History
A Catholic History of Siena
Siena's Catholic story runs from Saint Ansanus, the tradition's baptizer of the Sienese, through a pilgrim hospital on the Via Francigena and the vow of 1260 that made it the city of Mary. It gave the Church Saint Catherine and Saint Bernardino, two Piccolomini popes and Alexander VII, and in 1730 the hosts of San Francesco. The Palio keeps the Marian vow alive, and the city has renewed its gift to the Virgin in 1944 and 2020.
Before 400
Saena Iulia and Saint Ansanus
Siena began as an Etruscan settlement on the cathedral hill, and Rome made it a colony, Saena Iulia. Its Christian story starts with Saint Ansanus, who by tradition was a young Roman, denounced by his own father, who preached and baptized in the town and so became the baptizer of the Sienese. He survived the ordeal of boiling oil, was held in a tower in Castelvecchio and was beheaded at Dofana on the Arbia river on December 1, under Diocletian. The tower is built into the Church of the Prison of Saint Ansanus, which opens only on his feast.
These details come from late tradition. The first bishop of Siena on firm evidence is Eusebius, at the Roman synod of 465. Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius and Victor became the city's four advocates, and they kneel before the Virgin in Duccio's Maestà. Ansanus stayed the city's principal patron, and his feast still opens the year of the contrade.
