Episode 31 — The world of Venetia

The Venetians fleeing the Lombards migrated into the lagoons along the Adriatic coast. Lagoons in the plural, as there were several, but what kind of environment was that, why was it there, and how did the Venetian settle in? Links Episode 27 — Cassiodorus Episode 28 — The early sources Episode 29 — The Lombard Invasion Episode 30 — Venetia Maritima History Walks Early Venice The Historia Langobardorum by Paul the Deacon The Lombard Invasion Did Narses invite the Lombards? The conquest of Venetia Main sources for early Venice Kings of the Lombards Transcript Episode 31 — The world of Venetia The Venetian lagoon, as we know it, is just a small part of the lagoons which once were, both north and south of the estuary and delta of the River Po. The current-day Venetian lagoon is about 50km long, but in the early Middle Ages, there were several lagoons with a combined length of over 130km, from Grado to Cavarzere, as the ancient Venetians liked to say. South of the Po river, there were many more. The view from space If we zoom out a bit, and look at the territory of ancient Venetia from far above, inland it started in the foothills of the Dolomites, with a wide fertile plain sloping towards the sea. The coastal areas, where farmland gradually gave way to meadows and wetlands, and finally lagoons, were ultimately delimited by the lidos, which separated the lagoons from the open sea. A number of rivers, of varying sizes, ran across this landscape. The main waterways were the Isonzo (Soça) in the north, then the Tagliamento, the Piave, the Bacchiglione, the Brenta, and the Adige to the south, but there were many smaller rivers, such as the Stella, Livenza, Zero, Sile, Dese and so on. On a modern map, it is easy to see where the mainland ends and the lagoon starts, but it wasn’t always so. Rivers were diverted in the Middle Ages, dikes were built, and meadows and wetlands were drained and reclaimed to create arable land for farming. In the early Middle Ages, there was a continuum of changing landscapes from the mountains to the sea. Hills gave way to plains, which gradually morphed into meadows, wetlands and lagoons. There were few natural borders parallel to the coast, and as the territory was split on that axis between Lombard and Byzantine areas, drawing those borders was not easy. An ice-age landscape From far above, let’s move way below. The bedrock under the lagoons is at a depth of some 900m. Between the bedrock and the surface there are three ice-age deposits, each of 250-350m. Europe, and in particular the Alpine regions, have gone through three ice-ages in the last quarter of a million years. Each ice-age lasted tens of thousands of years, and the last ended about twelve thousand years ago. During each glacial period kilometre-thick ice-sheets covered the land and the mountains, When the climate then warmed, the ice melted, leading to abundant, fast-flowing rivers. The glaciers had ground down the mountains, producing copious quantities of sand and gravel, which the melt-water carried down towards the sea. The sand and gravel transported by the melting water from the glaciers deposited along the way, in a layer which grew to several hundred meters in thickness as the ice-sheets slowly disappeared. During the last ice-age, the location of Venice was some 500km inland, as the coast was then in the middle of what is now the Adriatic Sea. When all the ice had melted, an interglacial age followed, which also lasted tens of thousands of years. During these times, the rivers ran much slower, and only carried very fine sediment towards the sea. Over the many millennia, this sediment created a layer of dense clay, of some tens of metres in thickness. Therefore, this having repeated three times, from the bedrock to the surface, there’s first a thick layer of sand and gravel from the ice-age some 150,000 years ago, then a thinner layer of clay from the interglacial age, then sand and gravel from the ice-age around 80,000 years ago, clay again, sand and gravel from the last ice-age, and finally clay deposited since the last ice-age. Consequently, immediately under the surface of the entire territory of the wider Po valley, including the area of Venetia and the lagoons, there is a layer of clay, several tens of metres thick, made of an extremely fine sediment. This is the clay Venice is built on, but it extends much, much wider. Because the sediment is so fine, the clay layer is effectively impervious to water. The dense clay is why the wooden pilings under Venice don’t rot, and also the basis for their ancient water supply, collecting rainwater in underground cisterns, separated from the