CIVIDALE DEL FRIULI

ividale del Friuli is an attractive little town strategically situated in a defensive position atop the high, rocky walls of the Natisone river’s right bank.
    There are signs indicating that this area was frequented in the pre- and protohistoric periods, but the remains discovered so far only allow us to reconstruct its history from the Roman era onwards.
    Apparently, Cividale (Forum Iulii) was founded around 50 BC by Julius Caesar as a military outpost guarding Italy’s North-eastern mountain passes. Soon after (probably in 49 BC) the town became a municipium and when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions Forum Iulii became part of the X Regio which was later called Venetia et Histria.
    A second, more extensive set of defensive walls was probably built by Marcus Aurelius to defend the town against Quadi and Marcomanni invasions in 168 AD. Later Forum Iulii became part of the eastern Alps’ defensive system (Claustra Alpium Iuliarum) and in the fifth century AD it became the seat of the governor of Venetia et Histria.
    During the Gothic period the town was the stronghold of the clausurae, the defence system laid out by the Goths in the eastern Alps. After the Byzantine conquest it was included in the Limes, becoming a stratia (military settlement).
    When the Lombards, led by their king Alboin, invaded Italy in 568, Alboin chose Forum Iulii as the seat of the first Lombard duchy and gave it to his nephew Gisulf. Cividale was not chosen by chance, as it was the biggest fortified town in the region. The Byzantines were not an obstacle and Forum Iulii was occupied without any resistance; it is thought that the town still looks as it did in the late antique period. The duke, his court and his gastaldo (personal steward) all resided in Forum Iulii.
    The Lombard duchy’s history closely followed that of the Aquileia patriarchate. When the Lombards overran Italy the bishop of Aquileia, Paolino (557-569), fled to Grado taking the cathedral’s treasures with him. In 557 the Aquileia bishops had started the schism “of the Three Chapters”,

breaking off communion with Rome and Constantinople which they considered to be in a heretic position. Later the bishops in Aquileia laid claim to the title of patriarchi, based on the tradition that St. Mark had preached in Aquileia. When the Grado patriarch made peace with Rome and Constantinople in 607 Aquileia elected a second, schismatic, patriarch, Abbot John, whose jurisdiction covered the dioceses in Lombard territory while the patriarch of Aquileia in Grado had the dioceses in Byzantine territory (coast area and Istria) under his jurisdiction.
    John’s successor, Fortunato, transferred the patriarchal seat to the Castrum in Cormons between 608 and 628. The patriarch of Aquileia in Cormons ended the schism in 698, returning to Roman orthodoxy. In 737 Patriarch Callisto moved his seat from Cormons to Cividale. He ordered the building of the patriarchal palace (more or less on the site of the 

present Palazzo dei Provveditori Veneti), the church of St John the Baptist (near the cathedral’s parvis) and the baptistery, whose famous tegurium still exists.
    The eighth century was a period of political and cultural prosperity for the Lombard duchy of Friuli, Cividale became a meeting place for sovereign and aristocratic powers, ecclesiastic institutions and cultural hegemonies. In the same century the Altar of Duke Ratchis was made and the oratory of Santa Maria in Valle, better known as the “Lombard Temple”, was built. Furthermore, the monasteries in Sesto al Reghena, Salt and Santa Maria in Valle di Cividale were founded.
    The peak of the town’s splendour coincided with the decline of Lombard rule. In 773 the Frankish king Charlemagne proclaimed himself king of the Lombards, in 776 Cividale was occupied by the Franks and its name changed to Civitas Austriae.