“An act of bravery” is the most appropriate definition of a gesture, the resignation of Benedict XVI, which has left everyone speechless, although there have been a few clues in the past that never, however, became more than faint rumours about a remote possibility, just one of many rumours in circulation, almost fiction. This is instead a real “act of bravery” as one should describe all gestures challenging tradition within a religious denomination, all the more so if this “within” is at the very top and the decision concerns the head of that tradition and of its liturgy. This was a challenge that in a vain attempt to search for precedents harked back to the end of the 13th century and the resignation of Pope Celestine V.