Insubria

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Insubria ( Italian Insubria , Lombardy Insübria ) refers to the region between the Po and the pre-alpine lakes, which was inhabited by the Insubrians in ancient times . According to Titus Livius , in the fourth century BC the Insubrians BC Milan founded.

history

In the course of history, the term insubria has found various uses. This was used to describe:

The pre-Roman times

Several Latin authors, such as Pliny the Elder or Strabo , speak of the population of the Insubres . Polybius defines them as the largest ethnic group north of the Po. However, these authors never use the name Insubria to denote the territory of this people, give concise and contradicting information about it, and situate the Insubres in different parts of the foothills of the Alps. Polybios settles them z. B. at the edge of the mouths of the Po. The Tabula Peutingeriana contains the name Insubres , but they are located far from Mediolanum , in the Eporedia area . In fact, in prehistoric and protohistoric times, the area was populated by other peoples such as the Orobians, the Comensians, the Lepontians , the Helvetians , the Raetians , the Bergellians and various Ligurian tribes .

The area of ​​the insubres on the Tabula Peutingeriana

It is likely that Titus Livius meant a larger organization, a foedus , made up of numerous Cisalpine tribes by Insubres , which recognized the predominance of the Insubres .

The archaeological evidence confirms the sparse information. In the area between the Serio and Adda rivers in the east, the Sesia in the west, the Alpine valleys of the Toce , Ticino and Moësa in the north and the Po in the south, development began in the thirteenth century BC. A homogeneous civilization called the Golasecca culture . This culture had several capitals. The larger of these was Como , which at that time stood west of today's city, on the hills south of Spina Verde.

Between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 4th century BC, Celtic tribes , carriers of the La Tène culture , crossed the Alps and invaded this area. They caused the decline of the Golasecca culture. Most of them were insubres . They settled in what is now Lombardy. After Titus Livius they founded Milan .

The Romanization of Insubria

The Insubrians , along with the Gauls , came into conflict with the Romans , who wanted to extend their rule to the Alpine ridge. The coalition suffered 225 BC. A first defeat in the battle of Telamon , then again in 222 BC. At the battle of Clastidium and Acerrae . The Romans occupied the area. This occupation was very short, because four years later Hannibal found loyal allies in the Insubres. At the Battle of Lake Trasimeno, the Insubrian knight Ducario avenged himself in 217 BC. His people and killed the consul Gaius Flaminius , who had fought against the Celts . Only 194 BC BC Rome with the consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus could finally win against the Insubrians.

From then on, Insubria, together with the areas inhabited by the Gauls , became part of the Roman province of Gallia Cisalpina . 42 BC The province was finally abolished and integrated into the Roman Empire .

The process of Romanization was slow but unstoppable. The local culture survived for several centuries in the peripheral Alpine valleys, far from the main communication routes. Archeology shows that Romanization only began in the first century AD. Celtic symbols of identity are only used sporadically or in the Alpine regions for the dead in the graves. The Insubrians signed the foedera aequa with the Romans , with which they recognized the supremacy of the occupiers and promised the Romans eternal loyalty. In return, they received the integrity of their territory. The Via Aemilia and Via Postumia roads , important parts of the Roman road network, avoid the Insubria area. In the Augustan era , the Insubrians were still buried with La Tène style fibulae , tools and pottery, while the use of balms and amphorae spreads from the Roman tradition.

The high Middle Ages

The process of Romanization can be considered complete when Diocletian appointed Milan as imperial capital in 286 AD , a status that was maintained until 402 AD when Flavius ​​Honorius transferred the imperial seat to Ravenna .

In AD 568, with the immigration of the Lombards , the legal and political structure of the Roman Empire underwent a profound change. A new, larger identity was created that covers the entire Po Valley, which derives its name from that of the new German people: Lombardy . The subsequent political fragmentation of Regnum reduced Lombardy to its core area.

The Duchy of Milan

The Duchy of Milan at the beginning of the 15th century under the Duke Gian Galeazzo , the time of greatest expansion.

Later the name Insubrien is related to the Duchy of Milan (1395–1796).

