The patrons of Cividale del Friuli are Saints Donatus and Romulus, celebrated on 21 August.
The date the town never misses, though, is another: on 6 January comes the Messa dello Spadone, the Mass of the Broadsword, a religious rite accompanied by a procession in period costume that re-enacts the entry into Cividale of Patriarch Marquard von Randeck in 1366. It is the mark of a town that was a Lombard capital and a patriarchal see, and that stages that past once a year.