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 Sabaudian Studies
Political Culture, Dynasty, & Territory 1400–1700

Edited by Matthew Vester

Early Modern Series 12

Truman State University Press
Kirksville, Missouri
Copyright © 2013 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501
All rights reserved
tsup.truman.edu
Cover art: Sabaudia Ducatus—La Savoie, copper engraving with watercolor
highlights, 17th century, Paris. Photo by Matthew Vester.
Cover design: Teresa Wheeler
NOTE: Because of display limitations of e-readers, some special characters (e.g.,
accents or other diacritical marks, cedillas, characters in Eastern European
languages, Greek or Hebrew letters) may not display properly in the e-book
version of this work.
NOTE: Bracketed gray numbers in the body of the text refer to page numbers in
the print edition; citations appeared as footnotes in the print edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sabaudian Studies : Political Culture, Dynasty, and Territory (1400–1700) /
[compiled by] Matthew Vester.
p. cm. — (Early Modern Studies Series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61248-094-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61248-095-4 (ebook)
1. Savoy, House of. 2. Savoy (France and Italy)—History. 3. Political culture—Savoy
(France and Italy)—History. I. Vester, Matthew A. (Matthew Allen), author, editor
of compilation.
DG611.5.S24 2013
944'.58503—dc23
2012039361
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any
means without written permission from the publisher.
 Contents

Illustrations and Maps

Abbreviations

Dukes of Savoy, 1343–1730

Introduction
The Sabaudian Lands and Sabaudian Studies
Matthew Vester

1 Sabaudian Studies
The Historiographic Context
Matthew Vester

Policies and Institutions

2 The Practice of Diplomacy at the Court of Amadeus VIII of Savoy
(1391–1440)
Eva Pibiri, trans. Matthew Vester

3 Justice and Politics

The Conseil de Genevois during the Early Sixteenth Century
Laurent Perrillat

4 From Piedmont to Tenochtitlan

Social Conflict and Mercurino di Gattinara’s Imperial Policies in
New Spain
Rebecca Boone

5 Philibert-Albert Bailly, or The Origins of Valdostano Particularism

Alessandro Celi
 Representing the Dynasty
6 Recollecting Court Festivals
Ceremonial Accounts in Sixteenth-Century Savoy
Thalia Brero

7 Charles Emanuel I’s Foreign Policy

The Duke of Savoy’s French Voyage (1599–1600)
Stéphane Gal and Preston Perluss

8 The Model of the Holy Savoyard Prince

A Religious Discourse for Political Ends
Michel Merle, trans. Matthew Vester

9 The House of Savoy and the Theatre of the World

Performances of Sovereignty in Early Modern Rome
Toby Osborne

10 The Prolonged Minority of Charles Emanuel II

Kristine Kolrud

Territorial Practices
11 Fiscality and Territory
Ivrea and Piedmont between the Fifteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries
Guido Alfani

12 Reshaping Local Public Space

Religion and Politics in the Marquisate of Saluzzo between the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation
Marco Battistoni

13 Composite Politics in the Vallée d’Aoste

Matthew Vester
14 Sabaudian Spaces and Territories
Piedmont as a Composite State (Ecclesiastical Enclaves, Fiefs,
Boundaries)
Blythe Alice Raviola

Postscript
In Memory of Robert Oresko
Geoffrey Symcox, Matthew Vester, Toby Osborne, and Blythe Alice
Raviola

Notes

About the Contributors

Index
 Illustrations and Maps

Illustrations
Fig. 10.1 Tommaso Borgonio, L’educatione d’Achille, fol. 14, showing
Charles Emanuel II as zephyr, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di
Torino, Turin, q.V 58
Fig. 10.2 Tommaso Borgonio, Hercole et Amore, fol. 41, showing
Charles Emanuel II as Amor (with equally dressed Amorini),
Biblioteca Reale di Torino, Turin, St.P.952
Fig. 10.3 Tommaso Borgonio, L’educatione d’Achille, fol. 48
Fig. 10.4 Tommaso Borgonio, L’educatione d’Achille, fol. 102
Fig. 10.5 Tommaso Borgonio, L’educatione d’Achille, fol. 91
Fig. 10.6 Cornelis Bloemaert II after Giovanni Angelo Canini (Io.
Angel Ca. del), frontispiece of Luigi Giuglaris, La scuola della
verità aperta ai Prencipi, 1650
Fig. 11.1 Ivrea, from the Theatrum Sabaudiae (1682)

Maps
Map 1 The Sabaudian states
Map 3.1 The apanage of the Genevois
Map 11.1 Ivrea and its surroundings
Map 12.1 The marquisate of Saluzzo
Map 13.1 The Vallée d’Aoste
Map 14.1 Masserano and Crevacuore
Map 14.2 Papal enclaves in Piedmont (18th-century map from AST1)
 Abbreviations

ACI = Archivio Comunale, Ivrea

ACS, AS = Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Archivio del SS.
Sudario
ADCO = Archives Départementales de la Côte-d’Or
ADHS = Archives Départementales de Haute-Savoie
ADS = Archives Départementales de Savoie
AHR = Archives historiques régionales, Aoste
ASPR = Archivio di Stato di Parma
ASV = Archivio Segreto Vaticano
AST1 = Archivio di Stato di Torino, prima sezione
ASTR = Archivio di Stato di Torino, sezioni riunite
BAV, UL = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urbinates Latini
BNT = Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino
BRT = Biblioetca Reale di Torino
Cam. Sav. = Camerale Savoia (Inventaire Générale des Titres du
Duché de Savoie)
CC = Fonds du Conseil des Commis
CFE = Carteggio Farnesiano Estero
inv. = inventory
LMR = Lettere Ministri, Roma
ME = Materie Ecclesiastiche
mz. = mazzo
PGN = Materie Politiche per Rapporto all’Interno, Principi del
Genevese e di Nemours
Segr. SS = Segreteria di Stato Savoia
 Dukes of Savoy, 1343–1730

Amadeus VIII, r. 1391–1434 (1451): first duke of Savoy (1418);

Pope Felix V (1439–1449); married Mary, daughter of Duke Philip
the Bold of Burgundy
Louis I, r. 1434–1465: married Anne, daughter of King Janus of
Cyprus
Amadeus IX, r. 1465–1472: married Yolande, daughter of King
Charles VII of France
Filibert I, r. 1472–1482: early regency of his mother, Yolande
Charles I, r. 1482–1490: married Blanche of Monferrato, who
served as regent for her son
Charles John Amadeus/Charles II, 1490–1496: regency of his
mother, Blanche, for entire reign
Philip II, r. 1496–97: uncle of Filibert I
Filibert II, r. 1497–1504: son of Philip; married Margaret of Austria,
daughter of Emperor Maximilian I
Charles II/III, r. 1504–1553: brother of Filibert II; married
Beatrice, daughter of King Manuel I of Portugal
Emanuel Filibert, r. 1553–1580: married Margaret, daughter of
King Francis I of France
Charles Emanuel I, r. 1580–1630: married Catherine Michelle,
daughter of King Philip II of Spain.
Victor Amadeus I, r. 1630–1637: married Marie Christine,
daughter of King Henry IV of France
Francis Hyacinth, r. 1637–1638: regency of his mother, Marie
Christine
Charles Emanuel II, r. 1638–1675: early regency of his mother,
Marie Christine; married Marie-Jeanne-Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours
Victor Amadeus II, r. 1675–1730: early regency of his mother,
Marie-Jeanne-Baptiste; married Anne of Orléans
 Introduction
The Sabaudian Lands and Sabaudian Studies

Matthew Vester

[1] One of the key developments in European history following the

tripartite division of the Carolingian Empire in 843 was the
appearance of the kingdom of Burgundy, which included large
swaths of what is today Switzerland, northwestern Italy, and central
and southeastern France. This kingdom of Burgundy became part of
the Holy Roman Empire in 1032, and over the course of the
following centuries portions of it were acquired by families and other
political actors operating across this vast region. The Hundred Years’
War might be considered one element of the gradual disintegration
of the Burgundian kingdom and the subsequent scramble for
authority over its remnant territories. Among the families that
profited from this power vacuum was the house of Savoy, which
emerged from the Maurienne valley, deep in the Alps, and acquired
the comital title in the eleventh century.
When Amadeus VIII of Savoy saw his county of Savoie elevated
to ducal status by Emperor Sigismund in 1416, he became duke for
the third time, since he already held the titles of duke of Aosta (a
valley southeast of the Mont Blanc) and of Chablais (on the southern
shore of Lake Geneva). At this point his lands also included the
seigniory of Bresse (on the eastern bank of the Saône River, from
the outskirts of Lyon north to the Doubs and east to the Pre-Alps),
the lands of Bugey and Valromey east of Bresse, the barony of Gex
and other bailiwicks near Geneva, the land of Vaud and the county
of Romont (north of Lake Geneva), the county of the Genevois and
the barony of Faucigny (west of the Mont Blanc), and the Tarentaise
valley (north of the Maurienne). The dynasty enjoyed a variety of
rights (formal and informal) over the city of Geneva. Amadeus’s
father, Amadeus VII, had acquired the county of Nice and its
hinterlands (including Barcelonnette, in the Alps of High Provence) in
1388, and his grandfather Amadeus VI had annexed Cuneo, Santhià,
Ivrea, Biella, and other places east of the Alps. To these territories
on either side of the Alpine watershed he also added, two years
later, the principality of Piedmont and other lands east of the Alps
that had been in the hands of a cadet branch of his dynasty, the [3]
Savoy-Acaia, when its head Lodovico died in 1418. Thus, in the early
fifteenth century, the main branch of the dynasty consolidated its
overlordship of lands reaching from Bresse and Vaud in the west and
north all the way to the Mediterranean and the borders of Lombardy
in the south and east. In the centuries following the reign of
Amadeus VIII, the dynasty continued to acquire lands east of the
Alps (the marquisates of Ceva and Saluzzo, the county of Asti, and
the Monferrato). The diversity of these territories, linguistically,
culturally, and geographically (they included plains, swamps, hill
regions, the highest mountains in Europe, and coastlines) was
perhaps unparalleled.
 [2] Map 1. The Sabaudian states. Map by Matthew Vester.

