Cividale del Friuli (or simply Cividale, Cividât in standard
Friulian, Sividât in the local variant, Čedad in Slovenian) is an
Italian town of 11 095 inhabitants in Friuli-Venezia Giulia: founded
in Roman times by Julius Caesar with the name of Forum Iulii, from
which the whole region took its name, it became the Lombard capital
of Friuli.
According to the regional law 26/2014
"Reorganization of the Region system - Local Autonomies of Friuli
Venezia Giulia", Cividale del Friuli is the seat of the UTI of the
"Natisone" of which it belongs with the municipalities of Buttrio,
Corno di Rosazzo, Drenchia, Grimacco , Manzano, Moimacco,
Premariacco, Prepotto, Pulfero, Remanzacco, San Giovanni al
Natisone, San Leonardo, San Pietro al Natisone, Savogna, Stregna and
Torreano.
Cividale del Friuli rises at the foot of the hills of eastern Friuli on the banks of the Natisone, 17 km from Udine, on the road that connects the Friuli plain to the middle and upper Isonzo valley, in Slovenian territory. It covers an area of 49.50 km², from a minimum altitude of 97 meters to a maximum of 508 meters.
Rainfall is concentrated in the periods between March and May, with a slight decrease in the summer months and a worsening in the period between October and late November.
Origins of the name
The city, in Roman times,
was called Forum Iulii. Tradition indicates it as founded by Julius
Caesar: «Forum Iulii ita dictum, quod Iulius Caesar negotiationis
forum ibi statuerat». The toponym "Forum Iulii" could, on the other
hand, have originated from the gens Iulia, who left several other
testimonies in the area in the names attributed to the places in the
region. Between the seventh and eighth centuries it was called
Civitas Forum Iulii. At the end of the eighth century Paolo Diacono
mentioned it as Civitas vel Castrum Foroiulianum. In the 10th
century, being located in the eastern part of Lothair's kingdom, it
began to be called Civitas Austriae. Shortening the official name,
the population called it Civitate (m), from which the local names of
Sividàt, Zividàt, Cividàt and later, around the fifteenth century,
first in the literary field, that of Cividale descended.
Roman times
The human presence in the area where Cividale stands
today dates back to quite ancient times, as attested by the
prehistoric stations of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods found
just outside the city; to these are added abundant evidence of the
Iron Age and of the Venetian and Celtic presence dating back to the
fourth century BC. The strategic position of this primitive
settlement led the Romans to settle there, founding perhaps in the
mid-second century BC. a castrum, of obvious military nature, which
was later elevated by Julius Caesar to a forum (market) and for this
reason the locality took the name of "Forum Iulii" which later
became the identifier of the whole region. Subsequently the locality
was elevated to municipium, being ascribed to the Roman tribe
Scaptia and finally rose to the rank of capital of the Regio X
Venetia et Histria when Attila razed Aquileia to the ground in the
fifth century.
Longobard period
In 568 the Lombards, of
Scandinavian origin, arrived from Pannonia, whose king Alboin
immediately elected the Roman Forum Iulii as the capital of the
first Lombard duchy in Italy and placing his nephew Gisulfo as duke.
Renamed its capital Civitas Austriae, or "City of Austria" (hence
the modern name), the Lombards erected imposing and prestigious
buildings and in the surroundings they founded fortified structures
assigned to the fare, that is the noble lineages of that Germanic
people; in 610 Cividale was sacked and burned by the Avars, called
by the Lombard king Agilulfo (then based in Milan) to punish the
rebelliousness of the "Friulian" Duke Gisulfo II. In 737, during the
reign of Liutprando and to escape the Byzantine incursions, the
patriarch of Aquileia Callisto decided to transfer his seat here, as
did the bishop of Zuglio who was expelled by Callisto himself. The
city thus increased its role also thanks to this important
ecclesiastical presence; a few decades later, in 796, the council
was held here which reconfirmed the indissolubility of marriage.
The Holy Roman Empire and the Patriarchate of Aquileia
In 775
the Duchy of Friuli was invaded by the Carolingians and the
Lombards, with their Duke Rotgaudo in the lead, took up arms for the
last time facing the arrival of the Franks. Having defeated the
ancient rulers, the Carolingians established the eastern brand of
Friuli, keeping Civitas Austriæ as their capital. The latter became
the seat of an important court, especially during the marquisate of
Eberardo which attracted men of culture from all over Europe. On May
25 of the year 825 the emperor Lothair I promulgated the capitular
of Corteolona who established the imperial schools, in addition to
Pavia capital of the Kingdom of Italy, Cividale also had the public
school of law, rhetoric and liberal arts, inheriting the tradition
of the school of law, founded by the Roman emperor Theodosius I; all
the students of the Marca del Friuli depended on the Cividale
campus.
Important politicians were born from the families that ruled the
brand, including the emperor Berengar, son of Eberardo himself. In
the 10th century, that is, in the Ottonian era, the Friulian brand
was downgraded to a county (or countryside) and inserted first in
the Marca of Verona and then in that of Carinthia (the latter being
first part of the Duchy of Bavaria and then rising itself to
Ducato). The recomposition of central European and northern Italian
powers left an important space to the patriarchs, who increased
their possessions and power from the beginning of the 10th century
and in 1077 became free feudal lords of the Holy Roman Empire over a
vast territory. Thus arose the patriarchal state which lasted until
1419.
