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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 621: Frontier Zones in the Mediterranean, II: Political Frontiers in the Po Valley towards the Adriatic Sea

Tuesday 7 July 2020, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Italy in Late Antiquity & the Early Middle Ages (ILAEMA), Amsterdam University Press
Organiser:Edoardo Manarini, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Roma
Moderator/Chair:Edward Schoolman, Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno
Paper 621-aSt Sylvester of Nonantola and the Fluvial system of the Eastern-Po Valley
(Language: English)
Edoardo Manarini, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Roma
Index terms: Charters and Diplomatics, Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval, Law
Paper 621-bHagiographical Representations of a Border: Venice and Its Hinterland in the Eyes of a 9th-Century Monk of Reichenau
(Language: English)
Francesco Veronese, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, Roma
Paper 621-cWhen Is a Border No Longer a Border?: The Changing Relations of the Exarchate of Ravenna with Its Neighbours in the Late 9th and Early 10th Centuries
(Language: English)
Thomas Brown, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities
Abstract

Building on the previous session, these three papers consider specific geo-political frontiers in the Po Valley adjacent to the Adriatic Sea and in particular, the legacy of the frontier that operated between the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Lombard kingdom. Commencing with Edoardo Manarini, who analyses the fluvial and hydrographic management of this frontier zone by the influential Abbots of Nonantola, the session continues with Francesco Veronese, who will speak about the Commemoratio sancti Genesii, an account of a relics transfer from Jerusalem to the monastery of Schienen. In this text, Venice and its hinterland were assigned the role of gateways for people, news, and saints' relics from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Carolingian world. Finally, Tom Brown takes up the ongoing perceptual boundary that operated in the former Exarchate once the Byzantine Empire had ceased to rule in north-central Italy and the persistence of a frontier mentality.