Download PDF | Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, 750-1000 Byzantine Heritage, Imperial Present, and the Construction of City Identity.
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Preface
This book is the principal outcome of an AHRC-funded project entitled From Byzantine to Ottonian empires: Venice, Ravenna and Rome, imperial associations and the construction of city identity, c.750-1000, awarded jointly with C. Wickham in the History Faculty of Oxford University. I am grateful to the AHRC for funding the project, and to the History Faculty, which provided the administrative and logistical support to me as a Research Fellow.
I should also like to thank the two universities which awarded me a Visiting Professorship and a Visiting Fellowship respectively, during my research time in Italy: the Universita Ca Foscari of Venice (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici) and the Universita Roma— La Sapienza (Dipartimento di Storia, Culture, Religioni. Sezione di Storia Medievale e Paleografia) in 2012 and 2013.
During the time of this project, I have incurred debts to innumerable people: colleagues, librarians, and administrative staff across institutions and research centres. My first, and most considerable debt of all, is to Chris Wickham, who not only enabled me to instigate the project and to make it viable, but spent hours discussing its implications, listening to, and challenging my assumptions, reading the text as I went along, and generally providing intellectual enlightenment and, above all, staunch friendship and moral support. To him, this book is dedicated.
A core group of colleagues have constituted my main academic network throughout the years of research and writing. Most notable of these have been Stefano Gasparri and Sauro Gelichi in Venice, and Paolo Delogu and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani in Rome, who have taken time to provide discussions and archaeological visits, as well as, in the process, becoming real friends. Many other colleagues have helped at some point, and I thank them all for their time and interest. They are FE de Rubeis, A. Rapetti, G. Ortalli, G. Ravegnani, M. de Min, E Borri, D. Calaon in Venice; R. Cosentino, P. Novara, E. Cirelli, A. Carile, A. M. Orselli, A. Augenti, R. Savigni, M. Bondi in Ravenna; L. Capo, U. Longo, A. Rovelli, Lucia Sagui, M. Serlorenzi in Rome; and, in a more general way, C. La Rocca, and a whole group of younger scholars now working in this field in Italy: A. Pazienza, C. Moiné, FE. Veronese, M. Betti, I. Barbiera, and C. Provesi. To them, I would add my colleagues in the UK who, over the years, have stimulated ideas and revisions in my views through personal contact, especially C. Goodson, J. Nelson, T. Brown, J. Herrin, C. Leyser, and J. Smith, and, on the European/ international scene, F. Bougard, A. Peters Custot, T. Granier, E. Crouzet Pavan, H. Keller, W. Pohl, C. Jaggi, E. Schoolman, and D. Deliyannis.
A large number of people have helped me obtain access to the resources of their respective institutions, which have provided the basis of the research work: the BAUM, Marciana, and Cini Foundation libraries, the Archivio di Stato, the Archivio del Patriarcato, the libraries of the Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie and that of the Ateneo Veneto in Venice; the Classense library (with the outstanding support of Dott.ssa C. Giuliani), the University Library, the Archivio centrale dello Stato, Archivio Comunale, and Archivio Storico Diocesano in Ravenna; the libraries of the Ecole Francaise, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Vallicelliana in Rome.
Without them, their resources, and their staff, who have stoically coped with innumerable requests for arcane papers and for large numbers of photocopies and scans, there would be no academic work possible, and every scholar needs to thank their staff with humility. Equally, the various bodies which are in charge of the archaeological patrimony and of the custody of churches and museum artefacts have allowed me access to normally closed sites, and provided help: the Soprintendenza Archeologica for Ravenna-Classe (site of Classe) and the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma (for example for the closed parts of the Crypta Balbi or the recent excavations on the Palatine), the Patriarchate of Venice (for the churches of S. Antonin and S. Lorenzo, for example), the Museo Archeologico at the Correr, the then Proto of the basilica of S. Marco, Dott. E. Vio, who granted me access to the Cortile of the basilica, and discussed in detail the crypt of S. Marco. To each and every one of them, I am grateful for their time, courtesy, and patience. I am also indebted, as usual, to my home library, the Bodleian, which has been my scholarly basis for many years, and whose staff have never ceased to be valued colleagues.
A project of this kind has need of administrative support, especially when much of the time funded has been spent working abroad. First and foremost, I should like to thank the History Faculty, in particular its Research Officer A. Mooney, and its Finance Officer J. Smith, the first for contributing to the putting together and success of the grant application, the second for unfailingly keeping up her good humour in the face of suitcases full of Italian receipts and complex payments required—thanks to her, I actually managed to live in Italy with ease. On the Italian side, the staff at CaFoscari (especially E. Conte and D. Biancato) and at La Sapienza, who provided me with the practical facilities, such as an office, library access, and IT support, have greatly contributed to creating a pleasant environment for the time I was welcomed there. Last but certainly not least, I should like to express my most heartfelt thanks to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College in Oxford, who kindly allowed me to become associated with the college during this period.
The college not only provided me with all the facilities, such as an office (with an uncommonly comfortable chair, courtesy of the Bursar, S. Beaver), Common Room, and dining rights, and access to the Codrington Library at all times, but also, and above all, gave me a wonderful environment for work, intellectual stimulation, and such a socially congenial background as to make it the most enjoyable time of my working life so far.
This book has been contracted to Oxford University Press from early on, and I am grateful to the Delegates of the Press for accepting to publish it. 1am especially grateful to my Editor, Cathryn Steele, who has had to put up with the inevitable delays and hiccups over the years, without losing either her good humour or her belief in its eventual delivery. Thanks also to D. Gasparri and to A. Pazienza for checking the scientific apparatus, tidying up, improving, and catching innumerable errors, and to P. Stanworth and D. McDonough for helping with IT issues.
It is customary to leave thanks of a personal nature till the end—but they should run in the background in a continuum. Without my husband’s support, understanding, and forbearance—not to mention the occasional help with drawing up tables—in the middle of upheavals, international moves, and career changes, I could simply not have completed this book. To him, my thanks reach well beyond words.
Introduction
This book is about the common heritage of Byzantine Italy in three main cities of particular significance. It is a study of Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, not only as individual cities but through a detailed look at the way in which various elements of their social, cultural, and ideological history compare with one another across the three. Its purpose is to highlight how their heritage, originally late antique but somewhat transformed by the period of rule of the Eastern Roman Empire (more commonly called Byzantine) remained, changed, or disappeared between 750 and 1000.
The Context The Terminology: Some Difficult Words
First of all, a little lexical explanation. It is a well-known fact that historians of early medieval Italy have the difficult task of needing to define the words they use, notably Byzantine and Carolingian, in order to make clear what each of them understands by these words, which were never used by contemporaries. Such words were mostly coined by historians over the last several hundred years, and can lead to some confusion about what is meant in a specific context. This is especially true of the word Byzantine. In practice, the subjects of the rule of the emperor in Constantinople called themselves ‘Romans’ until the end of that polity in the fifteenth century, though they began to accept the variation of “Eastern Romar from the sixth to seventh centuries.
The controversy was already in place in the ninth century, as we will see later in the discussions between Western and Eastern emperors. As far as the Emperor Justinian was concerned, when he ‘reconquered’ Italy in the mid-sixth century, he ‘restored’ the Roman Empire. But the inhabitants of Italy themselves made a distinction between ‘Italian’ and ‘Eastern Roman, meaning Greek. Scholars have, over time, come to use the word Byzantine when talking about the Eastern Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, as a form of shorthand, which helps distinguish the ethnic groups established in the post-Roman kingdoms in western Europe, from the subjects of the Eastern Roman emperor. I will also use the term Byzantine in this way.
In addition, however, also by tradition, the inhabitants of some areas of Italy have also been labelled as members of “Byzantine Italy: The term is used of them during the period of the rule of the Eastern Roman emperor over Italy, from Justinian until 750 in northern and central Italy, and until the eleventh century in the southern part (called Langobardia minor in the administrative language of Constantinople). In the context of this work, I am also using the word Byzantine in these two ways. The first is when referring to the people under the rule of the emperor in Constantinople, especially after 750, when this rule no longer applied to Italy, except in Venice and the south. When they claimed descent from the ‘original’ inhabitants since ‘times immemorial, that is to say before the Lombards settled in Italy, the inhabitants of my three cities called themselves Romans. From the ninth century onwards, however, they also used the term Italian, but mostly the narratives call them simply Romans in Rome, Ravennati in Ravenna, and Venetians in Venice.
But there is a second form of use of the word Byzantine in this book. It refers to a set of values and traditions: political, judicial, administrative, familial, cultural, religious, artistic, and so on, which were perceived as being different from the Lombard or Frankish ones, and generally referenced their origins in the ‘Roman, that is to say the late antique, period. These values, regarded as part of this long tradition by Justinian, led to their becoming adopted by both Italians and Greeks as they began to mix and evolve. The mix created a society associating itself with the old, Roman, as well as the new, Italian, order, and I will call this mix, in the context of this book, Byzantine.
One reason for doing so is in order to differentiate between the Italian society of the mixed late antique, Greek, and Lombard kind, and the more recent immigrants, the Franks (with some other groups associated with them—Alamans, Burgundians, Bavarians). Here we have once again both an ethnic and social concept of the ‘Franks’ as the Italians saw them; and a political one, linked to the Frankish dynasty which controlled the ex-Lombard kingdom of Italy from Pavia, after Charlemagne had conquered it in 774. These rulers are known as Carolingians. Although some historians would prefer to use the word only for the kings from Charles Martel to the end of the rule of Charles the Bald in Francia, others, especially Italian, German, and French historians, use it for Italy until the death of Charles the Fat in 888, as do I.
The Geography: Why These Cities?
