AQUILEIA. — Today a village of Friuli in the province of Udine, near the lagoon of Grado, on the Nattissa River, which connects it with the sea. It has barely 1,200 inhabitants and approximately 10,000 in the extensive municipality, which is exclusively agricultural. In antiquity it lay amid lagoons accessible from the sea, hence its importance and its role, which anticipated that of Venice.
AQUILEIA - Interior of the Basilica (11th and 14th centuries).
(phot. National Photographic Cabinet)
was present at the Council of Arles (314); Fortunaziano was a trusted associate of Pope Liberius, although he later came to terms with the Arians (354); St. Jerome had very much to praise in St. Valerian, and the same holy Doctor was bound by a fervent friendship to his successor, Cromazio. Particularly celebrated was the Council which, presided over by St. Ambrose in 381, was directed toward eradicating the last remnants of Arianism in the Danubian provinces.
In the first decades of the 5th century, A. became the metropolitan see of the entire province of the Venetia et Histria, and of the neighboring regions to the north and east; its organization was not at all disrupted by the invasion of the Huns (451), who conquered and burned the city, since, once the scourge had passed, it fully resumed its activity. The question of the Three Chapters had more serious consequences in 553, because, in opposition to Justinian and to Popes Vigilius and Pelagius, A. refused to accept their condemnation and openly adopted a schismatic stance. When the Lombards descended into Friuli in 568, Bishop Paolino, who claimed to proclaim himself patriarch, took refuge in Grado, a castle in his lagoons; his successors continued to reside there, obstinate in schism, until (605), with the consent of King Agilulf, an abbot named Giovanni was elected bishop of A., while in Grado, with the support of the Byzantine Empire and the Pope, Candidiano was elected for the Catholics. Thus began the division of the bishopric of Aquileia into two parts: one subject to the Lombard kingdom, the other to the Empire. Both prelates proclaimed themselves patriarchs; but the one at A., unable to reside in the city, now desolate and unsafe because of its proximity to Grado, settled in the castle of Cormòns, continuing in schism together with his suffragans until the end of the 7th century, when, through the intervention of the Lombard king Cuniberto, the patriarch Pietro returned to Pavia in union with Rome. The fortunes of the patriarchate then revived when, during the reign of Liutprand, his successor Callisto transferred his residence to Cividale, which was the capital of the duchy of Friuli. Meanwhile, the succession of patriarchs continued at Grado and did not end until the 15th century.
The patriarch Paolino (d. 802), a man of great learning and a close friend of Charlemagne, brought immense distinction to the patriarchate of A. Under him, the missions among the Avars, and especially those among the Carantani (Sloveni), greatly expanded in the surrounding regions. A celebrated act of 810, sanctioned by Charlemagne, established the course of the Drava as the boundary between the metropolitan see of A. and that of Salzburg, which had recently been established. Through it, the diocese of A. acquired an immense territory beyond the Carnic and Julian Alps, so that it could be considered the largest in Europe; to the west, however, the boundary remained approximately at the Tagliamento. The patriarch Massenzio did not succeed, although he had convened a council at Mantua in 827 for this purpose, in incorporating the patriarchate of Grado into his diocese, nor did some of his successors succeed in doing so on other occasions. In any case, all the sees of Istria and Venetia (excluding the lagoon and insular region), together with Mantua (until the 15th century) and Como (as a result of the ended schism), remained included in the metropolitan province. Massenzio also deserves credit for having begun to restore the fortunes of A., thanks to the support of the Carolingian rulers. Indeed, beginning with Charlemagne, who granted the free election of the patriarch and immunity, we have a whole series of concessions, continued in broader form by the kings of Italy Berengario and Ugo, and by the rulers of the Saxon and Salian houses.
