ARNOLFINE, LANDS.—A group of castles in southern Umbria, situated between Terni, Spoleto, Amelia, and Narni, whose administrative unity—preserved in memory of a previous feudal autonomy—was maintained from the 11th to the 18th century by ecclesiastical governance, alongside the far larger Patrimony of St. Peter in Tuscia. Through the shifting fortunes of various dominations, the following places belonged to this special district: Cesi, Sangemini, Poggio Azzuano, Macerino, Porzano, Collecampo, Cisterna, Scoppio, Fiorenzuola, Messenano, Arezzo, Palazzo, Appecano, Castiglione, Acquapalomba, Fogliano, Rapicciano, Balduino, Portaria, Quadrelli, Fossola, Cicigliano, Montecastrilli, Dunarobba, Collesecce, Farneta, Avigliano, Castel del Monte, Casigliano, Mezzanelli, S. Maria in Pantano, Montignano, Configni, Acquasparta, and the disputed Gallicitulo.
The name of the territory (*Terra Arnulphorum*, as expressed by Cencio Camerario in the *Liber Censuum* and by Nicholas III in a bull of 1289, or *Terra specialis commissio Arnulfiorum*, as expressed by Martin V around 1417) and the very family name of the Arnolfi, ancient owners of these lands, derived from a vassal of Otto I and Otto II. This vassal, a companion of the two emperors in their Italian campaigns, appears in documents of 981 as *comes et missus sacri Palatii*. It is possible that this Arnolfo was enfeoffed by the first Otto, in the distribution of fiefs to his followers made immediately after his imperial coronation (961), with the lands of the royal *curtis* of Casentino, around the ancient Carsoli, which had been destroyed. These lands, through an agreement in 1004 between Henry II and John XVIII, were exchanged for the Church’s domains in Carinthia dependent on the bishopric of Bamberg, thus being added to the Patrimony and forming the basis of the Papal State.
The sons and successors of Arnolfo, already subject to the Duke of Spoleto, assumed the role of vicars, dividing into two branches that dominated respectively the mountainous *Terra Arnulphorum* (or Spoletan) and the lowland *Terra Arnulphorum*. A long series of donations—to the monasteries of Farfa and Montecassino—in the 11th and 12th centuries marked their existence, while from them sprang the Counts of Sangemini, the Bentivenga of Todi, and the Cesi (later of Acquasparta). These very donations gradually eliminated their remaining power, making possible, with the decline of Farfa’s influence and the cessation of conflicts with Barbarossa—and better still, with the reorganization carried out by Innocent III—the establishment of direct ecclesiastical rule over the region. A sign of this was the construction of the fortress of Cesi, residence of the rectors of the *Terra Arnulphorum*, which later appeared divided into the five castles of Cesi, Portaria, Macerino, Castiglione (later Porzano), and Gallicitulo (later Fiorenzuola), each issuing—and having confirmed—their own statutes.
In the following centuries, and already in the years following the death of Innocent III, animated by renewed imperial struggles, the strengthening of civic autonomies, and the repression of heresy, the *Terra Arnulphorum* became a continual source of conflict between Terni and Narni, between Todi and the Church, and between Terni and Spoleto. The disputes were particularly bitter over possession of the estate known as *Arsicicali* and of Poggio Azzuano. Much of the political history of the Umbrian cities and their relations with the curia revolved around the castles of the *Terra Arnulphorum*.
To end the long dispute, Alexander VI, by a bull of April 29, 1502, placed the *Terra Arnulphorum* under the administration of the clerics of the Apostolic Chamber. But Julius II revoked the bull, and every subsequent pope returned to the issue, while conflicts continued among the neighboring cities, until in 1568 Pius V definitively confirmed Alexander VI’s act, maintaining Cesi as the head of the *Terra Arnulphorum*, seat of the vicar of the Chamber’s clerics. Yet by this time, the ancient unity preserved through so many vicissitudes was reaching its crisis: between the late 16th and 17th centuries, it was undermined by frequent grants of new lordships by the Church. Only the community of Cesi retained, with the few lands remaining, its ancient pride as a dominant power and defended it in the long litigation over Poggio Azzuano with the Dukes of Acquasparta. Nevertheless, though reduced to those few places—and now more the land of Cesi than of the Arnolfi—the district survived until the Napoleonic storm, only to be forgotten and disappear in the final restoration of the Papal State.