salty groundwater by a barrier of dense clay. Likewise, on the mainland, the layer of clay made the entire Po valley naturally swampy. Rainwater isn’t absorbed by the soil, so the upper layers saturate with water, creating swamps and wetlands. The main problem of agriculture on the plains in northern Italy is therefore not a deficiency of water, but excess of water. When it rains, the water is not absorbed by the soil, but remains on the surface, forming lakes, swamps, meadows and wetlands. Risotto is a traditional dish in the north-east of Italy, exactly because the clay below makes rice paddies possible. Much of the Po valley, and surrounding areas, were therefore unhealthy and difficult to farm, mostly until the Romans arrived, and started systematic drainage works, but in some parts of the plains, areas were only reclaimed in early modern times or even later. When some of the cities of Venetia appear to have been abandoned — such as Altinus — even if we have no record of a Lombard conquest, the reason might be environmental changes, which rendered the cities less viable. A lack of maintenance of the drainage systems and control of the rivers, due to decades of wars and plague, caused territories, which had been arable and liveable for centuries, to return to their natural state as malaria infected swamps, meadows and wetlands. The lagoons as a natural phenomenon Finally, in this geographic survey of the landscape of Venetia, we have the lagoons and the lidos. Why are there lagoons? The defining element of the lagoons are the lidos. The lidos — from the Latin littus, meaning sandbank — are … wait for it … sandbanks. They are created by a trick of nature. The back and forth of the tidal flow in the upper Adriatic Sea, conditioned by the rotation of the globe, moves north on the eastern side, and south on the western side. Consequently, the sea currents where the lagoons are, are consistently from the north to the south. The sediments carried by the rivers into the sea, are therefore deposited in long lines to the south of the estuary, drawn out by the dominant currents. These long lines of sand are the lidos. As they form, they separate the sea from the area behind, which becomes a lagoon with an ecosystem, which is different and separate from that of the sea, and from the wetlands further in-land. The lagoons — unlike the wetlands — are salt-water with a marked tide, but still distinct from the sea outside the lidos. Such lagoons are inherently ephemeral. They will naturally disappear again. Once the lidos are formed, the rivers, no longer flowing directly into the sea, will deposit their sediments inside the lagoon, where they form a delta. Gradually, the lagoon goes shallower, and more fresh-water, which leads to more extensive vegetation, and therefore higher rates of evaporation. The marshes dry out, and the lagoon is absorbed by the mainland, turning into freshwater wetlands, meadows and finally firm land. At that point, the rivers flow into the sea again, and, if the sea further out isn’t too deep, a new lido can form, create a lagoon, and the whole process repeats. This is part of the reason why many of the lagoons existing in the early Middle Ages are now gone, and also why the Venetians, between the 1300s and the 1500s, diverted many rivers. They had understood how the process worked, and wanted to keep their lagoon, as it was an essential part of their defences. Therefore, the rivers had to go around the lagoon, not into it. The Venetian lagoon exists today thanks to the work done half a millennium ago. Changing landscapes The areas, where the Venetians from the mainland settled, were made up of wetlands, marshes, lagoons and lidos. In the north, the territory started at the Isonzo (Soça) river, near Grado, and it extended to the Adige river in the south, just north of the Po river. The lagoon environments continued to the south of the Po river, past Comacchio — where there’s still a large surviving inlet — and Ravenna until Cesenatico. That area, however, was never part of Venetia, which was always north of the Po river. The Venetian lagoons, from the Isonzo to the Adige, from Grado to Cavarzere, were continuous wetlands, unlike today. A large central part — between the rivers Tagliamento and Piave — has almost entirely silted up, and is now a contiguous part of the mainland. Likewise, the lagoon areas were much wider than they are today. Looking on a modern map, one can see how wide the southern part of the Lagoon of Venice still is. The central and northern parts of the Venetian lagoon were equally wide, and that width extended all the way north and south, from Grado to Cavarzere. In fact, Cavarzere — which, together with the town of Loreo, formed the southern border of the new Venetian lands — was a settlement on the inner side of the lagoons. It is now a mainland town, some ten to twelve kilometres from the coast, on the Adige river. Diversions of the main rivers around the Venetian lagoon, and drainage works to turn marshes and wetlands into farmland, have dramatically reduced the width of the lagoon areas, along the entire coastline. What we see today are just fragments of what existed in the early centuries of Venetian history. The landscape of the early Venetians was therefore far larger than the lagoons we have today. Their landscape was also, at the same time, both wetter and drier that what we have today. Today, around Venice, one sees wide expanses of open water, interspersed with small, well-defined islands. Twelve-hundred years ago, that view would have been of marshes, covered in low vegetation, which would be partially submerged at high tide, with a network of winding canals going here and there. Occasionally, there would be a wider open area, called a paludo, or a patch of land which was slightly higher, and partially forested. The lagoon landscape was much more varied than it is today. The rivers from the mainland wound their way through this landscape in a clearly visible way, wider and deeper than normal marsh canals. The Grand Canal in Venice, and the Canale Giudecca, are such ancient riverbeds, while most of the minor canals in Venice derive from the winding canals of the primordial marshlands. Back then, there were far fewer open expanses of water, but overall the landscape was much more watery, but in the shape of marshes, wetlands and meadows, which in varying degrees flooded with the tidal cycle. This was the natural world the Venetians went to live in. The early Dogado The Roman province of Venetia et Histria had given way to the Byzantine Ducatus Venetiarum — the Duchy of the Venetians — and that in turn was reduced to only the coastal parts — the Venetia Maritima — but for the Venetians it soon became the Dogado — the Duchy. The governor appointed by the Byzantine exarch, the Dux, became the Venetian Doge, chosen by the Venetians themselves. The Byzantine use of these Latin words, Dux and Ducatus, became Duke and Duchy in English. As discussed in the previous episode, the people leaving the mainland didn’t flee the invaders to go and live in mud huts in the marshes. There were cities and settlements there well before the Lombards ever arrived in Italy. Some of these towns were already mentioned, as the records tell us of bishops moving the sees from threatened mainland cities to the associated lagoon settlement. The patriarch of Aquileia moved to Grado, which had already been fortified during the times of the invasion of the Huns in the mid-400s. The bishop of Concordia relocated to Caorle, and likewise sees moved from Opitergium (Oderzo) to Eraclea, and from Altinus to Torcello. Besides these church related notices, we have very few sources about the early lagoon settlements, and nothing for several centuries. We have three charters from the Holy Roman Empire, which contain in the provisions also lists of Venetian settlements. They are respectively from 840, under emperor Lothair I, from 967, under Otto I, and from 983, under Otto II. Next, we have a part of a manual for governing the Roman Empire. The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus wrote a manual for his son about how to administer the empire, called appropriately De Administrando Imperio, from around 950. Part of this treatise is a geographical description of all the provinces and territories, which include the land of the Venetians. Third, we have the first Venetian source available, which is the Istoria Veneticorum by John the Deacon, from around the year 1000, where a short section names the main settlements of the Dogado. Finally, book three of the Chronicon Altinate has some information about the lagoon environment, some of the settlements, and how it was organised, but probably from a later period, and large parts of it seem rather apocryphal. Istoria Veneticorum Let’s start with John the Deacon, the earliest Venetian source we have for this. As part of the narrative of the Lombard invasion, and the migration into the lagoons, he lists all the main settlements. There’s a slight problem, though. He puts Rivoalto — modern-day Venice city — in a prominent position because at his time it had been the centre of the dogado for two centuries, but he purports to write about the century before that. The settlements — and there were several — which became Venice city, only became central in the early 