Felix Cornicula

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Felix Cornicula , often also Felice Cornicola , was, according to the Venetian tradition, the second of a total of five Magistri militum who, after the murder of Doge Orso Ipato , in the years from 737 to 742, the settlements in the Venetian lagoon for one year each ruled. Felix Cornicula was the second of these magistri , if one follows this tradition, in office from 738 to 739. The place of death is not known; Comacchio is occasionally mentioned as the place of origin . The associated times are unknown. His predecessor was Dominicus Leo . His successor was the son of the murdered Doge Orso Ipato, Diodato , who served as the successor to Felix Cornicula for a year or two as Magister , but then from 742 to 755 as Doge. According to the chronicle of Doge Andrea Dandolo, Felix was brought back from exile. It is possible that Ravenna was reconquered from the Lombards by a Venetian fleet during the tenure of Felix Cornicula . This conquest is now dated in the autumn of 739.

Dating attempts and Venetian historiography

The traditional dating of all early medieval reigns is largely based on determinations that go back to the chronicle of Doge Andrea Dandolo , and thus to the more than half a millennium younger, state-controlled historiography of Venice. In accordance with the views of the fourteenth century, she attributed all essential achievements to the Doges, while the five years of the Magistri remained nebulous and were regarded, as it were, as a failed political experiment. At least Andrea Dandolo admits that the humble and peaceful Felix managed to calm the political situation and that he had the exiled Deusdedit brought back: “Hic vir humilis et pacificus Venetos discordes ad concordiam revocavit; et Deusdedit, occissi ducis filium, quem occissores exulaverant, repatriare fecit. "

The question of whether the short-lived office indicates a dominance of the Eastern Roman Empire in the lagoon or, on the contrary, speaks for a rebellion of the dominant families in the lagoon has long been debated. The focus of the research is the reconquest of the Eastern Roman Ravenna from the Lombards by a Venetian fleet, which is now postponed to the year 739 , which does not, as assumed in the tradition mentioned, fall during the reign of Doge Orso Ipato , but that of one of the Magistri militum .

Territories of the Eastern Roman-Byzantine Empire and the Longobard Empire in Italy around 744

Venetian historiography, which from the 14th century onwards was based predominantly on the work of Doge Andrea Dandolo, saw the battle for Ravenna as central against the background of the iconoclastic controversy and the “national resistance” of the Italians against Byzantine rule . This turned the Venetian naval operation into a turning point in the history of Venice, if not the Mediterranean. On the one hand, the Republic of Venice could be reinterpreted as the savior of Byzantium and, at the same time, of the Pope, who was in conflict with the Byzantine iconoclasts. On the other hand, the city (at that time still the different places of the lagoon) received trade privileges and rule over the Adriatic for the first time in the Byzantine Empire - an orientation that already referred to Enrico Dandolo , under whose leadership the Byzantine capital Constantinople was conquered in 1204.

Uncertain timing, reasons for the abolition of the Doge's office

As with his predecessors, Felix Cornicula's information about his reign has always differed greatly. Marco Guazzo completely withholds the office in his Cronica published in 1553 . According to "Orso Ipato terzo doge di Venezia", ​​who was made doge after him in 721 and spent nine years in office, Venice was without a doge for six years (from 730 to 736) "reggendosi per altri magistrati, & uffici “. The lagoon ruled itself through other magistrates and offices. From this it can be concluded that Felix Cornicula must have been a Magister militum from 732 to 733 . Michele Zappullo, in his Sommario istorico in 1609, set the year Orsos died at 729, which means that the magister in question was assigned a reign from 730 to 731.

But when it came to dating, the uncertainty was greater than these comparatively close dates would lead you to believe. In 1687 Jacob von Sandrart wrote in his work Kurtze and an increased description of the origin / recording / areas / and government of the world-famous Venice Republic that Orso 726 was “chosen” and murdered after eleven years, but he adds on the year of death: “ Others put this in the 680th year. ”This uncertainty in dating also appears elsewhere. In Volume 23 of the source series Rerum Italicarum Scriptores edited by Lodovico Antonio Muratori it is reported that Orso was elected in 711. In contrast, Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694) mentions the year 737 as the end of Orso's reign, with which he took over the traditional dating mentioned above.

