Lucca's Ancient Heritage. The Early Structures of City and Territory

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Luccas Ancient Heritage: The Early Structures of City and Territory

Throughout the Middle Ages, as later during the Renaissance, the origins and antique history of Lucca failed to excite sustained interest among local chroniclers. It is possible that our vision has been clouded, to a degree, by a re in 1822, which destroyed the manuscript collection of the seventeenth-century Lucchese bibliophile Francesco Maria Fiorentini. The loss of manuscripts was clearly substantial. The chronicle usually attributed to Sebastiano Puccini, more probably the work of Gherardo Sergiusti, hints at a local historiographical tradition regarding Luccas origins that is now lost to us. Nevertheless, enough material survives in transcript to suggest that patriotic Lucchese writers were generally disinclined to trace the history of their city back beyond the eleventh century. By the sixteenth century, Giuseppe Civitale, most important of all later Lucchese chroniclers, was forced to concede that rm records regarding Luccas most distant past had been irretrievably lost. Before the Cinquecento, one extant local chronicle alone ventured to describe Luccas foundation: a chronicle in ottava rima written by Alessandro Streghi. Streghis poem was probably composed mainly in the 1430s; though it was supplemented with additional verses in later decades, when it circulated widely in forms of both verse and prose. Streghi traced Luccas origins to the familiar company of wandering Trojan exiles. Lucca, originally called Urilia, becomes
Antica cronichetta volgare lucchese gi della biblioteca di F.-M. Fiorentini, ed. S. Bongi, Atti della R. Accademia lucchese, 26 (1893), pp. 21920. BSL MS 18, Delle Cronache di Lucca di Sebastiano Puccini, fo. 12r . The issue of authorship needs to be revisited: compare BSL MS 18, fo. 23r ; MS 98, p. 76; MS 927, fo. 111v . But see marginal note, MS 927, fo. 163r . Giuseppe Civitale, Historie di Lucca, ed. M. F. Leonardi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores Recentiores, nos. 1 and 4, 2 vols. (Rome, 19838), i, p. 116: Ma se da qualche discreto o amorevole cittadino di Lucca fu raccolto de ricordi di quei tempi che di pi avanti fossero stati scritti, cos della fondatione come del nome di lei, si pu tener per certo che le guerre, et le pesti, i rubbamenti, i sacchi, glincendij grandi et le revolutioni dello stato et simili rovine glhanno fatti disperdere et mandare a male. For the manuscript copies of Streghis verse chronicle, and of the prose translation attributedI believe wronglyto Alessandro Boccella: M. E. Bratchel, Chronicles of Fifteenth-Century Lucca: Contributions to an Understanding of the Restored Republic, Bibliothque dHumanisme et Renaissance, 60 (1998), pp. 813.
Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State
the creation of the Trojan Artomone. It was built on territory granted to the loyal Artomone by a grateful Aeneas, and was subsequently populated by many nobles who had followed Artomone from Troy. This rst city was destroyed from neighbouring Pisa by the descendants of Peleus. But two noble infants of Artomones line escaped the ruins of Urilia and ed to Rome, where their military prowess and faithful service quickly attracted the attention of the Roman Senate. These brothers, Vessilano and Catulo, together with a third and younger brother, Mauro, were rewarded by the rebuilding of their native city on even more lavish scale at the public expense of Rome. The city, now called Citt de Tre Castelli, was destroyed once more: this time by the forces of Scipio in punishment for the rebellion of its ruler, Garsipione, against Rome. Yet again two young brothers of Luccas ruling house, imprisoned in Rome in consequence of their fathers treason, emerged as the military heroes of Rome. The military valour of the brothers Enea and Polidamus was rewarded by the refounding of their city; and the new city was nally called Luca after two of the noble Romans, Lucio Celio and Lucio Bibolo, who had been entrusted with its restoration. Streghis narrative of Luccas foundation was recounted in full by Giuseppe Civitale. But the later writer then proceeded to demolish this local tradition as incompatible both with established chronology and with historical plausibility. The more critical approach to myths of origin is hardly surprising in a sixteenthcentury chronicler; though Civitale still tried to retain some space for the Trojans in a historical reconstruction now inuenced by the fantasies of Annio of Viterbo. More noteworthy than the uneasy combination of credulity with critical thought that characterized Lucchese writers of the sixteenth century is the general lack of interest displayed by all their predecessors, excluding Streghi, in Luccas earliest history. In Italian medieval historiography, there was a very widespread presupposition that a peoples future historical function and subsequent development were laid down and predetermined at the moment of foundation. The assumption that the founders of cities impressed indelible characteristics on all future inhabitants pervades the early Italian Renaissance. In Lucca itself, the point was explicitly acknowledged by Sergiusti, probably
BSL MS 942, Cronache di Lucca scritte in ottava rima da Allessandro di ser Giovanni di ser Masseo da Barga, c. i, ott. 2938. Ibid., c. i, ott. 4055. The story through to the refounding of Lucca by Lucio Celio, Lucio Bibolo, Marco Quinto, and Catulo and Leo Emilio is recounted in the rst four canti of Streghis poem: BSL MS 942, fos. 1r 21v . Civitale, Historie, i, pp. 1305. For the inuence of Annio of Viterbo on contemporary Florentine historiography: A. DAlessandro, Il mito dellorigine aramea di Firenze in un trattatello di Giambattista Gelli, ASI 138 (1980), pp. 33989. Following Annio, mia guida et vero lume certo delle cose antiche, Civitale attributed Luccas foundation to Lucio Lucumone, forty-fth ruler after Noah, king of Tuscany from 702 : Civitale, Historie, i, pp. 13666.
Luccas Ancient Heritage
writing in the 1540s. Yet, even in the hands of Streghi, the Trojan pedigree of Luccas nobility had been little more than the periodically invoked explanation and guarantee of Lucchese delity and valour. When, by the end of the sixteenth century, foundation myths nally became a major preoccupation of Lucchese chronicles, the objective had already shifted to the detached and meticulous listing of rival opinions. In part, the explanation lies with Luccas relatively weak historiographical tradition. Further, and perhaps not unconnected, many imperatives that prompted the antiquarian enthusiasms of other Italian societies were less pressingly relevant in the Lucchese context. Lucchese writers did not have to confront any challenge from within their own dominions comparable with that posed by Fiesole to neighbouring Florence. Fiesole was older than its ruling city of Florence, in a world where antiquity was closely intertwined with prestige. Fiesole could also advance claims to an independent and privileged relationship with Rome itself. Insecurity aroused by Fiesole was a major factor in inspiring the Florentine search for a legitimizing past. Moreover, Luccas political and constitutional situation was far too ambiguous to promote the impassioned, if radically uctuating, quest for an appropriate foundation myth that so bedevilled Florences developing historiography. And looking beyond Florence, Luccas rulers were entirely untroubled by the need to explain the settlement of their own noble ancestors among such barren and unprepossessing wastes as the Venetian lagoons; nor could even the most creative rewriting of Lucchese history reasonably duplicate
BSL MS 18, fo. 10v : Quanto lantichit sia delli homini appregiata nessuno che non lo conoschi, e li dotti humanisti sanno che questo vocabulo antiquo alle volte signica caro perch le cose antiche sono care. An anonymous Lucchese chronicle now preserved in Cambridge, apparently written at the very end of the sixteenth century and almost certainly the lost chronicle of Salvatore Guinigi, offers a particularly extensive survey of the current interpretations: CUL MS Add. 4700, Historie della Citt di Lucca, pp. 3658. Tuttavia doppo dhaver intorno a ci fedelmente riferito quanto ho potuto ravogliere, concludo che di tutte queste opinioni io non voglio, n riutarne alcuna per esser antiche, n affermarne alcuna per essere incerte, e si come i gusti delle persone sono diversi, cos rimetto volentieri a i lettori, che ciascuno si elegga quella che pi si trover di suo gusto: ibid., p. 58. This, and the preceding reference to the rozza simplicit of glantichi nostri, provides a further warning that the extant chronicle material may be less than representative. An underdevelopment greatly exaggerated by E. Cochrane, in Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1981), pp. 11921, 224. Certainly Lucca was not backward in the production of urban laudes: H. Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts: Studien zur Sozialstruktur einer Herzogstadt in der Toskana (Tbingen, 1972), pp. 33847. T. Maissen, Attila, Totila e Carlo Magno fra Dante, Villani, Boccaccio e Malispini: Per la genesi di due leggende erudite, ASI 152 (1994), pp. 561639. More specically: C. KlapischZuber, San Romolo: Un vescovo, un lupo, un nome alle origini dello Stato moderno, ASI 155 (1997), pp. 348. Thus Civitale comfortably accommodates his belief that Lucca became a Roman colony under the Republic in 320 at the time of the consuls Gneo Domitio Calvino and Lucio Cornelio Scipione II, with his later conviction that Lucca fusse allhora et sia sempre poi stata affessionata, devota et fedele allImperio, che il principio si attribuito meritamente al detto [Giulio] Cesare: Historie, i, p. 232.
