Oath of Pontida

Oath of Pontida (1851) by Giuseppe Mazza

The Oath of Pontida ("Giurament de Pontida" in Lombard, "Giuramento di Pontida" in Italian) refers to putative historical event where an oath made by the representatives of the cities of Northern Italy to make the Lombard League on April 7, 1167 in the town of Pontida in the province of Lombardy. The joined forces of the Lombard league would join together and defeat the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano.

The first references of the oath are in 1500s, but it inspired the supporters of the Italian Risorgimento who opposed the Austrian occupation of much of Northern Italy. It was a metaphor for a unified Italian resistance against Germanic domination. The Oath of Pontida was popular theme depicted by 19th century painters. The event is memorialized in a poem by Giovanni Berchet.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oath of Pontida.

The revolutionary leader Garibaldi in a proclamation issued in Bergamo on August 3, 1848, made reference to the oath, when he claimed: "Bergamo will be the Pontida of the present generation, and God will bring us a Legnano!".^[1]

With the beginning of Northern League, Italianists have diminished their celebration of the event as an early expression of national unity, and it has instead become adopted and celebrated by partisans of the regionalist Lega Nord, imbuing the event with seccesionist overtones. The Lombard government does celebrate the day of the Battle of Legnano as Lombardy Day.

References