1 Prime pagine ok.indd - accademia degli intronati

Mary, sovereign of Siena, Jesus, king of Florence 55
lasting, altogether, for well over a month. Already laid low by foreign
invaders, the Lombard capital was now again a battleground as (in the
midst of plague and famine) the French and their allies fought to retake
this prize from Spain. Tomasso began his work on Sunday 11 April
1529, when he preached a three-day supplicatory tour de force that was
to commence the following Friday. It was organized thematically 18 :
for the Friday procession (that was preceded by a Mass of the Holy
Cross and featured the banner of St. Ambrose, as well as a cross) it was
Christ and His Passion; for the Saturday procession (that was preceded
by a Mass of the Virgin, on this her special day) it was the Virgin;
and for Sunday’s Eucharistic procession (that was preceded by a Mass
of the Holy Spirit) it was the Deity 19 . Father Tomasso then proceeded
to exploit the post-Lenten liturgy. He told the people that he was on
a mission that would last until they were delivered; and, during his
weekly Sunday sermons, he introduced devotions for this purpose,
which centered on the feasts of the triune God – Ascension Thursday
(7 May), Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi (3 June) – and
included a spate of Eucharistic processions, in addition to the annual
one on this last feast 20 .
The discussion has again confronted us with the adventurous
nature of Christian crisis religion, which in spirit was not so far removed
from what magicians, astrologers, and alchemists attempted with
18 BURIGOZZO, Storia, 485-89; Ordine della processione triduana.
19 Ordine della processione triduana, 18-19. This was the same theme-based triduum of
crisis processions used at Siena in 1482, which was the invention of Mariano da Genazzano, whom I
mentioned earlier. KOENIG, Saving Siena, 88. For the Friday procession, see below n. 193. The Sunday
procession was commented upon by J. BURCKHARDT, who saw its pathetic supplicants reflecting the
depths of despair into which Milan had sunk, which, as he saw it, awakened a medievalism that
subverted the rebirth of thought and culture. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C.
Middlemore (London 1965), 301; and see on this point KOENIG, Saving Siena, 202n. 413.
20 BURIGOZZO, Storia, 491. We also have evidence of the use of Pentecost in crisis circumstances
at Florence, by the New Republic, for which see below n. 130, and by Savonarola in 1495, upon the
return from Naples of Charles VIII. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Signori e Collegi, Deliberazioni fatte
in forza di ordinaria authorità 97, ff. 59, 69v (hereafter, ASF, Deliberazioni); GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA,
Prediche sopra i Salmi, ed. Vincenzo Romano 1 (Rome 1969), 234-35.