During the period of greatest expansion around 1400 under Gian Galeazzo Visconti , the duchy included all of Lombardy (with the exception of Mantova ); in the Piedmont region : Vercelli , Novara , Alessandria and Asti ; in Veneto : Verona , Vicenza and Belluno , in Trentino : Riva del Garda ; in Emilia-Romagna : Parma , Piacenza , Reggio nell'Emilia and Bologna ; in Tuscany : Pisa , Lucca and Siena ; in Liguria : Sarzana and in Switzerland , the Ticino and the Italian-speaking parts of Graubünden ( Misox , Bergell , Puschlav and Calancatal ).

From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, scholars at the Duke of Milan court used the terms insubria and insubrer to promote awareness of unity and national identity, as a counterbalance to the very lively local autonomies.

The coat of arms of the Visconti, dukes of Milan.

Insubria describes the core of the extensive Duchy of Milan , as the writings of Benzo D'Alessandria, Giovanni Simonetta, Bernardino Corio and Andrea Alciato show. But even after the fall of the independence of Milan , the identity of Insubria does not disappear. In the middle of the eighteenth century Gabriele Verri affirmed the meaning of the term with the expression: " Insubrer sumus, non latini" .

In 1766 the Milanese composer Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini wrote the dramatic composition in two acts L'Insubria consolata: componimento drammatico ("The consoled insubria: dramatic work").

The Cisalpine Republic

A little later, in 1797, when the Repubblica Cisalpina was born , Napoleon had a commemorative coin minted at the Mint in Milan . On the front was the word All'Italico ("The Italian"); on the reverse "All'Insubria libera" ("The Free Insubrien"), with an allegory of the French Republic: a helmeted woman, to her right the peace who puts a Phrygian cap on the head of the new republic, with a genius ( good spirit) at their feet. In 1801 Giovanni Torti wrote the song Per la proclamata libertà dell'Insubria ("To proclaim the freedom of Insubria"), which glorified the Cisalpine Republic and Napoleon as liberators. Gabriele Rossetti did something similar at the same time. Even the fifteen-year-old Alessandro Manzoni quotes insubria several times in his Del trionfo della libertà ("Triumph of Freedom") from 1801 and, referring to the Cisalpine Republic, glorifies the ideals of the French Revolution .

The insubrica region

Today the term is used as a synonym for the area of ​​the Comunità di lavoro Regio Insubrica (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Regio Insubrica). The community, founded in 1995, includes the provinces of Varese , Como , Verbano-Cusio-Ossola , Lecco , Novara and the Swiss canton of Ticino . The region comprises the area of ​​the pre-alpine lakes on the border between Switzerland and Italy , where Italian and West Lombard dialects are spoken.

It is an amalgamation under private law in accordance with the Madrid Declaration of 1980 on cross-border cooperation, with the aim of promoting cooperation and integration in the region of the Italian-Swiss pre-Alpine lakes ( Lake Como , Lake Lugano , Lake Maggiore ) . The current symbol of the region consists of six pictograms with the first letters of the founding regions of the region (in the order Ticino , Province of Como , Province of Varese , Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola ) in Lepontic spelling (Lugano alphabet).

The geobotanical insubria

In geobotany the term Insubrien describes a (smaller) sub-area of ​​the geographical region Insubrien described here . This extends around the northern shores of the western northern Italian lakes from Lago di Orta in the west to an imaginary line between Lago di Lugano and Lago di Como in the east. At an altitude between approx. 200 m above sea level. d. M. (lake level of Lake Maggiore) and approx. 500-600 m above sea level. d. M. a special, insubric vegetation can be found here. Oak-birch forests and hazel-ash forests with the sweet chestnut , which was introduced in the area as an archaeophyte by the Romans around the turn of the times, as the predominant tree species grow here on acidic soils. Sticky sage and snow-white grove can be named as typical representatives of the herb layer . This special, sub - oceanic vegetation in this area is caused by geological factors (acidic metamorphic rocks ), but mainly by climatic factors, namely higher rainfall (especially in summer) than at the same latitude further to the east.