Venetian claims to a distant past characterized by a true political independence free from all imperial control. The early history of the urban settlement in Lucca is very obscure indeed, though obscurity presents no barrier to myth-making and is probably among the least signicant reasons for the relative neglect by Lucchese chroniclers of the earliest ages of their citys history. Within Lucchese territory there is sufcient evidence of human presence from Palaeolithic times. The site of Lucca itself, on islets then formed by the river Serchio, may have been settled by the Etruscans. Archaeological evidence has pointed increasingly to Etruscan roots; though a powerful local historiographical tradition has continued to attribute the rst habitations to the Ligurians of the northern Apennines, a people culturally and technologically inuenced in this border region by their Etruscan neighbours to the south. The story that the consul Ti. Sempronius Longus took refuge within the walls of Lucca following Hannibals victory at the Trebbia in December 218 may be ill founded. Little can be said with condence before the foundation of the Latin colony in 180 , from which date the history of the walled city clearly begins. Rome came into conict with the Ligurian tribes in the period after the Hannibalic War: both with the Ingauni around Genoa, and with the Apuani of the mountains above Pisa. Raids on Pisan lands by the latter resulted in the transportation and resettlement of perhaps 40,000 Apuani by the consuls Cornelius and Baebius in 181/0 . The Latin colony of Lucca was then established, probably with less than three thousand settlers, on the Pisan territory vacatedat least in partby these forced removals. The topography of the Roman city has long since been claried, with some lingering disputes over the course of the Roman walls to the north-west. Less revealing are the written sources for the citys history throughout the entire Roman period. Lucca apparently became a municipium after 90 , and was allocated upon
E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), particularly pp. 6774. The debate is briey summarized by I. Belli Barsali, Lucca: Guida alla citt (Lucca, 1988), pp. 56. The case for the extensive and continued colonization by the Etruscans of the Lucchese plainand indeed for the origins of Lucca itself as an Etruscan trading outpostis developed from archaeological evidence in P. Mencacci and M. Zecchini, Lucca Romana (Lucca, 1982), pp. 3358; and more recently by M. Zecchini, Lucca Etrusca: Abitati, necropoli, luoghi di culto (Lucca, 1999). For Etruscan settlement in the Garfagnana: G. Ciampoltrini (ed.), Gli Etruschi della Garfagnana: Ricerche sullinsediamento della Murella a Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (Florence, 2005). The retreat of Ti. Sempronius Longus to Lucca is recounted at length by Civitale, Historie, i, pp. 21820. The tradition has been accepted by more recent Lucchese historians from A. Mazzarosa, Storia di Lucca dalla sua origine no al 1814 (Lucca, 1833), p. 10, to G. Lera, Lucca: Citt da Scoprire (Lucca, 1980), p. 36. The difculties raised by Livys Sempronius Lucam contendit are discussed by F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, 3 vols. (Oxford, 195779), i, p. 411. A. De Conno, Linsediamento longobardo a Lucca, in Pisa e la Toscana occidentale nel Medioevo: A Cinzio Violante nei suoi 70 anni, 2 vols. (Pisa, 1991), i, pp. 6777. E. T. Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (London, 1982), p. 199, n. 331; Cicero: Epistulae ad Familiares, ed. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1977), ii, 280 (xiii. 13).
enfranchisement to the Fabia tribe. Thereafter we know only of that great gathering of senators and lictors drawn to Lucca in April 55 for the conference of the triumvirs Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the city faced a time of crisis under the Late Republic and Early Empire, but recovered both economically and demographically during the course of the fourth and fth centuries. This recovery, which may have begun as early as the second half of the third century, was accompaniedperhaps explainedby the restoration of the city walls and by the establishment of a state arms factory (fabrica) for the manufacture of swords. No less obscure are the decades following the fall of the Roman Empire in the west. At the time of the Ostrogothic kingdom, Lucca may have been the seat of a Gothic military commander or count (comes): the evidence is far from compelling. A more convincing indicator of Gothic interest in, and settlement around, Lucca is provided by the strength and persistence of Luccas resistance when besieged by Narses in 553 during Justinians wars for the reconquest of Italy. Agathias account of the siege perhaps points to the occupation of Lucca by a Frankish garrison, and clearly presupposes the settlement within Luccas walls of a large and diversied Gothic population. After nally conquering the city, Narses left behind a strong military force under the command of a magister militum. Thereafter all is speculation until the beginning of Lombard penetration at the end of the sixth century. The city that appears so eetingly in the literary sources of classical antiquity, and that had clearly been much less important than the neighbouring maritime centres of Pisa and Luna, becomes one of the best-studied societies of the Lombard age. Luccas high prole after 568 (and more specically after 685) owes as much to the comparative wealth of documentary evidence as to the citys undoubted
For tribal allocations in general, and for Lucca in particular: W. V. Harris, Rome in Etruria and Umbria (Oxford, 1971), pp. 23050, 333. See also L. R. Taylor, The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic: The Thirty-Five Urban and Rural Tribes (Rome, 1960), pp. 110, 272. Lucca seems to have reverted to the status of a colonia at the time of the triumvirs Ottaviano, Antonio, and Lepido: F. Castagnoli, La centuriazione di Lucca, Studi Etruschi, 20 (19489), p. 285. G. Ciampoltrini and P. Notini, Lucca tardoantica e altomedievale: Nuovi contributi archeologici, AM 17 (1990), p. 590. The literature is summarized by S. Cosentino, Dinamiche sociali ed istituzionali nella valle del Serchio tra v e vii secolo, in Garf. 1995, pp. 414. But see also Mencacci and Zecchini, Lucca Romana, pp. 86, 125. L. A. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, i, Excerpta ex Agathiae historia a ne Procopii ad Gothos pertinentia Hugone Grotio interprete. Ex libro primo (Milan, 1723), pp. 3867. Cosentino, Dinamiche sociale ed istituzionali, pp. 4661: particularly for the identication of Funso as a Gothic comes civitatis of the reign of Theodoric. My use of the word Gothic does not necessarily presume the existence of a single Gothic ethnic identitywhether original or acquired: P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489554 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 339, 1512 and passim. See now C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 823. By the sixteenth century the story of Narses siege had entered Lucchese historical consciousness: BSL MS 18, fos. 22r 23v . The learning here displayed in defence of questionable Lucchese action during the course of the siege provides an additional pointer to Sergiustis authorship of a textnow preserved in a number of very different versionsnormally traced to Sebastiano Puccini.
prominence within the Lombard kingdom. While there are no narrative histories of Lucca before the eleventh century, Lucchese archivespredominantly those of bishop and chapteroffer approximately 3,494 documents that record legal transactions pre-dating the year 1100, of which almost three hundred are pre800. The record is supplemented from the time of Pope Gregory the Great by miracle accounts and travellers tales, as pilgrimage routes to Rome brought saintly royal and aristocratic visitors to Lucchese hostels. By the seventeenth century Lucchese writers had developed a positively Arthurian myth of Lombard Lucca, featuring the institution in 700 of an order of chivalry called della ragione. These legendary knights came to number 2,500, and, though given a general mandate for the administration of justice throughout all Tuscany, were entrusted with specic responsibilities for the protection of widows and orphans. Such good and holy intentions were marred only by the perversity and barbarism of the Lombard laws that the knights administered. More recent analysis of the extant texts has shown the construction of new buildings by noble Lombard families from 685, particularly in areas immediately outside the walls. The region to the east and west of the gate of S. Pietro on the road from Pisa was settled by the highest ranks of Lombard society, though the earliest settlement seems to have been to the north around porta S. Frediano. Whetheras believed by Schwarzmaierinitial Lombard settlement in the suburbs is to be explained by the density of population already within the walls, or rather by the importance of gates and lines of road communications as foci of population, there is growing evidence from the early eighth century for the building of substantial houses by wealthy Lombards within the city itself. Luccas Lombard aristocracy retained its social and institutional importance during, and beyond, the early decades of Frankish penetration into Tuscany. But there was an increasing Frankish presence and control in the years after 815. The centuries thereafter were characterized by economic and demographic growthexplained in part by Luccas political signicance, but also by the citys position as the principal centre between the Apennines and the Arno on the via Francigena.
Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, pp. 811, 17; D. J. Osheim, The Episcopal Archive of Lucca in the Middle Ages, Manuscripta, 17 (1973), pp. 1323; C. Wickham, Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca (Oxford, 1998), pp. 2436; G. Ghilarducci, Ledizione dei documenti del sec. xi dellArchivio Arcivescovile di Lucca, in SantAnselmo, pp. 4236. Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, pp. 1617, 324. CUL MS Add. 4700, pp. 1778. I. Belli Barsali, La topograa di Lucca nei secoli viiixi, in Centro Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo: Atti del 5 0 Congresso Internazionale di Studi sullAlto Medioevo, Lucca 37 ottobre 1971 (Spoleto, 1973), pp. 4823; De Conno, Linsediamento longobardo, pp. 59127; Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 18. B. Andreolli, Uomini nel medioevo: Studi sulla societ lucchese dei secoli viiixi (Bologna, 1983), pp. 6777; De Conno, Linsediamento longobardo, pp. 646; Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 95.
The relative wealth of documentary evidence has attracted scholars to the history of early medieval Lucca; it has also stimulated scholarly debate. One enduring controversy centres on the issue of continuity from the classical Roman past. There is no doubt regarding the continued occupation of the area within the city walls; that the local nobility, in Lucca as elsewhere, remained urban based; that Lucca maintained and extended its function as an administrative centre. The debate revolves rather around denitions of urbanism, and the extent to which the town with its territory (civitas) survived the barbarian invasions as an autonomous unit. Comparisons with Roman antiquity are complicated by the radical changes that were already occurring in the centuries before the collapse of the western Empire. Lucca of the early third century has been portrayed as a city in ruins. And, if the Roman Empire had been a commonwealth of citystates, under the late Empire this mosaic of fairly independent town territories was subordinated to provincial governors and supra-municipal magistrates. No doubt cities came to full new functions in a changing world; appearances were transformed by changes both economic and cultural. But, at least in the case of Lucca, Wickhams insistence on the survival of clear urban characteristics appears irresistible. Further controversy surrounds the establishment and extent of the Lombard duchy of Lucca. The regions of Lombard Italy were ruled from the towns, and Lucca became the seat of a Lombard duke. Tradition has preserved the names of fourteen Lombard dukes of Lucca, beginning with Gummarith in 576. The list has always been treated with suspicion; in 1813 Cianelli pruned the ducal candidates for whom there is rm evidence to four. The vast landed possessions of Luccas Lombard aristocracy in the distant Maremma, and the apparent inclusion of Populonia within the territory of Lucca in documents of the late eighth century, offer some support to those who would trace the duchy
See, e.g., Ciampoltrini and Notini, Lucca tardoantica e altomedievale, pp. 56192. More generally, C. Wickham, Considerazioni conclusive, in R. Francovich and G. Noy (eds.), La storia dellalto medioevo italiano (vix secolo) alla luce dellarcheologia (Florence, 1994), pp. 74159. The literature is summarized in O. Capitani, Citt e comuni, in G. Galasso (ed.), UTET Storia dItalia, iv ( Turin, 1981), pp. 510; D. Harrison, The Early State and the Towns: Forms of Integration in Lombard Italy 568774 (Lund, 1993), pp. 8893. Ciampoltrini and Notini, Lucca tardoantica e altomedievale, p. 590. P. J. Jones, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford, 1997), p. 22. R. Thomsen, The Italic Regions: From Augustus to the Lombard Invasion (Copenhagen, 1947); M. Pasquinucci, LEtruria in et romana, in M. Luzzati (ed.), Etruria, Tuscia, Toscana: Lidentit di una regione attraverso i secoli (Pisa, 1992), pp. 6373. C. Wickham, LItalia e lalto medioevo, AM 15 (1988), pp. 10524; id., La citt altomedievale: Una nota sul dibattito in corso, AM 15 (1988), pp. 64951. A. N. Cianelli, Dissertazioni sopra la storia lucchese, in Memorie e documenti per servire allistoria del principato lucchese, i (Lucca, 1813), pp. 2541. The fourteen are: Gummarito (576); Valfredi (585); Arnolfo (590); Ariulfo (602); Tasone (630); Allovisino (685); Walperto (714); Ramingo (728); Berprando (730); Vanefredi; Valprando Duca e Vescovo (741); Alperto (744); Desiderio; Tachiperto. Cianellis revised list: Allovisino (686); Walperto (713); Alperto (754); Tachiperto (773). For doubts regarding Tachiperto: De Conno, Linsediamento longobardo, pp. 623.