During the three centuries spanning the erection of the duchy of

Savoy under Amadeus VIII and the long-desired acquisition of the
royal title by Victor Amadeus II (king of Sicily in 1713, a title he
traded for that of king of Sardinia in 1720), the dynasty ruled over a
set of contiguous lands that, taken together, formed one of the more
sizeable territorial states in early modern Europe (after the kingdoms
of France, England, Spain, Portugal, and Naples). When the kingdom
of Italy was created in the 1860s under Sabaudian leadership, its
dynastic lands were divided and left without an integrated
historiographic tradition, as French and Italian scholars focused
instead on celebrating the historical roots of their new nation-states.
As a result, subsequent European historiography has largely
forgotten the history of the Sabaudian lands and the dynasty that
ruled them during the early modern period.
This essay collection begins to fill this gap. The phrase
“Sabaudian studies,” employed for the first time in 2009,1 arises out
of a historiographic context concerned with the history of the Savoy
dynasty, the lands over which it ruled, and the relation between the
two. It aims to preserve an awareness of the simultaneously
centrifugal and centripetal nature of this subject, given the variety
and distinctiveness of the territories involved, coupled with the
unifying role of the ruling house. Although the phrase is new, a
distinctive Anglophone (or at least, non-French and non-Italian)
approach to Sabaudian history is not. Since the nineteenth century,
much of the Italian and French scholarship on the house of Savoy
and its Old Regime states has been constructed around national
frameworks. French scholars tended to treat the history of the
western Sabaudian lands as provincial history, without regard to
their role as the late medieval seat of a sovereign ruler. Italian
historians collapsed all of the cisalpine lands under the rubric of
“Piedmont,” and discussed the role of this region as the inevitable
leader of Italian unification. Scholars from each side of the Alpine
watershed [4] routinely focused on phenomena and events on their
side of the mountains, disregarding their political ties to a larger
sovereignty.
The perspective of “Sabaudian studies” differs from traditional
Italian and French histories of Piedmont and Savoy in several ways.
This approach considers the history of the whole of the Sabaudian
realms, not only Savoy or Piedmont, emphasizing their European
context. It does not take regional identities within the Sabaudian
lands for granted. It also maintains a critical distance from
historiographic narratives focused on state-building and Italian
unification. Its multiarchival methodology promotes an analysis of
historical problems from a variety of perspectives. In these ways
Sabaudian studies aim to introduce the history of these lands to an
international public beyond France and Italy, a public whose
historical imagination is still often strongly conditioned by modern
national boundaries.
The contributions in this volume demonstrate the links between
Sabaudian and more general European history during these
centuries, both in terms of specific international events and with
respect to thematic issues—issues on which evidence from this
diverse set of territories offers an important comparative
perspective. The essays that follow are organized under three
themes. The first analyzes political culture, which includes
institutional development—and the ways in which this was often the
result of unintended consequences related to the necessities of
information gathering or mobility—and political thought. The political
ideas discussed here address both the problem of how empires deal
with subject populations and how notions of provincial autonomy
and privileges were diffused throughout Europe. The theme of the
second part, dynastic representation, is explored in studies of
ceremonial depictions, personal actions and self-perceptions of
sovereigns, hagiographies of dynastic kin, representational strategies
at the court of Rome, and court ballets in Turin. The third theme
investigated here—territorial practice—examines the impact of ducal
policy on particular localities together with the ways in which local
conditions shaped outcomes. Several essays also address the
composite nature of territorial political organization and the long-
term consequences of this kind of configuration. An important
analytical thread linking the research presented here is the
interpenetration of cultural and sociopolitical analyses. In most of
this work, we find perceptions and worldviews engaged in a mutually
regenerative relationship with the material and social conditions
surrounding them. In this sense, developments in Sabaudian studies
parallel those in other fields of European history.
The themes investigated here were important for rulers and
subjects throughout early modern Europe, and this volume offers the
opportunity to [5] examine them in a new comparative context.
Readers will find important similarities and differences regarding
structures, practices, and ideas in other European realms. This is not
surprising, given the constant interactions of the Sabaudian lands
and their rulers with societies and states surrounding the ancient
kingdom of Burgundy and beyond. A brief chronological overview of
early modern Sabaudian history clarifies the European position of
this dynasty, its lands, and its subjects.
Over the course of the early modern period, the house of Savoy
continued to benefit from its control of key transalpine transit routes
(especially the two St. Bernard passes via the Vallée d’Aoste and the
Mont Cenis pass linking the Maurienne and Susa valleys), and from
the office of imperial vicar in Italy, granted to it by the emperor.
Although the fourteenth-century creation of the St. Gothard pass in
the central Swiss cantons cut into its share of the transit market, the
high volume of exchange between France and Italy during the
Renaissance benefited Sabaudian toll collectors, merchants, bankers,
and towns.
Amadeus VIII extended his dynasty’s prestige not only through
his acquisition of the ducal title (and through compilation of a legal
code, the Statuta Sabaudiae [1430]) but also through his devout
reputation. Following the death of his wife, Mary of Burgundy, in
1434, he resigned his duchy to his son Louis I, and withdrew with
five other knights to lead a contemplative, semimonastic life at his
château of Ripaille, on the southern shore of Lake Geneva. As the
newly founded Order of St. Maurice, they lived according to a rule
that Amadeus had written. News of his sanctity spread to the
Council of Basel, which in 1439 elected him as Pope Felix V. He
chose as his secretary the famous humanist Aeneas Sylvinus
Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II. Upon the acceptance of
Eugenius IV as pope by the major European powers in 1449,
Felix/Amadeus submitted. He died two years later, and the house of
Savoy came into possession of its most important relic, the Holy
Shroud, soon thereafter.
The reign of Louis I (1434–65) was marked by increasing
tensions between the duke’s subjects from the western and eastern
sides of the Alps, tensions that were exacerbated by dynastic efforts
to expand southeastward (toward Milan, the Monferrato, and
Saluzzo) following the end of the Hundred Years’ War and by the
subsequent growth of French power. During the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth century, the Italian-speaking cisalpine lands had also
acquired a level of economic dynamism missing from the transalpine
areas, as bankers and textile producers from Chieri and Asti broke
into the large French market. Louis’s marriage to Anne of Cyprus
formed the basis of the dynasty’s claim (against strenuous Venetian
opposition) to the crown of that island kingdom. Their son [6]
Amadeus IX (r. 1465–72) married Yolande, daughter of Charles VII
of France. Following her husband’s death, Yolande served as regent
and suffered the consequences of an ill-fated Burgundian alliance
(when Charles the Bold was defeated at Morat in 1476, Swiss troops
occupied parts of Vaud) and of the estates assembly’s reassertion of
its own authority. Factionalism among Sabaudian elites marred the
reigns of Filibert I (1472–82) and Charles I (1482–90). The latter
married Blanche of Monferrato, who served as regent for her son
Charles II/Charles John Amadeus2 (1490–96). At this point, the
Sabaudian lands found themselves at the center of a geopolitical
struggle between the houses of Valois and Habsburg for the control
of Italy: Blanche granted Charles VIII’s army safe passage over the
Alps in 1494, but declared neutrality. During the brief reigns of Philip
II (1496–97) and Filibert II (1497–1504), the dukes of Savoy sought
to balance their alliances with each side and were largely successful.
Filibert II provides a good example: having been raised at the
French court (with his sister Louise, who married Charles
d’Angoulême and later gave birth to the future Francis I), his
matrimonial alliance was nonetheless with Margaret of Austria.
Charles III/II, the half-brother of Filibert II and Louise, ruled for
nearly half a century (1504–53). His consort, Beatrice of Portugal,
the sister-in-law of Emperor Charles V, helped the house acquire the
county of Asti and the marquisate of Ceva. Still, his reign was
punctuated by setbacks. Ongoing efforts by estates assemblies to
assert their authority created political and financial difficulties for the
duke. Jurisdictional conflicts with the city of Geneva (over which the
duke of Savoy exercised partial sovereignty) overlapped with
growing religious unrest there and in Vaud during the 1520s and
1530s. Those who favored religious reform in Geneva made common
cause with the push for political autonomy, and the powerful canton
of Bern lent its support. Eventually, and partially in response to
outrageous territorial claims made on the dynastic patrimony by
Francis I (based on his mother’s supposed rights), Charles III
declared for the emperor. As French armies marched toward his
territories in the winter of 1535/36, Bernese and other Swiss forces
seized Sabaudian lands north and east of Lake Geneva and oversaw
their conversion to the Reformed religion, confessionalizing their
conquest. The French annexed the other Sabaudian lands west of
the Alps (with the exception of the apanage of the Genevois, whose
ruler supported Francis I) and invaded Piedmont, which became a
battleground between the Valois and Habsburg armies. The
peripatetic Sabaudian court had often resided in Chambéry, though
during the fifteenth century it also made Turin a f [7] requent
destination. Following the invasion, though, the French seized Turin,
and Charles III and his courtiers sought refuge in Vercelli and in
Nice.
The breathtaking imperial victory at St. Quentin (1557), won by
Duke Emanuel Filibert (r. 1553–80), commander of Philip II’s army in
the Netherlands, led to the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis two years
later, followed by the duke’s marriage to Margaret of France and the
restoration of his Sabaudian lands (except for Vaud, Gex, and
Chablais, which remained in Bernese hands). Emanuel Filibert
established a capital in Turin in 1563 and retained the appellate
courts established by the French in Chambéry and Turin, renaming
them “Senates.” He also engaged in a number of fiscal, institutional,
and administrative reforms, and oversaw the construction of citadels
in Turin, Bourg-en-Bresse, Nice, and elsewhere. Faced with a
sizeable population of Waldensian Protestants in the Piedmontese
Alps, the duke initially attempted a military solution, but was
eventually forced to countenance their continued existence in their
mountain strongholds.
 Charles Emanuel I (1580–1630) succeeded his father at the age
of eighteen. He married a daughter of Philip II (Catherine Michelle)
and was for most of his reign a reliable Spanish ally. He took
advantage of disarray during the French religious wars to seize the
marquisate of Saluzzo (1588) and press claims on Geneva, fighting
against Genevan, Bernese, and French forces in that area during the
1590s. By the Treaty of Lyon (1601), he traded Bresse, Bugey, and
Gex to Henry IV in exchange for French approval of his possession of
Saluzzo. At this point, the duke began to focus his military activity on
the eastern side of the Alps, hoping to gain control of the
Monferrato, a sprawling set of territories perilously close to Turin, a
large enclave in the middle of the duke’s cisalpine lands. Despite
Sabaudian claims to these territories, the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua
had won imperial recognition as counts, then dukes, of the
Monferrato during the sixteenth century. Charles Emanuel I
negotiated an alliance with Henry IV and then, when the duke of
Mantua died without a son three years later, invaded the Monferrato.
A Spanish counterattack forced him to make peace, but he won the
hand of Henry’s daughter Marie Christine for his son Victor Amadeus.
When another Gonzaga succession crisis presented itself in 1628,
Charles Emanuel struck again, this time with Spanish support against
the French (Richelieu’s policies no longer included a Sabaudian
alliance). The duke of Savoy died while on campaign during this
second Monferrato war, which ended with a number of territorial
gains for Victor Amadeus I (1630–37).
The new ruling couple turned back to the French alliance during
the last years of the Thirty Years’ War. When Victor Amadeus died
suddenly in 1637, rumor spread [8] that he had been poisoned. His
brothers Thomas and Maurice opposed the regency of Marie
Christine (“Madame Royale”), first for the five-year-old Francis
Hyacinth and then, when the young duke died in 1638, for his four-
year-old brother Charles Emanuel II (r. 1638–75). The opposition of
Prince Thomas and Cardinal Maurice turned into a civil war lasting
until 1642, with French support for Marie Christine and her
madamisti and Spanish backing for the principisti. A tenuous peace
permitted Marie Christine to function as regent until her death in
1663.
In the meantime, the first half of the seventeenth century saw
the massive growth of the city of Turin, a process that continued into
the eighteenth century, as the seat of the Sabaudian court became a
dynastic showcase and a textbook example of an early modern
capital city. Architects such as Carlo di Castellamonte, Guarino
Guarini, and Filippo Juvarra would transform Turin into a pearl of the
baroque. Charles Emanuel II and his son Victor Amadeus II (r. 1675–
1730) took steps to rationalize the state bureaucracy and encourage
industrial activity (especially silk-spinning, for which Racconigi
became a European center).
The marriage between Charles Emanuel II and his distant
cousin Marie-Jeanne-Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours in 1665 continued
the pro-French policies of the duke’s mother. Indeed, Marie-Jeanne-
Baptiste (the second “Madame Royale”) took her turn as regent for
the young Victor Amadeus II following her husband’s death. Despite
his marriage to a niece of Louis XIV, Victor Amadeus asserted his
own authority, both domestically (forcing his mother to accept his
personal rule in 1684) and internationally (joining the League of
Augsburg against Louis in 1688). The remarkable use of warfare and
diplomacy by Victor Amadeus to stand down French pressure
preserved Sabaudian independence and secured for the dynasty
both pan-European diplomatic influence and a royal crown. This new
era following the War of the Spanish Succession was marked by
enlightenment reforms undertaken by Victor Amadeus and his son
Charles Emanuel III (1730–73).
The essays in this volume explore three themes in Sabaudian
history over the course of this period. The first section focuses on
political culture, defined here in institutional and ideological terms.
Eva Pibiri’s study of the social identities of Amadeus VIII’s
international envoys, and of diplomatic practice at the Sabaudian
and other courts, shows the importance of local knowledge and
experience in this realm of activity. In the Sabaudian lands as
elsewhere, record-keeping associated with diplomacy contributed to
the development of institutions whose territorial reach stretched
across all of the dynasty’s lands. Laurent Perrillat places his study of
a particular part of the Sabaudian lands, the apanage of the
Genevois, in an international context as well. He shows how the
presence or [9] absence of the early sixteenth-century Savoy-
Nemours rulers (heads of a collateral branch of the ruling dynasty),
depending on their service at the French court or elsewhere,
affected their relationship to the main secular institution in the area,
the Conseil de Genevois. As in the case of Pibiri’s study, institutional
specialization was the result of the dynasty’s activities on a European
stage. Perrillat also draws attention to the jurisdictional and political
competition between the Conseil and the high court of justice in
Chambéry, reminding us that institutional development and
specialization can serve to reinforce the composite nature of dynastic
polities.
During the sixteenth century, various subjects of the duke of
Savoy served in high positions at the Valois and Habsburg courts.
Rebecca Boone examines the role of Mercurino Gattinara, Charles V’s
chancellor, in the emperor’s efforts to create a universal empire,
which would be (in Gattinara’s mind) centered in Italy. Boone points
out how Gattinara’s conception of empire was rooted in his early
political experience in Piedmont, once more drawing attention to the
interplay between local experience and European (and global)
politics. The political thought of a Sabaudian leader is also the
subject of Alessandro Celi’s essay on Philibert-Albert Bailly, bishop of
Aosta during the later seventeenth century. Celi shows that Bailly
was the earliest theorist of Valdostano particularism, linking the
liberties of this Alpine duchy to the preservation of its particular
political privileges. Here again the development of Sabaudian
political culture was linked to international contacts. Bailly lived for a
time in the Pyrenean region of Béarn, and his observation of
representative institutions there paralleled what he later found in the
Vallée d’Aoste, providing a foundation for his theoretical reflections.
Part two of this volume explores the theme of dynastic
representation in the Sabaudian context. As elsewhere in Europe,
ceremony was perhaps the central mechanism by which the family
communicated and reinforced its position of dominance, at home
and abroad. Thalia Brero studies Sabaudian ceremonial accounts as
a specific literary genre designed to showcase princely power,
beginning in about the middle of the fifteenth century in France,
England, the Italian states, the Holy Roman Empire, and the
Sabaudian court. Her overview describes the variety of ceremonial
events held at the Sabaudian court during the early sixteenth
century and of the means of their representation, which became
codified by the seventeenth century. Stéphane Gal and Preston
Perluss focus on one particular princely ceremonial event, the visit of
Duke Charles Emanuel I to France in 1599 to 1600, in order to
analyze this duke’s representational strategy. The authors effect a
cultural translation of the standard interpretive [10] approach toward
Sabaudian rulers: while Charles Emanuel I indeed sought to keep his
more powerful sovereign neighbors (the king of France and the king
of Spain, ensconced in Milan) off guard, his method was not flatly
geopolitical, but—equally important—representational and
intertwined with the duke’s persona as unpredictable and wonder-
inspiring.
Another strategy for exalting the house of Savoy with respect to
other sovereign dynasties in Europe was to draw attention to the
sanctity of its individual members. Sabaudian rulers exerted
considerable efforts in this direction during the seventeenth century,
as Michel Merle’s essay shows. His study of the “ecclesiastical
imaginary” of this period within a Catholic confessional state shows
how a model of sanctity was infused into political image-making.
Like Gal and Perluss, Merle combines an attention to cultural
dispositions with an awareness of specific political events. One of the
most important European sites for performing dynastic sanctity was
obviously Rome, which could be considered, according to Toby
Osborne, as a kind of Geertzian “theatre state”—albeit a constantly
changing one. Osborne carefully examines the position of Sabaudian
ambassadors at the papal court and the role of dynastic promotion
played by Cardinal Maurice (Charles Emanuel I’s son). While the
dynasty’s visibility on the Roman stage certainly increased during the
seventeenth century, it continued to experience sharp competition
from its rivals, especially the Medici. Sabaudian rulers also oversaw
performances at their own court, quite literally. Kristine Kolrud
studies the ballets organized by Marie Christine of France, dowager
duchess of Savoy following the death of Victor Amadeus I in 1637.
The themes of these ballets were political, serving both to effect
reconciliation within the Sabaudian lands that had been wracked by
civil war, and to reinforce the authority of the regency administered
by Marie Christine over her young son, Duke Charles Emanuel II.
The tensions inherent in many Sabaudian representational
activities were paralleled by the variety of contradictions implicit in
the fiscal, jurisdictional, and political organization of Sabaudian
territories, the topic explored in the third part of this volume. Guido
Alfani offers an overview of tax policy in the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, assessing how the fiscal burden (combined
with environmental and demographic disasters) affected the
subalpine town of Ivrea. Alfani analyzes tax records to uncover
patterns of wealth distribution, identifying uniformly higher rates of
wealth inequality over the course of the seventeenth century. As was
the case elsewhere in Europe, the military policies of Sabaudian
rulers generated fiscal requirements that exacerbated local disputes.
Marco Battistoni shifts the focus to an examination of how specific
[11] local political structures shaped the contours of religious
coexistence in the marquisate of Saluzzo (subject to France until
Charles Emanuel I seized it in 1588). The examples of two very
different places, Dronero (on the Piedmontese plain) and Paesana
(in the uplands), show how diverse local clerical and political
configurations affected Catholic-Protestant relations in quite different
ways. Matthew Vester also examines local political structures, this
time in the Vallée d’Aoste. He argues that the Vallée d’Aoste, one of
the components of the composite Sabaudian state, was itself a
composite territory, divided as it was amongst a number of
jurisdictional, political, and territorial groupings endowed with
particular identities and privileges. Finally, Blythe Alice Raviola
investigates frontier regions around Piedmont, focusing on the lands
of the Fieschi family (held from the papacy) in order to illuminate the
dynamic linking lords, local communities, Sabaudian rulers, and the
Holy See. While the family’s reliance on the pope as a counterweight
to the duke of Savoy eventually undermined its own power, local
communities in papal fiefs continued to benefit from ties to Rome,
especially in fiscal and jurisdictional matters.
 Chapter 1
Sabaudian Studies
The Historiographic Context