The richest and most politically complex regions in Italy in the earliest Middle Ages were the Byzantine sections of the peninsula, thanks largely to their continued links with the most coherent early medieval state, the Byzantine Empire. But what happened to them when those links broke, in the eighth century? My purpose in this book is to interpret the way in which the three main cities of Byzantine northern and central Italy—Rome, Ravenna and Venice—dealt with the end of Byzantine rule from 750 onwards. By the beginning of the ninth century, Rome and Ravenna, the two old capitals of Byzantine Italy, and Venice, the newcomer taking over some of that role, were struggling to find their place in the world of the new Carolingian Empire, and by the mid-tenth century they again had to position themselves with respect to the reborn Western Empire of the Ottonians. Their solutions were eventually very different, but how did they get to them?
The story covered here is that of three (significant) Italian cities at a specific time over 250 years. They were chosen not necessarily because they were three ‘capitals’ or because they were successful, but on account of their shared heritage from the period of Byzantine control of central and northern Italy, in other words because they seem to represent the last perceived forms of Roman government and culture in Italy from Rome northwards. Other cities continued the tradition into the eleventh century, during which we see the final retreat of the Eastern emperors from the south of Italy, including from the very important cities of Naples and Amalfi. Moreover, a study of the three cities cannot be entirely separated from their relations with the great ‘capitals’ of Milan and Pavia, as well as with their more immediate neighbours—Bologna in the case of Ravenna, or Verona and Padua in the case of Venice. However, the material available for such a geographically vast study would made it unmanageable within the scope of one book. For that reason, I decided to confine the present work to northern and central Italy (including Rome with its vast documentation), and to suggest further comparative work at a later stage.
It has also seemed appropriate to use these three cities on account of their different status with regard to the Eastern Empire, and to the Lombard and Frankish kingdoms. Ravenna, Rome, and Venice each had different continuing political relations with East and West. After 750 Ravenna became formally part of the Frankish Empire, not directly but as part of the Patrimonium of St Peter, the papal lands granted to the popes by the Franks. At the end of the ninth century, Ravenna became effectively part of the Kingdom of Italy under the rule of the first Italian kings. Rome was formally independent but conditioned by Frankish power after 774, when Charlemagne took over the Lombard kingdom. Venice remained notionally still part of Byzantium until it became in effect independent in official as well as practical terms. How did these differences play out in practice?
The Methodology: How to Articulate the Debate
When I first engaged in this study, I had no specific theory as to whether I was going to find:
a. that the Roman/Byzantine past that these three cities shared meant that they would have similar structures, which they carried through into the post-1000 period; b. that this Roman/Byzantine past carried weight in the three cities in the same manner;
c. whether the Roman/Byzantine features, whatever we may come to include among them, were maintained over time, or abandoned in favour of developing others which were closer to those of other Italian cities without a Byzantine heritage;
d. whether, indeed, there had been such unifying features in the first place.
The construction of this book arises, therefore, not from putting forward a ‘thesis, but from a determined effort to engage with the source material first, and allow it to drive the questions which need asking as a result. The book focuses on presenting and interpreting the evidence, supplying my own understanding of it, rather than offering a firm conclusion first and defending it subsequently. It is to be hoped that it will allow the reader to accompany me in my study of the source material, while ultimately allowing them to draw different conclusions from my own, should they so wish.
In order to present the evidence, I nevertheless had to question it in specific ways. I decided to divide this questioning along two lines of argument. These seem to me to provide the key elements towards suggesting some answers. The first of these arguments is: did these three cities, with their shared cultural past, continue to have features in common? Can one say that such features definitely show them to have preserved a strong heritage from a Roman/Byzantine tradition? The second argument is this: did the ‘Romar’ past remain ingrained in the physical and mental habits in a manner that would lead these cities to develop differently from the great cities of Lombard tradition, which were their close neighbours and sometimes rivals? Or is it the case that the mix of inhabitants and immigrants from the rest of Italy, to various degrees, led to a mix of political and administrative structures of power, of economic instruments, of social, cultural, and religious adaptation, which would make these three originally “Roman/Byzantine’ cities indistinguishable from their “Lombard/Frankish neighbours?
These two lines of inquiry arise from the sources themselves. These include narratives specific to each city, or reflected in the writings of foreign visitors; documents regarding judicial, economic, and social intercourse, including, for example, formulaic texts at the beginning and end of charters granting land and rights; and a large body of physical buildings and artefacts (churches, monasteries and palaces, mosaics, frescoes, relics and ritual processions, coins, and the archaeology of houses and public spaces, to name but a few). As always, one of the main difficulties for early medieval historians is that their evidence tends to come almost invariably from the political, social, or intellectual elite among contemporaries— because it was this elite who wrote, commissioned writing, or built in lasting materials. It was its members who founded and dedicated churches, built and decorated monasteries and palaces, made or received gifts of relics and land.
Inevitably, my evidence too comes principally from this elite, sometimes secular, most often ecclesiastical (popes, bishops, monks); and, therefore, it is its activities and impact that are most directly accessible. It is possible, though not always easy, to perceive the views of non-elite inhabitants of the cities, for example through accounts of religious festivals, choices of popular saints, and the naming of children, or sales and leases of property among a poorer economic group than that usually found in the main charters. I shall naturally attempt to incorporate as much of this material in the two chapters which open with an examination of the secular and ecclesiastical elite (Chapters 2 and 3), but subsequently include the other actors in the urban landscape, occasionally allowing us to look as far down the social scale as the slaves in Venice.
Of these sources, I shall need to ask a variety of questions, of which the following are but a few examples. A first set of questions relates to the people in the city. Who were they, how did they function within the life of the city, how did they define themselves in terms of social status, role, and relations to one another? This requires an examination of the main actors in the urban context of each city: their families, their self-definition, their wealth, their influence, their choices of alliances with external powers, royal or imperial. These questions will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the first relating to Rome, the second to both Ravenna and Venice—a division based on the purely pragmatic grounds that there is a great deal more source material relating to Rome than to the other two, which could thus be treated within a single chapter.
Having first defined these urban inhabitants, from the elite ruling families to the mid-ranking traders, artisans, and the less wealthy and prestigious, the next logical step is to see how they interacted with one another. Standing behind the popes, archbishops, or doges who officially ruled the city were the aristocratic families which provided the ruling figures. Who made the political choices in the city? To what extent did different factions fight for control? In all three cities, there was almost constant strife between families and groups, ruling through the election of their members at the highest post possible (pope, doge, archbishop), or through controlling major centres of power, such as monasteries or public space. In Chapter 4, I shall be examining how this was done, through the building of palaces, churches, and monasteries as centres of power; through the providing of relics, art, and charitable support for rival families or for the ordinary people to admire, be impressed by, and to create respect; and lastly through the display of power through the coins they used, the titles they attributed to themselves, or the gifts they exchanged. To give a few practical examples: changes in the topography of the city, for example with the expansion of the Leonine City as the rising papal centre of power around the Vatican, or in the move by the doges of Venice of their seat of government to the heart of the island known as Rivoalto (Rialto) in 810/11, reflect a real or perceived political and religious move in these cities’ allegiances. How did the process function in Rome, where the role of the pope was the key factor in any founding or restoring of churches and monasteries until the tenth century, when aristocratic factions chose to become involved in such patronage? In Chapter 5, I will continue to examine how power was displayed and exercised, this time through control over the activities and ceremonial of city life, from inaugurations, ceremonies ritual, and the use of public space for peaceful and cohesive actions or for forms of violent dissent. From these we can begin to see how internal city politics influenced the choices which underlie the creation of each city’s identity, which I will discuss in Chapter 6.
A second set of questions relates to the forms of control over the urban fabric which were not associated solely with power and wealth within the city but also with the importance or otherwise of the links of that city with the external powers in place in Italy, above all the emperors (Byzantine, Carolingian, Ottonian) and the kings. This requires a closer look at the impact of such external powers in the life of the city—or indeed in some cases at the lack of it. What was the role of Rome and Ravenna as imperial residences? We know of Charlemagne’s impact in Rome at the Vatican, of the Ottonians’ rebuilding on the Palatine and the Aventine in Rome, and of their palaces in Ravenna. Did this have an influence on these cities’ civic perception? How, if at all, did kings and emperors manifest their presence in the life of the city, for example through patronage and display. How did this contribute to a perception of that city as associated with an imperial past and/or present, western or eastern? In Chapter 6, I propose to add to the discussion about the creation of an urban identity around internal figureheads, ceremonies, or signifiers of power, with a look at the extent to which acceptance or rejection of imperial and royal authority also contributed to the strengthening of that urban identity.
By the time these two sets of questions are discussed in the final chapters, it will have become possible, in my view, to find some answers to the two original arguments: did these cities, with their shared cultural past, continue to have features in common? And did this Byzantine past remain so powerful that it would lead them to develop differently from the other cities of Italy, especially those of non-Byzantine tradition? These answers, I suggest, are that:
a. The common Byzantine (or late Roman) past did indeed provide some very strong elements of continuity, especially in social and ideological terms (such as names, titles, definition of status), and in religious and artistic terms. Such continuity applied to all three cities, but not uniformly or equally. For example, the awareness of Roman traditional names and titles was exceptionally strong in Rome and Venice, while Ravenna gradually incorporated a much stronger intake of Frankish and other northern European elements as a result of a greater mix of population through immigration and marriage from the Italian centre. The city ultimately became incorporated into the Regnum Italicum in 892.
b. While this common tradition was maintained in the mentalités, the economic, legal, political, and diplomatic evidence suggests that Rome and Ravenna maintained their Byzantine tradition in terms of law, urban administration, political institutions, and land division, while Venice, despite its officially belonging to the Eastern Roman Empire throughout this period, was, in practice, almost fully aligned with the administrative framework, political ruling style, economic instruments such as coinage and notarial style, and even legal elements of the Lombard then Frankish tradition of its Italian background.
c. One could thus argue that, independently of their Byzantine/late Roman tradition still strong in these three cities in intellectual and social terms, in practice their functioning was different, and varied from the most bound up with this past in Rome to the less bound up in practice—as well as, up to a point, in ideological terms—in Venice and in Ravenna. The influence of their already long association with the Lombard kingdom in everyday life, and later with that of the Carolingians, made Venice and Ravenna increasingly similar to other Italian cities, while Rome remained more distant from them. I shall argue that this was not the result of the papal presence there, as much as of a truly overwhelming perception, through institutions, language, and physical landscape, of the past of the city. Moreover, this past was continually reinvented by its aristocracies as an inheritance, not of Byzantine Italy, but of ancient imperial Rome.
