Fornacalia

Origins and history

Roman writers connected the Fornacalia with Numa Pompilius, the king remembered for setting out many of the city's rites, though the sources give this as a possibility rather than a certainty. Ovid, in his poem on the Roman year, pictured the oven as a goddess whom farmers asked to govern the heat of their grain. The name comes from fornax, Latin for an oven. The purpose was practical as much as devotional: bread had to come from household ovens unspoiled, and the rite asked divine help for that.

The wards of Rome

The city was divided into curiae, thirty wards that between them took in the whole body of citizens. Each ward kept the Fornacalia on a day of its own, and the curio maximus, the priest who led the curiae, proclaimed the timetable every year. The dates were made public: tablets were hung around the Forum, where each ward showed its own sign so that people could see when its rite would fall. Someone could therefore live as a Roman without knowing which ward was his, since the tie between a person and a ward had grown loose by later times.

Grain and ovens

Families brought far, the grain that English calls spelt, to the meeting hall of their ward. It was toasted there and then offered in sacrifice, with the aim that bread baked in the household ovens would not be burnt in the year to come. That offering tied everyday cooking to the goddess of the oven: the heat that could spoil a loaf was placed in her care. The festival ran for about thirteen days in all, which gave the wards time to keep their separate days before the whole city gathered at the end.

The closing day

The festival closed with the Quirinalia, nicknamed in jest the feast of fools. All the curiae came together then for a single shared meal. Anyone who did not know which ward was theirs could take part in the rites that day, and that is where the joke came from. The custom also hints that ward membership had come to mean little to most Romans, even though the curiae in principle took in every citizen. Lactantius, writing in late antiquity, shows the Fornacalia still being kept.

How Fornacalia is kept

Each year the curio maximus announced the dates. Rome's thirty wards then kept the Fornacalia in turn, each on the day assigned to it, with its own sign displayed among the tablets around the Forum. In the ward's meeting hall, families offered far, the grain called spelt, toasted for the purpose. When every ward had taken its turn, all of them assembled for the closing meal on the Quirinalia. People who could not name their own ward were welcome to join the rites on that final day.

When and where

It fell in early February and ran for roughly thirteen days. The Fornacalia itself probably opened on the nones, the fifth of the month, and the Quirinalia, its last day, began around the seventeenth. Since the wards kept different dates, the priest known as the curio maximus declared the schedule anew each year.

The festival belonged to the city of Rome and to its wards, the curiae, which in the age of the kings and the Republic took in the whole citizen body. Each ward held its own rite in its meeting hall, and notices were put up around the Forum so that everyone could see the dates. It was a city affair from start to finish.

What Fornacalia means

Fornax was the oven understood as divine, so the festival joined the most ordinary task of the household, baking bread, to the gods. Farmers in Ovid's poem ask her to control the heat of the grain; the offering of toasted spelt asks her to keep loaves from burning in the year ahead. The shared meal on the closing day gave the wards a common table, and the joking name for it, the feast of fools, made room for those who did not know where they belonged.

Questions people ask about Fornacalia

See also

LustratioAn ancient Greek and Roman cleansing rite using processions and animal sacrifice.IncubationThe sacred practice of sleeping in holy shrines to seek divine healing and dreamsNemoraliaA three-day Roman festival of torches and garlands for the goddess DianaInsufflationA ritual of blowing and breathing, used at baptism to drive out evil and breathe in grace

Good reading and sources

• Fornacalia on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

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