Judgments on Felix Cornicula's administration

Until the end of the Republic of Venice (1797)

Heinrich Kellner explains in his Chronica , published in 1574, that it is the actual and short description that the parties to the dispute lived in Malamocco, so Kellner's laconic reasoning, "then they had no more pleasure in living at the time / that is why they voted in community a war colonel / who had the regiment and all administration / but one didn't wear this felch any longer then a jar. ”After the first“ war colonel ”it says succinctly:“ After im Felix Cornicula ”- apparently nothing was known about him. Overall, he comes to the verdict that after five years the “unhappy Ampt or regiment of the colonels of war” ended and so “the place came back under the regiment of the Hertzians”. Overall, he suggests that the Magistri were not able to settle the dispute in the lagoon, so that the inhabitants of the three arguing cities of Eraclea , Iesolo and Equilio left their cities after the battle in the “Canal Arco” and “went elsewhere ". In the Historia Veneta by Alessandro Maria Vianoli from 1680, which was translated into German under the title Der Venetianischen Herthaben Leben / Government, und Absterben 1686, the second master's name was "Felix Cornicula" and after the translation his title was "Master of Knighthood" (P. 42). Vianoli believes that the "master" who came into office after him in 738 had "Theodat Ipatum, the latter Hertzog's Ursi son / again called to his fatherland" and that Theodat had "the Comacchini position" "with general shouting of joy" / as some call him / enter in the year 738 ". According to this, Felix Cornicula was only in office in 738 and was inherited in office by the son of Doge Orso, who had been murdered two years earlier.

Vincentius Briemle mentions Felix Cornicula in his pilgrimage in 1727 just as little as the names of the other magistri , but believes that the office of “general in the militia” only existed “for a very short time”. "Theodatus" initially held the office for two years and then the Doge office was restored. Johann Heinrich Zedler mentions only the names of the magistrates in Volume 14 of his General State, War, Church and Scholars Chronicke from 1745 . In the meantime the year 737 had prevailed for their first assumption of office, but the title had been changed from Magister militum to Magister equitum . The cause of the overthrow is again sought in the person of Doge Orso, whose office was to be abolished and at the same time the power of the new head was to be curbed by the annuity principle. The Magistri equitum also appear with this title in the 40th volume of Zedler's large, complete Universal Lexicon of All Sciences and Arts . Johann Huebner's Kurtze questions from the Political Historia of 1710 remain even more laconic, but speaks of an “INTERREGNUM in Venice” after Orso “massacred”, an interregnum that lasted five years. This tendency to drop the magistri in the ranks of the rulers of Venice largely prevailed. At the same time, Marcellus , the second doge of the Venetian tradition, who is only mentioned as Magister militum in contemporary sources , had long since been added to the ranks of the doges without justification. The five years of the Magistri thus became the only interruption in the long chain of 120 Doges recognized by modern historiography.

Attempts to classify national states: between civil war and Mediterranean great power politics

Carlo Antonio Marin thought the establishment of the Magistri militum was a clever move by the people's assembly to end anarchy, because it gave power to a single man, if only for a year.

The role of the Magistri in the context of the nation state was reinterpreted even more . In his Breve corso di storia di Venezia of 1872, dedicated to popular education , Giuseppe Cappelletti said that the proximity of the Lombards threatened Venetian “freedom” and “national riches” (“nazionali ricchezze”). Regarding the chronological order, Cappelletti believes that the reconquest of Ravenna from the Lombards took place sometime between 726 and 735. In 737 the lagoon inhabitants finally murdered because they did not want to tolerate a doge over them, the Orso, which was so well-deserved for the fame and honor of the nation. In 738, "Felice Cornicola" took over the office, the existence of which the residents remembered considering their Roman descent, and which they immediately introduced. This incumbent was able to secure the peace in the lagoon.

August Friedrich Gfrörer († 1861) saw in his History of Venice, which was published posthumously in 1872, from its foundation to 1084, the Magister militum "as a colonel appointed by the imperial court at Constantinople". On Dominicus Leo, who ruled after him until 738, followed Felix Cornicula, who brought Deusdedit back. Andrea Dandolo believed that this was done for the purpose of reconciliation, and for this reason, and to make amends for the injustice to the father, Deusdedit (Diodato) himself was promoted to master's degree . “You can see,” says the author, “Orso’s party lifted its head again and it quickly came up” (p. 58). As Gfrörer assumes “there was a counter-attack by the Byzantine party”, because Jovianus followed again - the title hypatus is again an indication - followed by Johannes Fabriciacus in 741 (who was blinded in 742) (p. 59).

After the posthumous editor Dr. Johann Baptist von Weiß had forbidden the Italian translator Pietro Pinton to annotate Gfrörer's statements in the translation, Pinton's Italian version appeared in the Archivio Veneto in 1883 . Orso, since Gfrörer's chronology contradicts the sources, was not overthrown by Byzantine intrigues, but by an internal Venetian civil war, as described in Andrea Dandolo's Chronicon breve . Pinton himself assumed that the reconquest of Ravenna did not take place until around 740 (pp. 40–42).

