Emilia

EMILIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY - A region of continental Italy, bounded by the Po, the Adriatic (122 km. of coast) and the Apennine ridge. In this broader and more general sense it also includes Romagna, corresponding to its eastern part; together with Romagna it forms the region of Emilia-Romagna established by art. 131 of the recent Italian Constitution.

The territory is divided roughly in half between the hills and mountains of the northern Apennine slope (54% of its surface) and the plain on the right bank of the Po (46%). Its economy hinges essentially

The territory is divided roughly in half between the hills and mountains of the northern Apennine slope (54% of its surface) and the plain on the right bank of the Po (46%). Its economy hinges essentially on a flourishing agriculture, which employs 3/5 of the population and gives Italy, among other things, the highest shares of wheat, sugar beet, hemp, tomato, etc., as well as a rich production of wine and fruit; and it is complemented by an equally flourishing livestock raising (cattle and pigs) with the related activities. Its mineral resources (sulphur, petroleum) are modest, but not negligible. Alongside the food industries (dairy products, cured meats, sugar refineries), which have dominant importance there, textiles, mechanical and chemical industries have developed in Emilia above all. The geographical position favors intense traffic and therefore an active commerce, which benefited from an excellent road and railway network (much damaged by the recent war).

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

The name derives from the Roman road laid out by the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus in 187 B.C., a road that crossed the entire region from Rimini to Piacenza, thus linking the Flaminia to Liguria. The province of Aemilia had broken away from Liguria between 370 and 381 and does not seem to have had an ecclesiastical autonomy. Christianity had penetrated its cities at different times, organizing itself hierarchically, first at Ravenna, then at Ariminum, then inland at Faventia, Bononia, Claterna, Placentia, Parma, Forum Popilli (Forlimpopoli), Forum Livii (Forlì), Forum Cornelii (Imola), Mutina. As a whole they constituted Region VIII. Parma in 378 already depended directly on Rome. In 379 Constantius, elected bishop of Claterna, received from St. Ambrose the directives for the governance of his diocese and the exhortation to keep watch over the Church of Imola, then without a bishop (Ep., 2: PL 16, 917-26). In the year 381 the bishops Eusebius of Bologna and Sabinus of Piacenza were present at the Council of Aquileia (Gesta Concilii Aquileiensis, ibid., 979). At the end of 386 St. Ambrose addressed to the bishops per Aemiliam constitutis a letter concerning the date for the celebration of Easter (Ambrose, Ep. 23: ibid., 1070-78). This demonstrates that both because of the civil importance of Milan, metropolis of Upper Italy, and because of the personal authority of St. Ambrose, the bishops of Aemilia were at that time under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Milan.

To the 5th century must be assigned the dioceses of Regium Lepidum (Reggio Emilia), Brixellum (Brescello), Vicohabentia (Voghenza), Ficaulae (Cervia); to the 6th century, Cesena.

But already with the second half of the 5th century the pre-eminence of Ravenna over the Churches of the province begins, as is shown by the letter of Pope Simplicius dated 30 May 482 to John bishop of Ravenna, in which the consecration of Gregory, bishop of Modena, is reproved, a payment is imposed on the bishop of Bologna, and finally the title of «Ecclesiae Ravennatis sive Aemilianae» is given (Simplicius, Ep., 2: ibid., 58, 35-37).

The boundaries of the province were, however, changed in 368 by the Lombard invasion. Paul the Deacon then indicates Bologna, Parma, Reggio, Imola among the most flourishing cities. In that era the abbeys of Bobbio and Nonantola were founded.

In the 8th century the episcopal sees dependent on Ravenna are: Sarsina, Cessena, Forum Popilli, Forum Livii, Faentia, Forum Cornelii, Bononia, Mutina, Regium, Parma, Placentia, Brixellum, Vicohabentia, Atria. Brescello disappeared very soon; Ferrara succeeded Vicohabentia; Agapitus II in 948 placed Cervia under the dependence of Ravenna, and Gregory IX added Montefeltro to it, which then immediately passed to being subject. In the 10th century the bishops had the governance of the cities; in the following century the prelates of Parma and Piacenza were counts.

