"That's true!" As far as I remember, the golden calends are celebrated in several places even in France. For example, in various locations they toast crêpes and savory griddle cakes instead of loaves of spelt and salt," said the French pope.
"Why do you think they still do these things?" asked the historian.
"As far as we know, it was handed down from Pope Gelasius in the distant fifth century, the golden calends were celebrated during the first days of February with fires and lights in the streets, which were usually celebrations dedicated to a priestess or goddess who had been elected patron or protector of a site at the time of Rome and the Caesars. Then someone tried to transform them into Candlemas or the feast of illuminated candles," replied the papal historian.
"Female pagan patrons?" asked the Pope in surprise.
"Yes, your Eminence. You are French and unfamiliar with Italian traditions, but they were usually priestesses, wives or daughters of high Roman officials who inaugurated12 or became patrons of an Italic site complete with a sacred ceremony13 to found it and ensure it was sacred and loyal to Rome."
"And how can we fight these heresies?" asked the pope.
"After so many centuries none should believe in these heresies anymore, Eminence, but traditions and superstitions that are rooted in the population cannot be eradicated with arguments of faith or reason. Many Christians, including priests and bishops, bless them and still celebrate them as Christian holidays without knowing anything about their true origins," said the historian.
"And how do you fight these things then, if someone wanted to fight them?" the pope asked again.
"It is possible to deviate, or rather, gradually pilot their false pagan festivals and traditions towards other similar Christian festivals and traditions, as has already been done in the past with other places and personalities, to the point of completely replacing them with ceremonies that are more suited to Christian peoples as has been done with Candlemas, which is also known as the feast of the candles of our Most Holy Virgin Mother."
The pope cut him short, "So let it take root in Forolivii and in Romandiola, and then baptize all of them and establish papal legates to whom allegiance can be sworn, since that land has been ceded to us by the Emperor Rudolph of Alemania14 and is now ours."
"The question is a little more complex, Eminence..." said the historian.
"Explain this to me."
"They, unlike others, have already refused to elect the Most Holy Virgin Mary of Candlemas as their patron, claiming their patron to be an ancient priestess called Livia Drusilla, Diva Augusta15 and protector of these sites and they do the same in the salt pans of Cervia, when they transport the sacred salt they produce in that place, to celebrate this Roman patroness."
"Sacred salt? Diva Augusta?"
"Yes, Eminence, those saltpans were founded by Livio Salinatore, an ancient ancestor of this Livia Drusilla, and still today they send salt from there, during a sacred procession to that city for the feasts to honor her."
"And how can they still believe these things after centuries?" the pope laughed quietly.
"Well, Eminence, you should know that this Livia Drusilla was not a common priestess but the wife of Octavian Augustus and, in Forolivia, some still wish to remember her as such and to keep her as protector, even if it is partially hidden by them, replied the papal historian.
"How do you know all this?"
"I learned everything from a friar of a particular religious order that was founded in Ravenna by Emperor Otto III two hundred years ago, a very good friend of Geremia Gotto and Guido Bonatti."
"Geremia Gotto and Guido Bonatti? The armed patarines16 who claim to be four hundred years old and Frederick II's Ghibelline astrologer?" exclaimed the pope.
"In person, Excellency, and they are both in Forlì among the ranks of the Ghibelline in the service of Guido da Montefeltro."
"Oh dear, the excommunicated captain of the Ghibellines?"
"Yes, Excellency!"
"But are they all that mad!"
"Indeed, Excellency, they are a little peculiar."
"You also spoke of a religious order founded by Emperor Otto III in Ravenna. What religious order are you talking about?" asked the pope.
"In Ravenna, Otto III founded a religious group with all practices and beliefs that still seem to be extant today."
"What practices and beliefs do they follow?"
"They seem to affirm the reincarnation and pre-existence of souls."
"Oh, there you are. Gnostic heresy.17 Is that why they say he is four hundred years old?"
"That may be so, Otto III was that young emperor who two centuries ago claimed to have been Charlemagne and appointed an antipope named Sylvester II to be re-elected as Constantine the Great, the legitimate heir of the Roman Empire," replied the historian.
