The meaning of the city of Siena’s deep devotion to Our Lady is tied to Mary’s role in the history of salvation. The civic community, which identified totally with the Church, saw in Mary the image of itself, the sign of a humanity loved by God and saved by Him. Veneration of the Virgin here dates back so far that it is extremely difficult to establish its origin with certainty. Even before the tenth century, the area where the Cathedral now stands was dedicated to Our Lady and identified in medieval documents as the “Piano Sancte Marie.” Starting in the twelfth century, Mary was the symbol of the new commune being formed, to the point that the gifts of land and subjection of castles to Siena were made in honor of the Virgin, as attested by the formula repeated identically in the deeds and documents of the period: “Ecclesie S. Marie et populo civitatis Senensis.” From these same documents we learn that the commune required the lords of the subject lands to give a gift of wax candles every year on the Feast of the Assumption, reiterating in this way the desire to trust in Our Lady, protector of the city.
The unbreakable bond between Siena and the Virgin was sealed definitively in 1260, the year of the famous battle of Montaperti, when the Sienese defeated the Florentine troops despite their military superiority. To succeed in this undertaking against Guelph Florence, Siena took the side of the Ghibellines, seeking support from Manfredi, the son of Frederick II of Swabia. On the eve of battle, the men of Siena, led by the magistrate Buonaguida Lucari, gathered together in the Cathedral to pray to the Virgin Mary, offering to Her the keys of the city and invoking Her protection. This act of entrusting the city to Mary should not be viewed as a sudden urge sparked by fear of the enemy troops, but as the natural development of a feeling that in the thirteenth century was shared and already deeply rooted in the urban population.
Right after the victory at Montaperti, the Florentine painter
Coppo di Marcovaldo, who had been taken prisoner by the Sienese as a result of the battle, was forced to earn his freedom by painting for Siena a wooden altarpiece of the Madonna enthroned, now kept in the Basilica of the Servites, one of the city’s other Marian sites. In the meantime, the town statutes praised Mary as Ruler over Siena, and they began to mint coins bearing the inscription “Sena vetus civitas Virginis” (Ancient Siena, city of the Virgin). The seals of the Republic affixed to every document presented the image of the Virgin and Child, accompanied by the words “May the Virgin preserve ancient Siena which She Herself makes beautiful,” making devotion to Mary an emblem of cultural identity.
Over the centuries, the veneration of the Sienese for the Blessed Mother has never waned. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, in a time of plague and famine, the city authorities took themselves to one of the most ill-reputed areas of Siena, in front of a miraculous image of Our Lady made of terracotta, and vowed to Her to build a great church, today’s Collegiate Church of Santa Maria in Provenzano. In Her honor, starting in 1655, every 2 July the Palio is run, at the end of which the winning contrada pours festively into the church and offers a Te Deum of thanksgiving to the Virgin for the victory.
In 1944, when the World War II front passed through Siena, the keys to the city were offered to the Virgin once again, renewing the consecration to Mary that had been sealed a good seven centuries earlier on the eve of the Battle of Montaperti.