In the Gesto pauperis scolaris Albini, Aemilia is remembered as a province, but the dioceses are all listed «in provincia Flaminea»; the metropolis is Ravenna with 15 suffragans: Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Forlì, Adria, Forlimpopoli, Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Faenza, Imola, Cesena, Cervia, Comacchio, Sarsina (Le Liber Censuum, ed. P. Fabre-L. Duchesne, II, Paris 1903, pp. 96 to 102).

Subsequently, however, the Ravennate supremacy declined rapidly until Gregory XIII in 1382 erected Bologna as an archdiocese, assigning to it as suffragans Imola, Cervia, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Piacenza, Crema, Borgo S. Donnino. Clement VIII placed Rimini and Ferrara under the dependence of Ravenna, and the latter in 1735 became an archdiocese and immediately subject.

The metropolitan see of Aemilia is today Modena; its archbishop held in commendam from 15 Dec. 1820 the «nullius» abbey of Nonantola, united in perpetuity from 1 May 1926. The suffragans of Modena are: the dioceses of Carpi, Guastalla and Reggio Emilia. Immediately subject are the dioceses of Fidenza, Parma and Piacenza.

CONCILIAR REGION OF EMILIA

It is one of the regions into which Italy has been divided for the purpose of celebrating regional councils, which are held in place of the provincial ones (v. CONCILIO: § IV); this was established by measures of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial of 15 February and 22 March 1919 and 29 September 1933 (AAS, 11 [1919], pp. 72-74, 176; 25 [1933], p. 466).

It comprises the territories of the ecclesiastical province of Modena and Nonantola, and of the dioceses of Fidenza, Parma, and Piacenza.

The chief town is Modena: and in this city resides the regional ecclesiastical tribunal for cases of nullity of marriage; an appeal against the sentences of this tribunal may be brought before the Romagna regional tribunal (Bologna) or before the Sacred Roman Rota (cf. Pius XI, motu proprio Qua cura 8 December 1938, in AAS, 30 [1938], pp. 410-13).

Pio Ciprotti

III. SACRED ART

The first expressive accents of the art that flourished luxuriantly in the Emilian region and in the neighboring Romagna, akin to it in many respects, must be sought in Ravenna in the church buildings of the age of Theodoric (6th century), where Byzantine structures and decorations are combined with elements such as the rhythmic arcades, the polygonal apses, the external decorations of pilasters and small arches, which already foreshadow what would become the Romanesque style in the Po Valley. Later, during the period of the Exarchate, new simplifying structures in building decisively prepared the advent of that style, as can be seen in the so-called Palace of Theodoric, also in Ravenna (8th century), and in many round bell towers of that area, between the 6th and 9th centuries.

Although it developed first in Lombardy, the Romanesque soon found in the E. expressions of highly representative sacred architecture, beginning with the cathedral of Modena (early 11th century) and ending with the cathedral of Ferrara, the most grandiose of the series, which was to assume ogival features in its upper part (13th century). And even in civil buildings that period is represented with typical forms, such as the two bold towers of the Asinelli and the Carisenda (12th century) in Bologna. Sculpture, in the service of building, found a marvelous development in the 12th century at Modena, through the work of Wiligelmo; at Ferrara, with Niccolò and his follower Guglielmo, and then at Parma, with Benedetto Antelami and his school (between c. 1380 and the middle of the 13th century), rising to European importance. In the field of painting, after the splendid mosaic flowering of Byzantine Ravenna, there followed a long stagnation, until in Bologna the art of illumination gradually developed, toward the end of the 13th century, with a certain freedom of movement.

The subsequent Gothic period boasts a religious architecture with local materials and characteristics, at Bologna (the churches of S. Francesco, S. Domenico and S. Petronio), at Piacenza (S. Francesco and S. Sisto), at Cesena (the Cathedral); civil architecture also flourished at Bologna (the Palazzi del Municipio, dei Notai, di Re Enzo), at Piacenza (the Palazzo comunale in stone, brick and terracotta), at Ferrara (the Palazzo Estense and the Palazzo della Ragione), while feudal fortresses and strongholds arose everywhere, of which it will suffice to mention the famous Castello Estense, at Ferrara, and the manors of Gradara and Castellarquato. Fourteenth-century sculpture appears in the E. as tributary to the neighboring regions, as attested by the very fine marble altarpiece by the Venetians Dalle Masegne, in S. Francesco at Bologna; but in this city notable painters were active, such as Vitale, Andrea, Lippo Dalmasio, Simone dei Crocifissi; at Rimini, a distinguished group of fresco painters, around the best known of them, Giovanni Baronzio, partly in the orbit of Giotto; at Modena the delicate Barnaba, under the influence of the Sienese, and the sharp and already realistic Tommaso, foreshadowing fifteenth-century typologies and tonalities. Among the manifestations of decorative art there emerge, in the late Gothic period, the Bolognese miniatures, especially those of Niccolò di Giacomo, the goldsmith work of Jacopo Roseto, also a follower of S. Petronio, and the cabinetmaking carvings of Giovanni di Basso, who has left us an authentic masterpiece, with purely geometric and vegetal motifs, with the stalls of the choir of S. Domenico, at Ferrara.