"Charlemagne, Constantine? Would you like to explain better what he did?" asked the pope.
"Certainly, Excellency. Otto III, around the year 1000, entered the Aachen cathedral, marked a point on the floor, then took a pickaxe, began to break through the floor and found the body of Charlemagne underground, it was still intact sitting on a throne, adorned and all decked out as a bishop, holding the Gospel in one hand and the staff of command in the other."
"And why did he do this?"
"Because he said he was his reincarnation and that he had returned to take his place as Holy Roman Emperor."
"And then?"
"He took the bishop's tiara that Charlemagne had on his head and put it on his own, then took Charlemagne's staff of command and said he had returned to rule."
"And then?" the pope asked more and more incredulously.
"Then, still not happy, he went to Ravenna and founded this particular religious group and appointed the bishop of Ravenna antipope, with the name of Sylvester II, to crown him emperor, exactly as Pope Sylvester had crowned Constantine emperor of the Christians, seven centuries earlier, at the time of ancient Rome," explained the historian.
"And why did he create this final scene?"
"To make everyone believe he was also the reincarnation of Constantine and to take back what he considered to be his property, that is the territories the church was trying to take from him, the empire, thanks to the gift of Constantine."
"And so he said he was the reincarnation of Charlemagne and Constantine to take the land back from the Holy Roman Empire?" exclaimed the pope.
"Those, Your Holiness."
"Those who?"
"Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II also exhumed the body of Charlemagne and proclaimed something like this. And I would bet that this tradition has also been handed down to the astrologer Guido Bonatti and to Friar Geremia Gotto."18
"But these are all crazy."
"I told you, Excellency, that they were a little particular," concluded the historian.
4. Confrontations between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Romagna
But why did the Church want Romagna?
What had happened between the papacy and emperors in those times?
Let's go back a few decades and take a look at a chronicle of the time.
Romagna in 1200
Although Pepin King of the Franks19 had given Romagna to the Church almost five centuries earlier, it was never perfectly under its possession. Often, therefore, many places in Romagna almost always joined the empire and towards the mid 1200s Gregory IX tried to take it back by force of arms. Because of the disagreements between Emperor Frederick II and the Church,20 the people of Romagna were also split between the Ghibellines and Guelphs as happened with many other peoples in Italy.
The residents of Forlì continued to obey the laws of the empire, while the residents of Faenza and Ravenna obeyed those of the Church.
Forlì, formerly named Forum Livii, in particular, was one of the most Ghibelline city in Italy and it was not a coincidence that Guido Bonatti, one of the best astrologers of his time, despite being born in Florence, requested and obtained citizenship of Forlì, believing that location to be the final place left in the world that maintained imperial traditions after the fall of the ancient empire of Rome, for reasons that you will soon discover for yourself.
In 1240, when Pietro Traversari died, who was the leader of the Guelphs of Romagna and lord of Ravenna,21 Ravenna and Faenza were conquered by Frederick II who went to Romagna and one after the other put siege to them.
In less than a week Ravenna fell and surrendered.
Now it was Faenza's turn to surrender, but the city, believing that Frederick II's forces were insufficient to cause it to capitulate, did not surrender and the emperor placed it under siege.
5. The siege of Faenza
Faenza resisted for seven months, infuriating Frederick himself, since years before he had already conquered the town and it had come to terms with him.
Furthermore, during the siege Frederick II ran out of gold and money and had to resort to the help of the Forlì people to conquer Faenza, he also requested the Forlì people to issue special augustarians22 in leather, equivalent to imperial gold coins, which he then repaid in gold to the inhabitants of Forlì once the town had been taken and sacked.
So, after having conquered Faenza, Frederick II wanted to raze it to the ground and erase it from the earth, saying all who were against the Faenza who, defeated, were unable to appease his fury in any way and had begun to have it dismantled by teams of scouts.
The people of Faenza, not knowing what else to do, even turned to their nearby enemies from Forlì, begging them to intervene and intercede with the emperor to stop the devastation he was causing to the detriment of their city.
The people of Forlì accepted the requests for help from Faenza and went as a delegation to intercede with the emperor to halt the destruction of the city.
