which the winner was the contestant who could spin the longest thread from raw wool without breaking it. The men could show off their skills in other contests, the most common of which was the scifa, wherein a large rectangular plate used for pasta (the scifa) was suspended from a cord attached to a ring. Riders would attempt to run through the ring at a gallop.
We find nothing of all this today in the modern small-town fairs in Lazio, even though many towns put on parades and games in costume in imitation of the old traditions, often organized by the local Pro Loco94 or by local confraternities.95 Until the 1960s, however, the sagre were mainly a market where the peasants sold their wares, even if very little money actually circulated and transactions were often by barter: salt for eggs, cheese for some other product needed for domestic subsistence.
Today sagre and fairs, their ancient peasant origins forgotten, along with the subsistence economy that made them necessary, are a Sunday outing for families, with tastings and with displays of typical products not always locally made. Many of these are dedicated to a single particular product that over time has been established in the area. Among the most famous is the strawberry festival in late May and early June at Nemi, in the Alban Hills just southeast of Rome. Today, the women and girls still wear the old costumes of the fragolare, or “strawberry women,” and parade through the town’s streets in a lively and beautiful procession. Finally, during the first days of October, Marino holds sagra in honor of the god Bacchus, with the famous fountains of wine, which still today attract throngs of tourists and the curious from near and far.
Roman Carnival
If Carnival is an institution as old as the world, the Roman version must be as old as the city, and its celebration says a great deal about the nature of its lively party-loving people.
It is difficult to establish the birthplace of this festival celebrated all over the world: it may have begun in India and been brought from there through Asia Minor to the Mediterranean. The handsome Greek god Dionysus became the flaccid, florid-faced, almost effeminate Roman Bacchus. His curly hair wreathed in vine leaves and ivy, he rode a wagon, accompanied by satyrs and bacchants, across the whole ancient world, the center of one of the most popular and enduring cults of antiquity. In his honor, the ancient Romans instituted the Saturnalia, celebrated between the end of December and the beginning of January. Tradition traces the Roman Carnival back to these raucous festivals, in which young and old, without caste or class distinction, abandoned themselves to merrymaking and banquets. The first masks appeared during the Saturnalia. Behind their shelter, people reveled in the streets and abandoned themselves to every sort of behavior, including the not strictly licit. Cart races, orgiastic dances, wild animal hunts—all outlived paganism and are documented, along with orgiastic banquets, as late as the Gothic domination.
The moving spirit behind Carnival came primarily from the wealthier classes, since the expenses one could run up in preparation for the masquerades and banquets could be enormous. The people participated mostly as spectators, but also actively in many games and races. Often the old documents provide resounding testimony of the contrasts of life even in the great civilizations, like the Italian Renaissance. The same people who had their palaces decorated with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo could find amusement in making Jews run races naked, like animals.
Beginning in the late Middle Ages, and for many centuries to come, even bishops and high churchmen participated officially in the Roman celebrations. They opened their sumptuous abodes, embellished for the occasion by famous architects and resplendent with gold and works of art, dances, theater, and banquets without end.
Carnival lasted a different amount of time every year, but always coincided, by definition, with the period just before the beginning of Lent. The word carnevale itself means farewell (vale) to meat (carne).
Among the best-attended celebrations were the festivals held in the piazza then known as Agone (reflecting its ancient use as a racetrack), now Piazza Navona, and in Testaccio, where races were run, followed by all-night feasting and carrying on. In the Middle Ages, these celebrations acquired a character of official solemnity, as well as great political importance, because they were largely regulated by statutes. They were often attended by the pope himself as well as any political bigwigs, ambassadors, and illustrious visitors who just happened to be passing through the Eternal City at that moment—a sort of modern Olympic Games. In fact, the opening day of Carnival was sometimes postponed to accommodate the imminent visit of some VIP. The people and the various corporations (trade guilds) were also enthusiastic participants in the organization of what was considered “the biggest party in the world.”
A rare manuscript of the fourteenth century that recounts the organization of the Testaccio race describes how the leaders (known as caporioni), nominated by the Senate, went around to the various rioni, or city quarters, accompanied by a bull, to collect the offerings of food needed for the feast: “One saw nothing but hams, cakes, and pairs of provature, dry and fresh, good fiaschi of every sort of wine, reds and whites, and salamis and cheeses and pizzas of pasta de provatura, and tongues . . .”
The Roman Carnival achieved its maximum splendor in the Renaissance, thanks to the Venetian-born Pope Paul II (1464–71), who offered the people banquets that the chroniclers called splendidissimi. The tables were set up expressly for the occasion under pavilions constructed in the gardens next to the basilica of San Marco, decorated with precious vessels on which were served the most refined preparations of meats and fish and excellent wines. Important citizens and magistrates sat at numerous tables, while the abundant leftovers were thrown to the people who watched noisily and amusedly.
Often, after the races, it was the people themselves who sat at the papal table. During the Carnival of 1470, “His Holiness Pope Paul had races run, that is, those of the Jews, of men, of youths, of old men, and at Testaccio the other usual contests—both asses and water buffalo through the street of Santa Maria del Popolo to San Marco—and made lunch for the citizens in his Garden the Monday of Carnival.”
Contemporary accounts describe sumptuous triumphal carts and masquerades that crossed the city. They also detail magnificent banquets, including long lists of the foods that were served, and the “parade dishes” that cooks, true artists of culinary ephemera, created to celebrate the greatness of the hosts.
The “parade dishes,” already in vogue in the great medieval banquets, were the gaudiest manifestation of Renaissance cuisine. They were enormous constructions of food, cooked and mounted only to be displayed: for example, a cooked sow, dressed in her skin and surrounded by sucking piglets, or a peacock, again cooked, dressed in his plumage, displaying an imposing and extremely colorful wheel, while a flame emerged from his beak.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, theater became the great event of Carnival. But the parties and banquets did not give up their privileged position, even if customs gradually changed. At balls, the fashionable drink, the exotic chocolate, was served with pastries, and barrels of wine were distributed to the people stationed under the front door, though sometimes, to the laughter and the amusement of the guests, the wine was poured directly from the windows.
This is the moment when the most beautiful Roman palazzi opened up to parties and balls. Here is one account of the details of a ball at Palazzo Farnese held during the carnival of 1751:
At five o’clock was distributed the first sumptuous refreshment of every sort of water and fruit ices, cakes, biscuits, and other pastries in superior abundance to the numerous company and to the great contest of the masks; the ball continued and at eight o’clock were brought into the middle of the room various small tables laden with precious cold foods and various foreign wines, with a prodigious quantity of various pastries, whence those Princes and knights could generously serve the Princesses and Ladies. Nor was such generosity restricted only to the nobility, but passed to satiate the large number of the masks divided through the Gran Sala and in the Loggia. At the same time was opened a grandiose apparatus of a table, with Credenza,96 raised on several steps, full to overflowing with an infinity of precious cold dishes with equal abundance of wines. . . . Meanwhile, the ball continued both in the noble Hall and in all the other rooms, and at 11 o’clock was carried in the third, similarly generous refreshment and, however, satiated both by the magnificence of the feast and the splendor