Emperor Frederick II (1215-50) 

In 1229, Orvieto switched its allegiance from Siena to Florence.  In the period 1229-35, Orvieto appointed a series of Florentines as Podestà. 

An organisation known as the Popolo existed from 1244 and the first Capitano del Popolo was appointed in 1250.  From this point, the Popolo enjoyed the recognition of the commune and participated at least in its foreign policy.

End of the Hohenstauffen Emperors (1250-68)

The Dominican Fra Costantino Medici, the author of a Legenda Sancti Dominici (1246-7), was bishop of Orvieto in the period ca. 1250-6.

Pope Urban IV stayed in Orvieto from October 1262 until September 1264.  Cardinal Ugo di San Coro died in the city in 1263 and was buried in San Domenico, a church that Urban IV consecrated in the following year.

According to tradition, the future St Bonaventure, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order stayed at San Francesco in 1262-4. 

Corpus Christi

Urban IV had been a priest in Liège in 1246 when Bishop Robert of Liège instituted a new Eucharistic feast that became known as Corpus Christi in his diocese.  This feast was held five days after Trinity Sunday, and it celebrated the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated Host.  [Juliana of Cornillon, a beguine of Liège, had a recurring dream in which the moon appeared with a small piece missing.  In ca. 1228, Christ appeared to her and told her that the moon was the Church, and that the missing portion represented a feast that was missing from the Church calendar.  She therefore began to campaign for a new Eucharistic feast that would celebrate the miracle of Transubstantiation.  Bishop Robert consulted the Dominican scholars in Paris, and on their advice instituted the new feast in the diocese.]

In September 1263, Urban IV issued the bull Transiturus, which extended the feast to the whole church.  He celebrated it (out of sequence) at Santa Maria Prisca, probably on the 19th June 1264, using a Mass that he seems to have commissioned from the future St Thomas Aquinas.  The bull was not widely disseminated, probably because of disputes within the Church relating to the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

[The feast of Corpus Christi was not universally celebrated until 1317.  It seems to have fallen into abeyance even in Orvieto: the earliest recorded celebration after 1264 relates to the celebration of 1337, although the feast was probably celebrated there as elsewhere after 1317.  The celebration of 1337 involved an extended public holiday and a procession through the city that marked it as the most important religious feast in Orvieto.  Indeed, the procession still takes place each year on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday in its original form.  Pride of place is given to a tabernacle that houses the Holy Corporal, which is a precious relic from the so-called Miracle of Bolsena.]

Miracle of Bolsena

This miracle apparently took place in 1263, during Urban’s stay in Orvieto, although the earliest surviving account of it is in eight enamel panels of the reliquary (1337-8) in the Duomo, and they were based on an account that was written after 1317.  [The earliest surviving copy of this document dates to ca. 1563, and this formed the basis of two inscriptions describing the miracle and its aftermath: in Santa Christina, Bolsena (1573) and in the Duomo, Orvieto (1601).]

The first of the eight enamels mentioned above shows a priest is celebrating Mass.  The written source tells us that the priest was from Germany, and that he was making a pilgrimage to Rome in order to resolve doubts that assailed him in relation to the doctrine of Transubstantiation.  He had stopped to celebrate this Mass at the ancient church of Santa Christina at Bolsena, and as he consecrated the Host, it bled and stained the altar cloth (corporal).  He rushed to Orvieto, and the second plaque shows him before the Curia, telling Urban IV about the miracle.  In the third, Urban IV sends the Bishop of Orvieto to collect the Holy Corporal, and in the fourth, he duly removes it from the altar in Santa Christina.  In the fifth and sixth panels, the bishop leads a procession to take the relic to Orvieto, and Urban IV leads the people out of the city to meet it.  In the seventh panel, Urban IV displays the relic to the people of Orvieto and in the eighth, he commissions the Office of Corpus Christi from St Thomas Aquinas.

Angevins and the Papacy (1268-1305)

Nicolò Farnese commanded a company of soldiers from Orvieto in support of King Charles d’ Anjou at the Battle of Benevento in 1266.  The defeat there of the Hohenstauffen gave a boost to the power and self-confidence of the communes of the Guelf cities, notably Perugia and Orvieto.

Pope Clement IV stayed in Orvieto for most of April 1266, and consecrated San Francesco during his stay.

Charles d' Anjou arrived in Orvieto in 1268, although even the Guelfs did not relish his presence.  However, the Monaldeschi strongly identified itself with the Angevin cause.

Pope Gregory X arrived in Orvieto in June 1272, after having left Viterbo after Guy de Montfort murdered Henry of Cornwall there.  He officiated at the funeral of Henry of Cornwall at San Francesco in 1273.  Charles d’ Anjou, King Edward I of England and his wife, Eleanor of Castile attended the service. 

