While Umbrian popular religiosity is represented by archaeological finds of the anthropomorphic Italic bronze-figurine type, the speculation of the ancient theologians is represented by the texts of the Iguvine Tables and by the religious ideology outlined in them. These are two profoundly different conceptual worlds, with independent roots, which coexisted in parallel for centuries upon centuries, at times with broad stretches of superficial convergence. During the first millennium BC (the period to which both the archaeological finds and the texts of the Iguvine Tables belong), popular religiosity saw the divinities in anthropomorphic form and expressed itself through ex-votos, while that of the theologians conceived the divine in abstract form and expressed itself in the "word".
At bottom, as Maddalena Fagiani showed in her 2007 work, these are two cultural strata superimposed over time, the first of which, characterized by an anthropomorphic conception of the divinity, goes back to the "Paleo-Umbrian" phase of the 2nd millennium BC, while the second introduces an abstract vision of the divine and represents the contribution of the "Safine" culture that was superimposed on the Paleo-Umbrian one during the 1st millennium BC.
It is true that even in the Iguvine Tables some designations of the divine pertaining to the most ancient phase survive (evidently too deeply rooted among the people for the theologians to erase them), such as the name of Iupater, or that of Marte, or that of Çerfo; but these "names" too are refunctionalized within the new theological vision, in which they represent "spheres" of action of the divine (as Prosdocimi had clearly seen, 1978 and 1989), rather than "gods" in the classical sense. In short, what is represented in the Iguvine Tables is not a true "pantheon", but an ideological system that organizes the idea of the divine.
And it is precisely this religious conception that concerns us here.
The Tables of Gubbio are seven bronze plates discovered in 1444 in the ruins of the Roman theater at Gubbio, and acquired by the Municipality of Gubbio with a notarial deed of 1456, today kept in the State Archive of Gubbio. The seven tables have different dimensions (from 28x40x0.4 cm of Table IV to 57x87x0.4 cm of Table VI) and different weight (from 2.590 kg of Table IV to 15.590 kg of Table VI), and were cast at different periods (Tables III and IV at the end of the 3rd c. BC, Tables I and II at the beginning of the 2nd c. BC, Table V around the middle of the 2nd c. BC, Tables VI and VII at the beginning of the 1st c. BC) with the aim of preserving texts previously written on perishable material (linen, hides, leaves, wood).

The texts contained in the tables (comprising 4365 words, of which, however, only 750 are different) belong to two types, some being liturgical texts of the breviary kind and others internal regulations of the Brotherhood of the Atiedii, the gentilicial association that managed the relationship between the community and the divine world (and certainly also the administrative power). These are nine texts of very varied length, from a few words to the 1866 words of the longest text, originally composed probably around the 8th-7th c. BC, with the aim of fixing the correct forms of the ceremonials and the correct norms of internal management of the brotherhood, author, owner, and addressee of the texts themselves.

The prayers, the rituals, and the prescriptions contained in the Iguvine Tables reveal two distinct ideological aspects: indeed, while the relationship with the divine is founded on utilitarian principles (do ut des), the vision of the world is vividly religious and reveals a profound communion of man with creation.
To attune oneself to the mentality that informs the texts of the Iguvine Tables, one must start from the awareness that those ceremonies do not represent a form of individual religiosity, as we moderns would be inclined to imagine, but rather the public instrument by which the community relates to the divine. Prayer, too, does not belong to the intimate sphere, but to the "contractual" one. Prayer, the persklum, is originally nothing other than a «request» (root perk-/prek- «to request»), and metonymically in the Iguvine Tables the same word is also used to indicate the entire 'sacred ceremony'. After all, the various prayers accurately transcribed in Tables VI and VII are substantially always 'requests', such as this one that reads, for example, in Table VI side b:

«Be favorable, be propitious with your peace to the Fisian Mount and to the Community of Gubbio, to the name of the former and to the name of the latter. O Fisovio Sancio, keep the Fisian Mount and the Community of Gubbio safe. O Fisovio Sancio, keep safe the name of the Fisian Mount and that of the Community of Gubbio; keep safe the warriors, the curiae, the heads of household, the livestock, the farmsteads, the harvests.»