However, Cividale remained the greatest political and
commercial center of the whole Friuli, rivaling from the thirteenth
century with Udine, which was in strong growth thanks to a more
congenial geographical position, so much so that the patriarch
Bertoldo of Andechs-Merania in 1238 transferred his own
headquarters. The city saw the rise of monasteries and convents,
palaces and towers, where the most important parliamentary houses of
Friuli settled here and equally dignified ones flourished. In 1331
Cividale remains in the chronicles because the first firearms were
used for the first time; the chronicles speak of fighting "with the
sclopi" on the Devil's Bridge. In 1353 the emperor Charles IV, after
a bloody revenge carried out by his brother the patriarch Nicholas
of Luxembourg (1350-58) - and also unleashed against the Cividalesi
to punish the assassination of his predecessor Bertrando - granted
Cividale the opening of the University.
In 1301 an earthquake
and a violent hailstorm struck Cividale but no damage was reported
even to the Cathedral, which instead in 1348 was significantly
damaged by a violent shock, the news is very sparse and can only be
found on the site "storing.ingv.it". In 1364, probably on 8 August,
the Cathedral suffered further damage; in this case the intensity of
the shock is known, which was 4.83 ° Richter scale, but it is not
known if there were any victims. The earthquake had Lombai as its
epicenter in the municipality of Grimacco and further confirmation
can be found on the Abruzzo portal. The Friulian infighting, during
which Cividale was often an ally of the counts of Gorizia and the
noble castellans against Udine, gradually found a more intense
intensity until they ended convulsively in 1419, when Venice decided
to invade the region. Cividale was the first to give to the
Serenissima, stipulating a solemn peace and a contextual alliance.
In the following decades some nobles planned to open the doors to
the ousted patriarch Ludwig of Teck, who returned in 1431 at the
head of 4,000 Hungarians, but the project failed.
From the
Venetian domination to the Kingdom of Italy
After almost thirty
years averted the danger of the Turks, who also carried out raids
and violence in these areas until 1499, in the early sixteenth
century war broke out between Venice and the League of Cambrai and
the Empire tried to occupy the city by besieging it with the armies
of Duke Henry VII of Brunswick in 1509, but after an epic struggle
the Cividalesi managed to make the Alemannic army desist. The
latter, however, still managed to occupy Cividale two years later,
but only for a few weeks, having to leave the city also due to an
earthquake and a plague. Around 1530 the city lost the gastaldia of
Tolmino and the annexed mercury mines of Idria: this decreed an
inexorable economic decline as well as a geographical
marginalization and later roads from which it never had the
opportunity to recover. More than once an attempt was made to bring
the seat of the patriarchate of Aquileia back to Cividale but in
vain, with the exception of Nicolò Donà in 1497.
In 1553 Cividale had instituted its own ordinary administrator
from Venice, chosen by the Senate from among the Venetian
patriciate, and in 1559 its autonomy and its territory was finally
sanctioned by the Friuli homeland, thus freeing itself from the
invisa Udine. A dramatic plague epidemic developed between 1598 and
1599. Between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of
the seventeenth century, Cividale was the scene of a long feud that
involved almost all the local noble families, creating quite a few
headaches for the Venetian rectors. In the same period, some
Cividalesi distinguished themselves with arms not only during the
war of Gradisca (1615-1617), obviously also fought in this
territory, but also in various armies of Europe. Despite the drastic
political and economic downsizing, here were the birthplace of
several men of culture, sometimes of international importance, as
well as important men of arms and of the church and never ceased to
embellish the palaces and churches using famous names such as
Palladio , Palma il Giovane and so on.
In 1797 with the
treaty of Campoformido between Napoleon and Austria Cividale passed
to the Habsburg Empire; after the brief period in which it was part
of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, it was reassigned to Austria by
the Congress of Vienna (1815). Between 1848 and 1866 there was the
presence of a lively Risorgimento movement; in 1866, after the third
war of independence, it was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy with
Veneto and Friuli and in the period known as the Belle Époque it was
the scene of an effervescent political activity.
The two
world wars
During the First World War, Cividale hosted the
command of the II Army and was damaged by aerial bombardments;
occupied by the Austro-Germans following the defeat of Caporetto,
the city was reconquered by the Italians at the end of October 1918
after the victory on the Piave. In the following years it was the
harbinger of illustrious personalities given to Fascism. During the
Second World War (1943) the city was annexed with all of Friuli to
the III Reich and Cossack and Kalmyk troops allied with the Germans
were also deployed here.
On its territory not only the civil
war took place but also a dramatic episode of struggle between
Osovan and Garibaldi partisans (communists and socialists, under the
orders of the IX Korpus Yugoslav): in the Bosco Romagno the
communist Gappists killed several Osovani fighters (including his
brother by PierPaolo Pasolini) previously captured at the Porzûs
huts. There were several episodes of clash between Osovani and
pro-Titini Garibaldini. An ambiguous situation, since the Yugoslavs
never hid their desire to annex the Italian territories up to the
Tagliamento, by virtue of an unfounded belief that Friuli was
formerly inhabited by Slovenes. This provoked a clear contrast
between Osovani and Garibaldi.
After World War II, Cividale
was the headquarters of the command and of some departments of the
"Isonzo" mechanized Brigade, placed to defend the eastern border in
case of invasion by the Warsaw Pact, where some components of the
Arrest Infantry kept various works defensive, including the
Purgessimo Gallery. The particular position in this historical and
geopolitical context led to the presence in the area of the Gladio
Organization - a national articulation of NATO's Stay Behind - which
was mainly joined by Alpine and former Alpine troops trained to
organize an armed resistance on the territory in case of Soviet
invasion. The city and the area suffered some damage in the 1976
earthquake, but the wounds were soon healed.