FRÜLLI. - The name is derived from Forum Iulii (later called Patria del Friuli), and it designates the territory that extends as far as the Isonzo and Timavo rivers to the east, the course of the Livenza to the west, the Adriatic Sea and the Carnic Alps to the south, and to the north. In this area, a particular Ladin dialect is spoken, quite different from the dialects of the rest of Veneto; while along the left bank of the Livenza, the populations have adopted a dialect similar to that of Treviso, in some mountain villages inhabited by ancient Carinthian immigrants, a German dialect continues to be spoken, and in the upper valleys of the Torre and Natisone, as well as in that of the Isonzo, inhabited until the 7th century by Slavic populations, a Slovene dialect is spoken.
The territory, divided between the two bishoprics of Aquileia (patriarchate) and Concordia until 1751, from that time onward, with Concordia remaining, constituted the archbishopric of Udine and partly that of Gorizia.
The great Lombard duchy of the Friuli, established by Alboin in 568 as an outpost against Avar and Slavic invasions, became a march under the Carolingians; within it, the county of the Friuli was restructured, and under the Saxon-Franconian emperors, it formed the feudal state of the patriarch with extensive privileges. The major vassals were the bishop of Concordia and the count of Gorizia as the advocate of the patriarch, the abbot of Sesto, and later chapters and prelates as secular lords; alongside them, free communities arose (Aquileia, Udine, Cividale, etc.). All, grouped into the three estates—nobility, clergy, and communities—had a voice in the Friulian Parliament, which from the 13th century tempered the patriarch’s absolute power as a feudal lord. When the Friuli was incorporated into the Terraferma states of the Republic of Venice in 1420, the ancient institutions continued to be in force, although the Parliament was deprived of any political power until the end of the 18th century. From then on, the Friuli followed the political and administrative fate of the rest of Venice, its eastern borders reduced until the end of the war of 1914–18.