See also

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The term is not mentioned in the Lombard dictionaries: Francesco Cherubini, "Vocabolario milanese-italiano", Dall'imp. regia stamperia, Milan, 1840. Giuseppe Banfi, Francesco Cherubini, "Vocabolario milanese-italiano ad uso della gioventù", Presso La libreria di educazione di A. Ubicini, Milan, 1857. Eugenio Cappelletti, "Vocabolario milanese-italiano-francese", Dalla Tipografia Boniardi-Pogliani di E. Besozzi, Milan, 1848. Pietro Monti, "Vocabolario della città e della diocesi di Como: con esempi e riscontri di lingue antiche e modern", Società tip. de 'classici italiani, Milan, 1845. Cletto Arrighi, "Dizionario milanese-italiano col repertorio italiano-milanese", Hoepli Editore, 1978.
  2. ↑ Livius, Historiae, 5, 34.
  3. ^ Renzo Dionigi, "Insubres e Insubria, saggio bibliografico e antologia di fonti", Nicolini, 2002, Renzo Dionigi.
  4. ↑ Gaetano Giucci, Storia della vita e del pontificato di Pio VII , 1864, p. 163.
  5. ↑ Francesco Cardinali, Nuova raccolta d'autori italiani che trattano del moto dell'acque , J. Marsigli, 1825, p. 338.
  6. ↑ Stelio Giurleo, Storia di alcune parole della lingua italiana , Brenner, 1988, p 114th
  7. ↑ Gaius Plinius Secundus Maior, Naturalis historia .
  8. ^ Strabo, Geografia, 5-6
  9. ↑ Polybios , Storiae , 2.17.
  10. ^ R. Corbella, G. Minella, GP Gallinelli, Insubria, le radici di una comunità dai Celti all'Austria Felix , Varese, 2004, Regione Lombardia, Provincia di Varese e Comune di Varese, p. 2f.
  11. ↑ U. Laffi, La provincia della Gallia Cisalpina , “Athenaeum”, 80, 1992, pp. 5-23.
  12. ↑ MT Grassi, La romanizzazione degli insubri: celti e romani in Transpadana attraverso la documentazione storica ed archeologica , ET Edizioni, 1995.
  13. ↑ Especially in the lepontic area which corresponds to the present Verbano and Ticino .
  14. ^ G. Cera, "La via Postumia da Genova a Cremona", L'Erma, 2000.
  15. ^ R. Corbella, G. Minella, GP Gallinelli, "Insubria, le radici di una comunità dai Celti all'Austria Felix", Varese, 2004, edito da Regione Lombardia, Provincia di Varese e Comune di Varese, p. 3.
  16. ↑ Cfr. G. Rohlfs, Studi e ricerche su lingua e dialetti d'Italia , Sansone, Firenze, 1972, pp. 3-5.
  17. ↑ Cfr. S. Gasparri, Prima della Nazione. Popoli, etnie e segni fra Antichità e Medioevo , p. 225.
  18. ^ Marco Formentini, Il Ducato di Milano, 1877, pp. 364f.
  19. ^ Gustavo Chiesi, Luigi Borsari, Giuseppe Isidoro Arneudo, La patria: geografia dell 'Italia. Cenni storici, costumi, topografia, 1894, p. 7f.
  20. ↑ G. Piccinni, Il medioevo , 2004, p. 236f.
  21. ^ Renzo Dionigi, "Insubres e Insubria nella cartografia antica", Nicolini, 2002
  22. ^ In 1535, with the death of Francesco II Sforza, the legitimate male line of the dukes of Milan expired . The title went back to Emperor Charles V of Habsburg.
  23. ↑ De Ortu et progressu juris Mediolanensis prodromus , 1747. In F. Venturi, Settecento riformatore: da Muratori a Beccaria it is said that with this formula Gabriele Verri succeeded in a formative way of distancing himself from the classical tradition that the Italian nations in those years denoted to express
  24. ↑ The work was written on the occasion of the wedding between Archduke Ferdinand Karl von Österreich-Este and Maria Beatrice d'Este in the Milan Cathedral on October 15, 1771, with which the Archduke became Governor of Milan .
  25. ↑ Armando Balduino, Storia letteraria d'Italia, l'Ottocento, PICCIN, 1990, p. 69.
  26. ↑ Alessandro Manzoni, Del trionfo della libertà, 1882
  27. ↑ See below, literature: NZZ, April 2, 2018
  28. ↑ The provinces of Lecco and Novara had since 1997 an associate and was in 2007 a member
  29. ↑ E. Oberdorfer, The insubric vegetation complex, its structure and demarcation from the sub-Mediterranean vegetation in northern Italy and in southern Switzerland, contribution. Forsch. SW-Deutschl., 1964, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 141-187
  30. ↑ F. Erdnüß, Ticino: Nature and culture in old gardens, Biology of our time, 4/2006 (36), pp. 244–250