back to the conquests of Gummarith. But Walperto (713736) remains the rst of three pre-Frankish dukes who are securely attested by the sources. No less debated is the territory over which Luccas dukes held sway. There is the possibility, frequently contested, that the Lombard duke resident in Lucca was the only holder of the ducal title in Tuscany. Consequently Lucca has been portrayed as the capital of a consolidated Lombard duchy that embraced either the whole of Tuscany or, alternatively, the more restricted region of northwest Tuscany. In all probability centres like Pistoia (and more especially Siena) enjoyed an effective administrative autonomy under local gastaldi (royal ofcials), though this was not necessarily incompatible with the hegemony throughout Tuscany of Lucca and its ducal court. Later under the Carolingians, the Bavarian Bonifacio, variously described as count and duke of Lucca, founded a dynasty that was to control the counties of Lucca, Pisa, Volterra, Luni, Pistoia, Florence, and Fiesole. His son, Bonifacio II, was entrusted with the defence of Corsica against the Saracens, while his grandson, Adalberto I, was named both marquis of Tuscany and guardian (tutor ) of Corsica. Adalberto II (886915), known as il Ricco, with his palace outside Lucca near porta S. Donato, and with powers and lands extending far beyond Tuscany, was lauded as king in all but name. After the Adalberti, the March of Tuscany, though signicantly modied in character and functions, was to survive until the death of Matilda of Canossa in 1115. Debates over the survival of the Roman city-territory, and over the nature and extent of the Lombard duchy and its successor formations, transport us from the obscure early history of the city into the countryside over which that city exercised control. In early sixteenth-century Lucca, the new, or renewed, interest in Luccas origins was intimately connected with live contemporary political
L. Bertini, Peredeo Vescovo di Lucca, in Studi storici in onore di Ottorino Bertolini, 2 vols. (Pisa, 1972), i, pp. 2145. But see B. Andreolli, Walprando: Un vescovo guerriero del regno di Astolfo, in Uomini nel medioevo, p. 24. For the inclusion of Populonia (Cornino) in territorio Lucense: F. Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana von der Grndung des Longobardenreiches bis zum Ausgang der Staufer (5681268) (Rome, 1914), p. 116. For the fragility of the evidence identifying Gummarith (Grimarit) as rst duke of Lucca: S. Gasparri, I duchi longobardi (Rome, 1978), p. 57. There is a convenient survey of the historiography in E. Lenzi, Lucca: Capitale del regno longobardo della Tuscia (Lucca, 1997), pp. 647. See, particularly, C. G. Mor, I gastaldi con potere ducale nellordinamento pubblico longobardo, in Atti del 10 Congresso Internazionale di Studi Longobardi: Spoleto, 2730 settembre 1951 (Spoleto, 1952), pp. 40915. Bertini, Peredeo, pp. 2930. See the articles by G. Fasoli and C. G. Mor on the Adalberti and Bonifacii sub voce in Dizionario biograco degli italiani, i (Rome, 1960); xii (Rome, 1970); M. Nobili, Levoluzione delle dominazioni marchionali in relazione alla dissoluzione delle circoscrizioni marchionali e comitali e allo sviluppo della politica territoriale dei comuni cittadini nellItalia centro-settentrionale (secoli xi e xii), in La cristianit dei secoli xi e xii in occidente: Coscienza e strutture di una societ: Atti della ottava settimana internazionale di studio Mendola, 30 giugno5 luglio 1980) (Milan, 1983), pp. 23558; H. Schwarzmaier, Societ e istituzioni nel x secolo: Lucca, in Centro Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo: Atti del 5 0 Congresso Internazionale di Studi sullAlto Medioevo, Lucca 37 ottobre 1971 (Spoleto, 1973), pp. 14361.
claims to territorial dominion. Luccas borders had contracted markedly during the wars of the fourteenth and fteenth centuries as neighbouring powers seized areas of traditional Lucchese control. In February 1536 the General Council (Consiglio Generale) appointed a commission of three citizens to collect together all writings relating to Luccas ancient territories. Their efforts, preserved in the Libri delle Sentenze, failed to penetrate back beyond 1308, which did not deter Giuseppe Civitale from embarking on his own search for more distant evidence. Belief in the political utility of these antiquarian exercises does not seem to have endured very long. By the end of the sixteenth century Luccas ancient territories were coming to be explored mainly for the location of pagan shrines. Civitale sought to identify Luccas legitimate borders from three points of reference. First, he drew from Alessandro Streghi the notion that Lucca, at its rst foundation by the Trojan Artomone, was assigned twenty miles of territory on both sides of the Serchio over the full course of that river. Secondly, there are the references, never specic, to Luccas ancient jurisdiction and territories as dened and conrmed in privileges issuing from the Emperors of Rome. Finally, there is the detailed description of the territories historically ruled by Lucca, clearly based on the Lucchese statute of 1308. We need not linger over the links between the Roman civitas and its mythical Trojan prototype; the identication of the Latin colony founded in 180 with the medieval city-state raises problems that cannot be dismissed so lightly. With the foundation of the Latin colony, centuriation (the marking-out of land for settlement) took place in the plain around Luccathough it is unclear whether the centuriation now visible relates to the rst or second period of colonization. Archaeological and toponymic evidence suggest the garrisoning of military outposts in the valley of the Serchio immediately after 180 , followed by the gradual colonization of the Garfagnana, eastern Versilia, Lunigiana, and Val di Lima. But the evidence of settlement provides only an imperfect guide to the borders of the city-territory, which itself was not immutable. The connes of Lucchese and Pisan territory remain uncertain even for the densely settled plain to the east of the city around Bientina. The disputed reading of classical texts has resulted in continuing debate whether Lucca reached the sea to the south of
S. Bongi (ed.), Inventario del Regio Archivio di Stato in Lucca, 4 vols. (Lucca, 187288), i, p. 50; Civitale, Historie, i, pp. 54, 11920. CUL MS Add. 4700, pp. 612. Civitale, Historie, i, p. 126. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., pp. 178212; Statuto del 1308: Statutum Lucani Communis an. MCCCVIII, repr. of 1867 edn. with foreword by V. Tirelli (Lucca, 1991), pp. 3546. Castagnoli, La centuriazione di Lucca, pp. 28590. Mencacci and Zecchini, Lucca Romana, pp. 2445, and R. Ambrosinis chapter on the Romanization of the Lucchesia, appended to the same volume, pp. 283314. For the Garfagnana: G. Ciampoltrini, P. Notini, and C. Spataro, Vie e trafci nella Garfagnana det augustea: Linsediamento della Murella di Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, in Garf. 2005, particularly pp. 2323. Mencacci and Zecchini, Lucca Romana, pp. 2001, 242.
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the Magra, thus dividing the territories of Pisa and Luni. At least by the sixth century, at the time of the brief Byzantine domination, the boundary between Lucca and Pistoia seems to have followed the valley of the Pescia maggiore, well to the west of the borders of the medieval ecclesiastical borders of Lucca. More controversial has been the evidence of an early second-century alimentary table from Veleia near Parma, which appears to show Lucchese jurisdiction extending as far north as Veleia, thereby restricting the territory of Luna to the south and west of its medieval diocese. The city-territories survived the collapse of Rome as units of administration and justice, though the cities themselves had already lost some of their administrative autonomy. At the time of the Roman Republic, Lucca belonged to the province of Cisalpine Gaul; under Augustus, Lucca became part of the seventh region, colloquially called Etruria or Tuscia. But the classical city-territories were only truly subsumed into broader provincial administrative regions with the reforms of Diocletian (284305), when Lucca became a north-western portion of the new province of Tuscia et Umbria (itself later subdivided between Italia annonaria and Italia suburbicaria). Both the larger and smaller divisions were perpetuated under the Lombards; the Italian provincial system may have disintegrated withor beforethe coming of the Lombards, but the ducal court centred on Lucca appears to have exercised some authority far beyond Luccas own
L. Banti, Luni (Florence, 1937), pp. 59, 112; P. M. Conti, Il presunto ducato longobardo di Pisa, BSP 312 (19623), p. 163; E. Pais, Dalle guerre puniche a Cesare Augusto, 2 vols. (Rome, 1918), ii, pp. 699716. For Pais, the coastal area around Viareggio was not part of the original territory ceded by Pisa, but had become the object of dispute between Lucca and Pisa by 168 . R. Pescaglini Monti, Nobilit e istituzioni ecclesiastiche in Valdinievole tra xi e xii secolo, in Allucio da Pescia, pp. 225, 22930; A. M. Onori, Pescia dalle origini allet comunale (Pistoia, 1998), pp. 203. N. Criniti, La Tabula Alimentaria di Veleia (Parma, 1991), pp. 238, 244; F. Baroni, Rapporti e collegamenti viarii medievali attraverso il passo di Tea fra la Garfagnana, la Lunigiana e il mare, in Garf. 1997, pp. 17983; G. Mennella, Agri placentinorum et lucensium in Veleiate sumpti , in Il capitolo delle entrate nelle nanze municipali in occidente ed in oriente: Actes de la x e rencontre franco-italienne sur lpigraphie du monde romain (Rome, 1999), pp. 8594; G. Petracco and G. Petracco Sicardi, La dichiarazione dei Coloni Lucenses nella tavola di Velleia, Archivio storico per le province parmensi, 4th ser., 56 (2004), pp. 28397. An updated literature is listed on the website http://veleia.unipr.it. Among older studies: Banti, Luni, pp. 579; U. Formentini, Per la storia preromana del pago, Studi Etruschi, iii (1929), pp. 5166; Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, pp. 63, 290; H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, 2 vols. (Berlin, 18831902), ii, p. 288. B. Cori and P. R. Federici, Etruria, Tuscia, Toscanauna regione naturale?, in M. Luzzati (ed.), Etruria, Tuscia, Toscana: Lidentit di una regione attraverso i secoli (Pisa, 1992), pp. 1533; Cosentino, Dinamiche sociale ed istituzionali, pp. 3941; Pasquinucci, LEtruria in et romana, pp. 6373; Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, pp. 210. For Italy in general: B. WardPerkins, From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy 300850 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 1617. For the sixth century: T. S. Brown, Gentlemen and Ofcers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy 554800 (Rome, 1984), pp. 19, 211. P. M. Conti, La Tuscia e i suoi ordinamenti territoriali nellalto medioevo, in Centro Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo: Atti del 5 0 Congresso Internazionale di Studi sullAlto Medioevo, Lucca 37 ottobre 1971 (Spoleto, 1973), pp. 7792; Brown, Gentlemen and Ofcers, pp. 1214.