The Source Material
To search for answers, I shall be relying on the use of evidence attached to several disciplines, which will help explain the interaction between imperial ideology, presence, and influence and the creative response of the city elites in the three cities. The core interest of this book is that of the functioning of the elites in each city, from the evidence of their written activities and contracts, the topography of power, as well as the cultural, artistic, and religious manifestations, and the impact of ritual in the time and space of the city as a reflection of power and self-representation. The evidence for this comes from the written sources, the ever-expanding field of urban archaeology, and the reading of art, material culture, and ritual.
The ideological shifts are visible through the way in which both contemporary and later commentators contributed, through their narratives, to creating the city’s past. These narratives did not only recall the past, but indirectly constructed the future. This constructed future would include the growing consciousness of the city’s own identity, largely arising from of the narrative of its past. The first body of evidence available—the written sources—will therefore lead me to look in great detail at the narrative material, for the story it tells, but also and just as importantly for its implied and indirect suggestions. The documents, which are relatively rich by early medieval standards, especially for Rome and Ravenna, are a major source of the information to be obtained for the lifestyle of the elites, their origins, wealth, power in the city, literacy, and self-awareness. The second body of evidence is that of material culture. Archaeology is crucial for identifying the places of memory, the topographies of power and authority, and the social/ ethnic manifestations of the city elites and its other inhabitants, notably through the acceptance or rejection of ritual forms of consensus. Thirdly, art and architecture, through location and iconography, need to be used to read ideological, political, and theological forms of social consensus, such as display and ritual. The tools used to put together the conclusions suggested in this book have therefore included many disciplines within the three major fields mentioned: interpretation of the stories told, diplomatics and palaeography, excavation reports leading to the interpretation of instruments of power and influence in the landscape, manifestations of status in architecture, iconography and display objects, accounts of places and objects of memory, anthroponymy and toponyms, language choices as well as artistic decorative choices, and the growing study of ritual as a key element in past as much as in present societies.
The editing of much of the source material began with large collections started already from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries by ecclesiastics or learned aristocrats with an interest in the history of their city, such as Cardinal Baronius and Antonio Muratori, or Flaminio Corner or Count Fantuzzi in Venice and Ravenna respectively. Such work continued in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with men like Fedele for Roman documents (many in the Societa Romana di Storia Patria), Cessi then Lanfranchi for Venetian documents, and various editors in Ravenna, whose partial editions have now been replaced by the monumental edition of Ravennate charters by Benericetti. At the same time, German scholars concerned with the grand narrative of Italian history, especially in relation to imperial rule from the Carolingians onwards, were producing their own scholarly editions of narrative sources, hagiography, letters, legal and normative documents in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica collection. Italian historians in turn began the large collection of the Fonti per la Storia d'Italia. The sources available for the three cities studied here are narrative (histories, annals, hagiography, literature); diplomatic (charters and other documents, law cases, letters); those pertaining to material culture (archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy); and art historical. Let me take them in turn.
Narrative Sources
In the first instance, we are fortunate in having a series of city-specific narratives, which range from the Liber Pontificalis and Benedict of Soracte’s Chronicle for Rome to Andrea Agnellus for Ravenna and John the Deacon for Venice.’ These three cities are, in fact, better served for local narratives than any other northern Italian city at this time. Our best narrative sources are thus individual histories of the cities, and the less-explored vein of hagiographies. For Rome more specifically, the types of sources are: pilgrimage itineraries; detailed accounts of the celebrations of the liturgical year in the city through processions; and the polemical literature found in texts such as the Invectiva in Romam pro Formoso papa and the Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma.’ Though covering different periods, and in some cases having to be treated very carefully for periods preceding the author’s lifetime, they are nevertheless all invaluable as sources for the perception by contemporaries of both current events and memory of the past. Rome’s classical buildings are also the focus of detailed accounts from the eighth century onwards, with a particular flowering after 1100; such later accounts at least allow us to see what continuities in interest in the classical past there must have been.
Of equally great importance are the narrative sources from outside Italy, especially Frankish Carolingian in the late eighth and ninth centuries, and German in the tenth. Although Frankish sources usually only contain the most clichéd accounts of Italy, a great interest in Rome north of the Alps at least means that some writers have more detailed accounts of that city and its events. Narratives were either written by individual authors, such as Einhard, the Astronomer, Thegan, Notker, Thietmar, Regino, Liutprand, Flodoard, or by anonymous (and not so anonymous) authors of annals, the most important in our case being the Royal Frankish Annals, the Annals of St Bertin, and the Annals of Fulda.’ Last but not least, occasional Byzantine sources also give information on aspects of the history of the three cities, in particular the work of Theophanes, and of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.*
A thorough discussion of the difficulties in relation to most of these narrative sources cannot be carried out here. Some relate to the natural bias of the author, or to his attempt to mould the hero of his story according to the great figures of the past, as do Einhard or Liutprand for Charlemagne and Otto I, or the author of the Gesta Berengarii for Berengar I. Equally, much of the discussion in terms of political sides, such as the support of the Annals of St Bertin (and of its main author, Hincmar) for western Francia and for Charles the Bald, as opposed to that of the Annals of Fulda for the eastern Frankish side and Louis the German, has been superlatively presented in the modern editions of the documents.* My main purpose here is to look more closely at the narrative sources which present us with very specific technical problems, especially in terms of authorship, beyond the ordinary issues of a writer’s partiality.
On that score, my main three narrative sources all present us with specific problems in terms of reliability, which have been discussed at length over the decades. Without going into all the specifics of these debates, I shall emphasize those problems which apply most directly to my own approach. First and foremost is the Roman Liber Pontificalis. With a considerable body of work discussing its dates, authorship, and stance,° I propose to highlight the two main problems that I need to take into account when dealing with the material. The dating of the Liber is not essential in this debate since it is generally accepted by scholars that, by the time that I begin to use it, in the 720/30s, it was already a contemporary document, written within the Lateran environment, more or less contemporaneously or little after the pope whose life it tells, and often passed on between the two main offices of the papal bureaucracy, the scrinium and the vestiarius, to fill in respectively the information about local expenditure and the various restorations and gifts to Roman churches, and that concerning the more ‘political’ aspects of the pontificate. This overall understanding of the source is generally uncontroversial. But the issue of the evolution of the authorship is; as is also the treatment of the political issues of some of the most difficult pontificates—two points which are, naturally, not independent of one another.
The issue of authorship is of concern to me in two ways. The first is the change that we perceive from what is alleged to have been the anonymity of the production of the papal offices up to the time of Pope Nicholas I (858-67) and the move towards the writing of the Liber by some of the more famous authors of the second half of ninth-century Rome (Anastasius Bibliothecarius and John Immonides having been claimed among them—though it is now almost certain that the former needs to be discarded).’” The fact that the Liber was at first the product of the Lateran clergy does not mean, of course, that it was in any way ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’—it is sufficient to observe the way in which it deals with the popes of the second half of the eighth century, especially Pope Hadrian I (772-95), or with Pope Eugenius (824-7), to realize this. In the first instance, the necessity of explaining the move away from Byzantine rule from Pope Zacharias (741-52) onwards, while not antagonizing the Byzantine emperors before the Frankish alliance was at its strongest, gives rise to equivocation, obfuscation, the telescoping of some events to blur the chronology, and occasionally the actual omission of uncomfortable ones. Two examples of such a way of writing will be sufficient. The first concerns the crisis with the Emperor Leo III over taxation, which was turned into a much more effective crisis over iconoclasm when soliciting Frankish help. As we shall see later, it has been argued that, in reality, the issue of the imposition of iconoclasm in Italy only began to be a real issue twenty or thirty years later, but was made to appear one of heresy both in the papal correspondence with the Franks and in the Liber, to make the appeal more effective to the Frankish devotion to St Peter.’ Recently, Costambeys has argued that there were in fact competing narratives available at first (of which we know from copies in much later and sometimes distant sources) and that it was precisely Pope Hadrian I who managed and streamlined the account, as part of his campaign of pacification of Rome.’ Another example concerns the almost inexistent biography of Pope Eugenius, one of the shortest in the Liber at this time, even though he was a very significant figure, but one clearly detested by the clergy for his perceived submission to the Carolingian emperor.’ As if this was not sufficient, occasional events, such as Louis II’s coronation as emperor in Rome in 850 by Pope Leo IV (847-55), were completely written out of the story.’’ To this needs to be added the commonplace habit of the Liber to glide over the almost inevitable fighting between factions at every papal election, or its habit of taking credit for events which, according to other sources, were not under papal control. One such was the claim that Pope Leo IV asked for money from the Emperor Lothar I to build a wall to defend Rome from the Saracens, while a capitulary of Lothar I implies quite clearly that he ordered the pope to fortify the city with a wall to that end.’? It is not necessarily the case that the other source was completely to be relied on, but the issue of trust to be had in one or the other comes necessarily to the fore.