Modern research

To this day the question remains open as to which side the first Magister militum is to be seen on, the Byzantine or the “autonomist” side. Until recently, research assumed an uprising by the Venetian ruling class, which in the end was no longer willing to submit to a Dux who no longer had any noteworthy support from the Exarch of Ravenna . Accordingly, argued Agostino Pertusi in 1964 , the annually changing magistri militum could be interpreted as the result of the growing ambitions of the groups prevailing in Venice, whereas the restoration of the Dogat could be interpreted as an increase in the Byzantine central power at the expense of the local ruling class. However, since Deusdedit was to be regarded as an exponent of Malamocco and no longer of the old headquarters of Heraclea , it was assumed, in contrast, that the group of families ruling in Malamocco had simply prevailed against those of Heraclea. Accordingly, with the murder of Orso, on the contrary, the Byzantine central power first returned in the form of the Magistri militum , against which Malamocco then resisted, as Gherardo Ortalli argued. The settlement of the epithet or title of Iubianus as Hypatus could therefore be based on a proximity to Byzantine power. It is unclear whether the Magistri had Venetian roots.

The classification of the reconquest of Ravenna in the time of the Magistri militum

Paulus Diaconus in conversation with Pope Gregory, whose vita he wrote (Carolingian fresco in St. Benedict's Church in Mals in South Tyrol , around 825)

The implied confusion regarding the dating of the battles for Ravenna found its way into modern historiography because of a single word in the description of the events by Paulus Deaconus , the source closest in time. This is the name of the Lombard king's son in connection with the battle for Ravenna as "regis nepus". This was stated in 2005 by Constantin Zuckerman. According to this, Ludo Moritz Hartmann took the view that Hildeprand , the nephew of the Lombard king, would hardly have been addressed as nepus had he already been king at the time of the battle for Ravenna. Since it can be deduced from Longobard sources that Hildeprand became king in the summer of 735 because it was believed that Liutprand would soon die (which he did not do), always after Hartmann, Ravenna had to be conquered before the coronation, i.e. before 735.

All reports and speculations ultimately go back to the meager information in the historical work of the Lombard historian Paulus Diaconus . He placed Hildeprand's coronation at the time when the coronation operators believed that his uncle, King Liutprand (who only died in 744), was dying (VI, 55). Paulus Diaconus, however, did not grant the newly crowned man a large share of royal power, and in connection with the loss of Ravenna, contrasted his capture with the manly ('viriliter') death of another defender of the city, a Vicentine . If one follows this logic, no more chronological conclusions can be drawn from the designation as a mere nepus .

Pietro Pinton had already suggested dating the battle for Ravenna to 740 in 1883 and again in 1893. He saw the sequence of the reports of Paulus Deacon as being correct in time and saw it as being more in the year 740. However, this chronological classification was largely ignored. Constantin Zuckerman arranged the events of the reconquest of Ravenna in the larger context of the "dark centuries" of Byzantium and came to the conclusion in 2005 that the conquest by the Venetians must have taken place in the autumn of 739, and thus at the time of the second Magister militum Felix Cornicle.

