AQUILEIA. - Today a village of Friuli in the province of Udine, near the lagoon of Grado, on the river Nattissa, which connects it to the sea. It has barely 1,200 inhabitants and about 10,000 in the vast commune, which is exclusively agricultural. In antiquity it stood amid lagoons accessible from the sea, whence its importance and its function, which foreshadows that of Venice.
A legend, first known at the end of the 8th century, attributes the first evangelization of A. to the evangelist St. Mark. He is said to have established there as first bishop an Hermagoras, and then to have gone to evangelize Alexandria. The origin of the Church of Aquileia can critically be traced back to the middle of the 3rd century or a little earlier, and it was the center of irradiation throughout all Venetia and also in the adjoining territories of Raetia Secunda and Upper Pannonia. Once the Diocletianic persecution had ceased, in which a Fortunatus, the three Canziani, and Chrysogonus fell as martyrs, the Church immediately entered a period of great splendor; the bishop Theodore was at the Council of Arles (314); Fortunatianus was a man trusted by Pope Liberius, although he later came to terms with the Arians (354); St. Jerome had the highest praise for St. Valerian, and with Chromatius, his successor, the same holy doctor was bound by fervent friendship. Famous is the Council which, presided over by St. Ambrose in 381, was directed at extirpating the last remnants of Arianism in the Danubian provinces.
In the first decades of the 5th century A. became the metropolis of the entire province of Venetia et Histria, and of the neighboring regions to the north and east, and its organization was not at all disrupted by the invasion of the Huns (451), who conquered and set fire to the city, because, once the scourge had passed, it fully resumed its activity. Greater consequences had the question of the Three Chapters in 553 because, in opposition to Justinian and to the popes Vigilius and Pelagius, A. refused to accept their condemnation and openly assumed a schismatic stance. When in 568 the Lombards descended into Friuli, the bishop Paulinus, who claimed to proclaim himself patriarch, took refuge at Grado, a fortress of its lagoons; there his successors continued to reside, obstinate in the schism, until (605), with the consent of King Agilulf, an abbot John was elected bishop of A., while at Grado, with the favor of the Byzantine empire and of the Pope, Candidianus was elected for the Catholics. In this way began the split of the Aquileian bishopric into two parts: one subject to the Lombard kingdom, the other to the empire. Both prelates proclaimed themselves patriarchs; but the one of A., being unable to reside in the now desolate and unsafe city due to its proximity to Grado, settled in the castle of Cormòns, continuing in the schism together with his suffragans until the end of the 7th century, when, with the intervention of the Lombard king Cunincpert, the patriarch Peter returned to Pavia in union with Rome. Then the fortunes of the patriarchate rose again when, during the reign of Liutprand, Callistus, his successor, transferred to Cividale, which was the capital of the duchy of Friuli. Meanwhile at Grado the series of patriarchs continued, which did not cease until the 15th century.
Very great luster to the patriarchate of A. was gained by the patriarch Paulinus (d. 802), a person of great learning and a close friend of Charlemagne. Under him the missions among the Avars and especially those among the Carantanians (Slovenes) in the surrounding regions acquired great growth. There belongs to 810 a famous act, sanctioned by Charlemagne, by which between the metropolis of A. and that of Salzburg, newly instituted, the course of the Drava was set as the boundary. By it the diocese of A. acquired an immense territory beyond the Carnic and Julian Alps, so that it could be considered the most vast in Europe; to the west, on the other hand, the boundary remained roughly at the Tagliamento. The patriarch Maxentius, however, did not succeed, although he had assembled a council at Mantua in 827 for that purpose, in incorporating into his diocese the patriarchate of Grado, just as some of his successors later failed to do on other occasions. In any case there remained included in the metropolis all the sees of Istria and of Venetia (excluding the lagoon and island part), with Mantua (until the 15th century) and Como (as a consequence of the ended schism). To Maxentius also belongs the merit of having begun to restore the fortunes of A., thanks to the support of the Carolingian sovereigns. Indeed, from Charlemagne, who granted the free election of the patriarch and immunity, we have a whole series of concessions, continued in more ample form by the kings of Italy Berengar and Hugh, by the sovereigns of the Saxon and Salian houses.
The patriarch Poppo (d. 1042), a German, also obtained the missatic power and the privilege of minting coin and gave new impulse to the reorganization of his Church and of Friuli, ruined a few decades earlier by the Hungarian invasions. To this age goes back the foundation of the great Benedictine monastery of the nuns of S. Maria d'Aquileia, of the patriarchal chapter, of the minor chapters of S. Stefano and of Sts. Felix and Fortunatus, while the monastery of Beligna goes back to earlier times; a special reorganization was also had by the collegiate chapter of Cividale. With this ecclesiastical organization, which developed with the progressive creation of the pievi and of the rural archdeaconries, is closely connected the political organization which had its growth during the investiture struggle. And in reality, to the donations of vast lands and castles, there was added in 1077 that of the county of Friuli and shortly afterwards also that of the march of Carniola and of the county of Istria, and in 1081 of the feudal lordship over the bishoprics of Trieste and of Parenzo and then also of Pola, while that over Concordia went back to the times of King Hugh. The patriarch was thus at the head of a powerful feudal State, which, if it did not have solidity in the transalpine regions, grew strong in Istria and particularly in Friuli, embracing the whole territory from the Julian Alps and the Karst as far as the Livenza, including Cadore. During the period of this feudal state arose the two important Benedictine abbeys of Rosazzo and of Moggio, while other ecclesiastical institutions arose at that time also in the transalpine regions. A whole series of patriarchs, largely of Germanic nationality, held the government of the patriarchate until the death of Frederick II and the rise of new political relations in Italy, thanks to the victory of the papacy. From this time the patriarchate was involved in the political struggles that alternated in northern Italy and particularly in the Veneto, until in 1420, Venice having taken possession of Friuli and of part of Istria, the feudal dominion of the patriarchs ceased. The new order of things was regulated by a compromise in 1445, with the approval of Eugene IV. Then began the regime of the commendam, which lasted until the middle of the 16th century; in 1463 the small bishopric of Ljubljana was erected in Carniola, by imperial will, leaving unchanged the organization in the remaining transalpine territory, ecclesiastically subject to Aquileia.
