Margraviate of Verona

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Banner of the Margraviate of Verona
Italy around 1000

The margraviate of Verona ( Mark Verona , Mark Verona and Aquileia , Veronese Mark ) was a medieval dominion, the territory of which in fact encompassed the whole of northeast Italy . In 952 it was forced from the Italian King Berengar II and given to the Duke of Bavaria as a fief. The capital of the march was the city of Verona . The de facto end of the margravate is to be set at 1167, the foundation of the Lombard League .

Prehistory: Carolingian Mark Verona and Berengar's Mark Verona and Aquileia

As early as 774, after the Longobard campaign of Charlemagne , the conquered Longobard duchy of Friuli became a march of Verona . This was lost again to Eastern Franconia through the splitting up of the imperial territories under the late Carolingians , the majority of the region was the Friuli march .

Margrave Berengar I of Friuli († 924), who became king of Italy in 888 and Roman emperor in 915 , moved his center of power to Verona and thus founded the Marca Veronensis et Aquileiensis . This extended over the whole of Veneto (except Venice ) and today's Friuli-Venezia Giulia with the Mark Aquileia , as well as Istria , in the northwest the county of Trento was part of the brand area.

Margraviate history

After the defeat of the Italian King Berengar II, the grandson of Berengar I, in 951 against Otto I , this mark was separated from the Kingdom of Italy in 952 at the Reichstag in Augsburg , as the margraviate of Verona was annexed to the Duchy of Bavaria and Duke Heinrich I. given to fief .

Italy in 1050 with the margraviate of Verona-Aquileia

The Bavarian ducal house was involved in all uprisings in the Holy Roman Empire in the last third of the 10th century, despite family ties to the Saxon royal house . So it happened that under the Bavarian Duke Heinrich II , known as the brawler , the dispute with Emperor Otto II escalated. After Heinrich's defeat in 976, this led to the downsizing of the Duchy of Bavaria. Otto raised Carinthia to an independent duchy and handed over the margraviate of Verona, including the brands of Istria and Krain (Krain was part of Carinthia until 1040), to the new duke as a fief. From now on, the acting margraves were no longer the dukes of Bavaria, but the Carinthian dukes, who from now on ruled the margraviate in personal union.

In 1004, the later Emperor Heinrich II. Spun off the County of Trento from the Verona march and handed it over to the Bishop of Trento as the Hochstift Trento .

In the year 1056 Konrad III. Duke of Carinthia and Margrave of Verona. This was a native of Franconia and, as a foreigner, did not succeed in taking over his rule. After his death in 1061, the margraviate fell to Duke Berthold I of the Zähringer family . During Berthold's reign, the Istrian peninsula was split off from the margravate, which was elevated to an independent margraviate in 1070. Since Berthold, as a foreigner, also had problems enforcing his rights, the Duchy of Carinthia and the Margraviate of Verona fell to the Carinthian family of Eppenstein in 1077 after his death . Some official acts as court lords in Verona have been handed down from the Eppensteiners.

In 1077, in the course of the investiture dispute, the city of Aquileia and the other areas of the patriarchate , that is most of Friuli, were separated from the margravate, given their own imperial and count rights and handed over to the Patriarch of Aquileia , Sieghard .

The death of the Carinthian Duke Heinrich III. and the associated extinction of the ruling family of the Eppensteiners in 1122 led to the duchy and margraviate of Verona falling to Heinrich's godchild, the Spanheimer Heinrich IV.

Meanwhile the economy in northern Italy prospered and the citizens in the cities grew stronger and strived for autonomy. The city lords tried to shake off the supremacy of the empire.

In 1151, Duke Heinrich V of Carinthia lost the margraviate of Verona by royal decree of Conrad III. It was given to Heinrich's uncle Hermann III. to hand over. Like many of their predecessors, the Baden family had problems maintaining their rule. Hermann is even referred to as the titular Margrave of Verona.

After King Conrad III. Had never seen himself in Italy and the power of the empire over the cities was gone, Friedrich Barbarossa wanted to take the reins more firmly in hand with the court day on the Ronkalischen fields and in 1162 destroyed the stubborn Milan . Even the new Veronese city lords had nothing good to expect from the emperor and that is why the Veronese League was founded in 1164 under the leadership of Venice , which was expanded in 1167 in the Lombard League . This federation comprised the northern Italian cities under the leadership of Milan , had the fight against the Hohenstaufen imperial policy and can be seen as the de facto end of the margraviate of Verona.

Further development

After the Battle of Legnano in 1176 with the victory of the Lombard League over Barbarossa, a compromise was reached in the Peace of Constance in 1183 , according to which the cities remained part of the empire, but otherwise remained autonomous. The title of Margrave of Verona remained with the House of Baden .

List of margraves

Duchy of Bavaria

Personal union with the Duchy of Carinthia (from 976)

Changing ruling houses

Eppensteiner

Spanheimer

...

to bathe

Honorary title:

from 1151

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bavaria and the German Empire (10th - 12th centuries). Younger tribal duchy . In: Political history of Bavaria. House of Bavarian History (hdbg.de)
  2. ↑ The title of Margrave of Verona seems to have been only a titular dignity before and in the following years, since in 1209 the Spanheimer Duke Bernhard of Carinthia, who came to Italy with Emperor Otto IV of Braunschweig , with the margraviate was enfeoffed without ever really exercising control there.