reminder that Central Italian festival culture was never monolithically Latin-rite Catholic. What you experience today across Central Italy is not a museum of re-enactments but a palimpsest: the roads, the calendar dates, the hilltop destinations, and the community structures have survived every change of narrative from Etruscan to Roman to Christian to Italian, carrying ritual memory in their physical form even when the meaning has been rewritten.