Frederick, not without objections and protests against the people of Faenza, whom he considered traitors,23 finally agreed the city could be spared. However, he imposed that the city should become imperial definitively and should be governed under the banner of a mayor selected from among their Forlì neighbors, since they had helped him and proved to be Ghibellines in heart and soul. So he ordered that the people of Faenza stop doing "Guelph things" and merge with Forlì.
Thus the two cities became, until Frederick's death, two cities united in a small state governed by the same imperial laws and defended by the same arms.
Furthermore, because of their loyalty, Frederick granted the people of Forlì the right to use the black eagle on a gold field24 on their municipal coat of arms and gave them the right to mint imperial coins because of their assistance and loyalty and, for this reason, the people of Forlì proudly left.
Many things changed, however, in 1249, when Frederick II died in Puglia and especially in the following years, when Carlo d'Anjou defeated Frederick II's son, Manfredi, in Benevento in 1266.
Thus the Guelphs, who had been expelled from Florence a few years earlier after their defeat at the battle of Montaperti, began to regain strength in Florence and Bologna. A battle began in those cities for dominance over the Ghibellines, which briefly extended to all of Romagna, with the support of the Church that claimed that land to be hers.
And so, while Carlo I d'Angiò was named pope the imperial vicar of Tuscany, the Tuscan Guelphs returned to Florence and the region, while the Tuscan Ghibellines had to leave and take refuge in Romagna, which remained one of the last of the Ghibelline sites still loyal to the imperial laws in Italy.
6. The dragon, the Guelph cross and the Ghibelline cross
At that time, from 1186, various apocalyptic stories circulating around Italy were attributed to the prophet Gioacchino da Fiore, which spoke of the coming of a dragon with the seven heads of seven antichrists.
Six heads had already been assigned to various historical figures of the past but the last, and most important, was still vacant.
Thus the final missing head of the dragon was quickly attributed to Frederick II, by a certain type of clergy, who believed in the prophecies of Gioacchino da Fiore, because of the fact that, in addition to wanting to reform the church, it was said that he was born out of a union between a prelate and an old nun. Furthermore, Frederick II spoke Arabic, his bodyguards were Arabs and, during the Crusades, he was more concerned with making peace than war in the Holy Land, so much so that he was nicknamed "the Dragon", while other Franciscan and poorer circles of the Church, paradoxically, attributed to him the role of reformer, as the expected apocalyptic persecutor of the corrupt Church and especially of the cardinals.
For this reason many poor friars and priests, and later also white Guelphs, fought in the ranks of the Ghibellines.
The Guelphs used a papal cross as their symbol and flag; while the Ghibellines, while not denying the existence of God, had the reverse an imperial cross with contrasting colors that mirrored the Guelph one and summed up the different philosophy between the two factions.
But how were they made and what was the difference between the two symbols? Let's take a look.
Perhaps the Ghibelline and Guelph crosses arose as symbols, even before the Guelphs and Ghibellines, during the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne.
But it was during the struggles of investiture between the papacy and the empire that they developed into a struggle for the right to elect emperors and administrators by the pope and bishops against the right claimed by the emperors to be elected directly by God without the intermediation of the Church.
Both symbols represented the power of God but there were two main ways to represent and understand them.
The first was imperial, that is, the power of God was pre-existent and was granted by Him in person directly to the emperors so that they ruled, already from the time of ancient Rome, long before the coming of Christ and the church.
The other was the power of the Church which, representing the will of God on Earth, acted as a direct intermediary and to whom the power of control by God over men had been granted and it was therefore he who decided whether or not to give it to the emperors.
Various disputes and many religious and military groups arose from these two visions, or philosophies, such as the Carolingians, the Templars, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
Two main symbols were used to represent these factions and ideas:
One was the cross of Saint John the Baptist, which was used by the Templars and Ghibellines.
The other was the cross of Saint George employed by the clergy and the Guelphs.
When the nobles and clergy organized expeditions or crusades, they put these flags on their heads that bore white or red crosses, depending on whether the divisions were under the nobles or the church or if emperors or popes had assembled them.
But how were these two flags made and what did they mean?
First you need to know that purple was the official color of ancient Rome and represented the Roman emperors, while white represented the color of God.