172 LaCitadeSancta
Processions, candle offerings, dancing, singing, and rock fights were ‘‘pop-
ular,’’ insofar as they were open to all, or at least all male, members of the
commonwealth. These were participatory activities. One group seems ab-
sent from communal celebrations, the military aristocracy, whose position
the communes had subverted from their very inception in the twelfth cen-
tury. The knightly class did not cease to exist; it remained an essential part
of the communal army. Nevertheless, when present for the republican cere-
monies of the Assumption, the knights were part of a ‘‘bourgeois’’ crowd. At
Parma by midcentury, even the making of knights had been subsumed in
the republican Assumption festivities. Church ritual blessed the sword and
shield.^199 But the city made the Parmese knights; any citizen with sufficient
money to buy a horse and arms might present himself, with communal ap-
proval, to get them blessed.^200 The early communes had tolerated greater
aristocratic visibility. In 1198 Spinello de’ Carbonesi was killed in the piazza
of Bologna when he fell off his horse whilebagurdando(tourneying).^201 Under
the Popolo, with its antiaristocratic prejudices, cities excluded chivalric
games, at least for a while. But the republics had to make a public place for
their aristocrats. Florence grudgingly turned its ‘‘boys’ battles’’ into ‘‘chival-
ric games’’—jousts.^202 But it did so only after the knights had recommenced
tournaments themselves—to compete with communal processions on the
feast of Saint John the Baptist.^203
Chivalric games underwent a republican transformation. The joust on
horseback became a horse race, the palio, so called from the cloth banner
(pallio) that usually formed the prize. The palio retained something of a mili-
tary flavor. When Cremona defeated the army of the emperor Henry VII
on the feast of Saint Bartholomew, the city ordered an annual palio in honor
of the saint.^204 During the war with Arezzo in 1288 , the knights of Florence
ran a palio around its besieged city’s walls. They mocked their exiled bishop,
who had taken refuge there, by displaying mitered asses’ heads below the
walls.^205 The Florentines forced subject cities to supply palios, in this case
precious cloth, as a sign of subordination.^206 Verona had two palios, one a
foot race, the other a horse race. The Veronese made merry with the contes-
tants who came in last. They tied abaffaaround the neck of the jockey who
- Pont. Rom. (xii), App. 9. 1 – 3 ,p. 302.
- Parma Stat.i(by 1255 ), p. 200.
- Matteo Griffoni, 7. In the fourteenth century, jousts and aristocratic games reappear; e.g., the
joust of Saint Leonard in Parma Stat.iii( 1316 ), 114. - See Ciappelli, ‘‘Carnevale,’’Riti e rituali nelle societa`medievali,ed. Chiffoleau, Martines, and Para-
vicini Bagliani, 163 – 65 , and Stefano Gasparri, ‘‘I rituali della cavalleria,’’ ibid., 101. - On this, see Trexler,Public Life, 218.
- Cremona Stat. ( 1313 ), 105. On the mixture of civic, spiritual, and merely recreational elements
in the palio, see Webb,Patrons, 211 – 12. - Giovanni Villani,Cronica, 7 : 120. On this event, see also Trexler,Public Life, 4 n. 9.
- See Trexler,Public Life, 262.