The change in authorship of the Liber from the anonymity of the offices to that of someone who was much more of a mouthpiece for the popes themselves, even if not necessarily one of the main intellectuals in the city, has been offered as an explanation for the gradual tailing off of the Liber after its official end with Pope Stephen V (885-91)—the genre of episcopal acta apparently no longer suited to the times in Rome. From my point of view, therein lies the second main problem of the Liber, namely its absence (except in the form of short notices added later in the twelfth century by Cardinal Pandulf and Pierre Guillaume) of any real material for the tenth century. This means that, during a crucial period in terms of their relations with the aristocratic elite of Rome at the end of the ninth century, from Pope John VIII (872-82) and Pope Formosus (891-6) onwards, until the end of my period of choice, c.1000, there is little papal documentation except for the occasional letter or bull. The tenth century, which saw the height of aristocratic rule over the city in ways which make it crucial for the history of the city, does not, unfortunately, have any other major narrative source, reliable or otherwise, except for those from outside the city, like Benedict of Soracte. This is, of course, significant in terms of who controlled the writing of history in Rome, but also a serious difficulty for the historian, whose narrative material comes exclusively from outside the city, mostly from the German emperors’ courts.
As I showed previously in the case of both Byzantine and Frankish sources, the tale they tell could be quite different from that of the Liber. One such example is the information given by the Annals of St Bertin on the important pontificate of Eugenius, and on such events as Louis II’s coronation in Rome in 850—completely absent from the Liber itself. Other examples of material from northern European sources whose use is essential are those of writers who help us reconstruct the history of Rome in the tenth century, for which we have no other local evidence— such as, for example, Thietmar of Merseburg, Liutprand of Cremona, and Flodoard of Rheims for the Ottonian presence there. A few other cases are those of material written by northern Europeans with little sympathy for Rome and the Romans, men whose stories are often highly dubious if not unlikely, such as Notker, but whose views are nevertheless revealing of contemporary views and attitudes towards Rome. Also occasionally uncertain are writers like Benedict of Soracte, with decisive views on the decadence of the spirit of ancient Rome, and not infrequently misinformed about events there, or mixing them up and conflating various ones, such as the alleged conspiracy by his family against Alberic.’*
Other contemporary Italian sources are more useful from the point of view of the information they provide in the form of collected documents, which is the case of the later Chronicon Farfense associated with Gregory of Catino, and especially of the two main charter registers of Farfa and Subiaco, essential for us to be able to follow much of the movement of property, owned or leased in Rome, to and from the two monasteries, by or to Romans.’* Occasional references by Andrew of Bergamo and Erchempert reveal links with other Italian players on the political stage,’* as indeed do mentions of Roman and papal problems in the works of the two major chroniclers of Ravenna and Venice, Agnellus and John the Deacon, to whom I shall return below. It is from Agnellus that we hear the other side of the story of the Archbishop of Ravenna Sergius, shown to have been a supporter of Ravenna autonomy, while the Liber Pontificalis shows him only as condemned for his unusual lay status when he became archbishop;’* and our best account of the rebellion and condemnation of Crescentius II by Otto II] comes to us not from Rome but from John the Deacon in Venice.’” Also from outside Rome come another set of texts, best described as pamphlets concerned with putting forward views on Roman events. They may be near contemporary, though the dates and places of writing are not as yet entirely agreed upon. The first is known as the Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, and has been placed variously at the end of the ninth century, under Pope Formosus, in the 900s, and as late as the mid-tenth century. It has been argued, convincingly to my mind, to have been an expression of the imperial perceptions and views of the Spoletan emperors or their supporters; if so accepted, then the date of writing would most likely be the late ninth or very early tenth century, before the accession of Berengar I to the imperial title after 915.’* The other text, the Invectiva in Romam pro Formoso papa, clearly follows the death and condemnation of Pope Formosus by Stephen VI (896-7), defending him despite the alleged irregularity of his translation from one see to another. I will return in Chapter 2 to the Formosian controversy, and will argue that it was a major political issue, thus explaining its continuation long after Formosus’ death, and the existence of a Formosian literature, with which were also associated the two writers Auxilius and Eugenius Vulgarius.’? Both writers were well attuned to the Roman situation, as we know from their correspondence with the Theophylacts and Pope Sergius III (904-11), and it has been argued that the place of writing was Naples. Though not written in Rome itself, these texts are crucial since, their own agenda notwithstanding, they are revealing of the views of at least part of the secular Roman aristocracy.
We know that, during the second half of the ninth century, there lived in Rome two of the main intellectual figures of the Italian Middle Ages, Anastasius Bibliothecarius and John Immonides. Anastasius, from a family of Roman aristocrats with characteristic career patterns (his uncle was Arsenius Bishop of Orté and the layman Eleutherius was his cousin—possibly brother—in positions of great influence around the popes). Eleutherius was eventually executed for crimes against Pope Hadrian I] (867-72). Anastasius was himself exceedingly controversial; he was several times excommunicated for abandoning his pastoral post in Rome and subsequently for attempting to set himself up as pope, unsuccessfully.”° He was, however, uncontested as a scholar, knowledgeable in both Latin and Greek, appointed librarian of the papal administration, and several times ambassador speaking for the pope and the Western Church, especially at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 869/70, whose acts he translated into Latin. He was regarded as the mouthpiece for Western orthodoxy, and a contributor to the final abandonment of Byzantine iconoclasm at that council. But he was also and above all a defender and spokesman for the Western emperor whom he served, Louis II first and then Charles the Bald, to whose image as the philosopherking he contributed most.” It was to him that several of his hagiographical texts were dedicated, the Passions of Demetrius of Thessaloniki and of Dionysius (Denis) of Paris.”” He was also the author of a famous letter sent by the Emperor Louis II to the Emperor Michael UI, which contributed greatly to defining the understanding of the imperial idea and role of the two empires, Western and Byzantine—I will return to this later on.** Some of Anastasius’ main production, apart from the summing-up and translation of the acts of the council, was in the form of hagiography. This he shared with his contemporary John Immonides, who has now been accepted as the main individual author of the Liber Pontificalis in the second half of the ninth century, especially of the lives of Nicholas and Hadrian II.** John’s best-known work was his life of Gregory the Great: he began it by pointing out how the best-known and best-loved pope outside Italy, who had had his biography written several times, notably in England, had no such life or cult in Rome itself, which was shameful.”* But his main purpose, indirectly, was to write up Gregory as a model pope, just as he would then try to present Nicholas as being a new Gregory the Great in his own time. Both Anastasius and Immonides were Greek speakers, and contributed to a revival in interest in the Eastern Empire, at the time when the latter was itself once again attempting to renew closer links with the papacy.”® This did not mean that they did so at the expense of the Western emperors or Carolingian cultural models, as Anastasius’ work shows. But Immonides was also focusing on the Western world with his interest in Gregory and his demonstration in Pope Nicholas’s life of a papal figure focusing on the Carolingian world. In addition, his other main work, the Cena Cypriani,”’ was in fact an adaptation in Rome of an alleged classical text, but one actually produced at the court of Charles the Bald.
The texts mentioned are, naturally, rich in information on cultural, intellectual, theological, and ideological issues in Rome. But they are also useful for other kinds of information, for example when Immonides gives us a description of what could still be seen in Gregory the Great's monastery of SS Andrea e Gregorio in Clivo Scauro on the Celio, notably the pictures of the founder’s parents—information otherwise lost since Roman architecture has changed so much since.”* Hagiography, whenever available, is naturally invaluable as a source for Rome, though there is little of it concerning Rome itself and produced in Rome at this point. Occasionally foreign hagiographical texts can give us insights, as does the Vita of Bernward of Hildesheim describing the synod held in the monastery of Santa Maria in Pallara in 1001 in the presence of Otto III and Pope Silvester.”
What Rome lacked in hagiography, however, it made up for with two major sources of information: the pilgrimage itineraries and the liturgical texts. Pilgrimage itineraries had a long tradition, and several were produced, notably in the seventh and eighth centuries, most of these having survived only in northern European manuscripts (the Notitia Ecclesiar'um Urbis Romae also known as the Catalogue Salisburgense, the De Locis Sanctis, the list inserted by William of Malmesbury in his work in the twelfth century).*° The latest of them is the so-called Itinerary of Einsiedeln, found in a manuscript in the abbey of that name in Switzerland, and much discussed in terms of its composition. Current views are still at odds over this, some placing its origin in the Frankish area, more specifically at Fulda, while its more recent editor argues, convincingly to my mind, for the Lateran.*’ The Itinerary of Einsiedeln is of particular interest because it lists not only churches and relics but also all classical monuments that visitors to Rome could still see and identify through statuary and attached inscriptions. As such, and especially if we accept its Roman composition, it is a valuable source for the perception that both the Romans and especially the papal environment had of what Rome meant, and what was valued in it.
The itineraries present us with Rome as seen by pilgrims as well as by the Romans. The description of the stational liturgy found in the ordines which set out the detail of processions and liturgical celebrations throughout the year reflects the most specifically Roman events in the life of the city.*” The stational liturgy, of late antique tradition and, as such, only found elsewhere in Constantinople (the New Rome), was at the core of Roman life, as I will argue in Chapter 5. Around it were brought together all social groups in the city. It was essential to reflect and reinforce the social and political consensus and the unity of the city around its bishop. But it also served to make visible the hierarchies and categories which made up the city, in their proper place and role, during ordinary festivals throughout the year, and at the time of exceptional events, such as the adventus (triumphal entry) of a ruler into the city. The ordines give us our best insight both into the everyday life of the Roman community, its perception of itself and its components, and the self-perception of its elites as reflected in the order of processions and actions. They also allow us to see the community of the city functioning in normal times and circumstances, while we may otherwise only imagine it to be full of strife and disharmony on the basis of the conflicts and conspiracies described in the Liber Pontificalis at the time of papal elections, for example.
