That headline could mean many different things!

But, today I use it to refer to the national holiday in Italy, which happens every 6 January.  The holiday commemorates both the day the three pagan kings found the infant Jesus and presented him with gold, frankincense and myrrh and, in Florence, the modern holiday also pays homage to the Medici family and their tradition of reenacting the visit of the Magi.

Epiphany is, of course, the Christian feast day celebrating the revelation of God in his Son as human in Jesus Christ. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally (but not solely) the visit of the Magi to the Christ child, and thus the physical manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles.

Interestingly enough, when we in American refer to the “12 days of Christmas” and start from December 1st, we’ve got it all wrong.  The first day of Christmas is actually 25 December and the 12th day is 5 January.  Just one of many changes we have made!  In other words: the evening of 5 January is 12th night.

In Florence, 6 January is a holiday (as it is throughout Italy).  We didn’t even have school!  Yippee!  Since the 6th fell on a Friday, this weekend is a long one for most Italians.  Benissimo!

OK, since I’m in Florence, let’s start with Florence.  Everything I’m discussing can be found in these references:

https://www.visitflorence.com/florence-events/cavalcade-

magi.htmlhttp://www.theflorentine.net/lifestyle/2014/12/cavalcata-dei-magi/

http://www.duomofirenze.it/feste/epifania_eng.htm
Although it isn’t known precisely when the parade known as “The Cavalcade of the Magi” first began in Florence, documents show it existed by 1390. Every three years (after 1447, every five years), the wealthy powerful lay confraternity of the Magi organized a lavish pageant on Epiphany, which also celebrated the day as the time that John the Baptist, patron saint of the city of Florence, baptised Christ in the Jordan River.

Everything is so complicated.

Back in the Renaissance period, the confraternity met regularly at San Marco, a Medici church.  High-ranking members of that ruling family participated in the pageant, for the Medici’s in particular esteemed the Biblical Magi. The pageant also included influential community leaders and distinguished men of letters.

After 1417, the Cavalcade was financed by the Signoria of the Florentine Republic through a tax it imposed on the Jews; they had obviously never heard of political correctness.

The original procession took a different route than what is done today: three separate groups of participants converged from three different areas of town, meeting in front of the Baptistery (and then, from 1429, in the Piazza della Signoria) and then they all went together to San Marco church.

However, in 1478, the procession was suspended, probably because of the Pazzi conspiracy, and it would seem that Lorenzo the Magnificent, who survived the attack, had no intention of providing other occasions for potentially angry crowds to mill around the city. The procession resumed a decade later. However, when the Medicis were banished from the city in 1494, Savonarola, despite having taken part in the procession in the past, suppressed it, now considering it a perverse “Medici thing.”

One of my favorite Renaissance frescos is in the Chapel in the Medici Palace in Florence. Cosimo de’Medici had  this luxurious fresco painted in 1459 in the chapel of the family mansion in Via Larga by the artist Benozzo Gozzoli. In these frescoes, numerous Medici family members are depicted, including Giuliano and probably also Lorenzo the Magnificent. When Cosimo would withdraw for brief periods to share the friars’ life at San Marco, he was housed in a cell frescoed by Fra Angelico with The Magi Presenting their Gifts to the Christ Child. Some years later, in 1482, Marsilio Ficino, a philosopher and Cathedral Canon closely linked to the Medici, composed a treatise entitled “The Star of the Magi” (De stella Magorum).  There can be no question that the Medici family held a special place in their hearts for the moment from the Scriptures in which the Magi brought gifts to the Christ Child.

Although Savonarola was able to stop the parade in 1494, the celebration was resurrected in 1997 during celebrations of the Seventh Centennial of the Florence Cathedral. Grazie a dio!

Thus, as already stated, every year since 1997, on 6 January or the Feast of the Epiphany, the Cavalcade of the Magi again takes place. It starts at the Pitti Palace, wends its way through Piazza della Signoria and arrives finally in Piazza del Duomo, in the area between the Cathedral and the Baptistery formerly known as ‘Paradise’.
The three Magi on horseback, wearing Renaissance costumes inspired by those in Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes, are accompanied by a cortège of hundreds of other costumed personages, among whom the members of Florence’s Historical Football Association and representatives of towns in the Province of Florence, along with horsemen, footmen and standard bearers. The pageant includes Ladies and Lords, Knights, country folk, soldiers, religious figures and more: drummers and the sbandieratori (flag-throwing company of the Uffizi) enchants the public with their skills in throwing and waving their flags along the way and in Piazza della Signoria.
Once the cavalcade reaches il Duomo, the solemn proclamation of the Epiphany passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew is given by the Archbishop. Then the actors of the Magi, accompanied by the many children whose parents bring them to see the Cavalcade, present their symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Christ Child, who is the main ‘actor’ in a real-life crèche erected in the Piazza, with an ox, donkey, and many other farm creatures brought in from the Tuscan countryside.

 

OK, OK, va bene, enough talk! Let’s look at my pictures!  I’ve got so many, I’ll post them in several posts over the next week or so.