The efficacy of the man-god relationship is founded on the knowledge of the "efficient word", that is, the one handed down by tradition, which alone has the capacity to reach the divinity and consequently to act upon reality. The divinity manifests itself in every aspect of the real, and only the "efficient word", by correctly naming each single aspect, places it at the center of the man-god relationship, making it the object of every possible prayer and therefore of possible fulfillment. In this sense Prosdocimi (1989) spoke of "word-divinity" and of "action-divinity": if the divine is present in things and in actions, each of the things and each of the actions can realize a divine will favorable or unfavorable to the petitioner. Indeed the divine retains its own inscrutable will, which, however, can be prompted to grant the prayer only if the latter is carried out "according to ritual".
The centrality of the word is inherent in several key terms of Umbrian ritual practice: iuka "motto", aiu "saying, maxim", naraklum "announcement", fato "formulation", armune "mention", tiçel "rite", tiçit "declares". The importance of correct ritual expression appears evident in the invocation of Table VI, side a: «With this formula I address a prayer to you, O Giove Grabovio, and precisely trusting in the ritual formula, I address my prayer to you, O Giove Grabovio. O Giove Grabovio, I turn to you with this mature ox, as an expiatory sacrifice for the Fisian Mount and for the Community of Gubbio.»
And to those who ask what the characteristics of the efficient word must be, the Tables offer a fairly clear answer in the very etymology of a couple of terms of the rite: arsier and arsmor. The meaning of arsier is that of "(ritual) formula, traditional practice", both (1) because this is solidly consistent with the meaning of the passages in which the occurrences of arsier recur, and (2) because current linguistics recognizes as valid the connection of arsio with arsmo- "traditional entity", with arsmatia "relating to the traditional entity", and with arsmahamo "let one dispose oneself according to traditional entities", and (3) because the whole group admits comparison with Old Irish ad, pl. ada "customs, solemn usages" (on all this see Prosdocimi 1978:749). Thus the "efficient word" is the one "according to traditional ritual practice": it is in tradition that the community's power to relate to the divine and to make it favorable resides.
The concern for the formal aspect bound to the correct execution of the rite is very much alive in the Iguvine text. It suffices to cite a part of the prayer of Table VI side a:

«O Giove Grabovio, if in the ceremony sacred to you something has gone wrong, has gone amiss, has been deferred, has been anticipated, has been lost, if in the ceremony sacred to you there is a defect that is seen or that is not seen, O Giove Grabovio, if then it is right that purification be made with this mature ox, as an expiatory sacrifice, then, O Giove Grabovio, purify the Fisian Mount, purify the Community of Gubbio. »

One of the most significant aspects of the Iguvine conception of the divine is constituted by the divinities with a "speaking" name: these are divine entities organized within the sphere of a traditional divinity and which have been called "of the Act" (Prosdocimi) because they consist essentially of "divinized actions", to which the need was felt to supply a "theological sanction". Here is how Prosdocimi brought to light the "theology of the Act" on which the Iguvine conception of the divine is founded: «the system operates essentially through a structuring which, expressed by the theonyms, distributes the divine into divinities according to their function in relation to human being and human action» (Prosdocimi 1989:485); and again: « What remains characteristic and central to understanding the system is the continuity and validity of the principle whereby act-divinities, that is name-divinities, can always be created… coexisting with the act-divinities of the past, which have become "figures"» (ib.).
The divinities of the Act consist of notions of varied meaning, such as "the Hearth", "the Dedication", "the Defense", etc. Such notions acquire divine nature from being initially framed within the sphere of action of a "traditional" god, a "true and proper" god, so to speak; however, once the process is set in motion, there also occur cases in which the divinization takes place without the attribution of the name-divinity to one of the "superordinate" divine spheres, but simply in itself. As Prosdocimi rightly observed (1989:485), any notion is liable to be divinized, if only as a "god of the moment": but «the god of the moment is a species … of the more general principle constituted by the act-gods or function-gods ». Consistently with the survival of the few cults going back to Indo-European antiquity, the act-gods in the Iguvine tables turn out to be distributed among only three spheres, that of Giove (or Giovio), that of Marte (or marzio) and that of Cerere (or çerfio).
Of the "giovio" sphere are Tefro Giovio "the Hearth" (Umbrian tefro- from *teps-ro- "heater"), Trebo Giovio "the Settlement" (from *treb-o- 'building'), Hondo Giovio "the Victorious" (from *ghoundh-o- "vanquisher"), Torsa Giovia "the Rout" (of enemies, from *tors-a- "terrifier"), Dicamno Giovio "the Dedication" (in sacrifice, from *dika-m(e)no- "that which is dedicated"), Ahtu Giovio "the Action" (sacrificial, from *ag-tu- "action"). Of the "marzio" sphere are Ahtu Marzio "the Action" (sacrificial), Picovio Marzio "the Woodpecker" (augural), Çerfo Marzio "the Principle of growth" (vegetative). Of the "çerfio" sphere are Hondo Çerfio "the Victorious", Torsa Çerfia "the Rout", Prestota Çerfia "the Defense" (from *prai-sta-ta- "the hinderer").
It is likewise understandable how, in the speculation of the Italic theologians, among the most urgent functions of the divine, and which it was therefore most significant to realize as Word-divinities, there were those relating to the liturgy in general, and in particular to the key aspects of Italic liturgy: Spetur "the Observer (augural)", Ahtu- "the Action (sacrificial)", Dicamno- "the Dedicated (in sacrifice)", Pordouint- "the Offerer", Vestiçio- "the Concoction (sacrificial)". What, on the other hand, may seem anomalous at this point is the fact that two of these "Word-divinities" (Pordouint- and Spetur-) are not accompanied by the normal adjective that qualifies their divine sphere of expression (that is, "Giovio" or "Marzio"). It seems possible that in these cases the extreme level of Umbrian theological speculation was reached, the one whereby the Word-god detaches itself from belonging to the sphere of a "true and proper" divinity in order to constitute itself in itself as a "true and proper divinity".
This interpretation of the particular theonymic values of the Iguvine text also entails our recognition of the level of sophisticated reflection that Umbrian theology had already reached in protohistoric times. Far from being a matter of crude animism, this phase of Umbrian religiosity can rightly be considered a form of pantheism, in certain respects not very dissimilar from the one that in the same centuries was maturing in the India of the Upanishads.
A kind of "proof" of what is maintained here can be seen in the way the Iguvine officiant addresses the divinity in prayer. In the phrase of appeal the name of the divinity called is not in the vocative case, but is found in the same case as the object of the verb "to invoke", that is "You", so that this name can be understood only as a "complement of denomination" or "apposition", as one may wish to call it, not as a "complement of invocation": for example «I invoke You as Tefro Giovio». This entails that the theonym is not the divinity, but an appellative of the divinity. As if to say that the divinity can present itself under various denominations. One must then recognize the particular sensibility toward creation that such a pantheistic vision entails.
But what counts most is that in the texts of the Iguvine Tables there emerges an image of man that coincides in a striking way with the one that modern Western man has of himself.
The ancient Umbrian is in fact a man who places himself at the center of the universe, a man-cosmos, and not a man-atom, such as other cultures have conceived. Well before the Cartesian cogito ergo sum, the Umbrian theologian placed himself at the center of a universe that he sought to bring under his own control through the practice of the nomino ergo est.
That of the Tables of Gubbio is a pragmatic man, who deals with the divine on an equal footing, applying in this relationship the same parameters he abides by in social relations: on one side the utilitarianism of do ut des, on the other the value of loyalty and respect for the commitment undertaken.
He is therefore a loyal man: the centrality of this ethical attitude is entrusted to the divinization of the commitment itself, which takes substance in the theonym Fiso Sancio (relating to the commitment between men), and in that of Fisovio Sancio (relating to the commitment between man and god). The divine is moreover the guarantor of the "social pact", foundation of the community, and of the federal pact, foundation of "foreign policy".
He is an optimistic and positive man, who counts on the possibility of finding in all things the mers, a term we translate as "the just", but which etymologically indicates measure, equilibrium.
Characteristic of the mentality of these ancient fathers is the rejection of war:

«O Šerfo Marzio, O Prestota Šerfia of Šerfo Marzio, O Torsa Šerfia of Šerfo Marzio, be favorable and propitious with your peace toward the army of the Community of Gubbio, toward the Community of Gubbio, toward its veterans in active service and those on leave, toward the recruits in service and those awaiting call-up, toward their name and toward her name»

(Table VI side b)

It will be Rome that transforms the army, inherited as an instrument of defense, into an instrument of conquest and expansion, just as it will transform the very ancient routes of Umbrian trade into paved consular roads, suited to the movement of enormous military contingents. But the rural classes, which constituted the productive backbone of the peninsula and which (as Cavalli Sforza demonstrated, though he erroneously attributed those genetic traits to the "Etruscans") have preserved their own genetic heritage intact for three thousand years, will continue to experience war as a problem to be kept far from their own land, from their own life. Exactly as in the prayer of Table VII side a: «O Prestota Šerfia of Šerfo Marzio, by a distant road turn away the stranger from the army of the Community of Gubbio and from the Community of Gubbio.»

Bibliography consulted

[Here the enormous corpus of studies on the Iguvine Tables is deliberately ignored, and only the few publications referred to in the present work are noted]

Augusto Ancillotti, Romolo Cerri, Le tavole di Gubbio e la civiltà degli Umbri, Edizioni Jama, Perugia 1996, pp. 464.

Augusto Ancillotti, Alberto Calderini (eds.), Atti dei convegni IRDAU (Gubbio 2001 and Gubbio 2003), Perugia, 2009.

Maddalena Fagiani, Studi sul sacrificio italico, doctoral thesis, University of Perugia, 2007.

Aldo L. Prosdocimi, L'umbro, in "Lingue e dialetti dell'Italia antica", vol. VI of "Popoli e civiltà dell'Italia antica", Rome 1978.

Aldo L. Prosdocimi, Le religioni degli Italici, in AA.VV. "Italia", Milan 1989.

Augusto Ancillotti, Full Professor of Glottology and Linguistics at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Perugia, now retired. In the field of scientific research he has worked on the formation of the Indo-European languages (Kassite, Thracian, Umbrian), on the theory of genetic linguistics, on toponymy, on the analysis of the logico-semantic "deep level", and on text pragmatics.