John of Grado

John of Grado , more rarely John of Trieste , in Italian literature Giovanni di Grado or da Trieste (* in Trieste ; † 802 in Grado ), was Patriarch of Grado from 766 to 802 .

Life

John was born in Trieste, which was under the rule of the Lombards . The sources for the time before 766 do not give any information about his life. This year, as is generally assumed, he should have succeeded Vitalianus Patriarch of Grado.

A few years later, the conflict between the superimposed Frankish Empire under Charlemagne and the Lombard under Desiderius the internal conflicts around the Venice lagoon , but also between Grado and Aqueileja , both Patriarch seats.

John asked Pope Stephen III. , who was elected in August 768 not only to intervene against the Longobards in favor of the "Gradensis Ecclesia", but also to force the subordination of the bishops of Istria to the Patriarchate of Grado, which had the opportunity of the mess that had caused the advance of the Longobards , had exploited to evade its supremacy . In his response, the Pope (probably between 771 and January 24, 772, the day of his death) asked the prelates to submit to Grado. But with the advance of the Franks in the conquest of the Longobard Empire (up to 774), and then also of Istria, the bishops continued their secession efforts, especially as they faced new tasks within the framework of the Frankish system of rule. With the new Pope Hadrian I , the situation changed insofar as he announced the efforts of the patriarch to the Frankish king in October 775.

This was done in agreement with the Venetian Doge Johannes and his son and co-regent Mauritius (II.). But this agreement changed in the context of the growing Carolingian pressure that was exerted on the lagoon insofar as the local church magnates were partly involved, but some also rejected this dominance. This was particularly true for further splits in the form of a new diocese, as envisaged by the islands of the Ducat of Venice, which were becoming more independent. Around 798, John of Grado therefore opposed the plans of his namesake in the Doge's office to appoint a young Greek named Cristoforo as the new bishop of Olivolo-Rialto.

The situation had come to a head since, at John's instigation, in 785 all Venetian merchants had been driven out of the Pentapolis - that is, the five cities of Rimini , Pesaro , Fano , Senigallia and Ancona  - and Venice's trade in the Adriatic was threatened. After the death of Doge Mauritius I in 797, his son and successor John continued the conflict, which escalated through the said rejection of the Greek at the bishopric of Olivolo. The policy of leaning towards the Franks and the reigning into the island environment prompted the new Doge to send his son Mauritius (II) with a fleet against Grado and to have the bishop murdered. To do this, the younger Mauritius had the prelate overthrow from a high tower.

Even the oldest Venetian sources, namely the Chronica patriarcharum Gradensium (p. 394), the Chronica de singulis patriarchis (p. 14), the Origo civitatum , or the Chronicon Gradense (p. 47) report on the burial in the Gradensian church of Sant 'Eufemia , while the 14th century Chronicle of Andrea Dandolo tells of his burial in the Basilica of St. Mark (p. 126).

The latter also reports how the murdered man's nephew, Fortunatus , received the pallium on March 21, 803 . However, he first had to flee to Treviso in order to place himself under the protection of the Frankish King Karl . Fortunatus was only able to return to Grado in 810, seven years after the fall of the two Doges.

swell

The narrative sources include Iohannes Diaconus Venetus, Chronicon Venetum , ed. By Georg Heinrich Pertz ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , Scriptores, VII), Hanover 1846, p. 13, or La cronaca veneziana del diacono Giovanni , in: Giovanni Monticolo (Ed.): Cronache veneziane antichissime (= Fonti per la storia d'Italia [Medio Evo], IX), Rome 1890, pp. 59–171. There is also the Chronicon Gradense , edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz, p. 47 (he incorrectly assigns the chronicle to the chronicler Johannes Diaconus ) and the Chronica patriarcharum Gradensium , edited by Georg Waitz , p. 394 and 396 as well as the Cronica de singulis patriarchis Nove Aquileie , ed. by Giovanni Monticolo, in Fonti per la storia d'Italia [Medio Evo], IX, Rome 1890, pp. 9, 14 and the Origo civitatum Italiae seu Venetiarum (Chron. Altinate et Chron. Gradense) , ed. by Roberto Cessi , in: Fonti per la storia d'Italia [Medio Evo], LXXIII, Rome 1933, pp. 44, 124. Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum , ed. by Georg Waitz, is fundamental for the entire epoch , Ludwig Bethmann , MGH, Script. rer. Long. et Ital. saec. VI-IX, Hanover 1878, p. 78 f. (II, 10).

