Margraviate of Eastern Liguria

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The Margraviate of Eastern Liguria ( Marca Liguria Orientale ) was a political unit in northern Italy from the middle of the 10th century. Other names for this area are: Marca Januensis - Genoese Mark - due to its capital, Genoa , and Marca Obertengha after the first Marquis Oberto, Count of Luni . It included the rectangle of Genoa, Luni , Tortona , Parma and Piacenza ; indirectly also the rule over Corsica and Sardinia belonged to it.

In 950 Berengar became king of Italy from Ivrea . At the beginning of the following year, he completed the reorganization of military structures south of the Po from which his predecessor Hugo I . had begun with the aim of being better equipped against attacks by the Saracens from the sea. He created three new territories for which he appointed margraves with loyal followers from the very beginning:

  • The Marca Liguria Orientale, which he gave to Oberto von Luni, the progenitor of the Lombard Obertenghi
  • The Marca Liguria Occidentale (Westliguren), which followed in the West, and he Aleramo, Count of Vercelli was, the ancestor of the Frankish origin aleramici (and was also named after him Marca Aleramica) and
  • The Marca di Torino , which lay further to the west, and which he gave to Arduin Glaber, Count of Auriate , the head of the Franconian Arduine ; this margravate also bore the name of Marca Arduinica after him.

The area north of the Po (with the exception of the area around Vercelli) remained as a reduced Margraviate Ivrea (or Marca Anscarica - after another name for the now ruling House of Burgundy-Ivrea ).

The margrave title was soon borne by all members of the Obertos family, but the margraviate itself was not permanent. The family mainly retained the south-east of the margraviate, where the Pallavicini and Malaspina lines could hold their own larger margravates.

literature

  • Roberto Ricci: La marca della Liguria orientale e gli Obertenghi (945-1056). Una Storia Complessa e una Storiografia problematica (= Istituzioni e Società 8). Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, Spoleto 2007, ISBN 978-88-7988-118-0 .
  • Giuseppe Sergi: I confini del potere. Marche e signorie fra due regni medievali (= Biblioteca Studio 17). Einaudi, Torino 1995, ISBN 88-06-13058-7 .