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administrative and judicial area (iudiciaria, nis, territorium). The integrity of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian county was unprejudiced by the fact that Lucca seldom possessed its own count, but rather was combined with neighbouring counties or city-territoriesin varying and evolving waysto constitute the March of Tuscany. The concept of city with its territory persisted, but clearly neither the Lombard iudiciaria nor the Carolingian comitatus preserved the precise boundaries of the Roman civitas. The Lombard conquests had resulted in signicant modications to politico-administrative units throughout north-central Italy. The course of these conquests explains the eighth-century references to localities in Populoniafar to the southin iudicaria or in discursu Lucense. Territory to the north-east of Pisa was held by the Byzantines for more than fty years after the Lombard invasion. When the Versilia (nes versilienses) eventually fell to the Lombards, territory that appears to have been Pisan and Lunese in classical times was acquired by Lucca. In the high and middle valley of the Serchio, Byzantine resistance was centred on castrum Carfagnanae (probably Piazza al Serchio) and on castrum novum (Castelnuovo di Garfagnana). When these strongholds fell to the Lombards, it seems that some lands were subtracted from the ancient territory of Luni, and that Castelnuovo became the centre of a separate area of civil administration (nes Castronovo) under control from Lucca. Under the
Bertini, Peredeo, pp. 2930; Cianelli, Dissertazioni, i, pp. 4151; Gasparri, I duchi longobardi, pp. 302; Mor, I gastaldi, p. 411. Cianelli believed in an early pre-ducal period when every Tuscan city ruled itself under Lombard military supervision: Dissertazioni, i, p. 31. And Conti has argued that Luccas Lombard dukes exercised authority only over that citys iudiciaria, positing the independence from ducal control of the gastaldati that predominated elsewhere in Tuscany: Il presunto ducato longobardo di Pisa, pp. 14574. Bertini, Peredeo, p. 30; Cianelli, Dissertazioni, i, pp. 603, 736; Nobili, Levoluzione delle dominazioni marchionali, pp. 23558; Schwarzmaier, Societ e istituzioni, pp. 1514; V. Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca tra la ne del secolo xi e i primi tre decenni del xii, in Allucio da Pescia, pp. 901. Reference under Matilda to Corneto in comitatu tuscanense suggests that comitatus might also be used to refer to the entire March: C. Manaresi, I placiti del Regnum Italiae, 3 vols. (Rome, 195560), iii, pt. i, no. 455, p. 371. See now A. Puglia, Lamministrazione della giustizia e le istituzioni pubbliche in Tuscia da Ugo di Provenza a Ottone I (anni 926967), ASI 160 (2002), pp. 675733. Conti, Il presunto ducato longobardo di Pisa, pp. 16974; C. Violante, Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche nellItalia centro-settentrionale durante il Medioevo: Province, diocesi, sedi vescovili, in G. Rossetti (ed.), Forme di potere e struttura sociale in Italia nel Medioevo (Bologna, 1977), pp. 925. D. Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni sopra la storia ecclesiastica lucchese, in Memorie e documenti per servire allistoria del Ducato di Lucca, iv, pt. i (Lucca, 1818), pp. 1949; P. M. Conti, La iudiciaria longobarda di Maritima, BSP 401 (19712), pp. 15; Gasparri, I duchi longobardi, p. 57; Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, pp. 11622. Conti, Il presunto ducato longobardo di Pisa, p. 163; Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, p. 62. The material, even the location of Byzantine resistance, is very controversial. P. M. Conti, Luni nellAlto Medioevo (Padua, 1967), pp. 56; L. Angelini, Una pieve toscana nel medioevo (Lucca, 1979), pp. 812; id., Problemi di storia longobarda in Garfagnana (Lucca, 1985), pp. 1719, 22, 3650; Cosentino, Dinamiche sociale ed istituzionali, pp. 556, 601; Schneider, Die
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Carolingians, the county of Lucca was shorn of its most southerly extension with the reconstruction of Populonia on the basis of its ancient diocese. Elsewhere, the transition to Carolingian rule seems to have resulted in little restructuring of Lucchese territoryin marked contrast to what has been argued for other parts of north-central Italy. The search for administrative boundaries has been ill served both by the traditional identication of the ecclesiastical diocese with the Roman municipal territory, and by an enduring belief that dioceses throughout the succeeding centuries were to remain substantially unchanged. Neither thesis is entirely devoid of truth. The earliest bishops established themselves in towns, and, as their activities extended to the countryside, the bishops area of jurisdiction tended to coincide with the town territory. The principle was never insisted upon by the ecclesiastical authorities, though its desirability was established at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Later aspirations towards continuity and stability are amply attested in the border disputes that arose between diocesescontests that invariably revolved around the question of who held jurisdiction a tempore Romanorum et Langobardorum (at the time of the Romans and Lombards). Proof of actual continuity is more elusive, more particularly since the precise borders of the Lucchese diocese cannot be condently established before the estimo of 1260. The core area of the Lucchese diocese seems to have changed little between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. But
Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, pp. 389, 489, 645; A. Augenti, Dai castra tardoantichi ai castelli del secolo x: Il caso della Toscana, in R. Francovich and M. Ginatempo (eds.), Castelli: Storia e archeologia del potere nella Toscana medievale, i (Florence, 2000), pp. 323. A link between the nes of the eighth- and ninth-century documents and earlier units of Byzantine military organization is possible but unproven. G. Rossetti, Societ e istituzioni nei secoli ix e x: Pisa, Volterra, Populonia, in Centro Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo: Atti del 5 0 Congresso Internazionale di Studi sullAlto Medioevo, Lucca 37 ottobre 1971 (Spoleto, 1973), pp. 24850, 252, 256. Violante, Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche, p. 95. For Lucca, these assumptions pervade Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. i, pp. 393. For Siena: V. Lusini, I conni storici del vescovado di Siena, Bullettino senese di storia patria, 5 (1898), pp. 33357; 7 (1900), pp. 5982, 41867; 8 (1901), pp. 195273. Diocese, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York, 190712), v, s.v. The word dicesis, seldom used in the early medieval West, itself has secular rootssignifying the territory subject administratively to a city. The phrase appears in Lucca in the context of the eighth-century dispute between the bishops of Lucca and Pistoia over the two parishes of S. Andrea and S. Gerusalemme situated in the territory of Pistoia: L. Schiaparelli (ed.), Codice Diplomatico Longobardo, in Fonti per la storia dItalia, 2 vols. (Rome, 192933), i, no. 21. For commentary on the dispute itself: A. Spicciani, Le istituzioni pievane e parrocchiali della Valdinievole no al xii secolo, in Allucio da Pescia, pp. 1646; id., Il padule di Fucecchio nellalto medioevo, in A. Malvolti and G. Pinto (eds.), Incolti, ume, paludi: Utilizzazione delle risorse naturali nella Toscana medievale e moderna (Florence, 2003), pp. 612; R. Nelli, Montecatini dalle origini allet comunale (Pistoia, 1998), pp. 56. P. Guidi (ed.), Rationes Decimarum Italiae nei secoli xiii e xiv, Tuscia, i, La Decima degli anni 12741280 (Citt del Vaticano, 1932), pp. 24373. For a list of tenth/eleventh-century pievi: L. Nanni, La Parrocchia studiata nei documenti lucchesi dei secoli viiixiii (Rome, 1948), pp. 6475.
