The communal remembrance dispute

The bas-reliefs in the Porta romana are more confusions than designations, more memorial concatenations than precise recollections. We see the patriotic echo of the Battle of Legnano (May 29, 1176) and the return of Ambrose in the guise of Archbishop Galdino della Sala, hero of the freedom of the Church and the civic values of the commune. Ambrosian remembrance accompanies the three ages (consular, podestral and popular) of the commune. From the Credenza di sant Ambrogio (1198) to the Pace di Sant Ambrogio (1258), we dwell at greater length on the popular moment of Ambrosian remembrance, notably through the analysis of party names in Galvano Fiamma. Is it possible to measure the reality of this popular appropriation of Ambrosian memory and to identify the availability of this memory for partisan capture? We suggest a number of avenues, including the anthroponymic test (measuring the frequency ofAmbrosius among feudatories and notaries at the time of Filippo Maria Visconti) and the analysis of the narration of the popular legend of Ambrose in Pietro Maineri's sermons for Saint Ambrose's Day.

Contents

• What did we see on the Porta Romana bas-reliefs?
• Confusions rather than designations, memorial concatenations rather than precise memories
• Beyond the instrumentalization of memory, defining the politicization of remembrance
• On the historiographical concept of "civic religion
• The "bond of division" (Nicole Loraux) and the constitutive dispute of powers
• On the threshold of communal history: the documentary irruption of the consuls
• Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I imperatoris : "they love freedom so much that they refuse any excess of power and prefer consuls to chiefs to lead them"
• Ambrose returns: Archbishop Galdino della Sala, the freedom of the Church and that of the commune
• The patriotic echo of the Battle of Legnano (May 29, 1176)
• The contemporary reinvention of a tradition: the Legnano palio
• The carrocio, the cross of Ariberto da Intimiano and the oath of Pontida
• When the Northern League overturns an old national symbol and inverts the xenophobic divide
• From buffoonery to politics:imbroglio as a mode of action (Lynda Dematteo)
• The second age of the commune, the exacerbation of conflict and the circulation of podestates
• Milan assumes " leadership of the communal world" (Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur)
• Frederick II, the carrocio taken to Rome as a trophy (1238) and the Popolo : third age of the commune
• Ambrose returns, but as a name
• From the Credenza di sant Ambrogio (1198) to the Pace di Sant Ambrogio (1258)
• The popular moment of Ambrosian remembrance
• Galvano Fiamma and party names: Popolo and Militia
• In Bologna, a "battle hagiography": Petronio, Ambrose and the Popolo
• Divided remembrance within the basilica: monks and canons, cardinals and decumani
• The "political heart of the Ambrosian Popolo " (Paolo Grillo)
• Can we measure the reality of this popular appropriation of Ambrosian memory?
• The anthroponymic test: Ambrosius among feudatories and notaries at the time of Filippo Maria Visconti
• Can we identify the availability of this memory for partisan capture?
• Pietro Maineri's Saint Ambrosius sermons (after Silvia Donghi)
• Theexemplum of the chastened rich man, the De Nabuthae and the hymn Apostolorum supparem
• Hi sunt thesauri Ecclesiae : the poor are the treasure of the Church
• The founding novel of Italian cities and "the impossible serenity of cities in the face of their origins" (Renaud Villard)
• Founding, destroying, founding and destroying again: the legend of Milan's origins and the original dispute over memory
• What is founding? "The operation of the foundation consists in making necessary the submission of the thing to what it is not" (Gilles Deleuze)