swell

  • Luigi Andrea Berto (ed.): Giovanni Diacono, Istoria Veneticorum (= Fonti per la Storia dell'Italia medievale. Storici italiani dal Cinquecento al Millecinquecento ad uso delle scuole, 2), Zanichelli, Bologna 1999 ( text edition based on Berto in the Archivio della Latinità Italiana del Medioevo (ALIM) from the University of Siena).
  • La cronaca veneziana del diacono Giovanni , in: Giovanni Monticolo (ed.): Cronache veneziane antichissime (= Fonti per la storia d'Italia [Medio Evo], IX), Rome 1890, p. 95 (with reference to the magistri it says there: "... deinde secundus illorum nominabatur Felix, cognomento cornicula, qui similiter illos unius anni spatio rexerat") ( digitized , PDF).
  • Ester Pastorello (Ed.): Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta aa. 460-1280 dC , (= Rerum Italicarum Scriptores XII, 1), Nicola Zanichelli, Bologna 1938, p. 115 ( digitized p. 114 f. )
  • Historia Langobardorum , overview and reproduction of the Codex: Cividale del Friuli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, XXVIII.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Marco Guazzo: Cronica di M. Marco Guazzo dal principio del mondo sino a questi nostri tempi ne la quale ordinatatamente contiensi l'essere de gli huomini illustri antiqui, & moderni, le cose, & i fatti di eterna memoria degni, occorsi dal principio del mondo fino à questi nostri tempi , Francesco Bindoni, Venice 1553, f. 167v and 168r. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Michele Zappullo: Sommario istorico , Gio: Giacomo Carlino & Costantino Vitale, Naples 1609, p. 316.
  3. ↑ Jakob von Sandrart: Kurtze and increased description of the origin / recording / areas / and government of the world famous Republick Venice , Nuremberg 1687, p. 12 ( digitized, p. 12 ).
  4. ^ RIS, vol. 23, Milan 1733, col. 934.
  5. ^ Samuel von Pufendorf : Introduction à l'histoire générale et politique de l'Univers , Vol. 2, Chaterlain, Amsterdam 1732, p. 67.
  6. ↑ Heinrich Kellner : Chronica that is Warhaffte actual and short description, all life in Venice , Frankfurt 1574, p. 2r – v ( digitized, p. 2r ).
  7. ↑ Alessandro Maria Vianoli : Historia veneta di Alessandro Maria Vianoli nobile veneto , Giacomo Herzt, Venice 1680, p. 36 f. ( Digitized version ).
  8. ↑ Alessandro Maria Vianoli : Der Venetianischen Herthaben life / government, and withering / from the first Paulutio Anafesto to / bit on the now-ruling Marcum Antonium Justiniani , Nuremberg 1686, translation ( digitized ).
  9. ↑ Vincentius Briemle, Johann Josef Pock: The through the three parts of the world, Europe, Asia and Africa, especially in the same to Loreto, Rome, Monte-Cassino, no less Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Sinai, [et] c. [Etc. and other holy places of the promised land employed devotional pilgrimage , first part: The journey from Munich through whole Welschland and back again , Georg Christoph Weber, Munich 1727, p. 188 ( digitized version ).
  10. ^ Johann Heinrich Zedler : General State, War, Church and Scholars Chronicke , Vol. 14, Leipzig 1745, p. 5 ( digitized version ).
  11. ↑ Large complete Universal Lexicon of all sciences and arts , Vol. 46, Leipzig / Halle 1745, Sp. 1196 ( digitized version ).
  12. ↑ Quoted from the 1714 edition: Johann Hübner : Kurtze Questions from the Political Historia , Part 3, new edition, Gleditsch and Son 1714, p. 574 ( digitized version ).
  13. ^ Carlo Antonio Marin : Storia civile e politica del commercio de 'veniziani , 8 vols., Coleti, Venice 1798-1808, vol. 1, Venice 1798, p. 182 f.
  14. ^ Giuseppe Cappelletti : Breve corso di storia di Venezia condotta sino ai nostri giorni a facile istruzione popolare , Grimaldo, Venice 1872, p. 25 f.
  15. ↑ August Friedrich Gfrörer : History of Venice from its foundation to the year 1084. Edited from his estate, supplemented and continued by Dr. JB Weiß , Graz 1872, p. 58 ( digitized version ).
  16. ^ Pietro Pinton: La storia di Venezia di AF Gfrörer , in: Archivio Veneto (1883) 23–63 ( digitized version ).
  17. ↑ "Il ritorno di nuovo ai duces [...] è da intendere come un ritorno alla normalità, cioè alla sovranità bizantina dell'esarco." ( Agostino Pertusi : L'impero bizantino e l'evolversi dei suoi interessi nell'alto Adriatico , in : Le origini di Venezia , Florence 1964, p. 69).
  18. ↑ "il trasferimento della sede a Malamocco […] die ad indicare una ripresa del processo autonomistico" ( Gherardo Ortalli : Venezia dalle origini a Pietro II Orseolo , in: Longobardi e Bizantini , Turin 1980, pp. 339-428, here: p . 367).
  19. ↑ This and the following according to Constantin Zuckerman: Learning from the Enemy and More: Studies in “Dark Centuries” Byzantium , in: Millennium 2 (2005) 79–135, esp. Pp. 85–94.
  20. ^ Pietro Pinton: Longobardi e veneziani a Ravenna. Nota critica sulle fonti , Balbi, Rome 1893, p. 30 f. and Ders .: Veneziani e Longobardi a Ravenna in: Archivio Veneto XXXVI11 (1889) 369-383 ( digitized version ).
  21. ↑ Constantin Zuckerman: Learning from the Enemy and More: Studies in “Dark Centuries” Byzantium , in: Millennium 2 (2005) 79–135, especially pp. 85–94.
personal data
SURNAME Felix Cornicula
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Magister militum of Venice
DATE OF BIRTH 7th century or 8th century
DATE OF DEATH 8th century