Matthew Vester

[12] Historians who do not read French or Italian might be surprised

to learn that there is an extensive historiography in those languages
on various aspects of the history of the territories that had been
subject to the house of Savoy during the early modern period. That
scholarship has been written from a variety of perspectives and
methodologies, and has covered a wide array of subfields related to
the society and culture of these territories. Often, however, this body
of work has differed from that produced by Anglophone scholars, in
ways to be clarified below. These differences have been central to a
historiographic reconfiguration of scholarly approaches to the history
of this dynasty and its lands, a reconfiguration described here as
Sabaudian studies. This essay examines the genesis and nature of
these differences, highlighting the role of English-language
scholarship in their articulation. It does not examine recent
scholarship in every subfield, and leaves some topics and works
unaddressed (even English-language ones). Rather, it traces the
history of the term Sabaudian and assesses how its referent has
been addressed in Anglophone scholarship. It then examines how
recent French, Italian, and Swiss scholarship has begun to employ a
Sabaudian perspective. The third part of the essay surveys new work
on political culture, dynasty, and territory in Sabaudian studies, and
the final section looks at challenges for the field and topics for future
study.
Brief History of the Term and Its Relation to
Anglophone Historiography
In 1935 Ferdinand Lot, the well-known French medievalist,
investigated the history and significance of the term Sapaudia,
apparently first used by Ammianus Marcellinus to refer to the two
banks of the Rhône river between Geneva and the land of the
Sequani farther downstream. After examining efforts by other
historians [13] to define the territorial limits of Sapaudia during
ancient times, Lot concluded that other than locating it in the area
between Lake Geneva, the Rhône, and the Alps, it was impossible to
delineate precise boundaries. He also pointed out that ancient
Sapaudia was certainly much larger than the county of Savoy that
came into being between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and that
it clearly referred to a naturally defined region rather than to an
administrative province.1
The county of Savoy to which Lot referred was in the hands of a
family whose eleventh-century head, Humbert “the White-Handed,”
established himself as the ruler of the Maurienne and of Savoy
(south of Lake Geneva) following the breakup of the kingdom of
Burgundy in 1032.2 From its ancestral base in a valley just west of
the Alpine watershed, this family expanded its holdings and
jurisdiction over the following centuries, amassing a collection of
lands that eventually stretched from the Saône river north of Lyon to
the Sesia river in the Po valley, and from the southern shores of Lake
Neuchâtel to the county of Nice. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries the dynasty significantly increased its political involvement
east of the Alps, and by the late sixteenth century the dynastic court
had stabilized itself in Turin.
During the Middle Ages and until the eighteenth century, one
finds the Latin noun Sabaudia and the adjectives sabaudianus, -a, -
um used to refer to the dynasty comprised of the descendants of
Humbert, and to the territories over which this family extended its
dominion. But by the sixteenth century, when use of the vernacular
in both official and nonofficial texts was becoming increasingly
common, some confusion was introduced when the French terms
Savoie and savoyard began to be used to refer both to the dynasty
and to its lands. Some later scholars understood that the French
term Savoie had been meant as the equivalent of Sabaudia, and as a
term that likewise had two referents. Others, like Lot, saw Savoie as
a smaller, province-sized area within a much larger territory called
Sapaudia.3 The fact that, by the sixteenth century, the dynastic lands
east of the Alps (often referred to collectively by scholars as
Piemonte) were becoming more important demographically,
economically, and politically than Savoie (or even Sapaudia), made it
confusing to use the terms Savoie and savoyard to refer to the
ensemble of the dynasty’s states.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Anglophone
scholars worked around this problem by continuing to use the Latin
terminology when [14] writing in the vernacular, and by using the
adjective Sabaudian to refer to the dynasty and the entire collection
of its lands.4 Charles Previté Orton’s 1912 history of medieval
“Savoy” located this territory at the center of European transit routes
and examined developments on both sides of the Alps, in what he
called “Burgundy” (including the Vallée d’Aoste) and “the kingdom of
Italy.” Previté Orton highlighted differences between “Italy” and
“Burgundy and France,” but he also stressed how Count Thomas I
(1189–1233) acquired for his domains on both sides of the Alps
“consistency, some degree of internal order, and an embryo
administration.”5 In 1931, George La Piana, an Italian-born church
historian at Harvard, reintroduced the term Sabaudian to refer to the
head of the dynasty, its court, and its archives. Like Previté Orton, La
Piana was interested in the role played by the house of Savoy in
both Italian and European politics; hence his use of “Sabaudian”
when discussing dynastic matters.6
A small number of postwar historians and art historians writing
in English focused their attention on the early modern lands of the
house of Savoy. H. G. Koenigsberger’s study of European
representative assemblies included the Piedmontese estates, more
transalpine than Italian, in his view, and “open to the influence of
the political ideas of French and Swiss assemblies.” He explained the
dynasty’s policy toward such assemblies in light of “the old jealousies
between Piedmontese and Savoyards.” After Emanuel Filibert, who
had been raised at the court of Charles V and “was determined to be
the absolute ruler of his country,” recovered his lands in 1559 and
convoked the estates a year later, it was for the last time (according
to Koenigsberger). An apparent turning point in the history of
representative politics in Italy, the absolute rule imposed by Emanuel
Filibert and his successors enabled “the House of Savoy [to] claim
the credit for keeping their state independent.”7 This narrative,
which focused on regional divisions along modern national
boundaries and on the construction of a powerful [15] absolutist
state, echoed themes of Risorgimento and Fascist-era scholarship. It
also offered a model for later Anglophone scholars to challenge.
Working at around the same time as Koenigsberger but from an
art historical perspective, Rudolf Wittkower grew fascinated with
architecture in Turin and the cisalpine lands, describing the
Piedmontese baroque as “uncharted territory” and “the flower at the
end of a long stem.”8 He placed “the great Piedmontese architects”
such as Guarini, Juvarra, and Vittone alongside Bernini, Borromini,
and other masters, arguing that the “extraordinary part played by
Piedmont in the art and architecture” of early modern Europe was
inseparable from the political achievements of its ruling dynasty.9
Stuart J. Woolf also drew attention to the house of Savoy’s role in
European politics, highlighting the diplomatic activity of Victor
Amadeus II (“the Piedmontese fox”) and studying Piedmontese
noble families in their European context. Although Woolf focused on
the nobility of Piedmont rather than families in all of the dynasty’s
lands, his comparative perspective was crucial.10 A few years later,
Eugene Cox outlined the contours of “social and political life in the
Western Alps through a study of the transalpine state of Savoy and
its role on the international scene during the fourteenth century.” His
biography of Amadeus VI sketched the process of administrative
development and territorial acquisition by which the dynasty
“foster[ed] mutual respect and gave a kind of unity to the mosaic of
Alpine baronies under Savoyard rule.”11
In the 1970s, Ruth Kleinman picked up on the “conditions
peculiar to the historiography of Savoy as such,” noting how French
and Italian historians treated the history of the dynasty and its lands
in different ways according to their respective national interests,
either as provincial history (in the case of the French) or in
teleological, nationalist fashion (in the case of the Italians). She
called for an “appreciation of Savoy as a complex polity whose
princes only gradually worked out courses of action according to
their abilities and circumstances,” and argued that studying Savoy
“can serve to remind us that nationalism was not a foregone
conclusion in European political development.” Her study of Charles
[16] Emanuel I’s efforts to be elected Holy Roman Emperor offered a
contrast to Koenigsberger’s narrative by stressing the international
context and the “indeterminate” nature of the interests and identities
of the house.12 Several of these themes were reiterated in Geoffrey
Symcox’s 1983 biography of Victor Amadeus II.13 Symcox placed the
Savoyard monarchy within the context of other European absolutist
polities, examining the economic and social arrangements upon
which the growth of state institutions was constructed. Christopher
Storrs filled out the diplomatic side of the reign in his study of the
foreign policy of Victor Amadeus, which appeared sixteen years
later.14
In 1997 Robert Oresko reintroduced the term “Sabaudian” to
English-language historical scholarship on the society and culture of
the dynasty’s territories during the medieval and early modern
periods.15 Although he occasionally also used the adjective
“Savoyard” to mean the same thing, “Sabaudian” for Oresko
indicated the dynasty and the entirety of its territorial claims and
practices. His 1999 essay, “The Sabaudian Court 1563–c.1750,”16
gave the term greater prominence.17 Like Kleinman and Symcox,
Oresko sought to move beyond anachronistic, nationalist frameworks
through which the history of the dynasty and its lands had been
viewed. For him, the Sabaudian realm was “a classic example of the
‘composite state’, a polyglot group of units linked together through
dynastic accident.”18 But Oresko was less interested than Symcox in
narratives about the growth of state institutions and more attentive
to problems beyond the realm of (or antithetical to) institutional
development. He stressed the juridically composite nature of the
Sabaudian lands, and the ways in which [17] dynastic matrimonial
arrangements (and female dynasts) conditioned territorial claims and
international politics.19
Paola Bianchi has recently written of the difficulty that
“foreigners” (by which she appears to mean non-Italians) have in
understanding the Italian adjective “sabaudo, which does not
translate directly into English or French,” and which does not mean
precisely the same thing as Savoyard. For Bianchi, the English terms
“Savoyard State” or “Savoy-Piedmont” are unsatisfactory because
they fail to convey a sense of the historical constructedness of
“Piedmont” (though the same could be said of “Savoy”).20 But, as
we have seen, Oresko and others had long been particularly
sensitive to the problem of nomenclature in studies relating to the
house of Savoy and its territories; hence Oresko’s use of the term
“Sabaudian.” It is true that he sometimes used Savoie to refer to one
of the dynasty’s composite states, the duchy of Savoy, with
Chambéry as its capital, and then Savoy to refer to “the entirety of
the territories belonging to the dukes of Savoy.”21 But (with David
Parrott) he also wrote that

the very concept of “les Estats du Duc de Savoye” reflects the perceived
unity of an assemblage of discrete sovereignties bound together through
the personal union of the ruling prince, yet at the same time the
impossibility of finding one term to embrace them all.22

It appears that a term like “Sabaudian lands” enabled Oresko to

retain an awareness of both the composite nature of the dynasty’s
territories and the dynastic tie that linked them. Even the term
“composite state” misleadingly suggested too significant a level of
institutional unity to him; he insisted that these territories were
“more correctly known as ‘the lands of the Duke of Savoy.’”23
Oresko thus fit into a tradition of Anglophone scholarship that
was more likely than French or Italian works to treat the dynastic
lands as a whole and examine their position within a European-wide
context. At this point it is possible to expand a bit more our
introductory definition of “Sabaudian studies.” It is a perspective on
the history of the dynasty and its lands between the late [18] Middle
Ages and the eighteenth century that has been deeply informed by
English-language scholarship. For one thing, this point of view
situates the historical problems that it examines within a context of
the entire realm, not just with respect to Savoy or Piedmont. It looks
at the dynasty and its lands in an international setting, both in terms
of the historical interactions studied and in terms of the
historiographic narratives within which those interactions are placed
(the Sabaudian case being considered alongside developments
affecting other European polities). This means a more explicitly
comparative and analytical focus, and a stronger engagement with a
broad historiography than one would usually find in the work of
older Savoyard or Piedmontese scholarship, which is sometimes self-
referential and antiquarian.24 Second, with respect to the realms
themselves, regional and territorial identities (like “Savoy” and
“Piedmont”) are no longer taken for granted. The Sabaudian
perspective tends to complicate them and consider the ways in
which these identities were themselves historically constructed.
Third, a Sabaudian perspective is sensitive to the problem of
anachronism, especially with respect to two interrelated
historiographic narratives: one that draws a straight line from
medieval and early modern dynastic accomplishments to Italian
unification, and another that ties every political development to a
process of institutional state-building. Some Sabaudian studies
problematize the relationship between “state” and “dynasty,” while
others critique the hegemony exerted by the category of “the state”
over the universe of medieval and early modern political interactions
in the Sabaudian lands. Fourth, in terms of sources, Sabaudian
studies tend to be multiarchival, whether employing evidence from
archives in different countries or, in the case of a local study, looking
at records from a variety of repositories, and not just from central
state archives. Finally, Sabaudian studies are simply dedicated to
bringing the political, cultural, and social history of the Sabaudian
lands to the attention of a wider public, in Europe and beyond. Due
to the impact of national historical categories on the Western mind,
many specialists on medieval and early modern European history are
unfortunately unaware of the territorial organization of the western
Alps during these periods.