The patriarch Poppo (d. 1042), a German, also obtained the potere missatico and the privilege of minting money, and gave new impetus to the reorganization of his Church and of Friuli, which had been devastated a few decades earlier by the Hungarian invasions. To this period belong the foundation of the great Benedictine convent of the nuns of S. Maria d'Aquileia, of the patriarchal chapter, and of the minor chapters of S. Stefano and of the SS. Felice e Fortunato, while the monastery of Beligna dates back to an earlier period; the collegiate chapter of Cividale likewise underwent a special reorganization. Closely connected with this ecclesiastical organization, which developed through the progressive creation of rural parish districts and archdeaconries, was the political organization, which expanded during the Investiture Controversy. In fact, to donations of vast lands and castles was added, in 1077, that of the county of Friuli, and shortly afterward that of the march of Carniola and the county of Istria; in 1081, the feudal lordship over the bishoprics of Trieste and Parenzo, and later also of Pola, while that over Concordia dated back to the time of King Ugo. The patriarch thus stood at the head of a powerful feudal state which, although it lacked stability in the transalpine lands, grew stronger in Istria and especially in Friuli, encompassing the entire territory from the Julian Alps and the Karst to the Livenza, including Cadore. During the period of this feudal state, the two important Benedictine abbeys of Rosazzo and Moggio arose, while other ecclesiastical institutions were also founded at that time in the transalpine regions. A whole series of patriarchs, for the most part of German nationality, governed the patriarchate until the death of Frederick II and the emergence of new political relations in Italy, thanks to the victory of the papacy. From that time, the patriarchate became involved in the political struggles that alternated in northern Italy, and particularly in Venetia, until, in 1420, after Venice had taken possession of Friuli and part of Istria, the feudal rule of the patriarchs came to an end. The new order of affairs was regulated by a compromise in 1445, with the approval of Eugenius IV. The system of commendatory administration then began and lasted until the middle of the 16th century; in 1463, the small bishopric of Lubiana was erected in Carniola by imperial decree, while the organization in the rest of the transalpine territory, ecclesiastically subject to Aquileia, remained unchanged.
The 16th century saw attempts by Protestantism to penetrate that territory, particularly the Goriziano, and the struggles between the Venetian Republic and Austria, resulting from the occupation of A. and eastern Friuli following the wars of the League of Cambrai. The Empire in fact claimed the right to appoint the patriarch, on the pretext that A. and most of the patriarchal diocese lay under its rule; Venice, consistently supported by the Pope, worked to prevent this, since it would then also have led to 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 in Udine, and his jurisdiction in Austrian territory was stubbornly contested and obstructed. The decline of A. began: the abbey of Beligna and the two chapters of S. Stefano and of the SS. Felice e Fortunato disappeared; the Chapter officiated there only during the winter months
because of malaria. Finally, Benedict XIV, acceding to the wishes of Empress Maria Theresa, which had taken shape in the preceding period, sanctioned a new arrangement with the bull of 6 July 1751: the patriarchate was suppressed and two archbishoprics were created, that of Udine and that of Gorizia. The former was assigned the part of the ancient diocese subject to Venice, the latter that subject to the Empire; the ecclesiastical province was divided in the same way: Udine was given jurisdiction over the Venetian and Istrian dioceses, Gorizia over those of Como, Trento, Pedena, and Trieste. A., together with its basilica, was declared directly subject to the Holy See and placed under an apostolic delegate,
which also had governance of the women’s monastery of S. Maria, exempt from patriarchal jurisdiction. But the monastery was suppressed by Giuseppe II in 1782; and in 1786 the basilica was converted into the parish church of the village, so that the office of the apostolic delegate came to an end, and A. remained merely a humble parish of the diocese of Gorizia.
A. also has other remains of basilicas, brought to light in the excavations and dating from the 4th–6th centuries. A beautiful mosaic pavement, which may date from the 6th century, reappeared on the Tullio estate, and a mosaic fragment depicting a peacock is preserved in the local museum.
On the site of the bell tower stood the primitive basilica, established within a house connected with other rooms at the sides. Here, as is learned from an inscription on the mosaic pavement, in the section added immediately after the age of peace, Bishop Teodoro (who belongs to the early Constantinian period) rose from one dignity to another (if, as it seems, this is the meaning of: «Theodore felix hic crevisti hic felix»). In the original hall, a small channel in the floor served to hold the wooden screen separating the place of the clergy from that of the people. The mosaics are among the finest works of art from the late 3rd and early 4th centuries and depict various genre subjects, at times with symbolic intent. With the advent of the Constantinian peace, the site underwent transformations, and, parallel to this hall, a large basilica was erected, where the same Bishop Teodoro is commemorated in an inscription that may be called triumphal, because it alludes to the glorious dedication accomplished with God’s help and through the offerings of the flock entrusted by heaven to so great a shepherd. The inscription is set above an imposing depiction of the story of Jonah, which
In the 5th century, a large three-aisled basilica without an apse, with geometrically patterned mosaic pavements, was superimposed on that one, in the area of the bell tower (that is, the northern one). As for the other (the southern one), the evidence available to us does not permit secure chronological determinations. This new northern basilica suffered a fire which, rather than being attributed to Attila, should be connected with the Lombard or Hungarian devastations that effectively brought the early-medieval cycle of the dominicum aquileiese to a close. Certainly, in the Justinianic age new constructions had been undertaken, especially in the front section, 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 remainder of the pool between the two basilicas perhaps dates from the 5th century.
In the time of the great patriarch Poppo (1019–45), the new basilica (the present one) was built on the site of the ancient southern basilica, and beside it the imposing bell tower was erected. – Vedi Tav. CXXVI.