Gregory X stayed in Orvieto for a year while he prepared for his departure for France and for the Council of Lyon.  Two cardinals died in the city during his stay:

1. ✴Annibaldo Annibaldi della Molara in 1272; and
   

2. ✴Odo di Chateauroux in 1273. 
   

Both were buried at San Domenico.

It was at this time that the longstanding feud between the Monaldeschi and Filippeschi first flared into the open, when members of the Filippeschi family murdered four members of a family allied to the Monaldeschi.  The Podestà found them guilty of the crime, and then fled to avoid the vengeance of their family.  The problem subsided when the Filippeschi paid a heavy fine, but the precedent for future conflict had been set.

The Dominican Aldobrandino Cavalcanti became bishop in 1273.

Pope Martin IV (1281-5) was extremely unpopular with the Romans, who considered him to be merely a client of Charles d' Anjou.  He was crowned at Sant’ Andrea in the presence of Charles d’ Anjou and stayed in the city from March 1281 until June 1284.  He filled the city with Frenchmen who were hugely unpopular.  One of these men was Cardinal Guglielmo di Braye, who died in the city in 1282.  Arnolfo di Cambio had just finished a fountain in Perugia at this point, and he was commissioned to sculpt the monument to Cardinal Guglielmo di Braye (ca. 1282).  The works seems to have been done in Rome, although Arnolfo must have been in Orvieto for the erection of the monument in San Domenico.

The Popolo had been deprived of power since the late 1260s, but they now began to recover as they formed a focus for anti-French feeling.  Ranieri della Greca, who was Capitano del Popolo in 1280-1 and again in 1284 was the catalyst for this recovery.  Force of circumstance made the Filippeschi his allies.  His first act as captain in 1280 was to order the rebuilding of the Palazzo del Popolo, and the clearing of the Piazza in front of it.  In 1281, he refused to intervene in an anti-French riot, and the French insisted on his subsequent resignation.  His re-election in 1284 caused Martin IV to leave Orvieto as a sign of his disgust.  However, his attempt to raise a Ghibelline revolt failed.  The power of the popolo survived, but it was from this point exercised through a committee of guild representatives rather than through a single individual.  From 1292, the arrangement was formalised in the Signori Sette, which comprised the leaders of the seven most important guilds.

Orvieto was the seat of the Curia under Pope Nicholas IV (1288-92) from June 1290 until October 1292.  He became the first pope to accept the posts of Podestà and Capitano del Popolo of Orvieto, posts that he exercised through the papal vicar.  He also laid the foundation stone of the Duomo, granted indulgences to those helping to meet the cost of construction, and arbitrated in the disputes that had until then prevented the demolition of property that was necessary before construction could proceed.

Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303)

A long papal interregnum followed the death of Nicholas IV.  In 1293, Orvieto launched a short expedition against Amelia.  They also considered a pre-emptive strike to take the papal territory in the Val de Lago, but seem to have decided instead on a more subtle strategy, which involved a deal with one of the candidates for the papacy, Benedict Caetani, the future Pope Boniface VIII.  Caetani agreed to countenance the Orvietan usurpation of the Val de Lago in return for his plans to arrange a marriage between a member of his family and Countess Margherita Aldobrandino. [Margherita had inherited the Aldobrandini lands in 1284, and Caetani had been the executor of her father’s will.  Had Caetani’s plan succeeded, this would have been her third marriage; she was to marry five times in total.]Orvieto then invaded Bolsena and the other towns of the Val de Lago, but Orsello Orsini had pre-empted Caetani’s plans by marrying Margherita.  The disappointed Caetani excommunicated Orvieto on his accession to the papacy a year later and removed its episcopal status.  Orvieto remained defiant, and when Orsello Orsini died in 1295, they re-opened negotiations with Boniface VIII.  In 1296, Margherita married a member of the Caetani famly, and a year later Orvieto was forgiven in return for a stiff fine.  Although papal suzerainty of the towns of the Val de Lago was reasserted, their de facto submission to Orvieto was allowed to stand.

Boniface VIII spent five months (June – October) in Orvieto in 1297.  Statues of him were erected over the two principal city gates; he canonised St Louis IX in San Francesco; and he celebrated the first Pontifical Mass in the new Duomo.  Soon after, he granted an indulgence to help with the financing of the construction of the Duomo and he made a generous contribution.  He remitted the fine imposed earlier in return for the new papal palace that was then in construction (Palazzo Soliano).  Finally, he mediated between Orvieto and Todi, which led to the alliance between them in 1301.