PIEVE. – The name given in Italy to a parish, or even to hamlets or cities.
The origin of this term is to be traced to the word *plebs*, which, with the advent of Christianity, was used to denote the community of the baptized. At first, this expression *plebs christiana* had a generic meaning; but from a certain, undatable period onward, it was employed to indicate not only the people of the baptized but also an institution. Perhaps at first it referred to both together, namely, a body of persons conceived corporately and the unitary institution that derived from it and was summarized in the entity of the church, the building of worship where the mass of the faithful gathered and prayed; finally, it also came to denote the territory on which that people of the baptized had settled. Thus, one would speak, for example, of the *plebs* of such-and-such a saint. The generic meaning is preserved here and there in literary usage, but it is lost and disappears with the passage of time and across different places; instead, the specific, juridical, constitutional meaning remains confined to certain regions, taking root and consolidating itself in a particular territory.
This territory is northern and central Italy, roughly north of the 42°–43° parallel (Viterbo–Chieti), including Corsica (excluding Sardinia or at least part of it) and some Latin valleys north of the Alps. Historically and politically, this is a Franco-Carolingian zone, and linguistically, a Romance-speaking area. Yet it is a fact that the ecclesiastical Latin word *plebs* was introduced much earlier into England, where it still survives in Wales (*pluvij* in Celtic), whence, after the Saxon occupation of the island, it migrated with the Britons—pure Celts grouped in clans—to French Brittany. Here it remains, through numerous variants, rooted in the soil with about two hundred toponyms (though it is unclear whether in Brittany the *plebs* had the same constitutional structure in the Middle Ages as in Italy). Already in the 5th century in Italy, that is, in the regions indicated above, the word *plebs* was in use, apparently in both the corporate and the institutional sense (as in the *plebs Cluentensis* found in two documents of Pope Gelasius).
The constitutional structure of the Italian *pievi* in their proper territory is unique. It differs from the parish: the latter is the church of the late Middle Ages; the *pieva* is the church of the early Middle Ages; it is the baptismal mother church of all the smaller churches in the district. It often features a multiple clergy and an archpriest who is a *grand archpriest*, with originally communal property and a large territory in which many dependent chapels are often found. This is the typical schema; yet it is possible to find *pievi* that, while being mother churches, do not exhibit all these characteristics. Evidently, this is a form of rural territorial organization, eccentric in relation to the diocesan see but centripetal with respect to the scattered population of the broad rural district. Naturally, these baptismal mother *pievi* increase in number with the passage of time, of population, and of economic development. Yet it seems certain that originally they reflect, through their district organization, the framework of Roman municipal organization. The correspondence between the Roman *pagus* and the *pieva* still requires study and deeper investigation; certainly, the map of the districts of the oldest *pievi* may reproduce the administrative geography of the early medieval countryside in Italy.
The Italian area of expansion of the *pieva* ends where the type of settlement with scattered population (Celtic–Gallic) ceases and where the form of colonization typical of Greek cities begins (southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands). Outside Italy, in France, for example, the rural *archipresbyterate* held sway in the early centuries, which may have had a structure analogous to that of the Italian *pieva*, but it quickly dissolved.
*Pieve*, *pievania*, *piviere* is thus a rural district that persisted until the late Middle Ages, when the rural commune was about to emerge; yet the rural communal district organization altered the entire structure of the *pleban* system. Around the great city communes, several *pievi* are grouped within the same modern municipal territory, while the old *pleban* districts remain recognizable in the peripheral communes of the former diocesan territory. Ultimately, the unifying bond that tied the mother church to its dependent churches is dissolved; only honorific titles remain, which in time are also abolished, and the dependent chapels are fully equated with the old mother church.