Johannes Fabriciacus

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According to the Venetian tradition, Johannes Fabriciacus or Johannes Fabriacus , or Giovanni Fabriziaco , also Ciani Fabriciati , was the last of the five magistri militum who, after the murder of Doge Orso Ipato , in the years 737 to 742, the settlements in the Ruled the Venice Lagoon for one year each. Johannes Fabriciacus was the fifth of these magistrates , if one follows this tradition, in office from 741 to 742. Neither the place of birth nor the place of death are known, as well as the associated times. His predecessor was Julianus Hypathus ; his successor, albeit now as Doge, was Diodato Ipato , the son of the murdered Doge. John was deposed and blinded.

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 state-controlled historiography of Venice in the mid-14th century. In accordance with the views of this epoch, in which Venice had risen to become a great power in the Mediterranean, she attributed all essential achievements to the Doges, while the five years of the Magistri remained nebulous, and were regarded as a failed political experiment and almost ignored.

The question of whether the short-lived office proves 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 been debated for a long time. 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 was largely based 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, in the Byzantine Empire, the city received trade privileges and rule over the Adriatic for the first time - an orientation that already referred to Enrico Dandolo , under whose leadership the Byzantine capital Constantinople was conquered in 1204. The reconquest of Ravenna did not fit into the picture of rather weak magistrates by the grace of Constantinople. The end of this short episode was reported all the more brutally, because the last exponent was robbed of his sight.

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

As with his predecessors, the details of Johannes' reign have always differed significantly. Marco Guazzo also 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 John must have been a Magister militum from 735 to 736 . In his Sommario istorico in 1609, Michele Zappullo set the election year Orsos to 724 and the year of death to 729, which means that the magister in question was assigned a reign from 734 to 735.

But when it came to dating, the uncertainty was greater than what these dates, which are comparatively close together, suggest. In 1687 Jacob von Sandrart wrote in his work Kurtze and an enlarged description of the origin / recording / territories / and government of the world-famous republic of Venice that Orso was murdered in 737, but he adds on the year of death: "This is done by others in the 680 Year set. ”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.

Assumptions about Johannes' 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 all the people who moved to Venice lived the warring parties of the lagoon in Malamocco, so Kellner's laconic reasoning, “then they had no desire to move to the heart at the time / voted for it She was a war colonel in the community / who had the regiment and all the administration / but one didn't wear this felch any longer then a jar. ”Overall, he comes to the conclusion that after five years the“ unhappy office or regiment of the war colonels ”ended and so on “The place came back under the regiment of the Hertzians”. 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 “moved 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 Die Aussterben 1686, the fifth and last master's degree was called "Johannes Fabriciacus" and after the translation, his title was like that of its four predecessors, "Masters of Knighthood". Vianoli believes that the “master” who left office after him at the end of his reign was “because he did not stay / like his ancestors / in the prescribed registers / in that he had no love of the spirit / with the deprivation of bodily / Chastised and punished by the common people ”(p. 46). Eraclea and Iesolo had therefore exhausted themselves so much in a war, especially during the battle in the "Canal Arco", that their population left the cities. Out of “changelessness”, which “seems to be almost innate to him, the Populus,” and because “he is always eager for new changes”, and “takes the length and currency of a thing most sullenly”, is the Doge's office in that Person has been restored by Diodato Ipato (p. 47).

Vincentius Briemle mentions Johannes 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”. Johann Heinrich Zedler mentions only the names of the magistrates in Volume 14 of his Allgemeine Staats-, Kriegs-, Kirchen- und Schehrten-Chronicke , printed in Leipzig in 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 still 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 election for one year. 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. The 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 the contemporary sources , had long since been accepted into the ranks of the doges without justification. This made the five years of the Magistri the only interruption in the long line of supposedly 120 doges.

In his German translation of an English edition of the travelogue from Blainville, which appeared in 1765, Johann Tobias Köhler mentions the Magister as "Johann or Ciani Fabriciati".