[19]The Sabaudian Perspective in Recent French,

Italian, and Swiss Scholarship
Within the past ten or fifteen years, this Sabaudian perspective has
also been embraced by scholars from the areas that had once been
subject to the dynasty. Exposure to the works of non-French and
non-Italian historians likely influenced this development, in addition
to other factors. One is the impact of research by a new generation
of scholars in France, Italy, and Switzerland, including work by
Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani (University of Lausanne) and Guido
Castelnuovo (University of Chambéry), and their students. In Turin,
the state archives were renovated, academic exchanges with
Chambéry and Lyon were multiplied, and a variety of cultural
initiatives promoted the city as a European capital. This led to
several publications emphasizing the international position of the
house of Savoy during the early modern period. Simultaneously,
within the community of historians in Turin, debates and exchanges
between scholars engaging in macrohistorical, institutional history
and those employing more microanalytical, source-critical methods
have led to a reconsideration of historiographic themes that had long
been taken for granted.
One important move by this new generation of researchers has
been to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern
studies by looking at continuities across the period between 1350
and 1750 or so, rather than seeing 1559 (and Duke Emanuel
Filibert’s restoration of the dynasty to its patrimonial lands following
the Franco-Swiss invasion of 1536 and the Valois-Habsburg wars) as
a key dividing line.25 The results of this effort have been mixed. Alice
Raviola has pointed out that the focus on 1559 has caused the
Sabaudian realm to be left out of historiographic discussions
concerning the development of Italian Renaissance states.26 Some
have pointed to Duke Charles III (1504–53) as the central figure, the
“restorer of long-diminished ducal dignity” after a series of late
fifteenth-century civil conflicts.27 Others identify 1450 or so as a
turning point when increasing numbers of Piedmontese entered
ducal service.28 Recent [20] research does not offer a consensus
concerning the “golden age” of the Sabaudian lands. Nadia Pollini
sees the reign of Amadeus VIII (1418–30), who oversaw “the
territorial formation of the Savoyard states,” as the “apogee.” But for
Walter Barberis, the “best moments” of the dynasty were between
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This reintroduces 1559 as
the watershed.29 Despite these disagreements, many scholars seem
to accept a narrative of a “progressive institutionalization”30 that
took place during the late medieval and early modern periods, and
of a passage from “a model of feudal power to an absolutist
regime.”31
While not all would agree that the analytical category of the
transition from feudalism to absolutism is likely to generate fresh
insights, a reexamination of traditional periodizations of the history
of the dynasty and its lands seems useful. The integration of
scholarship being carried out elsewhere in Europe (and in North
America), such as work on the interrelationship between the
experience of warfare and societal change, into Sabaudian studies is
already under way.32 Recent scholarship has also often sought to
avoid anachronistic assumptions that impute a dynastic identity to a
given territory, project a Risorgimento mentality onto past events, or
read modern concepts (such as a neat division between spiritual and
temporal interests) or abstract historical models back into the past.33
These and other aspects of the new scholarship are largely
congruent with Sabaudian studies as it has been defined above. The
remainder of this essay will first identify some of the key themes in
this emerging body of work, grouped under the rubrics of political
culture, dynasty, and territory. Then it will indicate a few areas in
which work remains to be done.

Political Culture
A major area of recent work on Sabaudian political culture is the
field of court studies. This field faces the challenge of making
conceptual distinctions between “court,” “state,” and “dynasty,”
historical problems that are obviously related but [21] not
synonymous. The danger of losing this distinction was not
immediately apparent to some scholars; Giuseppe Ricuperati thought
that histories of court society (inspired by Norbert Elias) might feed
“an ideology that in turn would marginalize the importance of the
modernization of central administrative structures.”34 For Ricuperati,
the emergence of the modern state was the central theme in
European historiography, and it was quite distinct from court society.
More recently, however, scholars have viewed the court as a site of
key political and social interactions, as something “relating to the
process of the formation of the princely state,”35 and as a unifying
element “in the heart of a duchy whose composite-ness was both
territorial and social.”36 Castelnuovo, Bianchi, and Merlotti have all
analyzed the relationship between the court, the growth of state
structures, and dynastic authority.37 Despite claims for conceptual
clarity, it is difficult not to see some recent work collapsing “court”
into “state” (which seems also to serve as a stand-in for
“territory”).38
Other work on the Sabaudian court had engaged in more
historical, structural, and comparative analysis. While some have
tended to think about the Sabaudian court in terms of French or
Spanish models (depending on the nationality of the duke’s
consort),39 others have pointed to more specifically Sabaudian
characteristics, showing for example that courts “in the territories of
the old duchy of Savoy and modern-day Piedmont” did not fit the
model of the Po valley courts that has been prevalent in Italian
historiography.40 Only recently have scholars begun to study the
medieval Sabaudian court, but they have focused attention on how
medieval courts were transformed into early modern [22] ones
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.41 Luisa Clotilde
Gentile has looked closely at how court rituals embodied political
relations, considering the development of ceremonial over time and
the moments when, for example, Piedmontese subjects began to
participate regularly in Sabaudian tournaments. She has also shown
how other rulers in the Alpine area (the princes of Acaia [a cadet
branch of the house of Savoy], and the marquises of Saluzzo and
Monferrato) used ceremony, narratives, and images to represent
their power through an international language of courtly symbolism.
She concludes (perhaps too quickly and easily) that changes in court
ceremonial resulted from a shift of the Sabaudian realm “from a
feudal domain to a modern state,” or from “state consolidation.”42
But her research questions are interesting, and Eva Pibiri, Thalia
Brero, and Paolo Cozzo have studied diplomatic practice, princely
baptisms, and funeral ceremonies in similar fashion.43
Another key theme in the study of the Sabaudian court has
been its role within a European courtly system. This was the case
from the late medieval period onward, and has been demonstrated
in studies of music patronage,44 diplomatic “missions of courtesy to
commemorate great dynastic moments,”45 international exchanges
of portraits and drawings,46 the arrival at court of Italians from
throughout the peninsula hoping to be inducted into house knightly
orders,47 and the participation of Piedmontese grandees in a pan-
European “aristocratic international” during the early modern
period.48 Other court studies have focused on Emanuel Filibert’s
commissions for military fortifications, among other things, on artists
and artisans at court from the late thirteenth century onward, and
on the intersection between networks of artistic patronage and
diplomatic circuits.49
[23] The history of political thought has gathered some attention
in Sabaudian studies, though not as much as one might expect, at
least prior to the Enlightenment period studied by Franco Venturi.
Giovanni Tabacco’s 1939 work, Lo stato sabaudo nel Sacro Romano
Impero, influenced much later scholarship by stressing the continued
importance during the early modern period of medieval juridical
concepts.50 There have been studies of the ideas of Claude de
Seyssel, Pierino Belli, René de Lucinge, and of diplomats such as
Salvatore Cadana, but these have not always discussed how a
particular Sabaudian context conditioned the emergence of specific
political concepts.51 There has also been surprisingly little work done
on the Piedmontese thinker Giovanni Botero.52 Among the more
suggestive recent studies is Cornel Zwierlein’s analysis of the
emergence of a new mode of political thinking that grew out of the
European experience of religious wars during the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. He refers to this way of conceptualizing
politics in empirical terms as “Discorso” and identifies the Sabaudian
lands as a crucial site for its development.53

