1 Prime pagine ok.indd - accademia degli intronati

78
John Koenig
in a highly devotionalized good deed. The final act was a “bellissima
processione” through the city, in which its fraternities and religious
orders, the Madonna, the fifty young virgins, the government, and all the
people took part. The Virgin was doubtless most pleased by the assistance
rendered these needy young women, which was an established way of
honoring her as Mary Immaculate 58 .
The final donazione in March 1555 was pretty much a carbon copy
of the preceding one, without the charity vow. It was again to the main
altar that the Madonna (now, as in 1550, identified as the Madonna del
Duomo) was taken for the submission ceremony, in which the cathedral
canon who celebrated mass (the entire government communicating)
received the keys from and returned them to the prior on behalf of
the Virgin Mary. Again, a sombre, penitential mood prevailed (which
reflected the darkened, mid-siege atmosphere, as hope of a rescue by
the French receded): the mass was deprived of its music, the ceremonial
trumpets were silent, and the prior’s pre-offering prayer exuded even
more supplicatory pathos, as he informed the Madonna (truthfully) that
never before, since first sheltering under her most glorious cloak (as
the Madonna della Misericordia), had Siena been in such need. It was
his great hope that the “profound abyss of… [their] miseries” would be
lost “in the infinitude of [her] mercy.” And, when he bestowed on her
the keys to the city, he implored her to accept and keep them (emphasis
added) 59 , since they themselves, “having through their sins lost all power
and knowledge,” were incapable of using them, and to employ them in
her power and wisdom to close the city’s gates to war and open them to
peace and to their allies and to shut them to destructive discord and open
them to domestic peace and unity (“unione”). The prior also twice asked
her, as the Mother of God (emphasis added), to intercede for Siena, “since
our prayers are not worthy to reach the sacred ears of your most beloved
58 On this point, KOENIG, Saving Siena, 164; and for evidence that the procession was a
supplicatory one, ibid., 169-70.
59 Not to be taken literally. In his 1550 oration, the prior presented the keys to the Virgin as one
“più secura e più potente a custodirle.”