ABSTRACT
The year nineteen hundred and forty four and the eighteenth of June, at 8.30 pm in the Cathedral Church of Siena: To execute the decision already made on the sixteenth of the same month, which interpreted the feelings of the entire population and decided to make a new donation of the city to the most glorious Virgin Mary, invoking her protection and help in the dangers of the present war. In faithfulness to this high promise the author makes himself ready, together with the honoured Priors of the Contrade – the true and genuine expression of the popular spirit of the Sienese – to sign below this act that will remain perpetually on your altar and is engraved in the history of Siena as a testimony to the faith that illuminates our hearts [even] in all the darkness of the times.
