“Preda Ringadora” (Harangue Stone)
Piazza Grande
Modena, May 2024
“In the north-eastern corner of Piazza Grande, very close to the Palazzo Comunale, is the Preda Ringadora (which in the Modena dialect means ‘harangue stone’), a large rectangular marble block over 3 metres long which probably originally belonged to a Roman building. During the Middle Ages, the Preda was used as a stage for orators, but also as a place to carry out death sentences and display corpses (so that someone could identify them) as well as being used as a stone of dishonor: according to what emerges from the Municipal Historical Archive, every insolvent debtor on market day, after having walked around the square with a shaved head and a special headdress, preceded by the sound of a trumpet, had to declare himself as such and then was forced to ‘stay bare-assed on the preda rengadora, which must be well greased with turpentine, three times saying three times cedo bonis, cedo bonis, cedo bonis’, that is, promising to pay off the debt with his assets and this had to happen for three consecutive Saturdays at the request of the creditor who could then evaluate the possibility of getting his money back by recovering it from the debtor's assets.” (Piazza Grande, Wikipedia)
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