800s, a century and a half after the Lombard conquest had pushed the Byzantine aligned Venetians into the lagoon settlements. In any case, here’s the description of John the Deacon, starting in the north, moving southwards through the lagoons. Istoria Veneticorum, book I, chapter 7: Now indeed it is necessary to properly express the names of the individual islands. The first is called Grado, which possesses high walls and churches richly decorated and full by the bodies of saints, and just as Aquileia was in ancient Venice, so it is recognized that this [place] will be the head and metropolitan see of all the new Venice. The second island is called Bibione. The third, however, is called Caorle, to which the bishop of Concordia, arriving there with his companions. terrified by fear of the Lombards, with the authority of Pope Adeusdatus confirmed that his episcopal see would remain there in the future and decided to dwell there. The fourth island, on which long ago a city had been built with great care by Emperor Heraclius, but worn down by age, the Venetians rebuilt it smaller. However, after the city of Opitergium was captured by King Rothari, the bishop of that city wished, by the authority of Pope Severinus, to seek refuge in this city of Heraclia and establish there his see. The fifth island is called Equilus, on which, as the people living there were lacking an episcopal see, a new bishopric was established there by divine authority. The sixth island, Torcello, stands, although it lacks walls, by no means renowned in the circles of cities, nevertheless, protected by the other islands surrounding it, possesses safety in the middle. The seventh island is called Murano. The eighth island is Rivoaltus, although the last where peoples chose to live, yet it remains the richest and most elevated of all, which is shown not only by the beauty of its churches or houses, but also because it possess the dignity of the duchy and the seat of a bishopric. The ninth island is called Metamauco, while not without the fortification typical of cities, it is almost entirely surrounded by a beautiful lido, where, by apostolic authority, the people have succeeded in having an episcopal see. The tenth island is Poveglia. The eleventh is called Minor Chioggia, in which the monastery of Saint Michael is placed. The twelfth island is called Larger Chioggia. There is also at the far end of Venetia a castle, which is called Cavarzere. There are, furthermore, a great many habitable islands in the same province. John the Deacon clearly wanted the number to be twelve, as the twelve apostles, but as he had inserted Rivoalto, he pushed the last, Cavarzere, out of the list, but as it marked the border, he couldn’t leave it out. De Administrando Imperio Emperor Constantin Porphyrogenitus, in his imperial manual, listed many more cities and settlements. He wrote from a distance, but being emperor in a city where Venetians were coming and going constantly in his time — the early and mid-900s — he no doubt had good sources. However, we don’t know his sources. Many of the place names, which Porphyrogenitus mentions, cannot be identified with certainty, but those we can recognise are, still from north to south, using modern names: Grado with the metropolitan church and many relics, San Giuliano di Grado, Bibione in the estuary of the Tagliamento, Caorle, Eraclea, Fine, Jesolo, these last three around the estuary of the river Piave, Lio Maggiore, Ammiana, Torcello, indicated as a major trading hub, Sant’Erasmo, Murano, Rivoalto, seat of the doge, Metamauco, at the estuary of the Meduacus river Alberoni, Pellestrina, Chioggia, Brondolo, Fossone, Cavarzere, Loreo. Not all of these places can be found on a modern map, but most are there, and even if they’re no longer on the map, we generally have an idea of where they were. There are at least another seven places mentioned, which we cannot positively identify, but from their relative placement in the lists, they seem to belong mostly to the lagoon area between the rivers Tagliamento and Piave, which has completely silted up in the Middle Ages. The changes to the local geography has probably led to changes in place names too, since, for example, all the lidos and major islands have vanished as distinctive features of the landscape. The imperial charters The three charters of the Holy Roman Empire mention mostly the same localities, in varying selections. The first, from 840, listing 18 localities, interestingly mentions Rivoalto first, with the island of Olivolo, where the local bishopric was, separately. All later lists omit Olivolo, clearly perceiving it as a part of Rivoalto, despite its obvious