The breath of the Renaissance gladdened the Emilian lands with a certain delay compared with central Italy; in any case, the new building and decorative forms appeared first in Bologna, the city closest to Florence, established by architects such as Pagno di Lapo Portigiani and Fioravante and Aristotile Fioravanti. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, through the work of the Bramantesque Biagio Rossetti, the serene face of Este Ferrara was determined, with the so-called Herculean Addition and with a remarkable series of patrician palaces and churches, while the virile and Romanizing imprint of Leon Battista Alberti is manifest in the square bell tower of that Cathedral, and in Romagna at Rimini in S. Francesco, called the Tempio Malatestiano. In the course of the sixteenth century civil building developed, especially at Bologna, represented by the palaces of Andrea Marchesi, called il Formigine, of Antonio Morandi, called il Terribilia, of Bartolomeo Triachini and of the ingenious Pellegrino Pellegrini or Tibaldi, who was to establish himself especially in Milan and in Spain. At Ferrara, the Rossettian tradition was perpetuated until about the seventeenth century, with Girolamo da Carpi and Alberto Schiatti, in classicizing forms; at Parma the churches of Bernardino Zaccagni emerge; at Piacenza those of Alessio Trammello and the unfinished Palazzo Farnese by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, an architect of universal fame. Fifteenth-century sculpture flourished especially through the merit of foreign masters. At Bologna the great modeler and many-sided narrator Niccolò da Bari, called dell'Arca, dominated; at Ferrara the Donatellesque Niccolò and Giovanni Baroncelli da Firenze and the Paduan Domenico di Paris worked, while at Modena the local sculptor in polychrome terracotta, Guido Mazzoni, established himself with a spirit of popular realism. From him derived, also at Modena, the sixteenth-century and graceful Antonio Bagarelli; at Ferrara Alfonso Lombardi, very active at Bologna, grafted Tuscan forms onto native tendencies. A sempre fertile nucleus of the entire Emilian-Romagnan painting, for both centuries of the Renaissance, was the imaginative Ferrarese school, nourished by Pierfrancescan, Mantegnesque and Flemish juices, in the golden age of Cosimo Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole Roberti, and later by Venetian and Raphaelesque influence. Tributaries of it were, at Bologna, Francesco Raibolini, called il Francia, and his numerous pupils; at Modena, Agnolo and Bartolomeo degli Erri, Bartolomeo Bonascia and Francesco Bianchi Ferrari; at Parma G. F. Mainieri; in Romagna, Bernardino and Francesco Zaganelli da Cotignola, not comparable to the pictorial star of those lands: Melozzo da Forlì. Also during the 16th century the Ferrarese, through the triad Dosso Dossi, Ortolano and Garofalo, exercised a notable suggestion on the painting of the neighboring lands and prepared the advent of the prodigious colorist Correggio, who was to found at Parma a new school of which the greatest representative remains Francesco Mazzola, called il Parmigianino. More than in Romagna, Mannerist tendencies found accents of singular tonal victory at Modena, with Niccolò dell'Abate; at Novellara, with Lelio Orsi, and at Bologna, with Pellegrino Tibaldi. The decorative arts did not produce in this period masters comparable to the architects and painters, but one must nevertheless point out, in the field of fifteenth-century illumination, the marvels executed at Ferrara by Taddeo Crivelli, Franco dei Russi, Giorgio d'Alemagna and other collaborators of the famous Bible of Borso; the suggestive formal and chromatic harmonies of the maiolica makers of Faenza; the very beautiful inlays, under the influence of Piero della Francesca, worked by the brothers Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozi da Lendinara; the plastic terracottas, scattered throughout the region; of exquisite elegance at Bologna, of classical decorum at Ferrara. Quite notable are the sixteenth-century engravers of crystal and hardstone: Giovanni Bernardi da Castelbolognese and Luigi Anichini of Ferrara and, in the field of print engraving, the Mantegnesque Niccolotto da Modena and, subsequently, the famous Marcantonio Raimondi of Bologna (of whom excellent pupils were, besides his fellow citizen Giulio Bonasone, the Parmesan Enea Vico and Marco Dente da Ravenna), the ingenious woodcutter Ugo da Carpi and the painter Parmigianino, to whom the technical and stylistic birth of the etching is owed.

