To talk about Florentine festivals, with particular reference to the Renaissance, means to look in-depth at the very fabric of the “City of the lily”, in all its sides and complexity. Florentine feasts have an apparent linear development, but they hide something, seldom their contradictions. Every celebration is one thing, another or the opposite altogether. The magic and masterpiece of the Florentines lie precisely in harmonizing the opposites.
Often the pagan and Christian origin intersect or merge. Let us examine, for example, the modification, with a strong Christian emphasis, of the feast of St. John. Set around the summer solstice, it came to symbolize the great victory of light over paganism and the celebration of the encounter between the disciple and the son of God.
In all city festivals, the reference to the sacred is therefore very strong. This connection to the sacred applies to the food of simple ristori (restaurants) and on the people’s tables. It applies, more specifically, to the food served at civic power banquets, described as “heavenly meals”.

Moreover, it is in the name of the food that the popular background and the marked imprint of power intersect.

Within this dialectical game, the absolute certainty, and therefore the non-contradictory identity, is the respect of the calendar holidays. The days and seasons of the holidays, with their communal rites consumed around the table, demonstrate that the dominant aspect of Florence is time, in its sacred and profane progression.
Celebrations played a central role in the making of the civic identity through community celebrations of the patron saint and the remembrance of military and political victims. They all saw the entire social, secular and ecclesiastical body march through the streets.
However, the attendance in the feasts of the entire Florentine body did not mean real equality. We notice, for example, that the celebrations of power appear as bicephalous. Everything was for the people but nothing came from the people.
According to Nicole Carew-Reid, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s skill (just to mention the most emblematic case) was to allow the enthusiastic Florentine people to his celebrations and yet exclude them from the main purpose of the event.
We find this double standard also in the relationship between feasts and food.

THE SHRINE OF POWER AT THE TABLE
Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini married in June 1469. The celebrations lasted four days and the official decision was to let all people take part in the ceremonies. However, the people, as mentioned in the chronicles, were simple guests held at a safe distance. Del Lungo describes how the city appeared. There was a widespread presence of musicians and folk dances in the streets. Monumental fountains served wine in abundance “contributing to the general inebriation” of the souls. After all, as other historians point out, what matters is to hold the people in good dispositions and joy.
Again, all witnesses underlined that the Florentines remained as a guest at a safe distance.

With a historical leap, we now move to 1492, inside Palazzo della Zecca. For the Feast of St. John, the city authorities offer confetti, small presents, pomegranates and Trebbiano wine to the representatives of the main Arts and the Florentines attending.
Here a significant split starts. The people returned home for dinner, enjoying the fact that “throughout the city – as G. Dati writes – on the day of the wedding, great celebrations took place with fives and songs and dances and parties and joy and ornament, that it seemed paradise on earth».
Instead, the Florentine authorities, in the presence of ambassadors, ecclesiastics, knights, moved to the official banquet where also 45 foreigners were present. The banquet was largely based on fish dishes: 36 sturgeons, lampreys, fish from the river Arno and sea fish.
Another emblematic occasion that attests the grandiosity of Florentine celebration power is the banquet that the rich citizen Benedict, a descendant of the well-known Coluccio Salutati, offered on 16 February 1476 to the King of Naples’ offspring.
From a chronicle of the time, we count at least 32 dishes and 15 wines served, according to serving Renaissance custom. Each food “on the table with good order came and along with the sound of trumpets”. The scenography of Renaissance banquets had undisputed protagonists. They were the master of the house, the kitchen surveyor, the meat carvers, and the cupbearers; lenders, dispensers, and platers; the purchaser of goods, vintners, bottlers; cooks (head chef, secret cook, family cooks, and the foreigner’s cooks); pages, and musicians.
The entire display was crucial, almost the best part of the show, as in the case of the appearance of roasted peacocks, described as follows:
“[…] when the roasted peacocks appeared, following the blancmange, they came onto two silver basins, each with one cooked peacock, standing on its feet, with its feathers well arranged, and with the open tail. They seemed alive. Inside the beak, one had perfumed wine, the other a certain odoriferous substance that burned like a candle. Around the necks, some notes stated MODUS ET ORDO and on their chest hung the coat of arms of the Duke. They remained untouched, and after a little on the table, they took them away.”

THE “SACRED” TIME AT THE TABLE.

The Florentine party food also has a sacred rhythm. In February 1428, the city chronicles describe a celebration linked to the delivery of the bordone (staff). Many citizens, including the barber Francesco, nicknamed Cacio, are planning to leave for Saint James of Compostella. This vision allows us to analyze the pilgrims’ food. What did the pilgrim’s bag next to the staff contain? Bread or the flour to prepare it, biscuits or cakes. Other foods such as salted meat, cheese, raisins, almonds. At least a wineskin of water. A limited amount of wine (offered principally to the sick and suffering people), vinegar (mixed with oil to relieve one’s hunger), various syrups or cider.

In the sphere of the sacred, we can also look at the wait for Easter in a monastery, a place where the privation of the body and the soul also passed through food.
The variety of food in monasteries during Lenten is surprising. Rather than simple food, it is preferable to talk about a well-assorted diet. Eating lean implies eating mostly fish, preferably freshwater fish and of the day, even salted (sardines, herring), brined or in oil (tuna). There is also the mullet (dried or roe). Next to fish, there are the herbs, very helpful when cooking different dishes. Just to give some examples: the persicharia (chickpea soup with pepper herb), watercress, soups or fish sauces. Finally the pies: on all, the three colours pie or Lent pie, with herbs, almonds, parsley or marjoram, saffron and no meat.

FESTIVALS AND FOOD IN THE PULSATING HEART OF FLORENCE

The most peculiar cross-section of Florentine feasts concerning food brings us around the city quarters to immerse fully in the sacred, civic or arts and corporations celebration. Following the calendar, we come across, for example, the feast of St. Lawrence, on 11 August, when master pasta makers and bakers ennoble their trade with well-seasoned pasta and lasagna. Carbonata and porrea (pork pie) appear on the tables in the neighbourhood. On 29 September, instead, in St. Ambrose, the company of the same name celebrates St. Michael distributing jujubes and schiacciata (flatbread) with grapes.
In October, when the pilgrimage to the Madonna of Impruneta happens, we have the Fair of S. Luca. Shepherds, in their transhumance towards the Maremma, stop here to sell their cheeses and derivatives, while the artisans expose their creations. Pollo alla diavola (pepper-roasted chicken) makes its welcome appearance inside local restaurants.
Among the most curious celebrations, on 30 December, we celebrate St. Fiorenzo. Here the turnips (the last of the season) are the protagonists. After the blessing, families prepare the Three R soup, turnips, rice and rocchi (the driest and poorest part of the sausage, close to the binding).
However, let us not forget the feast of St. Joseph, on 19 March. All over the city, fritters are prepared with an “ancient” and more rustic recipe: a large slice of apple, borage, a small handful of rice, raisins (if any), oil or lard.
Various feasts, the most diverse foods and recipes, different worlds all meet in the name of a city that recomposes everything.
“Every year, beautiful Florence organizes celebrations to honour and revere the almighty God and for the contemplation and pleasure of the powerful Florentine people.” (B. Dei, Cronica, 1472).

FRANCO BANCHI