In 1769 Johann Friedrich Le Bret presented a number of generalities and tried to weigh them up against each other, but without being able to hide the fact that the sources for the fall of the last master's degree could not be determined from the sources. And yet it reflects the success of the thoroughly legitimizing Venetian historiography insofar as, in his opinion, it was the wisdom of Venetian legislation that was able to prevent the atrocities and unrest of “the people” that blinded, killed or chased everyone who owned his “Freedom” cropped: “The last one was called Johannes Fabriacus or Fabriciacus. But under him the internal unrest broke out again. If the Venetian historians themselves did not portray their ancestors to us as the most troubled minds, we might not be decent to cover up this abuse in their history. Such a group of people had no legislature who would have weighed the duties and obligations with the same balance. They chose a prince or a weak man under whom their liberty triumphed. If he did not act according to their wishes, they would tear out his eyes or beat him to death. Either their rulers did not understand the art of government, or the people were the most restless, who used their power to demand a new government almost every ten years. All the more we have to accept the wisdom of the later Venetian legislators right that they succeeded in forming the people, which especially in Venice always remains the same, according to the true conditions against the state. With Fabrianus the warlike dignity ceased. He was the second unfortunate regent of the Venetians, whose eyes were gouged out and chased away. "

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

Carlo Antonio Marin is quite different ; he thought the establishment of the Magistri militum was a clever move by the people's assembly to end the 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”). 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. 742 took over from the ranks of the Magistri as fifth "Giovanni Fabriziaco" the office, but he drove the opponents Eraclea and Equilio into a second bloody battle ("un altra sanguinosa battaglia") in the "canale dell'Arco". After the people exposed him as a secret warmonger and imprisoned him, the author describes in detail the cruel act, “secondo l'uso dei Greci”.

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". He believes that by Constantinople "in 740 Jovianus was proclaimed Magister militum", just as on the Byzantine initiative he was followed in 741 by "Johannes Febriciacus", who was blinded in 742 (p. 59). For the nickname “Febriciacus”, Gfrörer provided the explanation “the person suffering from fever” (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 . Pinton's own illustration 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 740, at the time of the fifth of the Magistri (pp. 40-42), that is, at the time of Johannes Febriciacus.

Modern research

The question of which side the fifth Magister militum is to be seen on, the Byzantine or the “autonomist” side, remains open to this day . 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 royal nephew 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, although his uncle, who was dying at that time, survived the disease and lived until 744, Ravenna had to be conquered, always according to Hartmann, before the coronation, i.e. before 735 be.

Paulus Deacon, however, did not give the newly crowned a large share of the royal power in the following period. On the contrary, in connection with the loss of Ravenna, he contrasted his capture with the manly ('viriliter') death of another defender of the city, the Peredeus Vicentinus dux : "Peredo viriliter pugnans occubuit". If one follows this logic, no more chronological conclusions can be drawn from the designation as a mere nepus . Then it is a sharp criticism of Hildeprand's behavior.

Pietro Pinton had already suggested dating the battle for Ravenna to the year 740 in 1883 and again in 1893. He saw the sequence of the accounts of Paul the deacon as chronologically correct. Constantin Zuckerman arranged the events of the reconquest of Ravenna in the larger context of the "dark centuries" of Byzantium and in 2005 came to the conclusion that the conquest by the Venetians must have taken place in the autumn of 739. He does not consider Hartmann's conclusion about the Nepus name to be sound.

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. ^ Johann Heinrich Zedler: 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. ↑ Johann Tobias Köhler (transl.): The Lord von Blainville, former secretary of the embassy of the States General of the United Netherlands at the Spanish Court, travel description especially through Italy containing a description of Venice, the way to Rome and of Rome itself with the surrounding area , vol. 2 , Dept. 1, Meyersche Buchhandlung, Lemgo 1765, p. 48 ( digitized version ).
  14. ^ Johann Friedrich Le Bret : State history of the Republic of Venice, from its origin to our times , part 1, Leipzig / Riga 1769, p. 100 ( digitized version ).
  15. ^ Carlo Antonio Marin: Storia civile e politica del commercio de 'veniziani , 8 vols., Coleti, Venice 1798-1808, vol. 1, Venice 1798, p. 182 f.
  16. ^ Giuseppe Cappelletti: Breve corso di storia di Venezia condotta sino ai nostri giorni a facile istruzione popolare , Grimaldo, Venice 1872, p. 26 ( digitized version ).
  17. ↑ 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 ).
  18. ^ Pietro Pinton: La storia di Venezia di AF Gfrörer , in: Archivio Veneto (1883) 23–63 ( digitized version ).
  19. ↑ "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).
  20. ↑ "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).
  21. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ "Quem Langobardi vita excedere existimantes, eius nepotem Hildeprandum foras muros civitatis ad basilicam sanctae Dei genetricis, quae Ad Perticas dicitur, regem levaverunt." (Paulus Diaconus VI, 55). The coronation came because it was believed that his father would soon die. However, he did not die until 744.
  23. ^ 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 ).
  24. ↑ 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 Johannes Fabriciacus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Magister militum of Venice
DATE OF BIRTH 7th century or 8th century
DATE OF DEATH 8th century