Patria del Friuli
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Patriarchate of Aquileia Patria del Friuli () | |||||||||||
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| 1077–1433 | |||||||||||
 State of the Holy Roman Empire | |||||||||||
| Capital | |||||||||||
| Official languages | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||||
| Government | Ecclesiastical principality | ||||||||||
| Patriarch | |||||||||||
• 1068–1077 | Sigehard | ||||||||||
• 1412–1420 | Louis of Teck | ||||||||||
| Legislature |
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| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||||
| 774 | |||||||||||
• Patriarch Sieghard of Beilstein invested with immediate comital rights | 3 April 1077 | ||||||||||
• Territory secularised by Venice | 7 July 1420 | ||||||||||
• Territory officially ceded to the Republic of Venice as an Imperial fief | 1433 | ||||||||||
• Emperor Charles V renounces all Imperial feudal rights to the territory. | 1523 | ||||||||||
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| Today part of | |||||||||||
The Patria del Friuli
Foundation
The former
Sieghard in turn safely conducted the king across the
.Expansion
The Patriarchate subsequently extended its political control in the area: regions under Aquileian control in the following centuries included the Friulian lands up to Cadore, the city of Trieste and the central parts of the Istrian peninsula. At its maximum height, the Patriarchate of Aquileia was one of the largest states in Italy. Noblemen from the Patriarchate were participants in the Crusades. In 1186 Patriarch Godfrey crowned Frederick Barbarossa's son, Henry VI, as King of Italy: in retaliation, Pope Urban III deposed him.
From 1127 the
In the early 13th century, particularly under Volchero (1204–1218) and
, which had been a favourite residence of the patriarch since the 13th century and soon became a large city.Rivalry with Venice
The patriarchs had regained the rule of the Istrian march from the
The Counts of Görz had retained some interior Istrian lands around Pazin (Mitterburg), which they bequeathed to the Austrian House of Habsburg in 1374. In view of the Venetian threat, the city of Trieste submitted to the Habsburgs in 1382.
Since the transfer of the patriarchal residence to Udine, the Venetians had never lived in peace with the Patriarchate, of whose Imperial favour and tendencies they were jealous. From about 1400, Venice under the Doge Michele Steno and his successor Tommaso Mocenigo began to enlarge its dogado by occupying the Aquileia hinterlands. At the same time, the Patriarchate suffered internal conflict between the citizens of Cividale and Udine.
In 1411 this turned into a war which was to mark the end of the Patriarchate, Cividale having received support from most of the Friulian communes, the
followed.Secularisation
The temporal authority of the patriarch was lost on 7 July 1420 when its territories were secularised by Venice. Doge
In 1445, after Patriarch Ludovico Trevisan at the Council of Florence had acquiesced in the loss of his ancient temporal estate in return for an annual salary of 5,000 ducats allowed him from the Venetian treasury, the war could be considered really over. Henceforth only Venetians were allowed to hold the title of Patriarch of Aquileia. The former Friulian state was incorporated in the Venetian Republic with the name of Patria del Friuli, ruled by a General Proveditor or a Luogotenente living in Udine. In 1523 Emperor Charles V ultimately renounced any Imperial feudal rights to the former Aquileia territory.
Parliament
The Friulian parliament evolved out of ad hoc patriarchal councils of increasingly greater size, convoked in the 13th century to obtain the financial and military support of the Friulian barons in the near continual wars of patriarchs with their neighbours. By the century's end, the institution had become regularized and in the early 14th century it spoke of itself as acting "in the name of the whole population of Friuli" (nomine totius universitatis Foriiulii). During the entire period of patriarchal rule the parliament's primary function was military. Barons, ecclesiastics and towns participated according to their military responsibilities as listed in the talea militiae. These responsibilities were fixed and periodically changed by the parliament. The patriarchal demesne itself owed service according to the talea. The patriarch's chief influence over the parliament lay in his appointment of gastalds in the towns, by which means he could influence the choice of representatives the towns sent to parliament.[2]
The parliament met up to ten times a year, and was especially important during vacancies in the patriarchal office, which were frequent. Plenary sessions never lasted more than one day, and the main work of the parliament was done by committees (consigli, singular consiglio), of which just two were regular. The first was composed of sixteen men—two churchmen, two barons, eight
The parliament had
The parliament cooperated with the patriarch in treating with foreign powers, but it had no role in the Venetian conquest and incorporation of Friuli into the Domini di Terraferma in 1420. Nonetheless, it continued to function in the same relation to a lieutenant (luogotenente) appointed by the Venetian Senate as it had had with the patriarch. Udine and Cividale ceased to participate and the parliament was divided into two assemblies for the regions east and west of the Tagliamento. In the mid-16th century, a separate body—the corpo della contadinanza—representing the rural districts was created. A 16th-century antiquary, Count Girolamo di Porcia, remarked nostalgically that Friuli under the patriarchs had "more the form of a republic than of a principality" (più a forma di repubblica che di principato).[2]
References
- ^ Carla Marcato, "The Friulian Lexicon", in Rosa Mucignat, ed., The Friulian Language: Identity, Migration, Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), p. 63: "at least since the twelfth century, the designation Patria del Friuli ("Fatherland of Friuli") has been used to indicate the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which as a territorial entity dates back to 1077. ... The designation Patria del Friuli continued to be used ... during Venetian rule over Friuli."
- ^ a b c d Helmut Georg Koenigsberger, "The Italian Parliaments from their Origins to the End of the 18th Century", in Politicians and Virtuosi: Essays on Early Modern History (London: The Hambledon Press, 1986), 27–62 [originally published in The Journal of Italian History 1, 1 (1978), 18–49]: "Friuli was a part of Italy in which a feeling of community developed without the help of compelling geographical or ethnic circumstances, neither of which, in fact, existed. The cohesion of the principality was due to the feudal overlordship of its prince, the patriarch of Aquileia. Since the prince was an ecclesiastic, this was not a dynastic overlordship. The state could therefore not pass to a foreign ruler by inheritance, nor could it be divided among a ruler's sons, as happened so frequently in the lay principalities of Germany during the middle ages. Most important of all, monarchical power tended to become institutionalised relatively early.".
- ^ C. Foligno, "Review of Pietro Silverio Leicht, Parlamento Friulano, Vol. I (1228–1331)", The English Historical Review, 37, 148 (1922): 576–79.
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Shahan, Thomas J. (1913). "Aquileia". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.