importance as the see of the local diocese. In the two remaining charters, both from the late 900s, we have lists of places — each charter lists fifteen localities — which have already been mentioned earlier. The parts of the lagoons Out of all this, we can conclude that in the 800s there were numerous cities in the lagoons, sufficiently important for a Byzantine or Holy Roman emperor to mention them in their documents. Since some of these places are mentioned in church sources from the late 500s and the 600s, many of these settlements must have been there for quite some time, before they’ve become important enough to appear in our other sources. All in all, our lists add up to some three dozen places, of which around two thirds can still be identified. Almost all of these towns were located near the main rivers traversing the lagoons from the mainland to the sea. Some were on the lidos adjacent to the see, others on islands inside the lagoons, and some in the wetlands towards the mainland. Starting in the north, we have Grado, which is situated on a lido. It is one of the most ancient of the known settlements in the lagoons, probably fortified by the patriarch of Aquileia in the mid-400s, during the invasions of the Huns. A century later, the patriarch moved there fleeing the Lombards in 568, and remained there, even as a competing patriarch was appointed in 606 in Aquileia. Grado remained the formal see of the patriarchy until 1451, when it was merged with the Olivolo island bishopric in Venice, but the residence of the patriarch was in Venice from 1162, after the attack of the Patriarch of Aquileia. There’s something about those events in episode 25 on the carnival in Venice. The island of San Giuliano in the centre of the Grado lagoon is now abandoned, but there was an important monastery in the Middle Ages. Bibione is at the mouth of the Tagliamento river, so it was probably on a lido originally. It is now a beach resort with no visible remains of the early medieval past. The area between the rivers of Isonzo and Tagliamento — from Grado to Bibione — was under the jurisdiction and control of the Patriarch of Grado in the Middle Ages. Caorle, now situated between the estuaries of the rivers Lemene and Livenza, so probably on a lido in the past, was where the bishop of Concordia moved, after the Lombard conquest of Concordia in 616. Further south, we have Fine, which might have been an island or a lido, and Heraclia (now Eraclea) which was definitely a lagoon island in the estuary of the river Piave, and Equilo (modern-day Jesolo), which was on a lido or just inside the lagoon, at the mouth of the river Piave. Most of the unknown places mentioned by Porphyrogenitus were probably in the area around between Bibione and Jesolo, but as these 60–70km of lagoons have completely disappeared over the centuries, ancient islands and lidos have all but vanished from the landscape. Heraclia was where the bishop of Opitergium moved around 640, and also the Byzantine Dux. It was therefore a significant place in the 600s and 700s, but was mostly abandoned later. The river Piave changed course at some point, leaving the once island of Heraclia connected to the mainland, and therefore less easy to defend. Fierce, and very violent competition between the neighbouring towns of Heraclia, with the Dux and the see of Opitergium, and Equilo (Jesolo), which was the local diocese, saw some of the early rulers of Venice killed, and the seat of the doge was moved south to Metamauco. Later political, and again very violent, in-fighting in the dogado had the dominant elite from Metamauco raid and destroy Heraclia twice in the early 800s, from which it never recovered. Its location was lost, and only rediscovered in modern times, after which the nearby village of Grisolera changed its name to Eraclea. From Jesolo, the Venetian lagoon commences. In the marshes, the names of Lio Maggiore and Lio Piccolo still persist. In neither place is there anything medieval to see, but they’re both reachable by car, and the areas can give a good impression of how the early lagoon landscapes were — except for the cars, obviously. Next is the group of Torcello, Ammiana, Constanziaco, Mazzorbo and Burano, some fifteen kilometres north of Venice. Torcello is one of most ancient settlements, from the same time as Heraclia, in the first half of the 600s. It was a major commercial centre, and where the bishop of Altinus moved. The cathedral of Torcello goes back to the 600s, and much of the current building is from the 800s. An inscription found there, indicated that the see of Altinus was moved there by permission of Isaac, Byzantine exarch of Ravenna during the