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the evidence of the thirteenth-century tax record remains less than compelling as a guide to either ecclesiastical or civil boundaries over the preceding millennium. Clearly neither ecclesiastical nor civil borders were immutable, and the changes were often interconnected. To the east the borders of the Lucchese diocese were apparently determined by the vicissitudes of the Lombard wars, and by the lines of fortications established in the Valdinievole respectively by the Lombards and the Byzantines (perhaps also by topographical constraints). The strength and conquests of Luccas Lombard dukes enabled Luccas bishops to acquire lands and to exercise jurisdiction far to the south, and on the connes of Pisa, though the precise nature of their spiritual authorityparticularly in the neighbourhood of Populoniaremains unclear. This expansion of episcopal power is not unrelated to the fact that Luccas bishops were drawn from the ranks of the local Lombard aristocracy. There is even a tradition, entirely unconvincing, that Bishop Walprando followed his father Walperto in the ofce of duke. Despite their political importance and their familial links with the citys rulers, bishops, in Lucca as elsewhere, do not appear to have exercised any institutionalized public functions under the Lombard kings. By contrast, Charlemagne utilized bishops as agents of royal power. They came to sit with counts in judging a wide range of transgressions; Charles the Bald in 876 granted powers as royal envoys (the missatico) to bishops of the Italian kingdom within their respective dioceses. From the ninth century, therefore,
For the sometimes contested border with the diocese of Pisa: M. L. Ceccarelli Lemut and S. Sodi, Il sistema pievano nella diocesi di Pisa dallet carolingia allinizio del xiii secolo, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 58 (2004), particularly pp. 4214. A. M. Onori, Massa e Cozzile dalle origini allet comunale (Pistoia, 1989), p. 7. L. Bertini, Intorno alla probabile genesi delle contese connarie tra i vescovi pisano e lucense, BSP 401 (19712), pp. 1415; id., Peredeo, pp. 216; Harrison, The Early State, p. 212. For Walprando: Andreolli, Walprando, in Uomini nel medioevo, pp. 206; De Conno, Linsediamento longobardo, p. 117; Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, pp. 748, 15961. O. Bertolini, I vescovi del regnum Langobardorum al tempo dei Carolingi, in Italia sacra: Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica: Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel medioevo (sec. ixxiii): Atti del ii0 convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia: Roma 59 sett. 1961 (Padua, 1964), pp. 112. But see Gasparri, I duchi longobardi, p. 25. Bertolini, I vescovi, pp. 1226; G. Rossetti, Formazione e caratteri delle signorie di castello e dei poteri territoriali dei vescovi sulle citt nella Langobardia del secolo x, in G. Rossetti (ed.), Forme di potere e struttura sociale in Italia nel Medioevo (Bologna, 1977), pp. 117, 1418. G. Arnaldi, Papato, arcivescovi e vescovi nellet post-carolingia, in Italia sacra: Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica: Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel medioevo (sec. ixxiii): Atti del ii0 convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia: Roma 59 sett. 1961 (Padua, 1964), p. 39: episcopi singuli in suo episcopio missatici nostri potestate et auctoritate fungantur. For the changing and ambiguous meaning of the concept episcopium (episcopatus, munus episcopale): Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, pp. 868. The ex ofcio grant to bishops of the missatico may have been short lived; but not the association of bishop and count in joint responsibility for the peace of bishopric and county: A. Meyer, Felix et inclitus notarius: Studien zum italienischen Notariat vom 7. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert ( Tbingen, 2000), p. 14; E. Dupr Theseider, Vescovi e citt nellItalia precomunale, in Italia sacra: Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica: Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel medioevo (sec. ixxii): Atti del ii0 convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia: Roma 59 sett. 1961 (Padua, 1964), p. 75.
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pressures of administrative convenience combined with Carolingian policy to forgeor re-establishthe general coincidence of ecclesiastical dioceses and comital territories. There was probably always a tendency for civil administrative divisions to adjust to the potentially more stable diocesan territories, and the latter were forged only in part by political events. The diocese has been dened as the sum of its baptismal churches. The identication of the pieve (local ecclesiastical unit) with the pagus (local territorial unit) has enabled historians to argue not only for the coincidence of Roman ecclesiastical and civil boundaries, but alternatively for the correspondence of the diocese with pre-Roman and unRoman frontiers. The identication of pieve and pagus is problematic, and a territorial denition of the late Roman diocese in terms of its pievi is itself rendered suspect by the late evolution of the pieve as a precise territorial entity. The picture is complicated by Cinzio Violantes insistence that, from the fth to the tenth centuries, neither diocese nor pieve is denable in terms of a criterion of territorialitythough both clearly possessed territorial dimensions. Whether or not Roman ecclesiastical and civil units ever truly corresponded, the link was soon shattered by missionary activity and by long vacancies of episcopal sees. On the borders with Pisa and Pistoia, some missionary foundations of the seventh and eighth centuries seem to have been annexed by the more powerful diocese of Lucca. The conversion of pagans or Arians by eastern missionaries may have created administrative problems within and between dioceses; subsequent juridical ambiguities and the conicts of neighbouring bishops over territory were perhaps in part a legacy of these missions. And continuing ambiguities might arise from the fact that bishops sometimes laid claim to institutions within
Arnaldi, Papato, arcivescovi e vescovi, p. 33; C. Violante, Le strutture organizzative della cura danime nelle campagne dellItalia centrosettentrionale (secoli vx), in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nellalto medioevo: Espansione e resistenze: Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo, xxviii, 2 vols. (Spoleto, 1982), ii, p. 1058; id., Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche, p. 95. And see n. 57 above. The tendency was not without exceptions. Continuing conict between Arezzo and Siena revolved around attempts to bring ecclesiastical boundaries into line with new civil administrative divisions: Lusini, I conni storici, passim; Schneider, Die Reichsverwaltung in Toscana, pp. 3941; J. P. Delumeau, Arezzo espace et socits, 7151230: Recherches sur Arezzo et son contado du viiie au dbut du xiiie sicle, 2 vols. (Rome, 1996), i, pp. 1969. In the Lucchesia, as late as 1003, the castello of Verruca might lie within the Lucchese pieve of Massa prope Burra, but infra comitato et territurio pistoriense: Pescaglini Monti, Nobilit e istituzioni ecclesiastiche, p. 250. Formentini, Per la storia preromana, pp. 623; Conti, Luni, pp. 238, 33. For a critical review of the evidence for the identication of pieve and pagus: Violante, Le strutture organizzative, pp. 9635. On the slow process of evolution by which local populations came to be attached to a particular baptismal church: ibid., pp. 995, 101519, 1136, 11445. Ibid., pp. 9631162. Bertini, Intorno alla probabile genesi, pp. 715; P. M. Conti, Ricerche sulle correnti missionarie nella Lunigiana e nella Tuscia nei secoli vii e viii, Archivio storico per le provincie parmensi, iv ser., 18 (1966), p. 107.
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other diocesesas in the case of the Cadolingi foundation of Rosaia, described by Enrico Coturri as an oasis of the bishopric of Pistoia in the midst of the diocese of Lucca. Throughout the early Middle Ages precise boundaries, whether of ecclesiastical or civil jurisdiction, are probably illusory and certainly evade reconstruction. Then as later, there are continuing indications of the adjustments of diocesan borders. In the Garfagnana, the precise boundaries of the dioceses of Lucca and Luni at the beginning of the twelfth century remain a contentious and undecided issue. Eschewing territorial precision, the diocese remains important as an agency for the transmission of territorial identity and notions of urban-based authority. Perhaps this is true of the brief Byzantine interlude, when power threatened to pass from municipal councils into the hands of extra-urban military commanders ruling from the castelli (fortied settlements) established in strategically important areas. Clearly it is true of the late Carolingian period when the diocese continued to provide a basic delimiting structure in a world of fragmenting authority. Francesca Bocchi has argued that the early communes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries sought to control territory in response to concrete economic and political needsspecically the need to secure food supplies. For Bocchi, the new city-state only coincidentally corresponded to the ecclesiastical diocese. Certainly the same topographical constraints and the same material interests in controlling networks of communication were likely to inuence (though not determine) the conguration of both diocese and state. But Italian historiographical orthodoxy since De Vergottini has tended to posit a conscious programme of communal expansion that aspired to annex the entire diocesan territory, and the actual areas of
E. Coturri, Ospedali della Valdinievole al tempo di SantAllucio, in Allucio da Pescia, pp. 21718. For the location of Rosaia, and for the pieve of Massa Piscatoria: Pescaglini Monti, Nobilit e istituzioni ecclesiastiche, pp. 2335, 259. Thus after 1133 the diocese of Luni seems to have been compensated for the loss of territory elsewhere by the acquisition of the Lucchese pieve de Castello (Piazza al Serchio) together with some chapels of the Lucchese pieve of S. Terenzo de Rogiana: Angelini, Una pieve toscana, pp. 536; G. Bottazzi, Viabilit e insediamento nella Garfagnana medievale, in Garf. 1995, p. 78. But see Angelini, Problemi di storia longobarda, pp. 228. R. Savigni, Le relazioni politico-ecclesiastiche tra la citt e lepiscopato lucchese e la Garfagnana nellet comunale (xiixiii secolo), in Garf. 1997, p. 48; L. Angelini, Elezioni nelle chiese della Garfagnana dugentesca, in ibid., pp. 1034; M. Seghieri, Piazza e Sala dominio del vescovo di Lucca: Origini e primi sviluppi della contea, Carfaniana antiqua: Miscellanea di studi, i (Lucca, 1980), pp. 1318. F. Bocchi, La citt e lorganizzazione del territorio in et medievale, in R. Elze and G. Fasoli (eds.), La citt in Italia e in Germania nel Medioevo: Cultura, istituzioni, vita religiosa (Bologna, 1981), pp. 634. On the role of roads and commerce in shaping territorial boundaries: Baroni, Rapporti e collegamenti viarii medievali, pp. 163209. E. Sestan, La citt comunale italiana dei secoli xixiii nelle sue note caratteristiche rispetto al movimento comunale europeo, in G. Rossetti (ed.), Forme di potere e struttura sociale in Italia nel Medioevo (Bologna, 1977), p. 186. See now: G. Milani, I comuni italiani. Secoli xiixiv (Rome and Bari, 2005), pp. 6, 37. The essential text is G. De Vergottini, Origini e sviluppo della comitatinanza
