page_title: Oath of Pontida
section_title: The following documents
hierarchical_section_title: Oath of Pontida / History / The following documents
caption_attribution_description: English: Oath of Pontida (Amos Cassioli, 1885) Italiano: Giuramento di Pontida (Amos Cassioli, 1885)
context_page_description: The oath of Pontida, according to tradition, would have been a ceremony that would have sanctioned on 7 April 1167, in the abbey of Pontida, near Bergamo, in Italy, the birth of the Lombard League, or of a military alliance between the municipalities of Milan, Lodi, Ferrara, Piacenza and Parma aimed at the armed struggle against the Holy Roman Empire by Frederick Barbarossa.
  The oath of Pontida does not appear on contemporary documents, being mentioned for the first time in 1505, then three and a half centuries after the traditional date of 7 April 1167.
context_section_description: In addition to the chronological aspect, which would seem to demonstrate the non-existence of the oath of Pontida as a constitutive pact of the Lombard League due to the two agreements signed before 7 April 1167, the first mention of the incident must certainly also be considered which is quite posterior.
  In particular, the oath of Pontida appears for the first time on a document dated 1505 by Bernardino Corio - therefore about 350 years after the canonical date of 7 April 1167 - which is called Historia Patria and which has as its subject the history of Milan.
  Then all the subsequent documents referring to the oath of Pontida were inspired by the Historia Patria by Bernardino Corio. In an excerpt from the code of 1584 Successores S. Barnabae Apostoli in Ecclesia Mediolanensi, which refers to a note on the archbishop of Milan Umberto Pirovano, it is reported that:
  [...] This archbishop, a man of the greatest prudence, after having held a meeting with the surrounding cities in the church of San Giacomo in Pontida in the Bergamasco to favor the rebuilding of the city of Milan, happily completed his desired initiative; but when death came, he could not fulfill his longed-for desire. [...]
  — Successores S. Barnabae Apostoli in Ecclesia Mediolanensi
  In Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium series historico-chronologica, which was compiled by Giuseppe Antonio Sassi in 1755 and which is linked to the aforementioned text of 1584, it can instead be read:
  [...] The Galesini, in the Synod Series, reports that this archbishop has been busy because his metropolis, destroyed by Federico, flourished again: that for this purpose he held a meeting in Pontida with the rectors of the neighboring cities to swear an alliance to free themselves from a game of terrible slavery and thus return to their original freedom; and finally that he attended you. [...]
  — Giuseppe Antonio Sassi, Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium series historico-chronologica
caption: The oath of Pontida in a 1885 painting by Amos Cassioli
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