Abstract:

The aim of the project is to undertake a comparative analysis of the urban identities and institutions of north-eastern Italy (including Venice, Istria and Dalmatia) from the 9th to the 11th centuries. This is a theme which has not yet been dealt with by earlier Italian medieval history research in an overview designed to delineate its specific features as a historical phase in its own right. The intention of this research is thus to analyse the north-eastern part of the Italian kingdom, i.e. the historical Longobard Austrian region which later became the Friuli and Verona marches, corresponding to the modern Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions. The political-institutional and social development of this area from the 9th to the 11th centuries is radically different from those of the Italian kingdom as a whole and many of these specific features derived from its border position. Clear signs of this are supplied by the initial opposition to Carolingian rule by Rotguado Duke of Friuli in 776, the subsequent constitution of the Friuli Marches in the 9th century which acted as a border area in the Carolingian empire with the Avar empire and lastly the rise to the crown of the Italian Kingdom in 888 of Friuli marquis Berengario I who maintained his base in the Friuli and Verona marches. These unique political and institutional features were supplemented by the area's border position with Istria and Dalmatia, an area whose human geography and ethnic and state makeup was much complicated from the 9th century onwards. The area of study is thus an ideal model of 'border society' in which the frontier acted principally as area of exchange and interaction of goods, ideas and people between institutionally distinct areas. In this framework, lastly, the study will examine Venice's role and development highlighting the socio-economic and cultural inter-relationships between this lagoon city and the other Marches and Adriatic towns. The field of research will focus on urban identity understood both as self and community perception and representation by town residents and as the way the special features of the urban areas concerned were seen from the outside. In order to delineate the characteristics of the urban identity in its many contexts, the following research themes will also be studied in depth: local institutional structures (counts, bishops, urban assemblies) and their relationships with central power; structure and transformations in the aristocracy; citizen militia military organisation; urban development and transformations in city topography (cathedrals, town walls, public buildings) and the development of the civic ideology. From a cultural point of view the research will also consider the reciprocal exchanges between towns which can be made evident also by means of the common graphic and codicological structures characterising products from different graphic centres. The initial phase of research will involve analysing the sources relating to the central area of the kingdom in Venice and Istria and Dalmatia from the 9th to the 11th centuries. In the second year of research the data on the individual towns considered will be compared and elaborated in a chronological and thematic framework (institutional structures, socio-economic characteristics of the ruling classes, functioning of the urban militia and changes in urban topography and architecture) with the aim of delineating the continuities and transformations which occurred in urban identity from the 9th to the 11th centuries. To this purpose, the final phase of the research will make use of interpretative and epistemological models from the sociological framework in the context of identity and urban networks and in anthropology in the field of ethnic and local identities.

Members of the research group

Maria Cristina La Rocca (Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World)
Stefano Gasparri (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)
Sauro Gelichi (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)
Laura Pani (Università degli Studi di Udine)
Marco Stoffella (Università degli Studi di Verona)
Tommaso Leso (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)
Chiara Provesi (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)
Francesco Borri (Università di Vienna)
Irene Barbiera (reseach grant holder)
Maddalena Betti (reseach grant holder)
Francesco Veronese (reseach grant holder)