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Patriarch Poppo (1019–1042) and the Rebuilding of the Basilica at Aquileia: the Politics of Conspicuous Expenditure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The traveller between Venice and Trieste may, if he knows where to look, catch a glimpse of a rather aggressive campanile in the coastal plain south of Cervignano. Slightly detached from the great basilica of Aquileia, rebuilt and then dedicated in 1031, the campanile was almost certainly intended by its builder, the Patriarch Poppo, as a gesture of derision towards its contemporary counterpart in Venice. With its foundations firmly skewering an Early Christian mosaic floor, it today overlooks a farmyard midden, the skeletal remains of a huge Roman city, and, of course, the splendid basilica.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987
References
1 Vita Meinwerci episcopi Patherbrunnensis, ed. F. Tenckhoff, MGH SRC 59, cap. 199, p. 155; Cap. 209, p. 122.
2 H. Bressltu, Jahrbùcher des deutschen Reichs unter Konrad II, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1879–84) 1, p. 488, referring to a placitum of 994. C. Manaresi, l Placiti del Regnum Italiae, 3 vols (Rome, 1957) 2, p. 308, dates the placitum to 14 February 995 and identifies the ‘Count Oci’ mentioned in it with the person of similar name who appears in a placitum of November 993 held at Verona (ibid., p. 303). On Poppo’s brother see Bresslau, Konrad II, 1, p. 487, referring to a charter of 1149. Admittedly the word comitis read by Bresslau does not appear in the versions of the same charter printed in MGH Dip KIII, 199 and A. Jaksch, Die Kärntner Geschichtsquetle 811–1202, 2 vols (Klagenfurt, 1004) 1, p. 102; but see Paschini, P., Storia del Friuli, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Udine, 1953) 1, p. 199 Google Scholar. On Poppo’s nephew see Paschini, P., ‘Vicende del Friuli durante il dominio della casa imperiale di Franconia’, MSF 9 (1913), p. 15 Google Scholar.
3 Tenckhoff (ed. Vita Meinwerci), p. 6, n. 1; A. Jaksch, Ceschichte Kämtens bis 1335, 2 vols (Klagenfurt, 1928) 1, p. 171.
4 Norwich, J.J., Venice, the Rise to Empire (London, 1977), pp. 86, 90 Google Scholar.
5 ‘Videns itaque ego predictus Poppo … eandem Aquilegensem urbem quondam famosissimam paganorum sevicia omnibus edeficiis et municionibus destructam et maxime ecclesiarum decore destituíam …’: Udine, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS pergamene capitolari, 1, no 7. The most recent edition is that of C. Scalon, Diploma Patriarcali (Udine, 1983), pp. 19–21. My thanks are due to Dr L. De Biasio, Librarian of the Biblioteca Capitolare, for much generous advice and help.
6 S. Tavano, ‘La basilica patriarcale’ in Aquileia e Grado (Centro di Antichità Altoadriatiche, Atti della Settimana di studi Aquileiesi, Aquileia, 1972), p. 239. Poppo’s epitaph was read by Giovanni Candido in 1521 but has long since vanished. On the capitals see Tavano, pp. 189ff.; H. H. Buchwald, ‘Eleventh century Corinthian Palmette Capitals in the Region of Aquileia’, Art Bulletin, 48 (1966), p. 147; X. Barrel i Altet, ‘Il contributo dei capitelli della basilica di Aquileia alla creazione del corinzio romanica dell’xi secolo’, Aquileia e l’Occidente (Centro di Antichità Altoadriatiche, Aquileia, 1981), pp. 351 ff.
7 Bresslau, Konrad II, 2, p. 176. See Schmidinger, H., Patriarch und Landesherr, die weltliclte Herrschaft der Patriarchen von Aquileia bis zum Ende der Staufer (Cologne, 1954), p. 53 Google Scholar fora similar view.
8 MGH Dip Oil, p. 271; Schmidinger, Patriarch, p. 31.
9 MGH Dip OIII, p. 835.
10 Ibid., p.836.
11 P. Paschini, ‘Le vie commerciale alpine del Friuli nel medioevo’, MSF 20 (1924), pp. 123–6; P. S. Leicht, ‘Note sull’economia Friulana al principio del secolo xiii’, MSF 34 (1938), p. 15.
12 For example, Ottenthal, E., ‘L’Administration du Friaul sous les patriarches d’Aquilée’, Mélanges Paul Fabre: Etudes d’histoire du moyen äge (Paris, 1902), pp. 304–5 Google Scholar; Schwartz, G., Die Besetzung der Bistümer Reichsitaliens unterden sächsischen undsalischen Kaisern (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913), pp. 11–12 Google Scholar; Hessel, A., ‘Friaul als Grenzland’, HZ 134 (1926), pp. 1 Google Scholarff.; Jaksch, , Geschichte Kàrntens, I, pp. 214–16 Google Scholar; and much more recently the admirable study by Menis, G. C., ‘Il processo formativo dello stato feudale nei secoli ix-xi’, in Miotti, T., ed., Castelli del Friuli, 6 vols (Udine, 1977-84) 4, pp. 13–32 Google Scholar.