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border tension between Lucca, Pisa, and Pistoia seem fully to support this thesis. Admittedly, in Lucca, as elsewhere, the precise shape of the early city-state was determined by the fortunes of warand ultimately inuenced (if not predetermined) by defensible natural boundaries. The legacy of classical Rome included not only the historic borders of the city-territory, but also the aspiration of cities to expand at the expense of their neighbours. Luccas frontiers stabilized against a background of armed conict with neighbouring cities, particularly with Pisa. Uncertainties over the parties to the border dispute of 168 render suspect the traditional dating of LucchesePisan rivalry to the era of Republican Rome. Modern qualms over the historicity of S. Paolino undermine a Lucchese chronicle tradition that attributed the martyrdom of Luccas rst bishop to continuing Pisan jealousy. More generally, our vision may be clouded by the tendency of later writers to pre-date the institutionalized territorial rivalry of organized urban communities. Nevertheless, cross-border raids (however constituted) can be traced back securely to the pre-communal age: under the years 1004/1005 Pisan chronicles record Luccas brief capture of the lower Valdiserchio. In the same period, less convincingly, Pisan sources allege the annexation to the bishopric of Lucca of the Valdera and Valdarnoterritories that seemingly had long formed part of the Lucchese diocese. There was ghting around Vaccoli in 1055. Continuous conict, punctuated by years of uneasy peace, began with the tussle for possession of the fortress of Vaccoli in 1088. Thereafter the ambitions of
(Siena, 1929), pp. 11341. G. Santini stresses the essential novelty and revolutionary consequences of these communal ambitions: Circoscrizioni amministrative civili nei domini matildici, Studi Matildici (Modena, 1978), p. 97. The communal aspiration does not seem to me to be affected by the distinction drawn by Tirelli between diocesan territory and episcopatus: Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, pp. 868. At the end of the Pisan wars, Lucchese and Pisan territory came to be separated by the logical natural barriers of the Monti Pisani and the marshes of Massaciuccoli and Bientinabarriers that all coincided with established diocesan boundaries. M. Ascheri, Citt-Stato: Una specicit, un problema culturale, Le Carte e la storia: Rivista di storia delle istituzioni, 12 (2006), p. 11. CUL MS Add. 4700, pp. 11416, 1369, 2489. For S. Paolino: R. Savigni, Episcopato e societ cittadina a Lucca da Anselmo II (+1086) a Roberto (+1225) (Lucca, 1996), p. 314. Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, pp. 249, 252, 260. Schwarzmaiers vision, in turn, is blurred by an exaggerated sense of cleavage between an older, rural-based nobility and the urban ruling class emerging during the course of the eleventh century. Bernardo Marangone, Vetus Chronicon Pisanum, ed. F. Bonaini, ASI 1st ser., 6/2 (1845), p. 4; Ranieri Sardo, Cronaca Pisana, ibid., pp. 756. These events seem to coincide with the emerging power of Luccas leading families, and with the temporary eclipse of both episcopal and margraval authority: Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, pp. 1289. For the refutation of Pisan claims: Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. i, pp. 1168, 923. G. Tommasi, Sommario della storia di Lucca dallanno MIV allanno MDCC, ASI, 1st ser., 10 (1847), p. 15. Eodem anno [1088], ut in Gestis Lucanorum scribitur, castrum de Vacchole destructum fuit a popolo Lucano, [quod erat nobilium]. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, ed. B. Schmeidler, MGH: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, , viii (Berlin, 1955), p. 20. See also Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum,
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the two neighbouring cities were pursued in a number of arenas that can be separated at least for reasons of narrative convenience. The earliest recorded conicts took place in the mountains to the south-west of Lucca, and in the sterile marsh and woodland that then extended northward from Pisa to the mountains. At times of Pisan weakness, Lucchese forces descended from the mountains, plundering to the walls of Pisa itself. In 1168 the Lucchesi burnt and laid waste the village of Quosa below Monte Pisano. In 1172, in retaliation for subsequent Lucchese incursions, the Pisans entered and plundered the Lucchese plain as far as Lunata. Quosa was again taken by Lucca, together with Avane and Ponte a Serchio, in 1285. But for the most part, military endeavour centred on the seizing and recovery of private fortresses in the Monte Pisano, whether by siege, assault, or the suborning of local lords. Ripafratta, controlling the valley of the Serchio between Lucca and Pisa, was captured by Luccaalbeit brieyin 1104. In the central Monti Pisani, the castello of Vorno was garrisoned by Pisans in 1144 when its lord, Enrico di Sigefredo (descendant of a family of Lucchese notables and royal judges founded in the tenth century by Giudice Leone), allied himself with Pisa against Lucca. The fortress of Vorno was abandoned by its Pisan defenders only in 1150, whereupon it was razed as a threat to Luccas security. Similar assaults by urban militia, often occasioned by the shifting alliances of local lords, were repeated to the south and west at Castagnori (1100), Asciano (1168), and Agnano (1169). A second region frequently contested between Lucca and Pisa was the Tyrrhenian coast from the mouth of the Serchio to the Magra. The charter of privileges granted to the citizens of Lucca by the Emperor Henry IV in 1081 included rights of free navigation on the Serchio and landing rights at the mouth of the Motrone. The early history of fortications along the coast is obscure before
ed. B. Schmeidler, ibid., p. 284. The date 1080 in one codex appears to be a corruption; but some problems of dating remain: A. N. Cianelli, Dissertazioni sopra la storia lucchese, in Memorie e documenti per servire allistoria della citt e stato di Lucca, iiiii (Lucca, 181416), iii, pt. i, pp. 8993; Tommasi, Sommario, p. 35. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 68; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 291; Marangone, Vetus Chronicon Pisanum, p. 52. Revertentibus Pisanis cum exercitu, Lucensium terras decimoquinto Kal. Septembris intraverunt, et ex utraque parte uminis Sercli totam terram Lucensium ab Aquilata usque ad Pontem Sancti Petri devastaverunt et igne cremaverunt, et bestias multas et spolia inde abstraxerunt. Marangone, Vetus Chronicon Pisanum, p. 65. D. Corsi, Lucca, Viareggio, Messina. Note darchivio, ASI 138 (1980), p. 460. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 29; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 285; Marangone, Vetus Chronicon Pisanum, p. 7. Lucca recovered Ripafratta in 1285, perhaps through the treason of the Pisan Podest, conte Ugolino della Gherardesca: Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 206; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 319. G. Massoni, La pieve e la comunit di Vorno (Lucca, 1999), pp. 3947. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, pp. 27, 689; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, pp. 285, 2912; Marangone, Vetus Chronicon Pisanum, pp. 525. Statuimus etiam, ut si qui homines introierint in uvio Serculo vel in Motrone cum navi sive cum navibus causa negotiandi cum Lucensibus, nullus hominum eos vel Lucenses in mari vel in
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the mid-twelfth century. The picture seems to be one of expanding Lucchese inuence, and subsequent conict between Pisa, on the one hand, and Lucca and its Genoese ally, on the other. The treaty between Lucca and Genoa shows that, by October 1166, the Lucchesi had taken and fortied Motrone. But Luccas control came to an end in 1169, when Motrone was destroyedand then rebuiltby Pisa. More mixed were the fortunes of Viareggio (Castello del mare). Viareggio repeatedly changed hands. The Emperor Frederick I ordered its destruction in 1175a prelude to his policy of forbidding the construction of any fortresses along the Versilian coast. After further vicissitudes, Viareggio nally fell under permanent Lucchese control in 1287. The contest for the control of the Versilian coast was inextricably linked with a wider struggle for dominance over the Versilian interior and the Garfagnana. Control of the coastal plain clearly lay behind the protracted struggle for Castello Aghinol, a struggle in which the local lordsthe Nobili da Castellowere both active and passive participants. Similar concerns explain Luccas sporadic action against Corvaia and Vallecchia, whose lords periodically formed alliances with Pisa. To the south, possession of Montramito (Montegravanto or Montravanto) was essential for the security of the road to Viareggio. But, while these fortresses on the edge of the Versilian plain were obvious centres of contention, lords throughout the Versilia and the Garfagnana were able to pursue their own interests under cover of the inter-city rivalriesand, indeed, under the protection of the universalist claims of Empire and Papacy. In 1169 the lords of Corvaia appear to have received widespread support from throughout the Versilia and the Garfagnana; Lucchese success against Corvaia was followed by the destruction of many noble strongholds in the Garfagnana. A determined minority then sought refuge in Pisa, though most took oaths of loyalty to the ascendant power of Lucca. New opportunities arose with the coming of the Emperor Frederick I: a diploma of 5 March 1185 freed the lords and communes of the Garfagnana and Versilia from the control of any city, placing them under direct imperial protection. Similar decrees emanated in 1209 from Otto IV, and in 1242 from Frederick II. Alternatively, protection might come from the Papacy: in 1227 Gregory IX took the whole province of the Garfagnana under papal protection. Yet both Pope and Emperor were
suprascriptis uminibus eundo vel redeundo vel stando molestare aut aliquam injuriam eis inferre, vel depredationem facere aut aliquo modo hoc eis interdicere presumat. Tommasi, Sommario, Documenti, serie prima, i. Though see now J. A. Quirs Castillo, El incastellamento en el territorio de la ciudad de Luca ( Toscana) (Oxford, 1999), pp. 2234. Tommasi, Sommario, pp. 3742; Corsi, Lucca, Viareggio, Messina, pp. 4435. Corsi, Lucca, Viareggio, Messina, pp. 44171. G. Sforza, Memorie storiche di Montignoso (Lucca, 1867), pp. 926. Eodem etiam anno [1170] intraverunt Garfagnanam et ibidem multa castra destruxerunt, multa ceperunt et multa etiam combusserunt. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 70. D. Pacchi, Ricerche istoriche sulla provincia della Garfagnana (Modena, 1785), pp. 11626.