The Roman Liber Pontificalis was written by contemporaries, anonymous or known, in our period, and reflected the views of the papal court. By contrast, the Liber Pontificalis of Ravenna, my second main narrative source, also organized as a series of episcopal acta—a common form of record in the early medieval period in many dioceses—is the work of one author, with very much his own views, not always favourable to the archbishops of Ravenna.** Agnellus’ Liber Pontificalis was very probably modelled on the Roman one, though Agnellus himself never acknowledged this. It presents us with several problems. The most obvious concerns the story of the archbishops before the time of Agnellus, who wrote roughly between the 830s and the mid-840s. For the period before the mid-eighth century, the issues are of lesser import from my point of view, though they all have been discussed at length by the various editors of the texts over the years. The main issue to keep in mind is, of course, Agnellus’ fierce anti-Roman (or rather antipapal) stance, reflecting the views of the Church of Ravenna itself during the period of its autonomy from Rome (called autocephaly). After the loss of the autocephaly in the earlier part of the eighth century, Ravenna never forgot this, and even into the tenth century many of its archbishops would still be found arguing against papal control over the city. We can interpret Agnellus as an almost contemporary source for the later eighth and earlier ninth century, and trace his views to both his local pride when decrying all who despoiled or harmed Ravenna, or to his anti-Romanism. This latter can be sensed in his not mentioning the issue of iconoclasm, because this was one area in which the archbishop was, by definition, supporting the pope; or his writing a fiercely negative account of Archbishop George, who was in fact the papal envoy to Francia at the time of the Battle of Fontenoy.”* In that sense, being able to compare Agnellus’ account with the Roman Liber Pontificalis may be of advantage, for example in the telling of the quarrel between Pope Stephen III (768-72) and Archbishop Sergius of Ravenna, an opponent of the papacy called to Rome and excommunicated, which Agnellus argues was a purely political move,” or on the issue of Archbishop George’ politics. But this only holds for as long as they run in tandem. Unfortunately, Agnellus’ account stops in the mid-ninth century, and we have no later contemporary narrative for the history of Ravenna other than hagiography and letters. It is on these two, brought together and examined in several key papers by Savigni,*® that one has to rely to tease out the history, even up to the somewhat uncertain archiepiscopal succession, and to estimate the relations of the city and its elite with the popes, the emperors, and the kings of Italy—and the change within those elites. We have only a few indirect mentions of the liturgy of Ravenna and hence only an inkling that it included some differences with that of Rome and kept some Eastern traditions that the popes and the Carolingians wished to see disappear. But we have a few hagiographical sources, which are important in terms of their strong political significance. Through them, the Church of Ravenna attempted to explain and justify its autonomy, first in the seventh century on the basis of its apostolic foundation by St Apollinarius as a disciple of St Peter, then in the tenth with the writing of the lives of its early bishops. These included genuine figures, such as Probus, but also, more creatively, some perhaps not quite real ones, such as Barbatianus, deliberately attempting to organize a cult around their newly translated relics.*” My third principal city-based narrative is that of the Venetian writer known as John the Deacon. The Historia Veneticorum’® attributed to him presents its own problems of authorship, though here, as with the Roman Liber Pontificalis, these mostly relate to the first book. It has been shown that this was, in effect, a compilation of material taken from several other writers, including Bede and Paul the Deacon. The issue is not relevant for the later period: there seems to be little doubt that he was the author of the other three books, which deal with events from 717 onwards until his own lifetime in the late tenth and early eleventh century. John is, therefore, reporting well enough on the events concerning Venice—but that is not to say that his report is in any way unbiased. John’s bias is less evident in direct omissions, but very clear in his reinterpretation of the early history of Venice, which he moulds to serve his very definite purpose (and possibly that of his master and patron, Doge Peter II Orseolo, whose secretary he was). This purpose is dual. In the first instance, he attempts to make clear that Venice developed as an independent entity, without external pressure, to attain the greatness that it already had by the tenth century. Byzantine control over it is almost unmentioned: we can only guess at it when mention is being made of early changes of power from dukes to magistri militum and back, unlikely to have been because, as John claims, ‘the Venetians tired of [them] and wanted something else, but rather because autonomous attempts failed and the Byzantines regained control. Similarly, mentions are made occasionally of Byzantine envoys in the city, such as the patricius Theodosius, as though this were a courtesy visit, not one for a whole year, teaching the Venetians how to build warships, as a result of which the Byzantine emperor, says John, asked the Venetians to help fight the Saracens in southern Italy—not, of course, that he ordered them to do so. This parallels the views put forward by John about the Lombard kings, then the Carolingians, once again gliding over the obligation of the Venetians—in the treaty of peace with the Emperor Lothar I (the Pactum Lotharii) in 840 (renewed in 841)—to send troops to help the Carolingian ruler in the south. John’s ‘interpretation’ continues throughout the book, and we will see that much can be debated about his presentation of the events preceding and during the rule of his hero Peter II. But beyond these specific elements lies an even more crucial factor, emerging from the narrative told by John. He is the author of the core foundation myth of Venice, that of its independence from everyone, but, even more importantly, that of its uniqueness, its difference from everybody else in both eastern and western contexts, its original and unusual status, which made the city deserving of its greatness. And this was to be a story which would become the fundamental building block of the whole subsequent history of the Venetian state.
Around John, a few other narratives allow us glimpses of the history of Venice, some earlier and some later. Earlier ones, and near contemporary with the events themselves, are the Carmen de Aquilegia numquam restauranda, dated by Gasparri to between 817 and 840, and the Translatio S. Marci, dated by its most recent editor, Colombi, to the ninth century.*® The first recounts the visit and request of Venetian envoys to the emperors Louis the Pious and Lothar to rescind their agreement to the papal synod of 827, which had agreed to demote the Church of Grado from its rank as a patriarchate (it being effectively the archdiocese of Venice) in favour of the Church of Aquileia (which claimed to be the rightful diocese, but was under Carolingian control). The second represented, in a sense, the result of the failure of the plea, which had led the Venetians to set up their own Church, on the basis of their obtaining the relics of the Evangelist Mark from Alexandria. The Translatio relates events which John the Deacon would also relate later, as being the turning point in the history of the city and its rise. In Chapter 3 I will look more closely at how the two accounts differ, and why this difference is indicative of the way in which John’s narrative came to be the key text for the formation of Venetian identity. Nevertheless, as Berto has argued, there is, throughout the early Venetian historiography, a not-unusual but very strongly enhanced use of phenomena such as miracles, visions, prophecies, and supernatural occurrences, whose purpose is to highlight and reinforce the creation of the memory of early Venice according to this specific aim of promoting its uniqueness as part of its identity.*°
Of the later Venetian sources, the first is the text known as the Origo Civitatum Italiae Seu Venetiarum, with the Chronicon Altinate and the Chronicon Gradense. The edition by Cessi suggests that it was made up of three layers, written at different times from the eleventh century onwards, though one such layer incorporates an original ninth-century text, which could thus be used to identify specific families, church foundations, and episcopal lists.** I will use this text, with some caution, partly because it is likely that it can indeed reflect the memory of, for example, the associations of a family with a church and relics; but mostly because it can be used very usefully to understand the Venetians’ perceptions of their early history, and their definition of themselves in association with specific areas of origin or settlement. It is for that reason that we find some of these associations later reiterated in sources like the thirteenth-century history of the city by Doge Andrea Dandolo, and by even later descriptive and topographical material, for example in the list of churches of Venice by Flaminio Corner.”
Some information about Venetian affairs can also be found, usually as an aside for matters of trade, diplomacy, and so on, in sources outside Venice, whether in the Liber Pontificalis or in Agnellus, but also in northern annals, such as the Royal Frankish Annals for the attack on Venice by Pepin, king of Italy and son of Charlemagne, and the follow-up to it until the treaty of Aachen with the Byzantine Empire. One such piece of information, of potentially great significance had the Venetians not managed to scotch the rumours to that effect, was that of an alleged translation of the relics of St Mark to Reichenau, mentioned in two Reichenau hagiographical texts as well as depicted in a wall painting*’; how this was achieved will be discussed in Chapter 3. Frankish sources were not alone in giving mentions to Venice; Byzantine sources also did so, though rarely. Most notable in that respect is the written account of the Byzantine provinces provided by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his De administrando imperii, in which he mentions Torcello as an emporion mega.** Much discussion of this has taken place, with suggestions that he may have been right in his estimation, which is a fact now completely obliterated by the success of Venice, in whose interest it was to conceal the importance of the rival Torcello. Both Berto, in an important article, and more generally Crouzet-Pavan have looked closely at this, Berto concluding that the Byzantine narrative was likely to have been more accurate than other contemporary ones in some respects, such as the events under Charlemagne and the role of Torcello.*°
Before I approach my other main type of written sources, the documents, I need to mention briefly an in-between category: the letters. These are numerous for the period, sometimes illuminating other narratives, especially regarding the papacy, sometimes contradicting them. Papal letters, especially those exchanged with the Byzantine and Frankish emperors, often come under the category of political relations of the papacy, rather than of the history of Rome. In that respect, the most important collection for my purpose is the Codex Carolinus, which includes letters received by the Frankish rulers, from Charles Martel to Charlemagne, and are an essential part in allowing us to understand the intentions of the popes and their presentation of the case for a Frankish alliance as it developed over time.*® But we also have occasional examples of letters which mention by-the-by details of such features as the papal appeals to the Doge Ursus to defend Ravenna; the conflicts between the Doge Ursus and the patriarch of Grado about the appointment of Dominic as bishop of Olivolo c.875, in which papal intervention was attempted; the letter of Pope Leo IV ordering the Archbishop of Ravenna Romanus to protect his deputies in Ravenna, the Dukes John and Desiderius, in 876;*” and many others of particular use when no other narrative sources are available, as is the case for tenth-century Ravenna.
