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On 24 JuneFlorence celebrates the feast day of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint ofthe city. This religious observation is accompanied by city-wide events andcelebrations and has beenpracticed in Florence for centuries. The modern festivities retain many practiceswith historic origins, such as parades and the observation of Mass in theDuomo, but the intra-city Calcio Storico – a cross between football,rugby, and wrestling – did not exist until the late sixteenth century.Prior to this, tournaments were held as part of the celebrations – in one ofthe key dates in the Florentine calendar, which often lasted for several days. Tournamentsin republican Florence were often associated with a civic event or religiousobservance and were organised and sponsored by the Signoria, the highest levelof contemporary government. The majority of these tournaments took the form ofjousts and included a diverse range of competitors such as Florentine citizens,the younger sons of elite families, and condottieri in Florentineemploy. In contrast to some other parts of contemporary Europe, Florentine tournamentswere open to non-nobles – with some exceptions. In rare cases, such as in 1513,group combat was held instead of jousting. Luca Landucci, a Florentineapothecary who kept a detailed diary between 1500 and 1514, recounts thecelebrations for the feast day and briefly narrates the tournament – and how itwent wrong.[1]&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Landucci is often sparing withdetails in his diary, with the exception of accounts of his own property andaffairs, for example the effect of the weather on the fruit trees at his villaat Dicomano. However, it is easy to recreate the tournament in 1513 fromLanducci’s limited information on the participants, their equipment, andespecially from his comments on the aftermath. We are informed, for example,that the tournament was held in the Piazza della Signoria, the political centreof the Republic of Florence. This is unusual as tournaments were more commonlyheld in the Piazza Santa Croce, as is the modern grand final of thetournament’s successor, the Calcio Storico. Temporary stands were alsobuilt to accommodate the spectators who came from miles around for the feastday. To give an idea of the size of the crowd, the spectators at the feast day inthe following year, 1514, were so numerous that they even used the rooftopssurrounding the piazza. Landucci recounts such vast crowds of people ‘neverhaving been known, for numbers of strangers had come from many different parts’– including four Roman cardinals in disguise.[2]&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Within the list, the area where thecombat took place, a wooden castle was constructed as the centre and focus ofthe fighting, but no description or iconographic representation has survived. Thistemporary edifice was defended by one hundred men, who aimed to resist thethree hundred attackers.[3]A secondary near-contemporary Florentine commentator, Giovanni Cambi, recountsthat the castle was eighty braccia, or arm-lengths, around but, in contrastto Landucci, states that there were four hundred attackers ‘of our territory’ –possibly soldiers in Florentine employ.[4]Both sides used ‘lances and divers weapons’, which may have been whatever theyhad to hand, and crucially fought in the tournament without armour. There isnothing particularly unusual with the story so far – it was an urban tournamentfought without armour. Both writers describe what happened after the combat,which led Cambi to decry the whole tournament as a ‘festa diabolica’.[5]The actions of the defenders, or possibly a small group of them, who led ‘badlives’ caused serious injuries and some deaths amongst the attackers – itshould be remembered that intentionally killing an opponent was never a part oftournaments. These injuries were inflicted by a somewhat unusual tournamentweapon – unbaked bricks! The defenders may have taken these bricks from aconstruction site in Florence, possibly on their way to the tournament, andwere presumably thrown from the walls of the wooden castle onto the unarmouredattackers. It is easy to imagine the effect of an unbaked brick, travellingwith some force, on an unarmoured body, and it is no surprise that some of theattackers were badly wounded and others died later in hospital.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; It is not clear from the sources ifthe defenders intended to cause such injuries to their opponents. There is norecord of names, district origins, or factional groupings in the records. Cambiclearly views these men as evil, due to the outcome of this festa diabolica,but Landucci simply refers to the brutal nature of the fighting – which is notdifficult to imagine. However, this was not the end to the fatalities. In theireagerness to watch the spectacle, a group of soldiers built a platform over anearby doorway and invited two courtesans to watch the combat. This platformcollapsed onto two brothers and all four were killed. It is little surprisethat the celebrations for the feast of St. John in the following year, 1514, wasa smaller scale, and arguably safer, joust of ‘about sixteen jousters, allsoldiers’.[6][1] A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516 by Luca Landucci continued by an anonymous writer till 1542 with notes by Iodoco del Badia, trans. by Alice de Rosen Jervis (London: J. M. Dent &#38; Sons LTD., 1927), p. 270.[2] A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516, p. 275.[3] Ideas of those ‘within’ defending against those ‘without’ hadexisted from the earliest days of the tournament.[4] Istorie di Giovanni Cambi Cittadino Fiorentino, Volume 3,ed. by Fr. Ildefonso di San Luigi (Florence: Cambiagi Stampator Granducale, 1786),pp. 23-24.[5] Istorie di Giovanni Cambi, pp. 23-24.[6] A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516, p. 276.[cite]