Popular Participation in Renaissance Siena’s Romanitas Program

Abstract With no clear textual or physical proof of an ancient Roman settlement, Siena faced considerable challenges to its assumed antiquity in the trecento and quattrocento. The damaging insistence by Giovanni Villani, Leonardo Bruni, and Flavio Biondo, among others, of Siena’s Gallic—and thus non-Roman—origins prompted the Sienese state to develop an elaborate civic program in defense of its antiquity and Roman-ness, or Romanitas . Building upon expanding literature of the republic’s endeavor to manufacture evidence of a Roman foundation, this paper examines the ways in which the general Sienese population engaged this state-endorsed effort to promote classical origins and participated in communal performances that popularized Siena’s Roman identity. Through the celebration of the she-wolf as a symbol of Siena, the continuation of key Roman practices, and spiritual devotion to patron saints selected from the early centuries of the church, the Sienese public proved critical to the success of the Renaissance city’s claim to antiquity.