The various collections of letters, such as the Gregorii III epistulae , edited by Wilhelm Gundlach , Ernst Dümmler , MGH, Epistolae, III, Berlin 1898–99, pp. 711–715, or Adriani I epistulae , in: Jacques Paul Migne : Patrologia Latina , XCVIII, coll. 288–290 are just as important for individual questions as the Codice diplomatico longobardo , Naples 1852–1855, IV, 5, n. 945 and 946, or the Codice diplomatico istriano , by Pietro Kandler , Trieste 1862-1865, Vol. I, n. 42 and 43, published. For the local church history , the Concilia aevi Karolini , ed. By Albert Werminghoff , MGH, Concilia, II, 1, 1979, n.47 should also be consulted.

For the period before 1000, the Documenti relativi alla storia di Venezia anteriori al Mille published by Roberto Cessi , in particular vol. I: Secoli V-IX , Padua 1942, here: n. 30, pp. 46-49 ( digitized ) and n . 31, p. 50 f. ( Digitized version ), contemporary documents, while Andrea Dandolos Chronica per extensum descripta , ed. By Ester Pastorello ( Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ), 2nd edition, XII, 1, p. 126 already filters strongly in the sense of the Venetian state historiography.

literature

• Giorgio Fedalto: Organizzazione ecclesiastica e vita religiosa nella Venetia maritima , in Antonio Carile , Giorgio Fedalto: Le origini di Venezia , Bologna 1978, p. 315 ff., 341, 344 f.
• Heinrich Schmidinger : Il patriarcato di Aquileia , in: Carlo Guido Mor , Heinrich Schmidinger (ed.): I poteri temporali dei vescovi in ​​Italia e Germania nel Medioevo , Bologna 1979, pp. 144, 148 f.
• Giuseppe Cuscito: La Chiesa aquileiese , in: Storia di Venezia , Vol. I, Rome 1992, p. 385.
• Gherardo Ortalli : Il Ducato e la "civitas Rivoalti" tra Carolingi, Bizantini e Sassoni , in: Storia di Venezia , I, Rome 1992, pp. 726-728.
• Daniela Rando : Una Chiesa di frontiera. Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche veneziane nei secoli VI-XII , Bologna 1994, pp. 14, 16, 18 f., 21, 44, 112, n. 9, 10, 11.

• Harald Krahwinkler: Friuli in the early Middle Ages. History of a region from the end of the fifth to the end of the tenth century (= publications by the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. 30). Böhlau, Wien et al. 1992, ISBN 3-205-05409-1 , pp. 83, 120, 172, 177, 179-180, 199, 214, 216, 218, 220, 231, 237-238.
• Andrea Bedina:  Giovanni. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 55:  Ginammi – Giovanni da Crema. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2000.
• Johann Samuelansch : General encyclopedia of the sciences and arts . Section 2, Theil 22. Leipzig 1843, p. 151, sub.uni-goettingen.de .

Remarks

1. ↑ In the Istoria Veneticorum (p. 124) it is said that he is "de nacione Istriae Tergestine civitatis".
2. ^ Paul Fridolin Kehr : Italia pontificia , VII, 2, Berlin 1925, pp. 34–41, 127–129, here p. 39.
3. ↑ Origo civitatum Italiae seu Venetiarum (Chron. Altinate et Chron. Gradense), ed. R. Cessi, in Fonti per la storia d'Italia [Medio Evo], LXXIII, Roma 1933, p. 44.

predecessor	Office	successor
Vitalianus	Patriarch of Grado 767-802	Fortunatus II.
John I.	Bishop of Trieste 759–767	Mauritius