Documentary Sources
We have at our disposal what is, by early medieval standards, a considerable body of diplomatic sources. At the royal and imperial level, the Carolingian capitularies for Italy, the numerous diplomas to monasteries from the Lombard kings to the Ottonian emperors through the Carolingians, and the placita from the Lombards to the Ottonians; both those for the Regnum Italiae, and outside it in all three cities, were published as part of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century great collections of sources, like the Fonti per la Storia d'Italia and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The exceptional series of private charters of the archbishopric of Ravenna, providing information about people as well as monastic houses, with names, status, titles, and family groupings, previously only available through an eighteenth century edition and several partial ones, has recently been published in a scholarly new edition by Benericetti.** Venetian documents from some of the great monasteries such as SS Ilario e Benedetto, S. Lorenzo, S. Giorgio, and S. Michele of Brondolo have also been published recently.*” Venetian documents were known from a long-standing unique typescript catalogue and part-edition by Lanfranchi, and a two-volume edition of a surviving corpus of documents from the earliest to the eleventh century was published by Cessi in the mid-twentieth century, and has been used ever since in its reprinted version.*® This has now been supplemented by the online edition of those documents, divided into atti notarili and atti diplomatici, made by the Centro Interuniversitario per la Storia e [Archeologia dellAlto Medioevo (SAAME).*? Most of the documents are themselves medieval transcripts of the original documents, which have nearly all disappeared, many no doubt in the numerous fires which plagued Venice throughout the Middle Ages. One of the first of these fires, of particular relevance to me, is that of the ducal chancery, destroyed when the fire was deliberately set to the Doge’s Palace in 976; this may explain the dearth of documents preceding that date. The relative scarcity of Venetian documents in the early period poses an interesting question as to the amount of government and private notarial business actually carried out, since it is not possible to establish whether this is due to limited activity or to historical accident of survival.
The most significant body of documents that we have for Rome during the period was mostly published from the late nineteenth century onwards, many by Fedele, in individual volumes or self-standing papers in the Societa Romana di Storia Patria. Key bodies of charters are those of the archives of the great monastic houses of S. Silvestro in Capite, SS Ciriaco e Nicola in Via Lata, SS Andrea e Gregorio in Clivo Scauro, SS Cosma e Damiano in Mica Aurea, S. Maria in Campus Martius, SS Alessio e Bonifacio, S. Prassede, S. Agnese, and of the diaconia of S. Maria Nova.*? Wickham has provided a complete analysis of their origins, association with Roman monasteries, and importance in understanding the social organization, wealth, and topographical development of Rome, especially in the tenth century.** Since his own work has been, by choice, one specifically focusing on the documentation of Rome, he has provided us with a thorough grounding in the understanding of these documents, but also of the constraints under which we have to work in terms of survival of the documentation in time and space. I shall not go over the material again, but reiterate the importance of these charters and judicial documents for my own purpose too, which is to gain information not only for such key issues as the extent and nature of economic power and social control in the city and the surrounding area, but also to understand the religious and ideological perceptions of the city by its inhabitants, the topographical and architectural developments, and, last but certainly not least, comparisons with the archival documentation of the other two cities. The interest I have from this angle would be that of confronting patterns of naming, cultural and historical selfawareness of the actors of the documents of their titles and status, legal affiliations, but also comparisons of plans of their houses, location of their properties in the city or outside it, and property of churches and monasteries.
Material Culture
As a general category, material culture encompasses archaeology, but also essential areas of research not specific to, but essential for, the early medieval historian of Italy: epigraphy and numismatics. These two areas occupied the interests and skills of some of the older scholars of this period, from the collections of inscriptions and coins published in the nineteenth century, best known among them being that of Roman Christian inscriptions by De Rossi, and of Venetian coins by Papadopoli Aldobrandini.** Various new items have been discovered since, or indeed looked at with other perspectives in mind, and newer editions brought out as a result of the possibilities of using new scientific approaches. Epigraphy in Rome has been enriched by the editions of the CISAM of Spoleto, and in Venice, where there had as yet not been a proper collection of all the materials from the region, a new edition is about to be published.*” Numismatic knowledge in Italy has been much enhanced by the studies of Arslan and Rovelli, with the cataloguing and interpreting of recently discovered hoards, including those of Arab coins in Venice, the growing interest in Carolingian mints in Italy, and the recent discoveries of coin repositories in the Crypta Balbi excavations, which help greatly with our knowledge of the use of money in early medieval Rome.”°
The excavations at the Crypta Balbi, begun in the early 1990s and published around 2000, have been part of the hugely important renewal of archaeology in Rome, focusing this time on the early medieval period rather than either ‘classical’ or ‘Christia’ Rome, as had previously been the case for centuries.*’ The interest in the period is not entirely new, though early work in the area had been seen as merely an adjunct to work on classical Rome in its later phases, or as part of a panorama of the whole of medieval Rome. Not until Krautheimer began his monumental life’s work on Rome was there a genuine interest in the city between the fourth and the eleventh centuries, and it is largely because of him that scholars began to focus on Byzantine and Carolingian Rome.** Much work was carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, partly still on churches, in the tradition of Christian archaeology, with major key aspects remaining the interest in the church of S. Maria Antiqua—to which I will return below when briefly discussing work on the artistic material. But some work also began in earnest on understanding the development of early medieval Rome in terms of its population and occupation patterns, topographies of power, and economic, social, and defensive models, with Hubert, Marazzi, and Delogu in particular looking at both the city and Lazio itself to understand the links between the two which allowed the city to function.*? From the 1990s, such work has developed exponentially, as a result of a large number of new excavations in the centre of Rome, with the possibility of exploring the area of the Crypta Balbi and Largo Argentina, then the Colosseum, the Porticus of Octavia around S. Angelo in Pescheria, and, last but by no means least, the area of the imperial Fora. Foremost among the archaeologists who worked in central Rome have been Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani with their teams in the area of Argentina and the Fori Imperiali.°° The latest excavation, which has helped considerably with our views of the industry and crafts economy of early medieval Rome, is that in Piazza Madonna di Loreto, an area continuing that of the Forum of Trajan towards the old Via Lata (the piazza is now more or less part of the Piazza Venezia zone).° With the Crypta Balbi and the current area of the Via Botteghe Oscure, we can begin to understand better how the area of the Circus Maximus/Septa Iulia functioned in terms of economic transformations of the city. With that of the Porticus of Octavia and the foot of the Aventine, such understanding has been extended to the most commercial zone of the city by the Tiber. Work on the Palatine and then on the imperial Fora gradually enabled us better to understand the pattern of occupation, especially at the high end of the social scale, of the aristocratic housing, and its attempt to associate itself with the prestige of imperial Rome; and the discovery of the two ninth-century houses in the Forum of Nerva gave the best impression so far of high-end housing at the time of Carolingian rule (Plates 1 and 2).°* By extending this to seeing how these houses and others may have been supplied through metalwork, ceramics, glass, textiles, and other goods for which there are traces of production so close to the Forum of Trajan, it is possible to gain a better idea of the size, nature, and custom of Roman industry at this point. Naturally, meanwhile, archaeological work has continued in the more traditional areas of interest in Rome, especially that of churches, as well as on the development of the Leonine City, its walls, visitors’ infrastructure associated with the pilgrimage to Rome, lodgings, food provision and aqueducts, and its defence.
The vastly expanding field of urban archaeology of the early Middle Ages can also be seen in Ravenna. Here too most work in the early twentieth century focused on the area where the palace of Theodoric was supposed to have been, though there is still some lack of clarity as to whether this was also the main late antique imperial palace. Excavations had been mainly focused on this area, and on some of the Roman domus, while gradually work has extended to areas of special interest to early medievalists, notably the important domus of the Traversari in the tenth century. Important work has been carried out around Ravenna too, especially on the site of the city of Classe, until at least the eighth century the port of Ravenna, and the leader of the work there, Augenti, has focused on examining how Classe functioned as part of the network of ports and emporia around Europe. The main individual excavation in Classe remains that on the site of the monastery of S. Severo, one of the most important in Ravenna in the ninth and tenth centuries, and a political centre for the Ottonian emperors.™
Before looking at the archaeological work carried out in Venice, it is essential to mention a key site situated between Ravenna and Venice, which saw its commercial peak between the eighth and the tenth century: Comacchio. The port there was, from the start, the main rival to Venice, through its highly successful trade in salt, then fish, between the Adriatic and the inland areas along the Po valley. The site of Comacchio has been excavated by Gelichi, who has drawn attention to its importance, but also to the great similarities between its and the early Venetian economy.®° He has explained how the rivalry between the two cities, fundamentally very similar in their nature and growth, eventually played out in favour of Venice, for both political reasons (as Byzantine headquarters) and economic ones (a more aggressive ‘foreign’ policy, early commercial interests in the East, and possibly the presence of a major unifying saint used to rally the city). This is the reason why, from a position of equal opportunities, Venice won and became the later success it was, while Comacchio declined and became a small provincial city.