The Emilian architecture of the Baroque and Rococo age does not present markedly regional characteristics, but, especially at Bologna, it produced opulent fruits, almost always supported by an intimate classical equilibrium, and it will suffice to mention the followers of Felsina Bartolomeo Provaglia, Giovanbattista Bergonzoni, Carlo Francesco Dotti, Alfonso Torregiani, Antonio Bibbiena (theater and stage architect), the greatest representative of a dynasty appreciated throughout Europe; the Ferrarese Giovanbattista Aleotti, known as l'Argenta, and the already neoclassicizing Giuseppe Pistocchi of Faenza. From Modena came the most fervent follower of Borromini, namely the Theatine Guarino Guarini, who left his most significant works in Turin, and in Imola lived for a long time Cosimo Morelli, the composed author of the Palazzo Braschi in Rome. The greatest Emilian sculptor of the seventeenth century is to be considered the Bolognese Alessandro Algardi, who also as an architect worthily rivaled Bernini in Rome, conferring on Baroque forms a matured dignity. Again in Bologna there distinguished themselves: Giovanbattista Barberini, Camillo and Giuseppe Mazza, Angelo Pio and, in Ferrara, Andrea Ferreri, trained in Bologna. Above all in painting the city of St. Petronius was in those centuries to impose itself on the attention of the artistic world with the eclectic school of the three Carracci, a valid figurative instrument of the Catholic Reformation and from which came the noblest masters of the region: besides the Bolognese Guido Reni, Domenichino, Albani, Tiarini, Andrea Donducci, known as il Mastelletta, Carlo Cignani, the Guercino da Cento, the Parmesan Lanfranco and Badalocchio, and the Modenese Schedoni, Caredoni and Luna, the Ferrarese Carlo Bonone. And in the following century there shone in Bologna the unprejudiced genius of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, known as lo Spagnolo, and there established themselves the talents of Marcantonio Franceschini and of the Tiepolesque Ubaldo and Gaetano Gandolfi, while the Piacentine Giovanni Paolo Pannini pleasantly anticipated the Venetian view painters. In the decorative arts mention is deserved by the Bolognese furniture and wall hangings of luxuriant cheerfulness, the maioexoticizing majolicas of the Ferniani manufactory in Faenza, the wrought ironwork of the eighteenth-century Modenese Giovanbattista Malagoli; the engraved prints of the Carracci and their school, and the popular ones of Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, also from Bologna.

During the nineteenth century there was no lack of artists remarkable for inventiveness and stylistic ability, but with no bond among them, often emigrated to other regions or abroad, so that no Emilian group or school figures in the history of this period. Architecture is honorably represented by the neoclassical Bolognese Giuseppe Nadi, by the Modenese Luigi Poletti and by Antonio Sarti of Budrio, working successfully in Rome under Gregory XVI and Pius IX, as well as by the neo-sixteenth-century Giuseppe Mengoni of Fontana Elice. Good Canovian sculptors proved to be, in Bologna, Giacomo De Maria and Adamo Tadolini. In painting, during the neoclassical period, there emerged the accomplished portraitists Gaspare Landi of Piacenza and Lodovico Lipparini of Bologna, then, at the time of Roman purism, Tommaso Minardi of Faenza and Adeodato Malatesta of Modena. In the second half of the century, there figured, among the major Romantic landscape painters, not only Italian, Antonio Fontanesi of Reggio Emilia, but also one of the most gifted and imaginative of the Macchiaioli, Silvestro Lega of Modigliana. A delicate Orientalist was Alberto Pasini of Busseto; a lyrical interpreter of the Apennine landscape, the Bolognese Luigi Bertelli, and in Bologna were born the robust composer and solitary draughtsman Luigi Serra and the decadent luminist Mario De Maria; the Ferrarese Gaetano Previati and Giovanni Boldini carried their fruitful activity into the present century; the one, a theorist of divisionism but of a dreamy, mystical temperament, and the other, an impetuous, biting commentator on Parisian high society.

