Reliquias sagradas y exaltación municipal. El culto a San Placido en la Sicilia española (siglos XVI y XVII)

This article analyses the use of the cult of Saint Placidus in Sicily for political purposes through the use of the scholarly production of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The devotion to this Benedictine monk and his fellow martyrs, attested since the Middle Ages, found new impetus in 1588 with the discovery in Messina of the alleged relics. The grandiose festivities organised on the anniversary of the inventiones offered the local ruling classes the opportunity to assert municipal glory in competition with rival Palermo in the struggle for the role of the island’s capital. A role sought, therefore, from a political-religious point of view by the extensive use of hagiographic piae fraudes, of which the false relics constitute the most important visible element, fully connected to the extensive local tradition of false privileges and pseudo-city chronicles.