Venice also had a tradition of archaeology of churches, most famous being the excavations at Torcello, begun in the 1960s through an Italian—Polish collaboration, revisited by that team later, and now revived by a new team. Archaeological work in Venice has always been easier in the islands than in the city itself, and much of this has been done, and is still done now, for example at Jesolo. Some work has been carried out in the city, much of it as emergency excavations when restorations were set up. Originally most of that work has been in and around Piazza San Marco and the basilica, notably in the crypt. Other occasional sites have yielded information over the years, for example the hoard of coins at S. Toma, and the tokens of trade in Cannaregio, the latter found during the excavations at Ca Vendramin.” These have given rise to an important debate in the 2000s, led by Ammermann and Gelichi, who supported the view that the island of Rialto was already a commercial hub, focusing on an axis extending from Castello (Olivolo) and the cathedral towards Cannaregio, in the seventh and eighth centuries; it was only later, according to them, that the centre of Venice shifted south towards the Grand Canal, following the move by the Particiaci of the political centre from Malamocco to Rialto with the building of the Doge’s Palace and the basilica of St Mark.®* This, as we shall see, goes rather against the impression which John the Deacon attempts to give in terms of the development of the city. John is quite adept at deflecting attention from what he wants to avoid saying, so it is important to weigh the evidence of these two views, to see whether one or the other is more reliable in terms of the early history of the city. This is all the more important since a recent excavation at Dogaletto di Mira near Fusina has reopened and widened the issue. Here, the discovery of ninth-century postholes which appear to argue for the presence there of a fairly large wooden city have led the archaeologists to argue that this was the original location of the city of Malamocco, not the later island. If this can be confirmed and defended, our views would once again have to shift. In the first instance, it would support the argument of a very close early involvement of the Venetians with the Lombard kingdom, since this location would be suitable as an opening onto the sea of the economies of the mainland, notably of Padua. Secondly, it would suggest that, contrary to Ammermann’s argument, it was indeed the Grand Canal, as a continuation of the mouth of the Brenta into the sea, which would have been the most suitable candidate as the political and commercial centre of Venice by the early ninth century. The Dogaletto di Mira excavation has not yet been fully published, and one awaits it impatiently. This excavation was partly a result of the recent work carried out on the site of the monastery of S. Ilario.®
Art and Architecture
Significantly, the excavations at S. Ilario near Venice have also allowed traditional views on artistic influences to be rethought, when it was argued that a figure in one of its few remaining floor mosaics represented an animal found only to the east of the Mediterranean, more specifically Iran.”° This, as has been suggested, could reflect contemporary knowledge of such an animal on account of trade links between Venice and the old Persian world, and the import of artefacts from that area to Venice; though it could perhaps also be just a copy of a late antique model from a local mosaic or wall painting. The continued reuse of late antique artistic models and techniques remained at the centre of medieval art in Rome. Until the eighth century, some of this tradition continued to be not just visible but constantly reproduced, notably in the great basilicas with their mosaics and frescoes, as well as traditional Roman architectural features. Contemporary sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-century features from the eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Palestine) and Byzantine adaptations of late antique art were increasingly seen in Rome in the form of icons, enamel, metalwork, and textiles, as these were imported into the city. The influence of their iconography can be seen in such themes as, for example, the Anastasis or the Crucifixion with the long loincloth (colobium), in S. Maria Antiqua.’* The debate regarding Byzantine influence in Roman art, and the impact or otherwise of iconoclasm, have all been discussed by art historians; I will return to this in Chapter 4. But Byzantine art was, in many ways, a reworking of early Christian or late antique art. Its continuation, then revival, was a feature of art in Rome, during the period of Byzantine rule certainly, but also, in a different and more openly antiquarian way, after Frankish influence came to the fore.
Nobody, since Krautheimer, has denied or indeed underestimated the influence of Carolingian art and architecture in Rome, and the city’s transformation through papal input into its restoration and embellishment, much of it funded by Charlemagne’s gifts. Several long-standing traditions can be identified in the overwhelming body of study about medieval art in Rome. Of relevance to me have been the discussions around the impact of the art of the Byzantine period, especially in relation to the importance of icons, and of the iconography of S. Maria Antiqua, now benefiting from the end of a long period of excavation, restoration, and study, brought together in one important volume of work published in 2004. Most of the art history of Rome has naturally been focused on its churches, since little else has survived, except for elements of reused sculpture. Though few and far between, these sculptures have nevertheless proved very important for the study of some of the architecture of the Lateran Palace and piazza in particular. Work on these and on the palace, already carried out since the early twentieth century, has intensified with Herklotz and Pietrangeli, and has taken some new directions.’* While there had been a definite interest, notably by Krautheimer, in the whole issue of papal and Carolingian ideological representations in Rome, and more particularly in the Lateran, this trend has been expanded and further debated recently to reflect on the significance of the ideologies and topographies of power of Carolingian Rome.”* Those themes have been at the centre of recent work on early medieval art in Rome, notably with the important body of work by Luchterhandt. Art historians have been increasingly aware of, and have insisted on, the impact of Frankish ideas, iconography, and building techniques in the city. The impact extends from the traditionally known imperial and papal ideology of the Lateran triclinium of Pope Leo III (795-816) or S. Suzanna, to theological points being made in the churches built or restored by Popes Leo III and Paschal I (817-24), such as SS Nereo e Achilleo and, of course, S. Prassede, for which the seminal work by Goodson has launched further questioning and debate.”
In Chapter 4 I will show how the focus of much recent research for this period has resulted in a clear demonstration of just how important Frankish influence was— by men who thought they were doing no more than restoring the glory of ancient Rome—in the artistic life of the city. It can be seen through new images and iconography, and a new liturgical architecture, with the multiplication of crypts, and through building techniques in church restoration. It was also responding to the arrival of new artistic models and styles, manuscripts like the S. Paolo Bible, the Chair of St Peter, or the vast increase in the use of metalwork (especially silver) in the great Roman basilicas. This last is, in fact, probably the single most important manifestation of the Carolingian impact on the city itself. It contributed, directly through increased economic resources and indirectly through its revival of early Christian motifs and ideas, to the reshaping of the city, or at any rate of its churches and the Lateran—contrary to the very modest impact that the Franks had on the city in any other way (administrative, political, social, ethnic).
For much of the ninth-century art and architecture in the city, we were highly dependent on our interpretation of the key written sources describing buildings no longer in existence. Previously, work such as Geertman’s on the catalogue of Leo II’s restorations has been crucial, and this has been studied anew by Bauer in more recent years.’* Similarly, both scholars of the liturgy and art historians have contributed to recreating the physical and visual environment of the great basilicas, including their mosaics, wall paintings, metalwork, sculpture, and stonework, from the written evidence of pilgrims, from the rich documentation of the later Middle Ages, and from the sixteenth-century copies made of art, especially for old St Peter’s, which was destroyed to build the new one.’° It is only on their account that we have some inkling of any work done in Rome in the very late ninth century (Pope Formosus’ finishing of the papal portraits in St Peter’s, and carrying out some major work on the frescoes of the nave at St Peter’s, including additions to the Christological cycle); and in the tenth century, with the restoration of the Lateran basilica, including Pope John XII’s (955-64) new chapel in the atrium leading to the church.”’ Ottonian artistic influence in the city was almost non-existent, and the tenth century is generally a relative blank so far as artistic production is concerned—though it was, of course, happening, as we know from the palaces and monasteries built by Alberic for example—with some rare exceptions, such as the frescoes of S. Maria in Pallara and S. Maria in Via Lata.’* We are aware of new and revived monastic foundations, of old aristocratic houses on the Aventine, and of new ones being built, for example on the Palatine, of which we know almost nothing at present in terms of architecture or decoration. It would be extremely desirable to be able to have such excavations—though difficult since much is now buried under later buildings—perhaps through attempts to review and fine-tune any evidence left by older archaeologists whose work on the Palatine, Aventine, and Via Lata area effectively destroyed the traces of early medieval buildings in order to reach the Roman layers. Whether it will ever be possible to do so remains to be seen.
Ravenna is both similar to and different from Rome. Similar in that it too hada Roman past, with an inherited body of churches, palaces, and domus, with mosaics, decoration, and architectural features belonging to the late antique period. Different, however, in that this heritage dated at most from the fifth century, when the Roman Empire had already become Christian, and thus its art and architecture were not of temples and pagan decoration but of Christian iconography and representations. Ravenna did not have Rome's problem of dealing with a large body of pagan architecture to be reused or demolished, but only that of expanding this body with new churches, restoring what had been ravaged by time or, in some cases, needed to bring new adaptations to a rival religious material culture put in place by the Arian ecclesiastical hierarchy before its defeat by the seventh century. Ravenna did not need to build up an ideology in mosaic because this was already present. Its art, studied for decades and written up by art historians, only began to acquire new features as a result of its closer Carolingian links. It was as a result of these that it remodelled itself, with the addition of crypts in its churches, new campanili, and sometimes even including Carolingian artefacts, like the ciborium of St Eleucadius at S. Apollinare in Classe.”” The integration of the non-Byzantine traditional artistic language, while becoming more important in the city, reflected this gradual integration in the Italian kingdom and sphere of influence. Nowhere is this more evident than in the architecture and sculpture of the pievi of the archdiocese (such as S. Giovanni del To in Brisighella, closely associated with the Church of Ravenna), of which some have survived almost unchanged and are thus eloquent witnesses to the probable extension of this mix across the Romagna.
One needs to highlight very strongly the family resemblance of Venetian art to its sources in the old exarchal area, which did in effect extend from the Exarchate to the other side of the Adriatic in Istria. This has been traditionally called by various, not entirely suitable, names: ‘exarchal’ art, ‘deutero-Byzantine art, and so on. The main element to retain from it are the similarities that we find throughout our period in the art of the Adriatic rim, which extend from late antique motifs to Lombard and Carolingian inspiration, and which created a specific style recognizable across the Adriatic arc. Already mined through the twentieth century by art historians, this strand has nevertheless been recently much enhanced by the development of ‘Adriatic studies, an area of interest not only in terms of its artistic unity but also in its overall similarities through political and commercial interests as well as anthroponymic, social, and legal traditions. This line of work has been one of the most vibrant in recent years, and has been of considerable interest for historians of both Venice and Ravenna, who have attempted to demonstrate throughout their work how one needed to move away from the dichotomy Venice-Byzantium in particular, and to place the history of these cities much more firmly in the framework of the Italian kingdom. In Chapter 4 I shall examine in detail the common elements of this Adriatic culture, which can be seen in the adoption of such elements as Carolingian-style crypts, westworks, decorative sculptural elements, and iconographical motifs in both cities. As already mentioned, these define much of the artistic renewal which we saw taking place in Rome also from the late eighth century onwards.