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distant and illusive allies. Ultimately the war in the Garfagnana was fought between unstable alliances that looked to Lucca and Pisa. The Garfagnana passed nally under Lucchese control, not because of Frederick IIs diploma of December 1248, but because of Luccas military successes and the nal coincidence of the interests of many Garfagnini with those of Lucca. The last regions of signicant contestation lay to the south and east: from Bientina to San Miniato, and including the southward thrust of the Lucchese diocese far beyond the Arno. There are suggestions of a border dispute between Bishop Peredeo and Pisa in the area of Collesalvetti as early as 764. In 1128 the Pisans encouraged the castello of Buggiano, and perhaps Limano, to rebel against Lucca: both were subsequently destroyed. The Fucecchiani at this time were apparently allied to Pisa; local skirmishes (if not the renewal of full-scale war) led to the destruction of that castello in 1136. In 1149 the Pisans attempted to defend Vorno by means of diversory attacks on Montecastello and S. Gervasio in Valdera. In 1169 Lucca captured Marti and recovered Palaia on the southern borders of the Lucchese diocese. And in 1172 Lucca captured and burnt San Miniato, which was in the diocese of Lucca but allied to Luccas enemies. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the communes of the Valdinievole and Valdarno inferiore were both participants in, and victims of, a continuing struggle for control that involved Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Prato, Pistoia, and the imperial vicar based in San Miniato. The Lucchese state that emerged from these wars never corresponded precisely with the diocese as revealed in the rationes decimarum of 1260. The borders of the diocese passed south of Castello Aghinol and Camporgiano, and never embraced those lands in the high valley of the Serchio that passed under Lucchese
Thus the Nobiles viri DD. de Versilia, & Lunisgiana, & Carfagnana, qui praestitere auxilium, & favorem Pisano Comuni were explicitly named in the peace negotiations between Lucca and Pisa of 1237: Pacchi, Ricerche istoriche, p. 125. Pacchi, Ricerche istoriche, pp. 1289; Cianelli, Dissertazioni, i, pp. 21516. Bertini, Peredeo, p. 36. For later attempts by bishops of Lucca to build up a network of alliances in the disputed southern parts of the diocese: R. Pescaglini Monti, Un inedito documento lucchese della marchesa Beatrice e alcune notizie sulla famiglia dei domini di Colle tra x e xi secolo, in Pisa e la Toscana occidentale nel Medioevo: A Cinzio Violante nei 70 anni, 2 vols. (Pisa, 1991), i, pp. 12972. CUL MS Add. 4700, pp. 28990; Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 46; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 287; Tommasi, Sommario, p. 29; Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. ii, no. cxxi. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 50; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 287. CUL MS Add. 4700, p. 304. Ibid., p. 330. Three years later, the castello and borgo of Palaia were still in the hands of the bishop and lucanus populus: Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. ii, no. cvii. And this cooperation continued into the 1220s: Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, p. 139. Andreolli, without reference, identies Palaia in Valdera as already under the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Lucca in 998: Uomini nel medioevo, p. 139. Tholomei Lucensis Annales, p. 71; Tolomeo, Gesta Lucanorum, p. 295. P. O. Baldasseroni, Istoria della citt di Pescia e della Valdinievole, 2nd edn. (Pescia, 1784), pp. 12036. In the wars with Pistoia after 1177, Nelli suggests that the Montecatinesi appear rather as allies than as subjects of Lucca: Montecatini dalle origini, pp. 1719.
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inuence during the early communal period. To the north, Piazza e Sala (Piazza al Serchio) in the diocese of Luni was under the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop of Lucca. Further south, Bozzano, though outside the diocese, seems to have been under Lucchese control at the end of the twelfth centuryand periodically thereafter. Despite the claims of later Lucchese chroniclers, there is no compelling evidence that San Miniato, though part of Luccas diocese, was ever under Luccas rm political control in any meaningful sense. Certainly Lucchese forces periodically burnt the lands of San Miniato. But plundering is not ruling. And local histories of San Miniato have been written largely without reference to Lucca, other than as an externalized threat. Yet, just as the territorial dimensions of Luccas bishopric seem to have played some role in preserving the concept of a city-based territory in the centuries after the fall of Rome, so in the High Middle Ages the area of Luccas true and natural jurisdiction continued to be vaguely identied with the borders of the diocese. As in the earlier period, the mechanics of the link are less than clear. A traditional Italian historiography has tended to portray the mediating role of bishop and diocese in juridical terms. Certainly, in some parts of Italy, bishops, by royal concessionssometimes without formal approvalfortied cities and claimed concomitant juridical rights over the surrounding countryside. With the collapse of royal power in the late Carolingian period, the bishops of many cities were granted powers of jurisdictionpowers that extended initially for one mile, later for as much as seven miles from the city walls. The situation differed in Lucca, not least because of the power of the margraves, and in spite of the proclivity of individual Emperors to favour the power of the bishops in Tuscany as a counterweight to the margraves and the counts and public ofcials who were linked to them. From the eighth century the bishop of Lucca gradually replaced the king as the leading landlord in the immediate environs of the city. As private proprietor
Seghieri, Piazza e Sala, pp. 1334. Cianelli, Dissertazioni, ii, pp. 3212, 325; iii, pt. i, pp. 44, 21222. Cianelli, Dissertazioni, i, pp. 2389. G. Rondoni, Memorie storiche di San Miniato al Tedesco con documenti inediti e le notizie deglillustri samminiatesi (San Miniato, 1876). Rondonis work is largely drawn from the documents published in the various collections of G. Lami, including Sanctae Ecclesiae Florentinae Monumenta, 4 vols. (Florence, 1758), i, pp. 33465, 3735, 4928. Even if the city was never able to govern directly the entire diocesan territory: Nobili, Levoluzione delle dominazioni marchionali, p. 250. Rossetti, Formazione e caratteri, pp. 11348. Bocchi, La citt e lorganizzazione del territorio, pp. 589; Dupr Theseider, Vescovi e citt, pp. 7990. For Piacenza: S. Rossi, Piacenza dal governo vescovile a quello consolare: Lepiscopato di Arduino (11211147), Aevum: Rassegna di scienze storiche linguistiche e lologiche, 68 (1994), pp. 3245. M. L. Ceccarelli Lemut, Cronotassi dei vescovi di Volterra dalle origini allinizio del xiii secolo, in Pisa e la Toscana occidentale nel Medioevo: A Cinzio Violante nei suoi 70 anni, 2 vols. (Pisa, 1991), i, p. 40. Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 38.
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and public functionary, Luccas bishop was a powerful presence within the Sei Migliathe area of plain and low hills that circumscribed the city. But the bishop never received a formal grant of lordship over the Sei Miglia, as became characteristic of city-territories further to the north. In this respect it is impossible to see the future commune of Lucca as the direct juridical heir of an episcopal signoria. When, in 1081, the Emperor Henry IV granted to the faithful citizens of Lucca that no castle was to be built within six miles of their city, he was merely conrming Luccas traditional zone of inuence. And the imperial diploma was clearly directed against the house of Canossa rather than, in the rst instance, against Bishop Anselmo II as one of the Countess Matildas leading supporters. The power of bishops over the wider diocese has been bedevilled by debates over the concept of the bishop-count. Certainly from Frankish times bishops were given powers within their dioceses to examine cases involving religion and morality. An older local historiography sometimes went beyond this to claim that Luccas bishops, from an early period, claimed the title of bishop and count (episcopus et comes). While bishops in some parts of Italy clearly were made counts, bishops in Lucca (as elsewhere in Tuscany) appear never to have been granted the title of count, nor yet to have exercised full comital powers. As in the case of other landholders, if on a grander scale, the temporal jurisdiction of Luccas bishop was associated with proprietary rights. Bishops exercised jurisdiction over church property, whether acquired through purchase or through the alienation of scal land. Later, episcopal jurisdiction over the residents on the lands of the church was conrmed and validated by imperial grant, as by Otto II in 980, or Frederick I in 1164. The identication of
C. Wickham, Economia e societ rurale nel territorio lucchese durante la seconda met del secolo xi: Inquadramenti aristocratici e strutture signorili, in SantAnselmo, p. 413. Tommasi, Sommario, Documenti, serie prima, i; MGH: Diplomatum Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae, vi, pt. i, Heinrici IV: Diplomata (Weimar, 1953), no. 334, pp. 4379. For reservations about this document, and more particularly about the diploma granted in the same year to Pisa, both preserved in late copies: G. Rossetti, Pisa e limpero tra xi e xii secolo: Per una nuova edizione del diploma di Enrico IV ai pisani, in C. Violante (ed.), Nobilit e chiesa nel medioevo e altri saggi: Scritti in onore di Gerd G. Tellenbach (Rome, 1993), pp. 15982. Henry VIs diploma of 1186 conrmed to Lucca omnia Regalia et omnem iurisdictionem et districtum intra et extra Civitatem usque ad sex milliaria: Cianelli, Dissertazioni, i, pp. 198200. Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 66; H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII 10731085 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 296307. Bertolini, I vescovi, pp. 1322; Rossetti, Formazione e caratteri, pp. 1456. Baldasseroni, Istoria della citt di Pescia, p. 65. Dupr Theseider, Vescovi e citt, pp. 92101. But see now: Milani, I comuni italiani, pp. 12, 38. For useful denitions and distinctions: M. Nobili, Il liber de anulo et baculo del vescovo di Lucca Rangerio, Matilde e la lotta per le investiture negli anni 11101111, in SantAnselmo, pp. 176, 179. Seghieri, Piazza e Sala, p. 20; Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, pp. 92, 112. MGH: Diplomata Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae, x, pt. ii, Friderici I Diplomata inde ab a. mclviii usque ad a. mclxvii (Hanover, 1979), no. 430, pp. 3226. By the reign of Frederick I, the
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episcopal and public power may have made it easier for the bishop to establish territorial lordships, over and above the proprietary rights possessed by all lords over their own tenants. But the areas of episcopal control formed scattered rural seigniories within and beyond the borders of the county. In Lucca, at least, it is not helpful to see the nascent commune as the direct heir to public functions previously delegated to bishops over the entire territory of the diocese/county. In more practical ways, the bishop played a decisive role in territorial integration. From the eighth century, bishops of Lucca had acquired extensive landed possessions by means of donations, exchanges, and purchases. These properties extended beyond the diocese, though they were concentrated within and throughout the diocese, and there was always an understandable tendency to shed possessions in areas outside the bishops sphere of inuence. Thus, in 1119 Bishop Benedetto ceded to Abbot Ugo of S. Maria di Serena possessions held by the Lucchese church towards Roselle (a suprascripto umine Cecina, usque ad Episcopatum Rosellense) in return for lands closer to Lucca (a Fluvio Cecine usque ad Fluvium Arni). The resources at the bishops disposal increased during the Carolingian period with the introduction and regularization of tithes, collected throughout the diocese with the coercive support of the civil authorities. Both lands and tithes were leased to laymen. From the early ninth century there is increasing reference in ofcial church records to baptismal churches with dened territories (pivieri). And by the end of the tenth century it became common for bishops to lease all or most of the possessions and revenues of pievi to high-ranking laymen (saving provisions for the care of souls). From the beginning, the cession of church land to laymenoften by perpetual or hereditary leases (livelli)might be seen as the despoiling of the church, whether through carelessness, violence, or by episcopal gifts to relatives. At the same time, the leasing of church lands and revenues throughout the Lucchesia clearly created important ties between centre and periphery. And the relationship was a reciprocal one in so far as aristocratic families, together with small and medium proprietors, continued to donate lands to the church in anticipation
legacy of the Investiture Controversy seems to have combined with current imperial policy to dene all episcopal property as regalia: Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, p. 76; G. Tabacco, The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 21415. For an alternative reading: Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, pp. 55146. Tirellis interpretation rests on his identication of the regalia with i beni pubblici, which seems to me problematic, and on his contested vision of the role of the bishop in Lucchese politics after 1081. The essential study here is Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich. Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. i, p. 47. Violante, Le strutture organizzative, pp. 10734. Ibid., pp. 101516, 1019. Ibid., pp. 10991101, 1107, 11224. D. J. Osheim, An Italian Lordship: The Bishopric of Lucca in the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1977), p. 13; Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 100. As early as 852 the Emperor Louis II granted restitution of all alienated property to the newly appointed bishop Geremia: Omnis vero libellos, omnisque scriptiones inde factos irritos & vacuos esse statuimus: Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. ii, no. xxxii.