reign of Heraclius. The city was abandoned over two centuries, between the mid-1200s and the mid-1400s, as the harbour silted up, and malaria became a problem. The neighbouring smaller towns of Ammiana, which was mentioned by some sources, and Constanziaca, were likewise abandoned, while the almost suburban settlements of Mazzorbo and Burano have survived until our time. This group of islands, all with people living there, might be what John the Deacon referred to, when he wrote that Torcello was protected by the surrounding islands. Then we have the Lido Marcense, or the island of Sant’Erasmo, as it is called today. The island is like a countryside for modern Venice, but there is nothing medieval to see. Finally, before Venice, there’s Murano, now famous for glass-works. The oldest building there is the Church of San Donato, which dates from the 1000s. What we now call Venice, was in the early Middle Ages a marsh area, with a number of smaller settlements. The most important of these gave its name to the wider area. The marketplace at Rivoalto — now Rialto — probably goes back as far as any other place in the lagoons. A higher ground — hence the name which means the high brink or shoreline — well protected by the surrounding marshes, at a bend of one of the main waterways in the lagoon —a branch of the Meduacus river, later called the Brenta — was a perfect location for commercial exchanges. The other important settlement in the area was the fortified town on the island of Olivolo, in the easternmost part of modern Venice, with the church of San Pietro. When the area became a diocese of its own in 774, the see was placed on the Olivolo island. In 1451, the diocese of Olivolo, or Castello, was merged with the Patriarchy of Grado, and then became the Patriarchy of Venice, which still exists. Continuing south, we arrive at Poveglia, an island just inside the lagoon, which was an important settlement until the late 1300s. On the nearby lido, we have Malamocco, the probable location of ancient Metamauco. Metamauco was placed at the mouth of the Meduacus river, which further inland passed by Padua, a branch of which connected to the Rivoalto area. When one of the early doges of Venice realised that Heraclia wasn’t safe, as his predecessor had been killed in a fight with the people of Equilo (Jesolo), he moved the seat of the duchy to Metamauco. As Grado was the undisputed centre of church authority in the lagoons, Metamauco was the centre of political power in the Dogado for much of the 700s, until the war with the Franks in 809, which we’ll talk about in a later episode. Metamauco was sacked and destroyed by the Franks, and the Venetians put up a new headquarters in the Rivoalto marshes, where the Doge’s Palace still stands today. There still a picturesque village at Malamocco, with some excellent fish restaurants, but nothing to see from the early Middle Ages. The next town is Albiola, which probably coincided with a part of modern-day Alberoni on the southern end of the Lido di Venezia. On the following island we have Pellestrina, still a small village of fishermen. The next island, which is no longer an island, but connected to the mainland, we have Chioggia, which as a city goes back to Roman times, as Clodia. The larger part of Chioggia was on an island inside the lagoon, the Chioggia Majore from John the Deacon, while the Chioggia Minore was on a lido, where Sottomarina is now. Just south of Chioggia, now a kind of suburb, but once a separate town, was Brondolo. Finally, at the southern border of the Dogado, on the river Adige, we have Fossone near the estuary, the city of Loreo between the Adige and the Po rivers, and Cavarzere inland, once at the bottom of the lagoon, now on the Adige river. Much more than Venice This was the Dogado of the Venetians, from Grado to Cavarzere, made up of lidos, lagoons, marshes, wetlands and meadows, traversed by dozens of rivers, with a multitude of cities, towns and settlements. Modern-day Venice was there, but it was still far from being the supreme centre of everything. The church was based in the north, in Grado, with bishoprics in Caorle, Equilo, Heraclia, Torcello, Metamauco, and later, on the Olivolo. The political centre of the dogado was initially Heraclia in the 600s, then Metamauco for much of the 700s, and only in the early 800s could Rivoalto claim the primacy of the Venetian cities. Venice back then meant the state, the dogado. For the first five or six hundred years of its existence, the city was called Rivoalto. It is only from the 1300s, that it became customary to use the name Venice for the city, and not for the dogado. Bibliography: insufficient context.