Historiography and Current Research
A detailed discussion of the main debate on the history of Rome itself, with the long tradition of the Catholic, Protestant, and pro-communal stances of the last 150 years, has been presented by Wickham in his recent history of medieval Rome in the central Middle Ages.°° His contention, with which I fully agree, is that almost from the medieval period itself and certainly until the last fifty years or so, Rome has always been studied as ‘the papal city, and its history identified with the history of the papacy. This was a reflection of the historians’ interest, but fundamentally also an imitation of the sources themselves. Like Wickham, I too am less interested in the history of the papacy in its European or universalist context than very specifically in what one can recognize as the history of the city of Rome itself and, by implication, of the pope only in so far as he acted as either bishop or ruler of the city. Again like Wickham, I shall therefore make much use of the documentary sources, especially the charters and legal documents reflecting land transactions in and around the city. However, the main focus of my book, unlike his, is not the economic and social transformations of the city, but more specifically the cultural and ideological ones, notably the evolution of the topography, art, anthroponymy, law, and writing—all topics covered there in part, but forming the main focus of this book, in particular for the purposes of comparing the evolution in Rome with that in Ravenna and Venice. I too am looking at ‘Rome in Italy; but as part of the tradition of Byzantine rule in Italy.
Various issues have been partially examined in the last thirty years, though not from the point of view put forward in this book. The essential research directions which have been pursued have traditionally been the following.
a. The first, and oldest, has been the history of Rome itself, from the point of view of the imperial, then late antique, then papal, city. The towering names associated with this work were, from both the German tradition and the Italian, those associated with the colossal general histories of the city or of the papacy. They generally came at it from several ideological viewpoints, above all that of highlighting the ascent of papal power in the Middle Ages.*' More recently, studies on early medieval Rome in terms of its historical development have focused on specific aspects of ideology, resources, and liturgy.** This latter is a bridge towards the second research tradition regarding Rome, that of the study of topography and of the physical development of the city. With a very long heritage of ‘Christian archaeology’ behind it, this kind of work has gradually evolved from an interest in the ‘ruins of classical Rome’ in the eighteenth century, to works on the cemeteries, inscriptions, and churches of Christian Rome in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The foremost names in that respect are those of De Rossi and Duchesne, then of Krautheimer, Paroli, and Pani Ermini.** Attention has now shifted to a slightly different area, thanks partly to the Italian legislation which came into force in the 1990s, and to the intense work of urban restructuring of the historic centre of Rome. Both have favoured a great archaeological surge. These excavations have been crucial in providing a long-awaited image of early medieval Rome in terms of the evolution of settlement, social and economic activities, and a better understanding of the physical activities and life in the city.** Such studies, complementing the work of historians of the stational liturgy and of in-depth work on the churches, monasteries, charitable institutions, infrastructure of walls, aqueducts, roads, and aristocratic houses, have enabled us, for the first time, to have a better spatial idea of how early medieval Rome looked. In addition, it has enabled us to examine how the city gradually moved from the spaces and monuments of its classical past to those secular as well as religious ones of the tenth century.** Such understanding becomes key when set side by side with that of another Roman city with a heavy monumental and ideological past—Ravenna. The comparison is essential in order to highlight their respective evolution and their respective understanding of their past, which is the purpose of the present work. Before leaving Rome, I will only add a word about a third venerable tradition of study, that of the art of the early medieval city. A considerable body of work has accumulated over the centuries in that area.*° Current art historical interest has focused more on the close relation between art and ideology at this period, particularly in relation to the Lateran Palace and churches with specific ideological programmes such as S. Susanna or S. Prassede.*” Here also, that work will be of considerable use for comparative purposes, especially with the art of Venice, which uses similar targeted ideological aims.
b. A second body of work, other than that on Rome, has been that on Byzantine Italy before 750, on Carolingian Italy, and on tenth-century Ottonian Italy. Here, with a few exceptions of historians of Byzantine Italy, there has been relatively little interest in the subject before the 1980s—just as there was for the history of early medieval Italy as an overall topic, outside the scope of individual cities.** Essential outlines of the history and the end of Byzantine power, of social and economic structures, and cultural shifts in northern and central Byzantine zones of influence have now been produced.*” That work has focused sometimes on Ravenna, and historians have brought together new archaeological results from the city and from the excavations at S. Severo in Classe, in order understand how Ravenna developed across these centuries as part of the history of the Romagna, the archiepiscopal dominion, and its interest in its past as an imperial capital.?° In the case of Ravenna, the interest has continued into the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, with some results of current research presented in a monumental series of volumes entitled the Storia di Ravenna.”’
c. While this may seem to continue the strong Italian tradition of individual histories of cities, with an overwhelming local civic interest, it is worth noting that the general editor of the volume just mentioned, Carile, wrote as much on the history of Venice as on that of Ravenna, and that another major scholar of Ravenna, Augenti, also worked on Rome.” Here is an indication of the fact that the new generations of Italian scholars have since the 1980s, in some cases under the influence of foreign archaeological input, been much more prepared to look at early Italian history from a translocal and regional point of view.
The shift can also be seen in the even more traditionally city-centric historiography of Venice. Used for centuries to being a centre of attention in its own right, based on the extraordinary success and longevity of its predominance, Venice had almost as many scholars interested in its long history, its state, art, and culture. For centuries, the myth of Venice has included two core themes: its unique status among Western cities, and its close association with Byzantium, due to its place as the ‘gate between East and West: These tropes, begun precisely in our period with John the Deacon, were at the very centre of the historiography of Venice for men such as Pertusi, and the encyclopaedic Cessi, whose writings became the litmus test for any perception of Venetian history.”*
It is here that current work has become essential, work which, under the influence of Ortalli, Gasparri, Gelichi, and Castagnetti”* at first, then of an even younger generation,”® has shifted the emphasis considerably. It has done so by exploding some of the old myths, through demonstrating the extent of Venice's early medieval involvement with its Italian and Adriatic background, and the parallel developments of its ninth- and tenth-century history, especially in economic terms, with the Italian terraferma and other port cities like Ravenna and Comacchio. Moreover, historians as well as art historians have shown convincingly how close were the links between Venice and Carolingian Italy, a trend already visible among the contributors to the monumental Storia di Venezia published in the early 1990s, and very much at the forefront of several volumes of conference papers given over the years at the Seminari del Centro interuniversitario per la Storia e lArcheologia dell’ Alto Medioevo, directed by Gasparri.
d. There are now far more studies, which see the developments of early medieval Italy not simply in their own autonomous terms, but within the wider scope of the whole of western Europe. So far, outstanding work has been produced from that perspective on Lombard Italy, with a huge impulse given to the period in the last ten years in particular. Byzantine Italy (leaving aside the south) too has had some syntheses put together. A great deal of interest is now present in the study of Carolingian Italy—though not always outside the actual kingdom of Italy, which was the case of my three cities until Ravenna in the tenth century became in practice a part of it.?°
Carolingian Italy, especially Rome, has been the focus of attention of several British, as well as German, scholars concerned with both texts and art, and recent work has been published on such topics as St Peter’s, Carolingian cultural and liturgical links with Rome, and Carolingian art and ideology.” Finally, a traditional German fascination with the Empire has been at the root of an early interest in Ottonian Italy, both in Rome and in Ravenna, and remains alive in recent German scholarship.”* Such an interest in the earlier history of the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ has always had a heavy focus on imperial ideology. But the interest has also had great importance for historians, in so far as much of it was focused on the editing of source material, especially of documents such as charters, diplomas, and papal sources.
Presentation: the Structure of the Book
I have adopted in this book an approach in tiers, which I should like to describe as resembling a form of theatrical performance. The Introduction and the first chapter, A Tale of Three Cities: History and Histories, give a brief history of the context of early medieval Italy following the main narratives of the sources, while questioning and challenging these on the basis of their drawbacks—these chapters provide the overture. The second and third chapters, The Actors: the Elites and the Populus, first in Rome, then in Ravenna and Venice, focus on the people who make this history, the actors on the stage, from the elites to those of the rest of the population about whom we have some information.
The chapters’ object is to identify and define them, by name, social and economic status, self-representation, and role in the life of their city. The fourth chapter, The Stage: Places of Power, Instruments of Control, focuses precisely on the various elements which allow these people to be involved in the life of the city: the topography of worldly power (palaces and residences), then that of spiritual power (churches and monasteries); the manifestations of this power through specific means (art, charity, liturgy, control of relics); and the instruments through which this power is exercised (titles, coinage, and symbols). This survey of the static ‘props’ on the stage of the city is completed by the fifth chapter, Exercising Power in the City: the Public Space, which looks at the play in its dynamics, the action or plot as it were.
Here I wish to look at the areas defined as ‘public space’ at who controls it (the Church, aristocratic elites), how they each exercise this control through display and processions, for example, and lastly how the public space can be used to reflect and promote consensus or, on the contrary, to manifest discontent and rebellion through violence.
The comparison between my three cities is completed in my final Chapter 6, Memory and the Construction of City Identity, where I hope to evidence precisely how similar and/ or different the three cities are in their use of their Roman/Byzantine heritage, and how this eventually determines (or does not determine) their present and future medieval development within the Italian urban scene by the time of the rise of the communes and future city states.
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