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of future benets. The precise nature of the ties remains controversial; much discussion has focused on whether grants to non-cultivators (grandi livelli) were or became feudal. Precisely on the basis of the Lucchese evidence, it has been variously argued how far grandi livelli created bonds of vassalage or of commendation; how far grandi livelli represented a Tuscan alternative to the feudo-vassalic institutions of Lombardy; how far the succession of Milanese bishops of Lucca in the eleventh century transformed livelli contracts involving entire pievi into grants that were truly feudal. The material is to be considered against the background of current Anglo-Saxon doubts regarding the phenomena of efs and vassals as conventionally conceptualized. It seems to me that, in Italy as elsewhere, historians have been overly preoccupied with constructing sharply dened relationships on the basis of a technical vocabulary that is both more uid and less exact than they tend to suppose. Eschewing the more detailed debates, certain points appear clear. In contested areas of the diocese the bishop of Lucca built up a network of alliances through the granting of lands and strongholds to allies, who, in turn, might offer lands and castelli to the bishop in return for episcopal support: a familiar eleventhcentury example is provided by relations in the southern part of the diocese, particularly in the territory of S. Maria a Monte, involving conte Gualfredo, son of conte Ardengo degli Ardengheschi of Siena, and Bonglio de Camugliano. Agreements with the bishop might include precise military obligations. Thus in 1180 the consuls of Montopoli, on behalf of the knights and people, promised to obey the orders of Bishop Guglielmo of Lucca. They were then invested, as a benece, with half the territorys guida (a payment due from travellers along the Arno for the right of safe passage); in return the knights of Montopoli were bound to defend the lands of the church with horses and arms. More generally, episcopal grants of lands, rights, and revenues created bonds of delity
Some of the recent literature is conveniently summarized by A. Spicciani, Concessioni livellarie e infeudazioni di pievi a laici (secoli ixxi), in C. Violante (ed.), Nobilit e chiesa nel medioevo e altri saggi: Scritti in onore di Gerd G. Tellenbach (Rome, 1993), pp. 18397. E. A. R. Brown, The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe, American Historical Review, 79 (1974), pp. 106388; T. Dean, Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este 13501450 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 16; S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), particularly pp. 1774, 181257. These doubts seem to me fully validated by the texts (if not always by the arguments) produced by Savigni, Episcopato e societ, pp. 183207. Pescaglini Monti, Un inedito documento lucchese, pp. 14457, 169. The consuls miserunt manus suas in sacris manibus ejusdem Episcopi, promittentes observare quicquid ipse Dominus Episcopus exinde eis preciperet, et imponeret, renouncing all their rights to the guida. The bishop then investivit nomine Benecii the consuls with one half of the guida; sic quod milites de Montetopali semper pro arbitrio, et voluntate Lucani Episcopi habeant equos, et arma ad honorem Dei, et Lucane Ecclesiae, et Episcopatus, et Lucani Episcopi, et ad defensionem terrarum, et bonorum opere Sancti Martini. Bertini (ed.), Dissertazioni, iv, pt. ii, app., no. cxi. In 1237 the podest and consiglio generale of S. Maria a Monte were ordered to provide the bishop with two well-armed knights for the service of the Emperor Frederick II: AAL Fondo Diplomatico, ++O23.
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(delitas) between the bishop and the great Tuscan families (to whom the bishop himself often belonged). Fidelitas might defy denition in precise feudo-vassalic terms, and loyalty to the bishop was perfectly compatible with loyalty to other role-players of early medieval Tuscany. Nevertheless, the diocesan aristocracy were tied to the city by a network of leases involving the bishop (and to a lesser extent the cathedral chapter). A degree of control was exercised periodically through the regular renewal of leases (livelli). And this against a pattern of highly fragmented landholding by powerful individuals throughout the diocese, which in itself privileged the city. If the diocese inuenced the perimeters of the future Lucchese state, the association probably owes more to the practical imperatives of ecclesiastical landholdings than to the bishops legitimizing role in preserving concepts of a territorialized public power (the potere missatico). The building of castelli and the founding of hospitals at strategic points also served to x boundaries that were to endure. But the diocese also contributed in less tangible ways. Ernesto Sestan has arguedI think rightlythat inhabitants of the city thought of the saints whose relics lay within the city as protectors of the whole diocesan territory (in quanto signori celesti, signori anche, e non detronizzabili n sminuibili, del territorio della diocesi). This world view appeared self-evident to the inhabitants of the countryside, who were accustomed to think of themselves as appendices of the mother church. The thesis requires qualication. Religious loyalties were not enough to enable Lucca to retain political control of the Valdera; the whole southern part of the diocese, particularly the region lying to the south of the Arno, was gradually slipping from Luccas rule by the twelfth century. Everywhere the exempt monasteries formed enclaves that were separate from, and potentially hostile to, the Lucchese bishopric. Reformed monasteries subject to Camaldoli, S. Benedetto di Polirone, Vallombrosa, and Montecassino were, no doubt, the products of the same eleventh-century spiritual revival that moved Luccas reforming bishops. But the reformed monastic congregations were essentially extraneous to the diocese, while, at a more local level, the whole Cluniac movement tended to resuscitate the control of private churches by powerful lay patrons. Indeed, episcopal control of the diocese needs to be periodized. There was a period of crisis in the late tenth century when the bishops powers to intervene in the pievi were greatly curtailed. The focus of faith and discipline on bishop and cathedral city was not a constant. It probably remains true that for most inhabitants of the Lucchesia religious attachments meant rather
Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 31. Castle-building became important during the reign of Bishop Pietro (896932), under the impulse of the campaigns of Berengar and the Saracen incursions: Schwarzmaier, Lucca und das Reich, p. 103. Sestan, La citt comunale, pp. 1912. Tirelli, Il vescovato di Lucca, pp. 6675. Violante, Le strutture organizzative, pp. 11278, 113942.
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more than civil ones. Bonds were strengthened by the reformulation of the diocese as a collection of pievi dependent from the mother church, and by the image of the bishop as font of peace and justice. All these ingredients transformed the diocese into the natural (if ultimately unattained) arena of city power. At the beginning of the communal age, Lucca laid claim to a relatively large city-territory. That claim was rooted in the citys history. Cities were less numerous in the territory of what was to become Gallia Cisalpina, and, with Roman colonization, cities in this region were endowed with larger territories than elsewhere in Italy. Luccas importance under its Lombard dukes resulted in a signicant extension of the area juridically subject to Lucca. From Roman times there was an association, neither static nor necessarily precise, between city-territory and its ecclesiastical diocese. This association was one of the factors that kept alive the concept of county (comitatus) throughout the Carolingian and post-Carolingian period, at a time when Lucca (usually) had no count (comes comitatus lucensis) of its own. Later, for reasons that may be debated, the early commune attempted to extend its jurisdiction over the Lucchese diocese, which essentially corresponded with the Carolingian county, and which was not unconnected with the city-territory of the Romans and Lombards. During these early centuries, as later, the boundaries of Lucchese inuence were determined by political events, and by Luccas success or failure in vindicating historic claims. The extent of Luccas political inuence was always too uid and too uncertain to permit of any crude explanations of geographical determinism. Nevertheless, Lucca was able to benet from certain natural and geographical advantages, including those advantages that had been responsible for the initial location of the Latin colony. Lucca was the natural outlet for the lands of the Serchio valley: the Roman state arms factory (fabrica di spathae) drew to Lucca wood from the high valley of the Serchio (as well as iron from Elba, Sardinia, and Populonia). Eastwards from the city stretches a large cultivated plain, topographically featureless as anyone will know who has walked the terrain from Porcari to Lucca. This region was reclaimed early from marshland; and, from Roman times, the Sei Miglia (constituting perhaps a fth of Luccas diocese) was always the zone of city inuence par excellence. More generally, Lucca was at the centre of important road networks, especially those that ran down the Serchio, then eastwards to the lower Valdarno. The road system had helped to shape the northsouth orientation of the Lucchese diocese, and constituted an important factor both facilitating and directing Luccas future territorial aspirations. Communications by road and water were necessary for the establishment of
Ibid., p. 1145. Cosentino, Dinamiche sociali ed istituzionali, pp. 423, 601. Wickham, Economia e societ rurale, p. 393.
26
control, even for the unication of a territory, without ever quite becoming the independent and decisive variant (conceptualized as area di strada) of some recent Italian historiography. The processes by which the commune of Lucca achieved dominion over its contado becomes the central concern of the next chapter.

Lucca's Ancient Heritage. The Early Structures of City and Territory

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Lucca's Ancient Heritage. The Early Structures of City and Territory

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Luccas Ancient Heritage: The Early Structures of City and Territory

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

Luccas Ancient Heritage

Medieval Lucca and the Renaissance State

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