Hi:

Over the weekend God spoke to me about Piacenza and 2010. He gave me my task for the year. I am to walk the city (already a task as I have to map it accurately for the 18th century) and proclaim to the city that this is the year of the Lord’s freedom. The rest of the post will make more clear what that might mean for this city. I told God I was happy to do this as long as He gives me a cell phone. I figure I can make it appear like I am speaking on the phone when I do my proclamations. That avoids the appearance of being the strange and crazy lady from Canada. And actually, a friend here has just offered me a cell phone. So lots of fun ahead as I walk the city and have the enjoyable task of telling it that God’s freedom is here. Here’s the post I wrote the other day.

Snodo

Snodo is Italian for ‘crossroads’. It is a word, used by the city officials, to describe Piacenza.  It is the word they use in a plan in the hope to obtain EU funds for development of the city. But it has a deeper meaning in both contemporary and historical Piacenza.

Since before I arrived here, I have been seeking to understand the spirit of the city.  Certainly, I have a sense of a population living in some sort of comfortable fog. It is a fog that allows for a daily life full of small decisions like which pastry shop to stop in on the way home, or which friends to invite for dinner this week. But this fog obscures some important issues and truths that at some point may impose themselves on the city’s inhabitants, perhaps in very uncomfortable ways. It appears to be almost a form of wilful ignorance, a type of denial that allows for a remarkably pleasant and ordinary lifestyle.

When I spoke of this to a friend here, she offered that this was actually the case for most of Italy and not really particular to Piacenza. That led us to a discussion of how to understand the city. She explained first that compared to the slightly larger city to the southeast, Parma, the people of Piacenza were historically understood to be unfriendly, closed mouth, unsmiling, and perhaps a bit dangerous (described by those in Parma as thieves and murderers). I have no such experience here. I can’t believe how friendly people are to me. We agreed that such descriptions may reference back to the assassination of the first duke in 1547 by 4 young noblemen. This led to Imperial occupation, more because the Emperor wanted the valuable city rather than in support of the duke’s son and heir who promptly moved his court out of Piacenza to the rival city of Parma. When the new duke regained control of Piacenza (in 1556) the agreement included Spanish troops to be stationed in the city for another 35 years.

My friend then said something that really made me sit up and listen. She described Piacenza as a ‘place where the powers meet’. The two powers in question are the military and the church – the twin pillars of empire since Constantine in the 4^th century. How has that worked out in Piacenza?  At the moment it is manifested in large parts of the city that have been used by the military and left off limits to citizens. Some of these were historically militarized sites; some of it was actually church land. As the military now leaves those sites there is some conflict between the city and those who own the land about future use. The city has also been full of churches especially from the 9^th and 10^th centuries until the Napoleonic suppression. This was an important crossroads for pilgrims on their way to Rome. In the 10^th through 17^th centuries this city supported a large number of convents, churches, pilgrims’ hostels, and the commerce associated with a large number of people passing through. My friend believes that Via Scalabrini, a street in Piacenza, is singular in Italy for the number of churches along it.

As I thought about all of this my mind returned to the 10^th century. At the end of the 10^th century Pope Urban III stopped in Piacenza. He was from this area and was returning from a church conference in France. There, some believe, he announced the first crusade. Whether it was there or here in Piacenza at the piazza in front of Santa Maria de Campagna, one account I read described the Pope holding a meeting here that required 30,000 people to be camped around the city. At the time the city likely barely had that many people living within it. Here, in the minds of Europeans of the time the Pope called for a (re)militarized church, one that would go out specifically against Islam in the Middle East.

So a snodo, a crossroads, a place where wealth and people have flowed freely to and through. And because of that wealth it has attracted thugs and warlords under the guise of all sorts of legitimate and illegitimate institutions; it has suffered wars and occupations, struggled over control of city land and water and continues to do so today. It is that attribute, the very location and geography of the place that causes Piacenza to be a key in God’s plans, a place where the powers have met over the centuries.

Cheryl