Dynasty
Recent work on the house of Savoy has emphasized (1) relations
within the dynasty and between the house and other ruling families,
and (2) the international context in which the house of Savoy
operated. Bruno Galland argued that, during the fourteenth century,
“the Savoyard state . . . only existed through its dynasty,” and
Geoffrey Symcox agreed that during the Old Regime “the Savoyard
state . . . was thus a dynastic state in the true sense of the term,”
the dynasty conferring to this composite state “an identity and
territorial cohesion that nature had denied it.”54
 The centrality of the dynasty in Sabaudian affairs has recently
led scholars to consider relations between various members of the
family. Already in 1967, Cox had given attention to the strategic
importance of bastards, a research field [24] in which Robert Oresko
also played a leading role.55 Oresko showed how the divisions
among the children of Charles Emanuel I were important factors
leading to the civil war of 1638 to 1642. He repeatedly demonstrated
the crucial role of dynastic women (especially mothers and regents
like Maria Giovanna Battista) in political affairs through their exercise
of informal power rooted in the close interplay between private and
public life, or kinship and politics.56 Carla Benocci has discussed the
prominent roles played by members of the dynasty in cultural
networks linking Rome to other cities, such as Ferrara, Bologna, and
Carpi.57 Merlotti has recently made the important argument that
upon his restoration, Emanuel Filibert sought to reunify the various
branches of the dynasty by showing grace toward those who had
served the French while assigning the most prestigious positions to
those who had served him faithfully during the wars.58
Another key research theme has been the competition between
the house of Savoy and other dynasties. Late medieval historians
have shown that Savoyards served at foreign courts from the
thirteenth century onward (in England, for example), and have
identified foreigners in the service of Sabaudian princes. Conversely,
only a handful of great Sabaudian nobles served at courts abroad.59
The house of Savoy carefully balanced relations with the papacy and
the empire. Its head was imperial vicar in Italy, but the dynasty also
supported the Avignon popes in their goal of returning to Rome. As
a result “the popes gave charge of the Church of Savoy almost
completely to its prince,” and good relations were preserved, at least
until 1378.60
Interdynastic struggle manifested itself clearly in marriage
politics: unlike other Italian princes the Sabaudian rulers tended to
marry above their rank, with sovereign families outside of Italy.61
Sabaudian claims to precedence within the [25] empire were linked
to the family’s insistence on its Saxon origins.62 Dynastic prestige
was also conferred by titles; the grand-ducal title awarded by the
pope to the Medici in 1569 and subsequently approved by the
emperor was a source of significant tension.63 The competition
between the house of Savoy and other families was fought in courts
across Europe with “weapons [of] precedence and protocol”64 that
were linked to title claims—the Sabaudian argument for the royal
crown of Cyprus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both
responded to the Medici and promised royal treatment.65 The
dynasty also distinguished itself through its widely recognized
longevity, the sanctity of key members (Amadeus IX and Margherita
d’Acaia, who were beatified in the seventeenth century), its
possession of powerful relics such as the Holy Shroud, and its
venerable knightly orders. For Merlotti, these elements were part of
a symbolic system that had collapsed by the early nineteenth
century.66
International competition for dynastic prestige was not only
symbolic, but also practical, material, and strategic; indeed, it was
often difficult to separate the symbolic and the practical. Oresko
stressed the indeterminate nature of Sabaudian ambitions during the
seventeenth century, arguing that both Charles Emanuel I and Marie
Christine of France (consort of Victor Amadeus I, regent from 1637)
cultivated ties with the Holy Roman Empire in order both to preserve
opportunities for expansion and to prevent the French from
dismembering the dynasty’s lands. Thus, dynastic historians stressed
the historic position of the duke of Savoy as a prince of the empire67
and Sabaudian diplomats took care to define “a clear role . . . for
[the dynasty] in central European politics, in Reichsitalien [the
ensemble of imperial fiefs in Italy] and in the Empire as a whole.”68
Much recent scholarship tends to focus on the dynasty’s position
between France and Spain, and its leadership claims among Italian
states.69 A main theme [26] has thus been the “Italianization” of the
dynasty. For Symcox, though the process was slow and not
foreordained, the loss of Geneva and Vaud in the early sixteenth
century rendered Emanuel Filibert’s decision to establish his capital
in Turin in 1563 “almost predetermined.”70 Much has been made of
the exposed position of the transalpine lands, but it is worth pointing
out that, with the exception of the period between 1536 and 1559,
the various French occupations of the area were quite transitory. But
this raises the question of the role of “Piedmont” within an
international and comparative context. This is a theme that has
mainly preoccupied Piedmontese scholars who, as we will see below,
no longer even take the category of “Piedmont” for granted. When
comparing Piedmont to other Italian or European states, however,
some scholars frequently slip from a discussion of “Piedmont” to a
discussion of “the Savoyard state,” as if the two were synonymous.71
Was Piedmont comparable to other early modern Italian states?
Bianchi has underlined Piedmont’s unusual history with respect to
the rest of Italy; Christopher Storrs points out that by 1720, the
Sabaudian state was more important in a European context, in
several ways, than other Italian polities.72 Jean-Claude Waquet
likewise sees the proper comparative context for Piedmont not as
Italian or even imperial, but European, since its rulers were “French”
as much as “Italian.”73
But Bianchi’s position is that one would be mistaken to look at
Sabaudian history within a European context while failing to tie it to
Italian developments. She sees this tendency as resulting from the
demythification of the old Risorgimento [27] narrative of the specific
Italian destiny of the dynasty. But the revisionist view is equally
mistaken insofar as it discounts the Italian context.74 Bianchi’s
warning is useful, but also risks creating a conceptual dichotomy
between “Europe” and “Italy”: although “Italy” certainly existed as a
cultural space, Italian states were also European ones. The overall
project of studying the Sabaudian lands with respect to other polities
seems most promising when Piedmont is not abstracted from other
Sabaudian territories and when other Italian states are also
considered in a European context.75
Territory
One of the most promising areas of new research in Sabaudian
studies concerns territorial identities, local political practices, and
conceptualizing the relationship between various Sabaudian actors.
Most discussions of Sabaudian territorial identity can be traced back
to Lino Marini’s 1962 Savoiardi e piemontesi nello stato sabaudo
(1418–1601), which argued for a gradual rise to dominance of
Piedmontese elites within the Sabaudian realms during the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.76 This thesis of a
fundamental split between two sociocultural groups facilitated the
tendency of French and Italian scholars to focus on historical
developments only in their respective regions, rather than on
Sabaudian developments as a whole. Synthetic works dealing with
Savoy and Piedmont (published in 1985 and 1994, respectively) took
the territorial unity of these regions for granted.77
[28] Since the 1980s a number of works have drawn attention to
the polycentric nature of the Sabaudian lands. Angelo Torre’s work
on the imperial fiefs in the Langhe region and Osvaldo Raggio’s
study of local political formations in the borderlands of the Genoese
Republic helped push scholarship in this direction.78 A major
contribution that called into question the territorial unity of
“Piedmont” itself was made by Raviola, whose doctoral thesis on the
Monferrato (published in 2003) opened the door for examination of
other polities located in the late medieval and early modern cisalpine
lands. Raviola counted the “micro-state” of the Monferrato among
those entities that were “more or less autonomous within a Europe
of large national states,” and whose inhabitants belonged to “a
state-like political entity.”79 Within the past several years, a new view
of Piedmont as a “composite politico-institutional reality” has taken
hold, with attention to Casale, Saluzzo, Asti, and other places as
important centers besides Turin.80 Although it now seems impossible
to assume that Piedmont was synonymous with the Sabaudian
state,81 some still identify a precocious Piedmontese hegemony as
early as the beginning of the sixteenth century.82
 Those who have tended to be successful in integrating an
awareness of the complete territorial extension of the Sabaudian
lands into their research (such as Alessandro Barbero and Guido
Castelnuovo) have worked on the late medieval [29] period.83
Gentile’s book on the representation of power during the late Middle
Ages takes into account practices on both sides of the Alps, and
Raviola is among the few who have examined the place of the
county of Nice in Sabaudian politics.84 A useful step forward was
offered by the 2006 volume L’affermarsi della corte sabauda:
Dinastie, poteri, élites in Piemonte e Savoia fra tardo medioevo e
prima età moderna. However, this set of essays is divided into two
chronological sections, the first dealing mainly with the transalpine
lands and the second looking at the court once it was stabilized in
Turin. For the most part, the individual essays take into account
either Savoy or Piedmont, but not both.85
The awarness among Piedmontese scholars of the distortions
created by projecting a “torinocentric” view of Sabaudian political
organization into the late medieval and early modern periods has led
to reconsideration of the center-periphery paradigm.86 This impetus
came, in part, from transalpine scholarship. In 1994 Castelnuovo
looked simultaneously at the entire Sabaudian realm and the
bailiwick of Vaud, seeking to uncover center-locality relations and to
view in parallel fashion “a wide-ranging collective domination” and
the restructuring of “local and regional elites.”87 Nadia Pollini’s study
of Ripaille, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and of the Sabaudian
necropolis at Hautecombe (on Lake Bourget) as dynastic centers
corresponds to Gentile’s finding that “for much of the fifteenth
century the duchy of Savoy was a polycentric state, composed of
various subregions with their capitals (Turin, Geneva, Bourg-en-
Bresse) whose urban elites challenged Chambéry’s centrality.”88
Merlotti’s reference to “an administrative and social polycentricity”
echoes Gentile,89 and Bianchi has called [30] for a reexamination of
the center-periphery paradigm for Piedmont.90 However, for Giovanni
Muto the frame of reference continues to be the state, leading one
to wonder whether a decision against torinocentrism makes any
difference as long as the state itself remains analytically central.91
Despite this conundrum, recent work on border areas and regional
centers has followed a lead established almost three decades ago by
Diana Carminati Masera, whose study of the Val di Mosso analyzed
local political dynamics in their own right.92
Coming to terms with torinocentrism is in a way the outcome of
a long-standing division among historians of early modern Piedmont.
On one side was “the Turinese school,”93 which was focused on the
development of state institutions.94 On the other was a
microanalytical approach employed by scholars working not only in
Turin but also in Genoa, Paris, and elsewhere who viewed the
Sabaudian lands as a territory that “resisted central power and was
able to regulate itself through an empirical system of feuds, factions,
mediation, and social compromise.”95 Other scholars, though never
positioning themselves [31] explicitly against a Turinese school,
resisted the temptation to take the centrality of the state for granted
and instead explored the concrete structures of local life (often
through parish and diocesan records, not just central ones) revealing
a microanalytic tendency in their work.96
Fortunately, over the past ten or fifteen years, there appears to
have been a softening of the differences between these two
historical approaches. Already in 1994 Castelnuovo was emphasizing
the overlap between central institutions, local administrations, and
regional society as he sought institutional clues as to who the real
holders of local authority were.97 In 1999 Claudio Rosso’s essay on
the annexation of the marquisate of Saluzzo, employed a
microanalysis of elite relationships to show how the ruler was forced
to reformulate his relations with various political and social actors.98
Raviola, a scholar sensitive to the broad continuum of political forms
in the Sabaudian lands, has also examined the interplay between
ducal institutions and other local structures. Her study of the
Monferrato is a kind of total history, dealing with social groups,
economic developments, and ecclesiastical policy (in addition to
institutional change).99 Tomaso Ricardi di Netro’s study of local elite
assemblies and administrations shows that while some elite families
cooperated with the Sabaudian project of asserting dynastic
authority, others focused on using primogeniture to reinforce their
own sources of power.100 Netro’s [32] work points to the need for
more empirical studies of political and kinship networks, and of the
history of warfare and violence in the Sabaudian lands. Scholars
such as Roberto Biolzi, Giovanni Cerino Badone, and Gregory Hanlon
have already begun to examine how the experience of warfare and
military occupation affected inhabitants and conditioned the
development of Sabaudian political culture.101

Challenges for Sabaudian Studies

Most of the scholarship reviewed here concentrates on the political
history of the Sabaudian lands, whether of the court, state, or
dynasty, or in specific localities. One challenge for scholars working
in these areas has already been mentioned: how to devise research
and narrative strategies best suited to distinguishing effectively
between “court,” “state,” and “dynasty” while also recognizing the
ways in which human relationships blurred these distinctions? And is
there a way of analyzing political culture that will prove more fruitful
than the conceptual dichotomy of “center” and “periphery”? As
scholars continue to examine the institutions and social networks of
hitherto neglected parts of the Sabaudian lands (such as the county
of Nice, the duchy of Aosta, Barcelonnette, and various parts of the
transalpine states102), perhaps they will devise models for studying
political culture that will move beyond the old state-building
narratives that fit so uneasily within a polycentric context.
A second challenge is to move beyond political history, however
broadly construed, and to engage in the archival work that will
eventually permit the construction of syntheses of economic, social,
cultural, and religious change in the Sabaudian lands during the late
medieval and early modern periods. There have been calls for more
research into the economic history of early modern Piedmont, and in
particular on the impact of urbanization on the countryside.103
Economic and demographic developments have lost the prominence
that they [33] enjoyed forty or fifty years ago; the same could be
said for studies of state finance. One of the few scholars currently
working in this area is Guido Alfani, who has studied kin relations
and fiscal structures in early modern Ivrea.104 The history of social
groups in the Sabaudian lands is also a relatively understudied topic.
In addition to closer analysis of the relationship between the dynasty
and great noble families, it would be interesting to see a long-term
study of the marriage patterns of Sabaudian elites between the
fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.105
Beyond studies of court culture and patronage, not much is to
be found in the area of Sabaudian cultural history.106 Religious
history is especially barren, aside from work on the Waldensians,107
although Paolo Cozzo has pointed to the need to integrate religious
history into broader themes in Sabaudian studies. He and others
have begun to study the Sabaudian presence in Rome.108 Jill
Fehleison and Michael Bruening have worked on the impact of the
first century of the Protestant Reformation in the transalpine lands
that had been part of the Sabaudian patrimony.109 Symcox and
Merlotti have begun to look at the degree to which the Sabaudian
lands fit the confessionalization model developed by Heinz Schilling
and others.110 Roger Devos took a slightly different tack, suggesting
the existence in the Sabaudian lands of a religious “third party”
during the late sixteenth century, evangelical in nature, close to the
sensibilities of Duchess Margaret (consort of Emanuel Filibert and
sister of Henry II).111 Again, [34] outside of court studies, there has
been little work done on other historical subfields, such as gender,
the environment, commerce and banking, etc.112
However, one field in which some of these other topics have
been investigated is in Alpine history, a subdiscipline that overlaps
significantly (though not completely) with Sabaudian studies. Not all
parts of the Sabaudian lands were situated in the Alpine arc (though
many of them were), and it is obviously the case that many Alpine
regions were not Sabaudian. A recent study identified twenty-six
Alpine regions, defined as regions whose total surface area is at
least 75 percent Alpine. Four of these regions, and portions of three
others, were located within the Sabaudian lands. Altogether these
seven regions accounted for 26 percent of the total surface area of
the Alps.113 Sabaudian history is thus an important part of Alpine
history, even though many Sabaudian districts (the Piedmontese
plain and the Vercellese, Bresse, the pays de Vaud) were in the
lowlands. Still, many of the themes treated by Alpine historians
represent areas of historical inquiry that are frequently unexplored in
Sabaudian historiography.
To begin with, one might consider the phrase “Sabaudian
space,” which has recently been used more frequently, especially by
Italian-language scholars, in order to indicate the historically
contingent nature of political and jurisdictional boundaries in
Piedmont and other parts of the Sabaudian lands.114 On one level,
this kind of language could be linked to what one might call “the
spatial turn” in historiography, in general terms, over the past twenty
years or so.115 On another level, it is interesting to note that the
phrase “Alpine space” had already long been in use to refer to an
area that shared certain economic, demographic, and sometimes
cultural characteristics, despite being divided by political
boundaries.116 Jon Mathieu has shown that there were important
differences within this Alpine [35] space, and that relations between
this space and surrounding areas changed over time. I do not wish
to suggest that the Alpine arc was any more economically, socially,
or culturally unified than the Sabaudian lands as a whole, but to
posit instead that the concepts “Sabaudian space” and “Alpine
space” have some analytical similarities (might they even be
historically linked?) and that the latter could serve as a useful model
for the former when it comes to addressing understudied historical
problems.
For one thing, in terms of periodization, historians of the Alps
have shown that the eighteenth century was a key turning point in
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Galerio (C. Valerio Massimiano), Cesare di Diocleziano, 163; disfatto dai
Persiani, 172; sconfigge i Persiani, 172; persecuzione dei Cristiani, 176;
Augusto (305), 177; riconosce Costantino, 179; promuove Severo
Augusto, 179; indice un censimento, 179; tenta combattere Massimiano,
180; alla conferenza di Carnuntum, 180; sospende le persecuzioni dei
Cristiani (311), 181-82; morte (311), 182.
Galizia (in Spagna), 258.
Galla Placidia, sorella di Valentiniano II, 239; moglie di Teodosio I, 239;
prigioniera di Alarico, 256; sposa Ataulfo (414), 258; restituita a Onorio,
259; sposa Costanzio, 260; madre di Valentiniano III, 260; reggente, 260;
destituisce Bonifazio, 261; muore (450), 265; mausoleo a Ravenna, 265.
Gallia, si dichiara per Vitellio, 6; insurrezione, 18; latinizzazione, 24;
famiglie galliche negli ordini senatorio ed equestre, alla metà del II sec. d.
C., 64-65; città principali, 65, 67; invasa dai Franchi, 137; la rivolta dei
Bagaudi, 159, 160; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; minacciata dai
Germani (297), 173; assegnata a Costantino II (335), 202; invasa dai
Germani (354), 215; Giuliano in Gallia (355-359), 216 sgg.; invasa da
Alamanni (365), 231; da Vandali, Svevi, ecc., 254, 257; nuove guerre,
258; i Visigoti in G., 258, 259. V. Narbonese, Aquitania, Batavi, Lingoni,
Treveri.
Gallieno (P. Licinio Egnazio), figliuolo e collega di Valeriano, 135-36;
imperatore (253-268), 136 sgg.; guerreggia i barbari dell’Occidente, 136;
vince Ingenuo, 136; combatte Postumo, 137; sconfigge gli Alamanni a
Milano, 137; combatte Aureolo, 138; ucciso (268), 138.
Gallo (C. Vibio Treboniano), governatore della Mesia, imperatore (251-53),
134; fa pace coi Goti, 134; vinto e ucciso da Emiliano, 135.
Gallo, nipote di Costantino I, 207; adolescenza, 214-15; Cesare (351),
215; capo del governo dell’Oriente, 215; ucciso (354), 215; difetti, 215.
Geiserico. V. Genserico.
Genserico (o Geiserico), re dei Vandali, invade l’Africa (429), 262;
combattuto da Bonifazio, 262; occupa le Mauretanie e la Numidia (431),
262, 263; s’impadronisce di Cartagine (439), 263; attacca la Sicilia, 263;
accordi con Valentiniano III (435), 263, (442), 264; invade e saccheggia
Roma (455), 267; assale Sicilia e Corsica, 267; distrugge l’armata di
Maioriano, 268; conquista la Sardegna, 269; attacca la Grecia e le isole,
269.
Gepidi, 162, 265.
Germani, progressi dei G., 89; cause delle invasioni, 89; invadono le
province danubiane e l’Italia (167), 88 sgg.; coloni, 90; invadono le due
Germanie e la Gallia (354), 215; nell’esercito di Attila, 265. V. Alamanni,
Marcomanni, Ermonduri, Quadi, ecc.
Germania, Giuliano penetra in G. (359), 217. V. Germani.
Germanie (le due), rivolta delle legioni (69 d. C.), 4; alla metà del II sec. a.
C., 65-66; insurrezione, 18; Adriano nelle due G., 65-66; invase dai
Germani (354), 215; abbandonate da Stilicone 253; perdute, 259.
Gerusalemme, assediata e incendiata, 11, 13, 19, 73; Aelia Capitolina, 75-
76.
Geta (P. Settimio), Augusto, 118; tendenze, 118; imperatore, 123; ucciso
dal fratello, 123.
Getuli, 231.
Gildone, 252.
Giovanni, primicerius notariorum, un usurpatore, 260; vinto e ucciso (425),
261.
Gioviano, imperatore (363), 229; pace coi Persiani (363), 230; muore
(363), 230.
Giovino, un usurpatore, 258; sconfitto (414 ca.), 258.
Girolamo (S.), 234.
Giudea (Palestina), 3; guerra di Giudea (69-70), 11, 13, 18, 19;
insurrezione sotto Traiano, 54; insurrezione sotto Adriano (132-34), 75-76;
visitata da Settimio Severo, 115; nel IV secolo, 235; servitù della gleba in
G., 246. V. Ebrei.
Giulia Domna, moglie di Settimio Severo, 112, 119; si lascia morir di fame,
125.
Giulia Mamea, nipote di Giulia Mesa, 125; madre di Severo Alessandro,
125; sua influenza sul governo di Severo Alessandro, 127 sgg.
Giulia Mesa, sorella di Giulia Domna, 119; relegata in Emesa, 125; fa
proclamare imperatore Eliogabalo, 125-26.
Giuliano, nipote di Costantino I, 207; adolescenza, 214-15; Cesare (355) e
governatore della Gallia, Spagna, Britannia, 216; qualità morali, 216, 221;
governo delle Gallie (355-359), 216 sgg.; proclamato Augusto, 218-19;
Epistula ad S. P. Q. Atheniensium, 219; marcia verso Costantinopoli, 219;
a Costantinopoli, riforme, 220-22; suo repubblicanesimo, 222; e il
Cristianesimo, 222 sgg.; e il Paganesimo, 219, 223 sgg.; la guerra coi
Persiani (363), 225 sgg.; sua morte (26 giugno 363), 226, 227, n. 10.
Giulio (papa), 210, 211.
Giulio (C. Vindice) e Galba, 1.
Giulio (Cn. Agricola), generale romano in Britannia sotto Domiziano, 30;
richiamato, 30.
Giulio Civile, capo dei Batavi, 18.
Giulio Classico, capo dei Treviri, 18.
Giulio Nepote, imperatore di Occidente (472), 270; sconfitto da Oreste,
fugge in Dalmazia (475), 271; sopravvive alla catastrofe dell’Impero di
Occidente, 272.
Giulio Sabino, capo dei Lingoni, 18.
Giulio (Sesto Severo), generale romano in Giudea, 76.
Giulio Tutore, capo dei Treveri, 18.
Giustina, moglie di Valentiniano I e madre di Valentiniano II, 238; reggente
per Valentiniano II, e sua politica religiosa, 238-39; fugge in Oriente, 239;
morte, 239.
Giustino (S.), 94.
Giuochi, Nemei, 71; G. ad Adrianopoli, 71; Pitici e Olimpici, 72; rifiorimento
degli antichi giuochi dell’Ellade, 98; decadenza, 145.
Glicerio, un pretendente, ucciso da Giulio Nepote, 270.
Gordiano I (M. Antonio), imperatore, 132.
Gordiano II, figlio di Gordiano I e suo collega nell’Impero, 132.
Gordiano III, nipote di Gordiano I, imperatore (238-44), 132, 133; guerre
persiane e germaniche, 133; trucidato, 133.
Goti, invadono le province danubiane (238), 133; vinti da Gordiano III,
133; invadono di nuovo le province danubiane, 134; sconfiggono Decio,
134; fan pace con Gallo, 134; invadono la Mesia, 135; sconfitti da
Emiliano, 135; invadono Dacia, Macedonia, Asia Minore (254-260), 135;
Asia Minore e Grecia, 137; nuova invasione (268), 138; in Germania, 162;
nell’esercito romano, 172; invadono Tracia e Mesia (323), 190; disfatti da
Costantino I (332), 202; coloni, 202, 235; invadono la Tracia (365), 231;
sconfitti da Valente (367-69), 231; loro dominio e divisioni nei secc. III-IV,
232; civiltà, 232; nelle guerre civili romane, 262. V. Ostrogoti, Visigoti.
Graziano, figlio di Valentiniano I, imperatore, 233; sconfigge gli Alamanni,
233, 234; invia Teodosio in Oriente, 235; lo nomina Augusto (19 gennaio
379), 235; cattolico; sua politica, 236; ucciso (agosto 383), 238.
Grecia. V. Acaia.
Gregorio Nazianzeno (S.), 234.
Grutungi, 232.
Guerre, quarta Gu. civile (69-70), 1 sgg., 13 sgg.; di Giudea (70), 18-19,
(132), 75-76; contro i Batavi (70), 18; in Britannia (77....), 30; contro i Catti
(83), 31; contro i Daci (85-89), 32 sgg.; (101-102, 105-106), 44 sgg.;
contro i Parti (114-16), 53 sgg.; (161-66), 86 sgg.; di M. Aurelio contro i
Germani (167-175), 88 sgg., (178-80), 95; Gu. civile del 193-97, 107 sgg.;
Guerra partica (197-98), 114 sgg.; Guerra germanica di Caracalla, 124;
persiana di Severo Alessandro, 129-30; guerre persiane e germaniche di
Gordiano III, 133; di Gallieno contro i barbari dell’Occidente, 136; di
Valeriano contro i Persiani, 136; Gu. civili del III sec., 131 sgg.; contro i
Goti (268-70), 138 sgg.; contro Jutungi, Vandali, ccc., 139; di Aureliano in
Oriente (272-73), 141; di Caro contro i Persiani, 143; Gu. civile tra
Diocleziano e Carino, 159; Gu. persiana (296-298), 172 sgg,; Gu. civili
dopo l’abdicazione di Diocleziano, 179 sgg.; tra Costantino e Massenzio
(312), 182-83; tra Licinio e Massimino (313), 184-85; tra Costantino e
Licinio (314), 185-86; (323), 190-191; Gu. civile tra Costantino II e
Costante (340), 209; Gu. contro i Persiani (363), 225 sgg.; di Valentiniano
I coi barbari dell’Occidente, 231-32; di Valente in Oriente, 232-33, 234; di
Graziano con gli Alamanni, 233; di Teodosio contro i Goti, 235; contro
l’usurpatore Massimo, 239-40; contro l’usurpatore Eugenio, 241-243; di
Stilicone contro Alarico (397), 251; (402-403), 253; contro Radagaiso
(404-5), 253; in Gallia (intorno al 411), 258; Gu. persiana (422), 260;
contro i Vandali d’Africa (429-431), 262; (468) 270; Gu. civile fra Ezio e
Bonifazio (432), 262; contro gli Unni (444-57), 264 sgg.; contro i Visigoti di
Gallia, 268, 230; ultime Gu. civili (472-76), 270-71.