13 The principal acquisitions are listed with references in Schmidinger, Patriarch, pp. 30–54.
14 Ibid., p. 50, where he suggests that this would give Poppo the right to clear land for arable or pasture and to found new settlements, but as we have seen this was already being done in the same area before 1001 (see nn. 9, 10, above). For the Forest Charter see MGH Dip KII, no 132.
15 MGH Dip OI, no 341.
16 In 1168 the monks of S. Sesto complained to Alexander III about the vexations they had suffered from successive patriarchs and notably from Poppo: imperator [HIII] patriarche mandavit ut eandem invasionem laxaret et de cetero ecclesiam in pace dimitteret. Ipse vero ut aspis surda aures obturavit, et non solum illam non dimisit, sed etiam alie possessiones quas reliquerat annuatim grave fictum imposuit’ (Paschini, ‘Vicende’, p. 37).
17 MGH Dip OII, no 304.
18 E. Theseider, ‘Vescovi e città nell’Italia precomunale’, Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel medioevo (sec. ix-xiii): Atti del convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia (1961) (Padua, 1964), pp. 97–106.
19 G. Tobacco, ‘La storia politica e sociale’, in Storia d’Italia (ed. G. Einaudi, Turin, 1974-) 2, pp. 122–3.
20 Leicht, ‘Note’, p. 3.
21 E. Degani, Le Decime nell’antico principato della chiesa d’Aquileia (S. Vito, 1888) is the only study available. Even the pacific Schmidinger (Patriarch, p. 42, n. 95) remarks that it ‘enthält nichts Erwähnenswertes’.
22 Manaresi, Placiti, 3, pp. 11–15. It seems to me that Schmidinger again takes a too inflated view of the importance of this judgement.
23 C. Briihl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium Regis, 2 vols (Cologne, 1968) 1, p. 538. See Paschini, , Storia del Friuli, 1, p. 202 Google Scholar.
24 MGH Dip KII, no 131; P. S. Leicht, ‘Il denaro del Patriarca Popone d’Aquileia’, Memorie Storiche Cividalese, I (1905), pp. 50ff.
25 C. G. Mor, ‘Nuove vedute metodologiche sulla storia friulana’, MSF 56 (1976), pp. 15–27. See also the curious episode of the ‘escape’ of Archbishop Aribert of Milan from Poppo’s custody in 1037: E. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Archbishop Aribert II of Milan’, History, 51 (1966), pp. 9–10.
26 Probably 1024 according to the dating suggested by Bresslau (Konradll, 1, app. 6). Andrea Dandolo (Chronicon Venetum, ed. E. Pastorello, Muratori, 12, p. 206) gives a colourful version of Poppo’s depradations from a Venetian angle, as does John XIX in the bull issued in December 1024 (Mansi, 19, cols 491–6 where it is wrongly dated): ‘Quicquid in ecclesia inventum est, unca manu depraedatum est, duorum monasteriorum Sanctimoniales srupratae ac violatae a suis sunt, neque Monachis pepercit. Quin etiam defunctorum corpora quietem desideratia a propriis tumulis auferens ad civitatem suam inhonorata transtulit, reliquias minus tamen quatn desiderabat similiter secum devexit…’ [my italics]. Allowing for hyperbole it must be remembered that Poppo rightly claimed that the relics of the Aquileian martyrs had only been evacuated temporarily to Grado in the face of barbarian incursions centuries earlier. One of the few historians to make this point, delicately but firmly, is H. Swaboda (although he gets the dates all wrong) in K. A. L. L. Lanckoronski, ed., Aquileia, sein Bau and seine Geschichte (Vienna, 1906), p. 80. It is only fair to add that Poppo passed some of die relics on to his uncle, Bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn, for his new cathedral (Vita Meinwerci, see n. I above, caps 119, 209). The same source tells us that Meinwerk, rather ungraciously, had the relics tested for efficacy.
27 See n. 5 above.
28 The villa was later subdivided into the villae of Mereto dì Capitolo, Palmada, Ronchis, Ronchiettis, and the villa Sclavorum (= S. Maria la Longa): see Paschini, ‘Vicende’, pp. 28–9.
29 Nothing was said about the tithes of the churches.
30 G.Biasutri, Il più antico rotolo censuale del capitolo d’Aquiìeia (Udine, 1956). The text of the Rotolo is printed in full with notes, pp. 20–48.
31 Leicht, ‘Note’, p. 9; C. Czörnig, Das Land Görz und Gradisca, mit Einschlussvon Aquileia (Vienna, 1873), pp. 424–30. It seems that the Friulian mansus could vary in size, and the average lies somewhere between seventeen and twenty-nine acres.
32 Biasutti, Rotolo, p. 21.
33 Leicht, ‘Note’, pp. 3 f draws attention to a similar mixture of names in three twelfth-century monastic inventories from Aquileia and Cividale.
34 Ibid., Paschini, ‘Vicende’, pp. 28–9.
35 Paschini, ‘Vicende’, p. 29, n. 7; Bresslau, KonradII, 2, p. 176; Schmidinger, Patriarch, p. 53; Czõrnig, Gõrzu. Gradisca, p. 255, n. 1;Leicht,’Note’, p. 15.