introduction

‘Cerimonia nihil aliud est quam honor debitus Deo aut hominibus propter Deum.’ With this concise formula, jurists and Masters of Ceremonies of the papal court summed up both the deeply felt value and the twofold meaning, political and religious, of the complex of rules they followed, in public and in private, on all solemn occasions. Previous historians have taken little interest in analysing ceremony – a complex and elaborate system inseparable from the nature of the authority it exalted – as a key to changes in the way power was expressed. Even Paolo Prodi, in his stimulating book on papal monarchy, though interested in such sources, handled them gingerly; indeed he emphasized the difficulty of detecting ‘changes in the symbols and ceremonies, whose basic fonction in the process of the legalisation of power is to appear immutable’. But now the historiographical ground has shifted; one can no longer shrug off the findings of anthropology and sociology. Deciphering symbolism has become a crucial tool for comprehending the essence of princely power, or, here, of pontifical power, as expressed both in court and outside it, in diplomacy, in the city, in feste and in ceremonies.

Compared with those of other courts in Italy and Europe, Rome's rituals, jealously guarded by its assiduous Masters of Ceremonies, touchy defenders of tradition, might seem imbued with repetition and immobility.