Chapter Representations of Lothar I in the Liber pontificalis Ravennatis

Lothar looms large in the Liber pontificalis of Ravenna, an episcopal gesta composed after 846 by a local cleric of that city named Agnellus. In its prefatory verse, Lothar was tied to the memory of his grandfather Charlemagne, and afterwards was presented as an ally of the city and its church, a relationship sealed by the service of the bishop George (837-846) as godfather to Lothar’s daughter Rotruda. Furthermore, upon the death of Louis the Pious, as part of an embassy attempting to resolve the conflicts between Lothar and his brothers, George sought to affirm Ravenna privileges on the eve of the battle of Fontenoy, an event described quite differently from other sources. Completed following these struggles, the Liber pontificalis of Ravenna used this image of Lothar to further claims of the special status of the city, especially in its independence from Rome and longstanding imperial connections, and actively sought to legitimize Lothar’s own position through a juxtaposition with Charlemagne. Although preserved in the accounts of the bishops of Ravenna, the singular efforts to elevate and memorialize Lothar differ from other contemporary institutional chronicles, and underscore the tension inherent in the narrative

On moving relics and monastic reform

In Ravenna’s hagiographic traditions, including the Liber pontificalis of its bishops, the translations of relics within the city and its suburbs, as well as narratives of relics that departed, were important components not only for local cults, but as reflections of the city’s status and history, and witnessed renewal of its ecclesiastical and monastic institutions. In seeking to understand the relationship between translations and reform, this article first presents the history of relics translations in Ravenna from the sixth to the tenth century as contexts for the Vita Probi, a narrative commemorating the discovery and translation of the relics of Probus, one of the city’s early bishops. This text, written in the 960s as a celebration of the final translation of his relics into the city, incorporated narrative material about the saint’s life into a longer description about his relics and the misadventures and return to proper conduct of local religious communities, at a moment when new norms of reform were on the horizon.Nella tradizione agiografica ravennate, tenendo conto anche del Liber pontificalis dei suoi vescovi, le traslazioni di reliquie all’interno della città e delle sue periferie, così come narrazioni relative alla partenza di reliquie, furono elementi centrali non solo nelle vicende dei culti locali, ma anche come riflessi dello status e della storia della città, testimoniando il rinnovamento delle sue istituzioni ecclesiastiche e monastiche. Cercando di comprendere il rapporto tra traslazioni e riforma, questo contributo presenta dapprima la storia delle traslazioni di reliquie a Ravenna tra il VI e il X secolo per fornire un contesto alla Vita Probi, un racconto che commemora il ritrovamento e il trasferimento delle reliquie di Probo, uno dei primi vescovi della città. Il testo, scritto negli anni Sessanta del X secolo a celebrazione della definitiva traslazione delle sue reliquie in città, inglobò il materiale narrativo sulla vita del santo all’interno di una più cospicua descrizione relativa alle sue reliquie, alle disavventure delle comunità religiose locali e al loro ritorno a un comportamento adeguato, in una fase in cui nuove regole riformatrici si stagliavano all’orizzonte

Chapter Representations of Lothar I in the Liber pontificalis Ravennatis

Lothar looms large in the Liber pontificalis of Ravenna, an episcopal gesta composed after 846 by a local cleric of that city named Agnellus. In its prefatory verse, Lothar was tied to the memory of his grandfather Charlemagne, and afterwards was presented as an ally of the city and its church, a relationship sealed by the service of the bishop George (837-846) as godfather to Lothar’s daughter Rotruda. Furthermore, upon the death of Louis the Pious, as part of an embassy attempting to resolve the conflicts between Lothar and his brothers, George sought to affirm Ravenna privileges on the eve of the battle of Fontenoy, an event described quite differently from other sources. Completed following these struggles, the Liber pontificalis of Ravenna used this image of Lothar to further claims of the special status of the city, especially in its independence from Rome and longstanding imperial connections, and actively sought to legitimize Lothar’s own position through a juxtaposition with Charlemagne. Although preserved in the accounts of the bishops of Ravenna, the singular efforts to elevate and memorialize Lothar differ from other contemporary institutional chronicles, and underscore the tension inherent in the narrative

Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles in the Early Middle Ages: Survival and Continuity in Ravenna and the Latin West

This article explores the continued use of titles, especially those once reserved for Roman senators, in the early Middle Ages. The scope includes literary and documentary sources in Latin throughout the western Mediterranean, with an emphasis on the documentary sources from Ravenna from the middle of the sixth through the end of the ninth century. The evidence suggests that in many areas the use of these titles diminished or essentially disappeared, while their survival in others was accompanied by dramatic changes in their significance over time. In these instances titles such as vir illustris, vir spectabilis, and especially vir clarissimus were repurposed to denote memberships in local political or social hierarchies that were themselves in flux. Thus the continuities reflected the traditions of notarial practices to a greater extent than the continued desire to use and apply signifiers derived from the late Roman aristocracy to new forms of elite identity

Greeks and »Greek« Writers in the Early Medieval Italian Papyri. Monasteries and Sacred Landscapes & Byzantine Connections - Volume 9. 2019 medieval worlds Volume 9. 2019|

This article examines the instances when Greek script was used in the sixth- and seventh-century papyri documents originally preserved as part of the archive of the church of Ravenna. In interpreting these instances, we find both reflections of larger political events and smaller personal choices against the backdrop of continued migration from the Byzantine east to Italy following the conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom by the armies of Justinian in the middle of the sixth century and the establishment of an exarchate dominated by military officials with various levels of clear »Greek« identity – political, hereditary, religious, and linguistic. Within this framework, participants in the creation of legal documents who were identified as grecus or wrote in Greek script did so for individual and micropolitical reasons that were distinct from conveying an ethnic identity, highlighting differences brought on by the situations in which they participated

Historical ecology and sustainable forest management: revealing key periods in the landscape transformation of the Italian peninsula

In recent years, palaeoecological analyses are increasingly widespread in various environments and are sometimes developed with particularly detailed temporal resolution providing historical ecology a new multidisciplinary focus (Hjelle et al. 2012; Izdebski et al. 2016). The possibility to compare the dynamics of local and regional landscapes at the decadal scale with climatic reconstructions, historical documents and archaeological data is confirming the long and pervasive land transformation of the Anthropocene (e.g. Marignani et al. 2017; Piovesan et al. in press), and providing alternative scenarios of some classical views derived strictly from interpretation of historical documents (Schoolman et al. in press). The aim of this contribution is to discuss what unites and what differentiates the historical landscape evolution along peninsular Italy on the basis of the available multidisciplinary records. ... Across all records we examined in Italy, there is a dominant pattern of widespread loss of forest ecosystems and an increase in forest degradation/pioneer communities in modern landscapes as compared with ancient landscapes. While this result is not surprising, the pattern of continuous change with a dominant trend of degradation of forest ecosystems and natural capital raises important questions about the need for future plans of forest management and ecosystem restoration for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and renewable products. The paleoecological data can provide critical baseline data for potential restoration efforts. The highest priority for ecosystem restoration is in the lowland wet environments

Historical ecology reveals landscape transformation coincident with cultural development in central Italy since the Roman Period

Knowledge of the direct role humans have had in changing the landscape requires the perspective of historical and archaeological sources, as well as climatic and ecologic processes, when interpreting paleoecological records. People directly impact land at the local scale and land use decisions are strongly influenced by local sociopolitical priorities that change through time. A complete picture of the potential drivers of past environmental change must include a detailed and integrated analysis of evolving sociopolitical priorities, climatic change and ecological processes. However, there are surprisingly few localities that possess high-quality historical, archeological and high-resolution paleoecologic datasets. We present a high resolution 2700-year pollen record from central Italy and interpret it in relation to archival documents and archaeological data to reconstruct the relationship between changing sociopolitical conditions, and their effect on the landscape. We found that: (1) abrupt environmental change was more closely linked to sociopolitical and demographic transformation than climate change(2) landscape changes reflected the new sociopolitical priorities and persisted until the sociopolitical conditions shifted(3) reorganization of new plant communities was very rapid, on the order of decades not centuriesand (4) legacies of forest management adopted by earlier societies continue to influence ecosystem services today