While the most showy and picturesque expressions, such as, for example, traditional styles of dress, have long since disappeared, popular customs and festivals of rustic origin and meaning have instead been preserved, to which city life has often caused a more sumptuous character and greater importance to be given. Of particular note are the mid-Lent festivals, whose centerpiece is a large puppet representing an old woman all adorned with necklaces of dried fruit and which, at the end of the festival, is sawed in two, while the fruits give way and are scrambled for by the crowd of children, and the people give themselves over to a carnivalesque revel. Accordingly the festival is called that of the Segavecchia, and it is celebrated with particular display at Reggio Emilia, at Cotignola (Ravenna) and at Forlimpopoli (Forlì). Notable survivals, again of rustic meaning, are found in the March fires that are lit on the eve of the calends of March and around which the children dance by leaping over the flames: even more important are those for the calends of May, which are preserved especially in various villages of the Emilian Apennines: groups of young people go from house to house, carrying flowering branches adorned with ribbons and singing begging songs with the announcement that "May has arrived." Besides the lyric maggi, composed predominantly in stanzas of eight-syllable lines, there also exist dramatic maggi, that is, veritable performances of epic-chivalric or sacred and historical subject, performed in the open air with the accompaniment of a small organ or violin: such maggi are sometimes repeated even during the summer season in the midst of the woods. In connection with the cycle of country labors, certain famous traditional fairs must also be placed, such as that of St. John (June 24) at Ravenna, of St. Peter (June 29) at Faenza, of St. Lawrence (Aug. 10) at Cervia, which give rise to original popular festivities (lotteries, pinwheels, contests, etc.). A festive character is also assumed by some of the principal country tasks, such as the husking of corn and the braking of hemp, which provide the occasion for the beginning or the proclamation of engagements among the peasant youth. Thus, always alive and rich in burlesque motifs is the festival of St. Martin (Nov. 11) on the occasion of the grape harvest.

Rural life is also abundantly reflected in the monostrophic lyric songs which in E. often take the form of a quatrain (sometimes with ABCC rhymes) and which in certain places, especially in the lower Ferrarese, are called romanelle, a name dear to Carducci. Also very rich is the traditional heritage of proverbs about the weather and agricultural labors, matters fed by the popular almanacs that have been printed for centuries in various cities such as Reggio Emilia, Faenza ("Luneri di smembar," etc.). - See plates XXV-XXVI.

tettura ferrarese nel Quattrocento e nel Cinquecento, Rome 1942; E. Bodmer, Il Correggio e gli Emiliani, Novara 1943; U. Nebbia, La pittura italiana del Seicento, ibid. 1946, pp. VII-XX.

Alberto Neppi

FOLKLORE

An eminently agricultural region, with numerous and important urban centers and a highly advanced civic life, E. draws from this condition its characteristics and

Among the manifestations of popular religiosity, special mention is due to the cult of the Madonna of S. Luca (Bologna). Numerous legends have flourished around the image itself and around the forms of worship to which it has given rise over the centuries. Other much-venerated sanctuaries, again in the same province of Bologna, are those of the Madonna of Boccadrino and of Monte delle Formiche. Ancient and very graceful painted tablets for ex-votos are preserved in the church of the Madonna del Monte (Cesena). Particular forms of veneration have also flourished around the Madonna del Fuoco, at Forlì, whose image is often reproduced together with that of St. Gregory and St. Anthony Abbot on the plaustra, the great agricultural carts, painted in vivid colors and still in use in the Emilian-Romagnol plain.

Characteristic expressions of popular art are also the rust-printed blankets, with which the oxen are covered during the winter, rustic ceramics, and the hemp hackles painted with the same floral motifs as the carts and the castellate (elongated barrels with which the must is carried into the city after the grape harvest).

Fairly well preserved, especially in the provinces of Bologna and Reggio, are the ancient popular dances, such as the ballo del feri, the galletta, the ruggiero, but above all the trescene, a typical courtship dance.

Paolo Toschi