«Non sarebbe stata bella festa senza questione». Vita cerimoniale "di contado" e conflittualità tra la pianura e le Alpi alla fine del medioevo

The lively letters of Carteggio sforzesco report many clashes - between individuals, groups of young people and communities - that broke out during festivals in the rural areas of central and upper Lombardy. It confirms the efficacy of a representation according to which seasonal regeneration rituals, aiming to give new life to the cosmos through ceremonial battles, required divisions in local society and conflict between different parties. The documentation, however, also allows us to go deeper into the analysis of these social tensions and their contexts. In fact, frictions were not usually exacerbated by hostility towards minorities or by the opposition between the classes. On the contrary, one of these texts coincides almost verbatim with the famous passage from Il Cortegiano, stating that in Lombardy noblemen and peasants danced and played together during countryside festivals. People were rather stirred up by territorial rivalries, from the opposition among villages, or between a peripheral valley and the nearest hegemonic town, to conflicts between jurisdictions and subjects of neighboring states. For these reasons the Sforza and their officials were often absorbed in preventive control of festivals linked to community life as a whole, and in suppressing the tumults that accompanied them, judging these manifestations of collective identity with the same suspicion with which they looked at other aspects of local culture.