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carroccio, taken in triumph to the victors’ cathedral, became a votive offer-
ing to God for the enemy’s defeat. Parma captured the carroccio of Crem-
ona after defeating the Cremonese and Frederick II at Vittoria. They lodged
it in their baptistery—but only after allowing the citizenry to strip it for
souvenirs. To the undying shame of Cremona, nothing remained but the
wheels, frame, and mast, leaning against the baptistery wall.^172 When Bolo-
gna captured the carroccio of Modena in 1272 , it became a votive offering
in San Pietro, after public display in the Piazza Maggiore.^173 The Paduans
kept the captured Vicentine carroccio in the Curia Episcopalis.^174 After a
rout in 1213 , the Milanese abandoned their carroccio on the field, where the
victorious Cremonese seized it. They entrusted it to the keeping of their
Piacentine allies. But on Pentecost Sunday, the Milanese drove off the Pia-
centines and captured the Cremonese carroccio. Cremona resumed the war
the following year, we are told, simply to get back their lost battle wagon.^175
The carroccio figured in processions of triumph as well. When the Bolognese
captured Frederick’s son Enzo at Fossalta, their carroccio carried the royal
prisoner to jail in the Palazzo Nuovo.^176
The republican army was consecrated by sacred rites. The communes,
bourgeois in their ethos, preserved the practices of knighthood but trans-
formed its ceremonies to conform to republican sensibilities. Each city cre-
ated its own knights, usually on Pentecost Sunday, the Sunday of the Knights
(Pasqua Militum).^177 Nevertheless, in cities under special patronage of the Vir-
gin, such as Siena, the Assumption was the favored date for knighting.^178
The bishop, as pastor of the city, presided at the ceremony. Only on the
most exceptional—irregular—occasions did Italians have recourse to a mere
layman, however noble, to knight a citizen of their republics. Such an event
occurred at Forlı`on All Saints’ Day, 1285 , when Count Alberto of Gorizia
knighted two citizens in the field. Raimondo, the patriarch of Aquileia, had
refused to preside, because one candidate was under excommunication for
homicide.^179 Servants of the city participated in its sacred character. The lay
theologian Albertano of Brescia spoke of city lawyers as the priests of the
commune. They purified the mouths of citizens with the salt of justice, as
the Church’s priests did those of neophytes with the blessed salt at bap-
tism.^180 God’s judgment was invoked in communal courts. Even after prohi-
- Ibid. ( 1247 ), 292 – 93 , trans., 193. The papal legate, Gregorio of Monte Longo, put Frederick’s
relic collection, also captured at Vittoria, on view in the duomo sacristy: ibid. ( 1247 ), 293 , Baird trans.,
173 .Annales Veteres Mutinenses( 1272 ), col. 71.
174 .Liber Regiminum Padue( 1198 ), 298.
- Galvano Fiamma,Manipulus Florum( 1213 ), 246 ,RIS 11 : 665.
- Tucci, ‘‘Carroccio,’’ 31.
- E.g., as at Reggio in 1270 ; see Alberto Milioli,Liber, 536.
- Stefano Gasparri, ‘‘I rituali della cavalleria,’’Riti e rituali nelle societa`medievali,ed. Chiffoleau,
Martines, and Paravicini Bagliani, 111.
179 .Annales Foroiuliensis,ed. Wilhelm Arndt ( 1285 ),MGH.SS 19 : 202 – 3. - See Powell,Albertanus, 58.