Calendimaggio
- Mélanie Bruniaux
- Apr 27
- 3 min read
Updated: May 1
Calendimaggio is the festival in north-central Italy that celebrates the return of spring. It is celebrated on May 1st, because it refers to the Kalends of the month in the Roman calendar, which honored the goddess Flora, responsible for the blossoming of trees. It corresponds to the feast of Beltane (Ireland, Scotland, Wales) or Walpurgis Night (Central and Northern Europe), and astronomically contrasts with All Saints' Day on November 1st.
How was Calendimaggio celebrated in the Middle Ages?
During this festival, people weave floral wreaths from wildflowers and freshly picked green branches. They also crown a May Queen, sometimes accompanied by the Lord of the Woods, and set up a Maypole, a tree around which people dance and sing. Sacred purifying bonfires are also lit.
E voi, donzelle,
a schieracon li vostri amadori,
che di rose e di fiori,
vi fate belle il maggio
Ciascuna balli e
cantidi questa schiera nostra.
Ecco che i dolci amantivan per voi,
belle, in giostra.
(“Ben venga maggio” ballad of Agnolo Poliziano, 1454-1494),
On Calendimaggio, all work was suspended to allow the celebrations to begin with parades and processions, songs and dances, walks and lavish banquets, tournaments, open-air concerts, and courtly entertainment. Boys and girls exchanged flowering sprigs (called "maggi") or hung one on the door of their beloved. It was also the time for falconry hunting. The art of falconry developed throughout Europe starting in the 12th century. In Frederick II of Swabia's "De arte venandi cum avibus," we know that it could also be practiced by women since it was a much more refined art than hunting.
Libro-dOre-ms111-Bm-Avignone
Calendimaggio and the Church:
The English Puritan writer Philip Stubbes (c. 1555 – c. 1610) testifies to the religious authorities' complete disfavor of May Day celebrations:
"In May, on Whitsunday and other days, young men and women, old men and old women, wander at night through woods, thickets, hills, and mountains, spending the night in merriment; and they return in the morning bearing branches and foliage to cheer their assemblies. […] But the greatest treasure they bring from the woods is their Maypole, which they carry with great veneration to their homes. […] And thus, having raised it, with handkerchiefs and fluttering streamers on top, they throw straw all around it, tie green boughs to it, and plant branches and shrubs in the ground. And they begin to dance in a circle like the pagans when they erected their idols, of which this is a perfect copy, or rather the same thing. I have been told [...] that, of the forty, sixty, or a hundred maidens who go into the woods at night, barely a third of them return untouched."
The Maypole
In Medici's Florence, May was celebrated with a decorated float representing the "Triumph of Love," which paraded through the city streets, surrounded by a procession of children carrying flowering branches. During their stops in the squares, the choir of young women would sing "Ben Venga Maggio..." while dancing in circles.
Painting of Francesco Pesellino Il trionfo di Amore, Castità, e Morte (1450)
lga Scarsi: "For a long time, the traditions of Calendimaggio were untouched by any religious influence, remaining merry celebrations exclusively for the common people. Starting in the 17th century, in an attempt to convert them, the Church unwittingly gave rise to evocative epic-themed performances called "Maggi Dramatica," which were added to the ancient festivities and portray the winter-spring antagonism as a struggle between two rival armies: the Christian one marching towards the Holy Land, embodying Good, against the Saracen or Turkish one of the infidels, symbolizing Evil. The Maggi Dramatica are today especially popular in Tuscany, where the recitation of ancient verses is mostly performed outdoors, with the final triumph of the morally positive forces and all the actors united in the general jubilation and sometimes joined in a dance of very ancient memory: the Moresca."
The Maypole in the 16th and 17th centuries was very tall and decorated with green garlands, ribbons, or painted with two-tone stripes: the tradition of dancing around the Maypole is rooted in England, Italy, Germany, and France at the court of Louis XIV. As paintings of the period confirm, dances around the pole took place without the intertwining ribbons, which appeared (or reappeared) rather in the Victorian era.
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