Herculius, 160, 164.

Hibernia (Irlanda), 30.

Iberi, 247.
Iberia (Georgia), 173, 204.
Iberica (Penisola). V. Spagna.
Illirico (prefettura), 249. V. Dalmazia.
Illirio (o Illirico). V. Dalmazia.
Impero, incertezza del suo fondamento legale, 2-3; tentativi assolutisti di
Domiziano, 36; carattere repubblicano, con Traiano, 46 sgg.; e il principio
dell’adozione, 57-58, 110; il principio ereditario, 94-95; 118, 120; l’Imp. alla
morte di M. Aurelio, 196 sgg.; disparizione delle minori città, 97; principio
della decadenza, 99 sgg.; l’assolutismo imperiale, 120, 121, 165; prima
divisione (253), 135-136; crisi economica del III sec., 144 sgg.; sociale,
146 sgg.; religiosa, 148 sgg.; nuovo principio di legittimità, 150; divinità
degli imperatori, 165; l’Imp. risorge con Diocleziano, 173-74; dualismo fra
Occidente e Oriente, 210, 211, 212, 214, 250, 251-52, 254; alla morte di
Costanzo (361), 220: alla morte di Teodosio I (395), 243-244; divisione
(395), 249; l’Imp occidentale alla morte di Onorio (423), 259-60; l’Imp.
orientale durante il governo di Teodosio II, 260; unificazione (423), 260;
fine dell’Imp. d’Occidente (476), 271-72.
Imposte. V. Finanze.
India, 73.
Indictio, 187.
Industria, nelle province romane, 64 sgg., 73 sgg.; nell’Impero alla fine del
II sec., 96-97; decade nel III sec., 144-145; nel IV sec., 244.
Ingenuo, proclamato imperatore dalle legioni di Pannonia e Mesia (258),
136; vinto da Gallieno, si uccide, 136.
Iovius, 160, 164.
Ippodromo (a Nemea), 70.
Isauri, 232.
Istituzioni alimentari, 40, 48.
Istruzione, nelle province romane, 64 sgg., 73 sgg.; scuole in Atene, 71;
l’Ateneo, 72; scuole di musica, 73; il Mouseion di Alessandria, 75; alla fine
del II sec., 97, 98-99; decadenza nel III sec., 147; le scuole e Giuliano
l’Apostata, 224.
Italia, nel I sec. dell’e. v., 6; riconosce Ottone, 6; invasa dalle legioni di
Vitellio, 7-8, 10; mercanti italici in Oriente, 68; invasa dai Germani, 88, 90;
fatta provincia da Settimio Severo, 117, 168; invasa dagli Alamanni (261),
137, 139; da Jutungi e Vandali, 139; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163;
invasa da Costantino I (312), 182-83; assegnata a Costante (335), 202;
invasa da Costantino II (340), 209; da Alarico (400), 252 sgg., 255 sgg.;
da Radagaiso (404), 253; da Attila (452), 265-66; l’Italia dopo il 476, 272.
Italica (vecchia Siviglia), 66.
Iugum, 169.
Iuridici, istituiti da Adriano 61; aboliti da Antonino Pio, 84; ristabiliti da M.
Aurelio, 95.
Iustitium, 242.

Jarbiensis (pianura), battaglia, 185.

Jazigi, 89, 159.
Jutungi, 139.

Κεράτιον (siliqua), 186.

Lambaesis, 73.
Lattanzio, 155.
Lavoro, organizzazione coattiva, 200 sgg.; mano d’opera, 201, 245 sgg.
Legioni (Le), e la elezione imperiale, 4; insurrezione delle L. di Germania
contro Galba (69 d. C.), 4; le L. d’Oriente riconoscono Ottone, 6, 12; le L.
della Germania e la guerra civile tra Ottone e Vitellio, 7; le L. d’Oriente
neutrali nella guerra civile fra Ottone e Vitellio, 12; le L. del Danubio e
Ottone, 6, 8, 13; accordi tra le L. orientali e quelle del Danubio contro
Vitellio, 13; acclamano imperatore Vespasiano (69), 13; le L. della
Pannonia e il consiglio di guerra di Petovio, 14; invadono l’Italia, 14;
riforme di Vespasiano, 20-21; i provinciali nelle L., 21; le L. di Germania
insorgono contro Domiziano (88), 34; infiacchimento dell’esercito sotto
Antonino Pio, 85, 87; le L. di Britannia insorgono, 86-87; difficoltà del
reclutamento sotto M. Aurelio, 90; imbarbarimento dell’esercito, 100, 120,
139, 172, 198, 199, 239, 240, 242; decomposizione sotto Commodo, 102;
le L. insorgono contro Didio Giuliano, 104 sgg.; Settimio Severo e
l’esercito, 113-14, 117; stanziamento di una legione presso Roma, 117; e
Caracalla, 123; il soldo militare raddoppiato, 124; indisciplina sotto
Eliogabalo, 126; e Severo Alessandro, 131; dopo la morte di Alessandro,
131 sgg.; accrescimento dell’esercito sotto Diocleziano, 169; diminuzione
dell’effettivo delle L., 169, 197; ordinamento dell’esercito sotto Costantino,
197 sgg.; importanza dei barbari nell’esercito alla metà del V. sec., 268
sgg., 270, 271; insurrezione delle L. romane sotto Oreste (475), 271.
Leone I (papa), 266.
Leone I, imperatore d’Oriente, 268; destituisce Ricimero, 268; preparativi
e insuccesso contro i Vandali (468), 270; nomina per l’Occidente Giulio
Nepote (472), 270.
Leptis, 107.
Lex de imperio, 17-18.
Lex de majestate, 28, 35.
Liberio (papa), 213, 214.
Libia, i Libi, 67; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163.
Libio Severo, imperatore (461-465), 269.
Libo-Fenici, 67.
Liciniano, nipote di Costantino, 195.
Licinio (Liciniano), Augusto (novembre 307), 180-81; editto che sospende
le persecuzioni dei Cristiani (311), 181-82; accordo con Massimino Decio
circa l’Oriente, 182; sposa Costanza sorella di Costantino, 182; editto di
Milano (313), 183 sgg.; sconfigge Massimino (313), 185; guerreggia
contro Costantino (314), 185-86; accordi con Costantino (314), 186;
osteggia i Cristiani, 190; favorisce i Donatisti, 190; nuova guerra a
Costantino (323-24), 185 sgg.; sua uccisione (325), 190-91.
Licinio (Muciano), governatore della Siria, 13; e Vespasiano, 13; in Italia,
15; invade l’Italia centrale, 15; spedisce Q. Petilio Ceriale contro i Gallo-
Germani ribelli, 18.
Limes Germanicus, 31, 66.
Limitanei, 198.
Lione, 65, 97, 213, 217.
Locus Castorum (battaglia di), 8.
Lusitania, 258.

