Ferragosto
Public holiday in Italy
Ferragosto is the popular Italian name of the public holiday of the Catholic feast of the Assumption of Mary celebrated on 15 August. It originates from Feriae Augusti, the festival of Emperor Augustus, who made 1 August a day of rest after weeks of hard work on the agricultural sector. It became a custom for the workers to wish their employers buon Ferragosto and receive a monetary bonus in return. This became law during the Roman Renaissance throughout the Papal States. As the festivity was created for political reasons, the Catholic Church decided to move the festivity to 15 August, which is the Assumption of Mary allowing them to include this in the festivity.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ferragosto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.