The 16th century saw the attempts at penetration of Protestantism in that territory, particularly in the Gorizia area, and the struggles between the Venetian Republic and Austria, a consequence of the occupation of A. and of eastern Friuli following the wars of the League of Cambrai. The Empire in fact claimed the right of appointment of the patriarch, on the pretext that A. and the greater part of the patriarchal diocese stood under its dominion; Venice, constantly supported by the Pope, strove to prevent this from happening, since otherwise there would also have been the appointment of a non-Italian ecclesiastic, while the ecclesiastical province was almost entirely in Venetian territory.
The patriarch no longer resided in A., but at Udine, and his jurisdiction in Austrian territory was obstinately contested and impeded. For A. the decline began: the abbey of Beligna and the two chapters of S. Stefano and of Sts. Felix and Fortunatus disappeared; the Chapter officiated there only in the winter months because of malaria. Finally Benedict XIV, acceding to the wishes of the empress Maria Theresa, which had matured in the preceding age, sanctioned with the bull of 6 July 1751 a new organization: the patriarchate was suppressed and two archbishoprics were created: that of Udine and that of Gorizia. To the first was attributed the part of the ancient diocese subject to Venice, to the second that subject to the Empire; in the same way the ecclesiastical province was divided: Udine had subject to it the Venetian and Istrian dioceses, Gorizia those of Como, Trent, Pedena and Trieste. A. with its basilica was declared directly subject to the Holy See, and subjected to an apostolic delegate, which also had the governance of the women's monastery of St. Mary, exempt from patriarchal jurisdiction. But the monastery was suppressed by Joseph II in 1782; and in 1786 the basilica was turned into the parish church of the village, so that the office of the apostolic delegate came to an end, and A. remained nothing but a humble parish of the diocese of Gorizia.
Bibliography3 works
Pio Paschini
schini, Storia del Friuli, 3 vols., Udine 1934-36; G. Brusin, A. e Grado, ibid. 1947.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MONUMENTS
The cathedral group of Aquileia has proved, through the Austrian and Italian excavations, to be of singular interest, since it has a stratification extending from the period of the persecutions to after the year 1000.
A. also has other remains of basilicas, brought to light in the excavations and belonging to the 4th-6th centuries. A very beautiful lithostrotos, which may belong to the 6th century, reappeared in the fondo Tullio, and a mosaic remnant, with a figure of a peacock, is preserved in the local museum.
On the site of the bell tower stood the primitive basilica, formed within the setting of a house connected with other lateral rooms. Here, as we learn from an inscription on the mosaic floor, in the section of the enlargement that came immediately after the age of peace, the bishop Theodore (who belongs to the earliest Constantinian times) grew from dignity to dignity (if this, as it seems, is the meaning of: «Theodore felix hic crevisti hic felix»). In the original hall a small channel on the floor served to insert the wooden chancel screen separating the place of the clergy from that of the people. The mosaics are among the finest of the art of the late 3rd and early 4th century and reproduce various genre subjects, sometimes with symbolic intent. With the advent of the Constantinian peace, the place underwent transformations, and, parallel to this hall, a great basilica was erected, where the same bishop Theodore is commemorated in an inscription that may be called triumphal, because it alludes to the glorious dedication that took place through the help of God and with the offerings of the flock entrusted by heaven to so great a shepherd. The inscription stands above an imposing figuration of the story of Jonah, which may have a double meaning here, in the sense of alluding to the resurrection of the Lord and at the same time to liberation from the danger of persecutions. The other images of this enormous lithostrote (the most important in early Christian art) are also of exceptional interest. We find there the Good Shepherd and above all the Eucharistic Victory, surrounded by small images alluding to the offertorium. In this section the wooden altar that stood in the midst of the people, two-thirds of the way from the entrance of the nave, according to the custom of Africa and other places (there was a trace of it also in Rome), must have rested. Later, when the wooden altar was changed into a stone altar, the supports were set into the lithostrote, damaging it. In the mosaic one also sees the living portraits of the offerers. The baptistery of this basilica (presumably the second of the community) was placed alongside and had an octagonal pool. The Aquileian basilica has also given us precious vestiges of wall paintings and of painted ceiling decoration. In the new basilica one sees remains of a heavenly garden with figures of shepherds.
In the 5th century a great basilica with three naves without an apse, with mosaic floors of a geometric type, was superimposed on that one, over the area of the bell tower (that is, the northern one). For the other (the southern one), the elements we possess do not allow us to make sure chronological determinations. This new northern basilica suffered a fire, which, rather than to Attila, must be referred to the Lombard or Hungarian devastations, which practically closed the early medieval cycle of the dominicum aquileiese. Certainly, in the Justinianic age new constructions had arisen, especially in the front part, where some mosaic remains belong stylistically to the 6th century. At this time the polygonal baptistery arose in front of the southern basilica, while the rest of the pool between the two basilicas is perhaps from the 5th century.
In the time of the great patriarch Poppo (1019-45) the new basilica (the present one) was built over the area of the ancient southern basilica, and alongside it the mighty bell tower was raised. - See Pl. CXXVI.
Bibliography5 works
Carlo Cecchelli