Macedonia, invasa dai Goti, 135, 138; assegnata a Costantino (314), 186;
a Dalmazio (335), 202; a Costanzo (337), 208; all’Impero di Oriente (395),
249; invasa da Attila (447), 264.
Macellum (in Cappadocia), 215.
Macrino (M. Opellio), un cavaliere, 175; prefetto del pretorio di Caracalla,
125; imperatore, 125; vinto dai Parti, 125; ucciso, 126.
Maggiorino, vescovo di Cartagine, 188.
Magister officiorum, 195.
Magistrature romane, decadenza, 197
Magistri militum, 195, 197.
Magnenzio, magister militum di Costante, 212; acclamato Augusto, fa
uccidere l’imperatore (18 gennaio 350), 212; favorisce i Pagani, 212;
disfatto e ucciso (352), 212-13.
Magonza, 131, 259.
Maioriano, magister militum, 268; imperatore (457), 268; guerra coi
Visigoti, 268; disfatto da Genserico, 268; ucciso (7 agosto 461), 269.
Mantinea, 70.
Marcellino, generale romano in Dalmazia, 269.
Marcello, generale di Costanzo, 216.
Marciano, imperatore d’Oriente (450), rottura con Attila, 264-265; muove
contro Attila (453), 266; disegni contro Genserico, 268; muore (27 gennaio
457), 268.
Marcianopoli, 138.
Marco Aurelio (M. Annio Vero), nipote di Antonino Pio e da lui adottato,
77, 85; riceve la potestà tribunicia e proconsolare (146), 85; imperatore
con L. Vero, l’imperatore filosofo, 86; guerra orientale (161-66), 86 sgg.;
guerre germaniche (167 sgg.), 90 sgg., 95; e il Senato, 91; e il
Cristianesimo, 93 sgg.; trionfo (23 dicembre 176), 94; fa suo collega
Commodo, 94; sua morte (17 marzo 180), 95; suo governo, 95-96.
Marcomanni, 34; vinti da Domiziano, 35; invadono l’Impero (167), 89 sgg.;
invadono la Spagna, 91; invadono le province danubiane, 130;
nell’esercito di Attila, 265.
Mardiensis (pianura), battaglia, 185.
Marsiglia, 65, 258, 261.
Massenzio, figlio di Massimiano, 179; Augusto (306), 180; favorevole ai
Pagani, 182; guerra con Costantino (312), 182-83.
Massimiano (M. Aurelio Valerio), origini, 160; Cesare, 160; Augusto (286),
160; persecuzione dei Cristiani, 176; abdicazione (305), 177; di nuovo
imperatore (306), 180; alla conferenza di Carnuntum, 180; in discordia col
figliuolo, 180; s’imparenta con Costantino, 181; congiura contro
Costantino?, 181; imprigionato e ucciso (310), 181.
Massimino (C. Valerio), origine, 131; imperatore (235-38), 131, 132;
combatte gl’imperatori senatori, 132; ucciso, 133.
Massimino Daio, Cesare (305), 177; Augusto (308), 181; favorevole ai
Pagani, 182; perseguita i Cristiani, 182, 184; accordi con Licinio circa
l’Oriente, 182; con Costantino, 182; invade la penisola balcanica (313),
185; vinto e fuggiasco, sua morte (313), 185.
Massimo (Magno Clemente), un usurpatore (383), 237-38; fa uccidere
Graziano, 238; riconosciuto da Teodosio, 238; combatte Valentiniano II,
(387), 239; disfatto e decapitato (388), 240.
Mauri, scorrerie nella prov. di Africa, 94, 231; insurrezioni, 67, 162.
Mauritania, alla metà del II soc. di C., 67; assegnata a Costanzo, 208; le
tre Mauritanie, 262; occupata dai Vandali (431), 262; restituita a Roma
(442), 264. V. Mauri.
Mazdeismo, 129.
Media, 87; M. Atropatene, 173.
Megara, 71.
Mesia (provincia di), invasa dai barbari, 18; dai Daci, 33; dai Goti, 134,
135; (268), 138; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 63; assegnata a Licinio,
190; invasa dai Goti (323), 190; invasa da Attila (447), 264.
Mesopotamia, invasa da Traiano e in parte dichiarata prov. romana (515),
13; insorge, 54; restituita ai Parti, 59; M. Superiore prov. romana (166),
87-88; invasa dai Parti, 114; liberata (198 o 199), 115; invasa dai Persiani
(231), 129, (241), 133; restituita all’Impero (298), 173; invasa da Sapore II
(359), 218; le fortezze cedute ai Persiani (363), 230.
Milano, 137, 164, 183, 253.
Milites Palatini, 169.
Millena, 169.
Miseno, 15.
Mitra, culto di M. in Asia Minore, 69; e la tetrarchia dioclezianea, 165.
Mitraismo, 149; diffuso nell’Impero, 149-50; adottato ufficialmente da
Aureliano, 149.
Mona (Anglesey) (I.), 30.
Monachismo, 245.
Monete, peggioramento sotto Traiano, 50; sotto Antonino Pio, 85; sotto M.
Aurelio, 91; sotto Settimio Severo, 119; nel III sec., 146; riforma di
Diocleziano, 170; di Costantino, 186-87.
Mouseion, 75.
Muciano. V. Licinio.
Mura aureliane, 140.
Mursa (in Pannonia), battaglia (28 settembre 351), 213.
Musica (Scuole di), 73.

Naissus (Nisch), battaglia (269), 139.

Napoli, 214, 271.
Narbona, 65, 258.
Narbonese, occupata dai Vitelliani, 7; invasa dagli Ottoniani, 8; si dichiara
per Vespasiano, 15; attaccata da Ataulfo (413), 258.
Narsete o Narseo (Narsehi), re persiano (294), 172; invade l’Armenia,
172; ferito in battaglia e disfatto, 172; fa pace con Diocleziano (298), 173.
Navicularii, 200-201.
Nemea, 70.
Nerva (M. Cocceio), carattere della sua elezione, 39-40; suo governo, 39-
41; riforme giudiziarie, 40; sceglie a collega Traiano, 40; fonda le istituzioni
alimentari, 40.
Nicea, 194, 230. V. Concilii.
Nicomedia, 164, 175, 177.
Nicopoli, 70.
Ninfidio Sabino, tenta farsi acclamare imperatore, 1; sua fine, 1.
Nisibis, 173.
Norico, 186, 249.
Numeriano, figliuolo di Caro e suo collega, 143; sua morte (283), 143.
Numidi, 67, 162.
Numidia, occupata dai Vandali (431), 262; restituita a Roma (442), 264.

Odenato, 136; dux Orientis, 137; combatte l’usurpazione di Macriano, 137;

muore (266 o 267), 140.
Odoacre, nell’esercito romano, 271; acclamato re degli Eruli, 271;
sconfigge Oreste (agosto 476), 271; depone Romolo Augustolo, 271; si
proclama governatore dell’Italia (476), 271.
Olibrio, candidato di Genserico all’Impero, 270; fatto proclamare da
Ricimero (472), 270; muore (472), 270.
Onorio, imperatore d’Occidente (395), 249; ripara a Ravenna (404), 250;
fa uccidere Stilicone, 225; sua politica rispetto ai Visigoti, 255 sgg., 258,
259; dona l’Aquitania ai Visigoti (418 o 419), 259; sua morte (27 agosto
423), 259; dona terre ai Burgundi, 259.
Opitergium (Oderzo), 88.
Oreste, sconfigge Giulio Nepote (475), 271; proclama imperatore Romolo
Augustolo (agosto 475), 271; sconfitto e ucciso da Odoacre (27-28 agosto
476), 271.
Orléans, 265.
Osroene, 110, 124.
Ostia, 47, 256.
Ostrogoti (Grutungi), 232; assoggettati dagli Unni (232); alla battaglia dei
Campi Catalauni (451), 265.
Ottone (M. Salvio), e Galba, 4; congiura contro Galba, 4-5; acclamato col
nome di Nerone, suo governo (69), 5 sgg.; e i pretoriani, 5-6; trattative con
Vitellio, 6; guerra contro Vitellio, 7 sgg.; disfatto a Bedriaco, si uccide (69),
9.

Paganesimo, e l’editto di Milano (313), 184; e Costantino, 191;

perseguitato da Costanzo, 209; nuove persecuzioni, 211, 213; favorito da
Massenzio, 182; da Magnenzio, 212; da Giuliano l’Apostata, 219, 220,
223 sgg.; e Valentiniano I, 230; reazione antipagana di Graziano e
Teodosio I, 237; insurrezioni in Oriente, 241; riscossa sotto Eugenio, 242;
nuova reazione antipagana, 242-43; durante il governo di Stilicone, 252.
Palmira, 74, 136.
Panhellenion, 71.
Pannonia, nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; assegnata a Costantino
(314), 186; le due Pannonie, 231; invasa da Quadi e Sarmati (365), 231;
liberata da Teodosio, 231; assegnata all’Impero d’Occidente (395), 249.
Paolo (giureconsulto), 119.
Papato, discussione sui suoi poteri, 211.
Papiniano, prefetto del pretorio sotto Settimio Severo, 119.
Partamaspate, 54.
Parti, il re dei Parti e Vespasiano, 13; guerre civili, 53; la Parzia invasa da
Traiano, 54; provincia romana?, 83; i P. si alleano con Pescennio Nigro,
109; invadono la Mesopotamia, 114; vinti da Settimio Severo, 115; pace
(198 o 199), 115; dinastia persiana, 128-29. V. Cosroe, Vologese III,
Artabano.
Partomasiri, 53.
Parzia. V. Parti.
Patriarcati, 237.
Pavia, 139, 255; battaglia (27-28 agosto 476), 271.
Perinto, 185.
Persiani, origine del nuovo Impero dei P., 129; invadono la Mesopotamia,
la Cappadocia, la Siria, 129, 135; fanno prigioniero Valeriano (259?), 136;
vinti da Caro (283), 143; decadenza al tempo di Diocleziano, 161; cedono
l’Armenia, 162; e Costantino il Grande, 189; e il Cristianesimo, 204; guerre
con Valente, 232; con Teodosio II (422), 260; V. Artaserse; Sapore I;
Sapore II, Bahram; Narsete.
Pertinace (P. Elvio), carattere e origine, 103; governo restauratore, 103-4;
ucciso dai pretoriani (28 marzo 193), 104; apoteosi, 108.
Pescennio Nigro (C.), acclamato imperatore dalle legioni di Siria e
d’Egitto, 104; origine e carattere, 107; si afferma in Oriente, 109; sconfitto
da Settimio Severo, 109; ucciso (194), 109.
Petilio (Q. Ceriale), combatte i Gallo-Germani ribelli, 18.
Petovium (Petau), 14; battaglia (388), 240.
Petra, 46, 74.
Petronio Massimo, senatore e capo della congiura contro Valentiniano III,
267; imperatore (455), 267; ucciso, 267.
Philippopolis, 70, 211.
Piacenza, 139.
Picti, 86, 231.
Pisone (L. Calpurnio Liciniano), collega di Galba, 4; suo carattere, 4;
ucciso (15 gennaio 69), 5.
Plinio il Giovane, suo Panegirico di Traiano, 46, 48, 57; governatore della
Bitinia, 51; e i Cristiani, 51-52.
Pola, 215.
Pollenzo (sul Tanaro), battaglia (6 aprile 402), 253.
Pontifex Maximus, 188, 237.
Ponto, 202, 208.
Popolazione (dell’Impero), diminuisce nel III sec., 144; nel IV sec., 244.
Postumo (M. Cassiano Latinio), proclamato imperatore dalle legioni della
Gallia (258), 136; suo impero gallo-iberico (258-267), 136; combattuto da
Gallieno, 137.
Potestà tribunicia, 85, 94.
Praefectus alimentorum, 95.
Praefectus praetorio. V. Pretoriani: sotto Adriano, 62; sotto Settimio
Severo, 113; Costantino gli toglie i poteri militari, 195, 197.
Praeses, 166.
Pretoriani (I), e la elezione imperiale, 3; e Galba, 1-2, 4-5; uccidono Galba
e Pisone (15 gennaio 69), 5; durante il governo di Ottone, 5-6; disciolti da
Vitellio, 11; ricostituiti da Vespasiano, 21; acclamano Domiziano
imperatore, 29; i prefetti del pretorio congiurano contro Domiziano, 36; i
provinciali tra i pr., 100; insorgono contro Pertinace, 104; offrono l’Impero
a Didio Giuliano, 104; ricostituiti da Settimio Severo, 108; il praefectus
praetorio, ammesso in Senato, 113; suoi poteri civili 113; accresciuti da
Diocleziano, 169; insurrezione (306), 180.
Prezzi (I), nel III sec., 146; editto di Diocleziano (303), 170-71.
Probo (M. Aurelio), generale di Aureliano, imperatore (272-282), 142;
ucciso, 142.
Procopio, generale di Giuliano l’Apostata, 230.
Procopio Antemio, imperatore (12 aprile 467), preparativi e insuccesso
contro i Vandali (468), 269-70; ucciso (11 luglio 472), 270.
Procuratores privatarum rerum, 112.
Protectores, 177, 198.
Province, tributi raddoppiati da Vespasiano, 22; nel III sec., 132 sgg.;
distribuzione nella tetrarchia di Diocleziano, 163-164; riforma di
Diocleziano, 166 sgg., 197. V. Provinciali, Acaia, Britannia, Gallia ecc.
Provinciali (I), nella riforma senatoria di Vespasiano, 24-25;
romanizzazione, 47; devono investire un terzo dei loro averi in beni
immobili in Italia, 47; nell’esercito, 100; ricevono da Caracalla la
cittadinanza romana, 124.
Pupieno (M. Clodio), imperatore, 132; combatte Massimino, 132-33;
ucciso, 133.

