RAETIA (Rhaetia et Vindelicia). - A Roman province from 15 B.C. until the middle of the 6th century.
The boundaries of R. changed several times in history; approximately it consisted of the Bavarian highlands between the Alps and the Danube, as far as the Inn (Eno) to the east and beyond Lake Constance to the west. In addition, the central Alpine part belonged to it, roughly comprised between a line from Kufstein in the Inn Valley to the Puster Valley near Bruneck: the Isarco valley as far as Chiusa di Bressanone, the Venosta Valley, the Engadine Valley 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 intermixed larger or smaller parts of older peoples, Illyrians, perhaps Etruscans, and others, with different language, religion and culture; but on the particulars scholars do not agree.
This vast region was of extraordinary importance for Rome, given that through it ran the oldest and most frequented communication routes; one need only think of the great passes of the Splügen, the Resia, the Brenner. Moreover, from the time when the Roman frontiers had been extended as far as the upper Rhine, the possession of R. with its passes had become a necessity. In hard but fortunate campaigns (15 B.C.), the whole region was subjected to the Empire; the operations, which even included a naval battle on Lake Constance, were directed by the stepsons of Augustus, Drusus and Tiberius. Under the reign of the latter, R. was organized into a province, with the seat of the procurator 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, crosses the Resia pass and the Fernpass, to reach Augusta and the Danube; the shorter but more difficult and rugged road of the Brenner, from Ponte di Druso, Brenner, Veldidena (today Wilten near Innsbruck) and the Porta Claudia, today Scharnitzer Klause (where the ruins of the Roman fortifications are still admired), as far as Augusta; or the road from the Splügen to the upper Rhine valley, to Chur and beyond.
This vast area was sparsely populated: there were only three municipalities with the right of a city: Augusta, Campodunum, today Kempten im Allgäu, and Brigantium, today Bregenz in Vorarlberg. Marcus Aurelius, in view of the growing Germanic pressure toward the Danube, stationed a legion at the most critical point, on the Danube, at Castro Regina, today Regensburg. Moreover, the boundaries of R. were advanced into Germanic territory with the construction and fortification of the limes which, across the Swabian and Franconian Jura as far as the Main, was to guarantee the security of the upper Rhine valley. Diocletian then, again for military reasons, divided R. into two: Rhaetia prima, the more exposed part, that is, the Bavarian highlands, and Rhaetia secunda, that is, the inner, Alpine part. For the latter, the seat of government was created at Curia (Coira, Chur). But from the middle of the 5th century, because of the continuous incursions of the Germanic populations, greatly favored also by the slow immigration into R. since 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 in the second half of the 6th century the definitive occupation by the Bavarians and the Alamanni marked the definitive cessation of R. in the classical sense of the word. The Roman colonizing work proved less effective in R. than that, for example, of the neighboring Noricum. The Alpine interior, with its tough and isolated tribes, remained more attached to religion and ancestral customs. Here and there throughout the regions, remains of ancient cults were found which appear, as indeed often happens in the more exposed Roman provinces, only externally Romanized. In the 3rd-4th centuries the usual Oriental cults (Isis, Mithras) were also imported.
As for Christianity, reliable information is very scarce. In the territory of R. there existed three bishoprics: Augusta, which arose as an episcopal see perhaps around 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. 480), we also know of an abbot-bishop Valentine, 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 not possible to know. In any case, the stable Christianization of the whole region belongs to the Merovingian and Carolingian era (7th-8th centuries) and concerns the Germanic populations. V. BAVIERA; SVIZZERA.
BIBL.: sources