REZAYEH dei CALDEI (= Urmia). — The episcopal see dates back to the 3rd century. The city was the seat of a Chaldean Catholic bishop from 1560 to 1647.
The Catholic see of R. was restored in 1890. The bishop is metropolitan of the Chaldeans of Persia. Catholics 3373, churches 26, priests 12.
The borders of R. changed several times throughout history; approximately, it consisted of the Bavarian uplands between the Alps and the Danube, extending as far as the Inn (Eno) to the east and beyond Lake Constance to the west. It also included the central Alpine region lying, roughly, between a line from Kufstein in the Inn Valley to the Puster Valley near Brunico: the Isarco Valley as far as Chiusa di Bressanone, Val Venosta, Val Engadina, and the eastern part of Switzerland. Various Celtic tribes lived there, the most important being the Vindelici, toward the Danube, the Breuni around the Brenner Pass, which takes its name from them, and in the Grisons the Suanetes and others. Among the Celtic populations were intermingled larger or smaller groups of more ancient peoples, Illyrians, perhaps Etruscans, and others, with different languages, religions, and cultures; but scholars do not agree on the details.
This vast region was of extraordinary importance to Rome, since the oldest and most frequented communication routes ran through it; one need only think of the great passes of the Splügen, Resia, and Brenner. Once the Roman frontiers had been extended as far as the upper Rhine, possession of R. with its passes became a necessity. In arduous but successful campaigns (15 B.C.), the entire region was subjected to the Empire; the operations, which even included a naval battle on Lake Constance, were directed by Augustus’s stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius. Under the reign of the latter, R. was organized as a province, with the procurator’s seat at Augusta, a city founded by Augustus: Augusta Vindelicorum. The ancient Alpine roads were rebuilt: thus the Via Claudia Augusta, which from Ponte di Druso, today Bolzano, crossed the Resia Pass and the Fern Pass to reach Augusta and the Danube; the shorter but more difficult and rugged Brenner route, from Ponte di Druso through Brennero, Veldidena (today Wilten near Innsbruck), and the Porta Claudia, today Scharnitzer Klause (where the ruins of the Roman fortifications can still be admired), as far as Augusta; or the road from the Splügen to the upper Rhine Valley, Chur, and beyond.
This vast area was sparsely populated: there were only three municipalities with city rights: Augusta, Campodunum, today Kempten im Allgäu, and Brigantium, today Bregenz in Vorarlberg. In view of the increasing Germanic pressure toward the Danube, Marcus Aurelius stationed a legion at the most critical point, on the Danube, at Castro Regina, today Regensburg. In addition, the borders of R. were advanced into Germanic territory through the construction and fortification of the limes, which, across the Swabian and Franconian Jura as far as the Main, was intended to guarantee the security of the upper Rhine Valley. Diocletian then, again for military reasons, divided R. in two: Rhaetia prima, the more exposed part, that is, the Bavarian uplands, and Rhaetia secunda, namely the inner, Alpine part. For the latter, the seat of government was established at Curia (Coira, Chur). But from the middle
of the 5th century, because of the continual incursions of the Germanic peoples, also greatly encouraged by the slow immigration into R. beginning in the 2nd century, R. prima ceased to exist. R. secunda, on the other hand, continued to form an integral part of the Italian kingdoms of Odoacer and Theodoric, until its definitive occupation by the Bavarians and Alamanni in the second half of the 6th century marked the definitive end of R. in the classical sense of the word. Roman colonizing activity proved less effective in R. than, for example, in neighboring Noricum. The Alpine interior, with its harsh and isolated tribes, remained more attached to ancestral religion and customs. Here and there throughout the region, remains of ancient cults were found which, as often happened in the Roman provinces most exposed to external influences, were only outwardly Romanized. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the usual Oriental cults (Isis, Mithras) were also imported.
As for Christianity, reliable information is extremely scarce. Three bishoprics existed in the territory of R.: Augusta, established as an episcopal see perhaps toward the beginning of the 4th century; Chur, with a first known bishop, Asinius, in 451; and Sabiona, with a first known bishop, St. Ingenuinus, 572–77. From the life of St. Severinus, the apostle of Noricum (d. in 480), we also learn of an abbot-bishop named Valentinus, a missionary who died at Malles, near Merano, in the second half of the 5th century, and is venerated as the apostle of western R.; on what historical basis, it is impossible to say. In any event, the stable Christianization of the entire region belongs to the Merovingian and Carolingian period (7th–8th centuries) and concerns the Germanic populations. V. BAVIERA; SVIZZERA.