Quadi, 34; vinti da Domiziano, 35; invadono l’Impero (167), 89 sgg.;

invadono la Pannonia (365), 231; nell’esercito di Attila, 265.
Quaestor Sacri Palatii, 195.
Quintiliano, 27, 43.

Radagaiso, ostrogoto, invade l’Italia (404), 253; disfatto e ucciso (405),

253.
Rationalis, V. Advocatus fisci, 113.
Ravenna, 253, 255, 265.
Religione, e Vespasiano, 84; e Antonino Pio, 84; irrompere dei culti
orientali, 126, 148 sgg. V. Cristianesimo, Mazdeismo, Mitraismo,
Paganesimo.
Rezia, nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; invasa dagli Alamanni (365),
231; abbandonata da Stilicone, 253.
Ricimero, un Franco generale di Teodosio I, 240.
Ricimero, nipote di Vallia, 267; magister militum, 267; combatte i Vandali,
267; depone Avito, 268; deposto, 268; patrizio, 267; fa uccidere Maioriano
(461), 269; proclama imperatore Libio Severo (461), 269; depone e uccide
Procopio Antemio (11 luglio 472), 270; muore (472), 270.
Riparienses, 198.
Rodi, 22; invasa dai Goti (268), 138.
Roma, battaglia tra Vitelliani e Flaviani (70); fortificata da Aureliano, 140;
nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; insurrezione contro Galerio, 179-80;
proclama Massenzio, 180; nella guerra tra Massenzio e Costantino, 183;
Chiesa di R., 210, 211, 237; insurrezioni contro gli Ariani, 214; rivalità con
Costantinopoli, 250; R. assediata da Alarico (408-409), 255-56; invasa e
saccheggiata da Alarico (410), 256.
Rossolani, 90.
Rufino, prefetto del pretorio e tutore di Arcadio, 249; trucidato (27
novembre 395), 251.
Rugi, 271.

Sabaudia, 263.
Sallustio, prefetto del pretorio di Giuliano, 219.
Salmantica (Salamanca), 66.
Salona, 177, 185, 271.
Salvio Giuliano, 63.
Sapore I, re persiano, invade la Mesopotamia (241), 133; conquista
cinque province armene dell’alta valle del Tigri, 173.
Sapore II, re persiano, 204; e il mitraismo, 204; scaccia il re d’Armenia,
204; perseguita i Cristiani, 204; controversia con Costantino I, 204; guerre
con Costanzo (338-350), 209, 212; (359-61), 218, 219; con Giuliano
l’Apostata (363), 225 sgg.; impone la pace a Gioviano, 230.
Saraceni, 162, 242.
Sardegna, nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; conquistata dai Vandali, 269.
Sardica (Sofia), 140, 210.
Sarmati, invadono la Mesia (69-70), insorgono sotto Traiano, 54-55;
invadono l’Impero (167), 89 sgg.; l’Asia Minore e la Grecia, 137;
migrazioni, 162; disfatti da Costantino (332), 202; coloni, 202; invadono la
Pannonia (365), 231; disfatti da Mario Teodosio, 231; rivalicano il Danubio,
234.
Sassanidi, 128.
Sassoni, 135, 161, 162, 231.
Scisma d’Oriente, 210, 211.
Sciti, 89.
Scizia, 83, 264.
Scolares, 198.
Scoti, 231.
Scrinia, 196-97.
Seleucia, 87, 143.
Selinunte, 55.
Senato (Il), composizione, 31-32; e la elezione imperiale, 3; e Galba, 1; e
Ottone, 6; e Vitellio, 10; nella guerra civile del 69-70 e Vespasiano, 17;
riforma di Vespasiano, 23 sgg.; conseguenze, 25, 30; e Domiziano, 30,
34; e l’elezione di Nerva, 39-40; e Traiano, 41-42, 46-47; e Adriano 58-59,
62; e Antonino Pio, 84; e M. Aurelio, 91; sua importanza nell’Impero, 99-
100; menomazione dei suoi poteri sotto Commodo, 102; restaurazione dei
suoi privilegi con Pertinace, 103; e Settimio Severo, 108, 110, 111, 113-
114, 117, 119-120; e Caracalla, 123; e Macrino, 125; restaurazione
senatoria sotto Severo Alessandro, 127 sgg.; dopo la morte di Alessandro,
132 sgg.; dopo la morte di Aureliano, 142; e Tacito, 142; e Probo, 143;
dopo Diocleziano, 166, 197; il S. costantinopolitano e Giuliano l’Apostata,
222; il S. romano e Ricimero, 268.
Senecione, congiura contro Costantino, 185.
Sens (in Gallia), 216.
Servitù della gleba, 245-46.
Settimio Severo (L.), origini e carattere, 107; acclamato imperatore dalle
legioni di Pannonia, 104; sconfigge Didio Giuliano, 108; e il Senato, 108,
110, 111; scioglie la Guardia del Pretorio, 108; fa suo collega Clodio
Albino, 108-9; sconfigge Pescennio Nigro, 109; si fa adottare da M.
Aurelio, 109; sconfigge Clodio Albino, 111; carattere del suo governo, 111
sgg., 118 sgg.; e l’ordine equestre, 113, 114; e l’esercito, 113, 114; guerra
coi Parti (197-98), 114 sgg.; in Oriente, 115; editto sui Cristiani, 115; fa
colleghi all’impero i figliuoli, 118; in Britannia (208), 118; guerreggia in
Caledonia, 118; muore (4 febbraio 211), 118; sua Corte, 118-119.
Severo Alessandro (M. Aurelio), figliuolo di Mamea, 125; collega di
Eliogabalo, 127; imperatore unico, 127; carattere del suo governo, 127
sgg.; guerra persiana, 129-30; guerra germanica, 130-31; ucciso (235),
131.
Severo (Fl. Valerio), Cesare (305), 177; Augusto (306), 179; costretto ad
abdicare (307), 180; deposto, 180-81.
Sicilia, nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; attaccata da Genserico, 263,
267.
Sigerico, re dei Visigoti, 259.
Siliqua (κέρατιον), 186.
Singara, 218.
Sinodi dionisiaci, 72.
Sinodo di Alessandria, 192.
Siria, nella seconda metà del II sec. d. C., 73-74; insorge (161), 87; invasa
dai Persiani (231), 129; (254-60), 135; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163;
sedizione contro Diocleziano, 175; assegnata a Massimino Daio (311),
182; a Costanzo (335), 202.
Sirmio, 164, 208, 219.
Siscia (Sisech), battaglia, 240.
Soemia, nipote di Giulia Mesa, 125; madre di Eliogabalo, 125.
Sofene, 13.
Solidus, 186.
Spagna, si dichiara per Vitellio, 6; latinizzazione, 24; famiglie spagnole
nell’ordine senatorio ed equestre, 24; riceve il ius Latii (74), 26; nella metà
del II sec. d. C., 66-67; città principali, 66-67; invasa dai Mauri, 91; dai
Franchi, 137; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; assegnata a Costantino II
(335), 202; invasa da Alani, Svevi e Vandali, 257-58, 259.
Sparta, 137.
Stazio Prisco, generale romano in Oriente, 87.
Stilicone, origine, 249-50; magister militum e tutore di Onorio, 249; dissidio
con Rufino, 250; combatte Alarico in Grecia, 250, 251; conflitto con
l’Impero d’Oriente, 251, 254; suo governo in Occidente, 252 sgg.;
sconfigge Alarico (402-403), 253; e Radagaiso (405), 253; trattative con
Alarico, 254; congiura contro St., 255; morte (23 agosto 408), 255.
Stymphalos (L.), 70.
Sulpiciano, suocero di Pertinace, 104.
Svetonio (Paulino), generale Ottoniano, padre dello storico, 8; batte a
Locus Castorum le milizie vitelliane, 8; nell’ultimo Consiglio di guerra di
Ottone, 8.
Svevi, 34, 254, 257.

Tacito (lo storico), 43.

Tacito (M. Claudio), imperatore eletto dal senato (275-76), 142; ucciso,
142.
Tarragona, 66.
Teatro di Marcello, 26.
Tempio di Nettuno (a Mantinea), 71; di Giunone (ad Argo), 71. V.
Panhellenion; di Venere e di Roma (a Roma), 72, 75.
Teodorico, re dei Visigoti, muore nella battaglia dei Campi Catalauni (451),
265.
Teodorico, re dei Visigoti, fa proclamare imperatore Avito, 267, 268;
guerreggiato da Maioriano, 268.
Teodosio I il Grande, figliuolo di Flavio Teodosio, 231; combatte in
Pannonia, 231; in Oriente, 235; imperatore (19 gennaio 379), 235; politica
religiosa, 236, 237; sconfigge l’usurpatore Massimo (388), 239-40; e S.
Ambrogio, 240-241; sconfigge l’usurpatore Eugenio (394), 242; sua morte
(17 gennaio 395), 243; divisione dell’impero, 249; giudizio sull’opera sua,
243.
Teodosio II, figliuolo di Arcadio e imperatore d’Oriente (408), 254; suo
governo, 260-61; guerra persiana (422), 260; unifica l’Impero (423), 260;
pace con Attila, 264; muore (450), 264.
Tertulliano, 99, 154.
Tessaglia, 264.
Tessalonica, 70, 97, 241, 250.
Tetrarchia (La), 163 sgg.; suo carattere politico e religioso, 164 sgg.
Tetrico, un usurpatore, 141.
Tezzio Giuliano, generale di Domiziano contro i Daci, 34.
Thervingi, 232.
Tiana, 141.
Tilsafata (in Mesopotamia), 230.
Tiranni (I Trenta), 137.
Tiridate, re d’Armenia, 162, 173.
Tiro, 208.
Titinio Capitone, segretario di Traiano, 47.
Tito figliuolo di Vespasiano, 13; collega di Vespasiano all’Impero (riceve la
potestà tribunizia), 19; console (71), 19; sua importanza nel governo di
Vespasiano, 20; comandante dei pretoriani, 21; eletto imperatore dal
Senato, 28; suo governo (79-81), 28.
Tolosa, 65, 258.
Torrismondo, 265.
Tracia, 22; nella tetrarchia dioclezianea, 163; assegnata a Licinio, 190; a
Dalmazio (335), 202, 208; invasa dai Goti (323), 190; (365), 231; (377),
233, 234; da Alarico (395), 250; da Attila (447), 264.
Traiano (M. Ulpio), origini, 43; governatore in Germania e collega di Nerva
(97), 40; rimane in Germania (97-99), 41; e il senato, 41-42; guerre
daciche (101-2, 105-6), 44 sgg.; conquista e colonizza la Dacia (45-46),
sua amministrazione civile, 46 sgg.; lavori pubblici, 47; e i provinciali, 47-
48; e le Istituzioni alimentari, 48; e i Cristiani, 50 sgg.; guerre in Oriente
(114-16), 52 sgg.; adotta Adriano, 58; sua morte (agosto 117), 55;
carattere del suo governo, 41, 46 sgg.
Treviri (città), 164, 216.
Treviri, popoli della Gallia, insurrezione, 18.
Turcilingi, 265.

Ulpiano (giureconsulto), 119.

Unni, stirpe e origine, 232; si gettano sui Goti, 233; sconfiggono Valente
ad Adrianopoli (9 agosto 378), 234; nelle guerre civili romane, 260, 262;
disfacimento dell’Impero unno, 266. V. Attila.

Valente, fratello di Valentiniano I, assume il governo dell’Oriente, 230;

accoglie i Visigoti al di qua del Danubio (377), 233; sua disfatta e sua
morte (9 agosto 378), 234.
Valentiniano I, imperatore (28 marzo 364), 230; divide l’Impero con
Valente, 230; leggi di tolleranza religiosa, 230; muore (novembre 375),
232.
Valentiniano II, figlio di Valentiniano I, imperatore, 233; e Massimo, 238;
sua politica religiosa, 238-39; fugge in Oriente (387), 239; conversione al
cattolicismo, 239; ristabilito sul trono (388), 240; ucciso (15 maggio 392),
242.
Valentiniano III, figliuolo di Galla Placidia e di Costanzio, 260; Augusto,
260, 261; accordi coi Vandali (435), 263; (442), 264; uccide Ezio (454),
266; sua morte (16 marzo 455), 266.
Valeriano (P. Licinio), censore, 134; governatore della Germania, 135;
imperatore (253), 135; divide l’Impero, 135-136; perseguita i Cristiani, 135;
guerra persiana, 136; sua prigionia (259?) e morte, 136.
Vallia, re dei Visigoti, riceve la Gallia Meridionale, 259.
Vallum Hadriani, in Britannia, 66; in Africa, 68.
Vandali, invadono l’Italia, 139; sconfitti da Aureliano (271), 139; invadono
la Gallia, 254; la Spagna, 257-58, 259, 261; in Africa. V. Genserico.
Vandalusia, 258.
Vero (L. Elio), figliuolo di L. Ceionio Commodo Vero, 77; adottato da
Antonino Pio, 77; imperatore con M. Aurelio, 85; contro i Parti, 87; invade
la Media, 87; muore, 94.
Verona, battaglia (403), 253.
Vespasiano (T. Flavio), sua origine, 19; all’assedio di Gerusalemme, 11-
12; eletto imperatore (69), 14; suo piano contro Vitellio, 13-14;
riconosciuto dal senato e lex de imperio, 17; si associa il figlio Tito, 19;
riforme militari, 20-21; finanziarie, 21 sgg.; censore (73), 23; riforma del
senato, 23 sgg.; opere militari, 26; colonie militari, 26; e la religione, 27; e
la coltura, 27; muore (24 giugno 79), 27; carattere del suo governo, 26
sgg.
Vetranione, 212.
Via Scironia, 71.
Vicarii, 168.
Vicennalia (I), 175.
Victuali, 89.
Vienna (in Gallia), 65.
Villa Tiburtina, 72, 77.
Vindice. V. Giulio.