Rome. Moyen-Age
Abstract
Thomas S. Brown et Neil J. Christie, Was there a Byzantine model of settlement in Italy?, p. 377-399.
This paper analyses the results of recent research concerning settlement in Byzantine Italy between the 6th and 8th centuries
A.D., concentrating on the well-documented provinces of northern and central Italy. It develops themes first proposed in 1978 by
Brown who stressed the role of insecurity and the militarisation of society in promoting seulement change in the imperial
territories, in particular through the creation of castra. Besides examining the origin and nature of these castra, and their position
in current thinking on the later process of incastellamento, comment is also made on the effects of Byzantine rule on the cities of
Italy, assessing levels of continuity and change.
The paper is divided into two halves : in the first part the regions of Venetia and the Exarchate are surveyed from a primarily
documentary viewpoint in the second half archaeological data provide physical image of settlement change in Liguria and
central Italy The combina tion of these various sources of evidence allow important conclusions to be drawn regarding the
character of Byzantine rule and settlement in Italy
Brown Thomas, Christie Neil. Was there a Byzantine model of settlement in Italy ?. In: Mlanges de l'Ecole franaise de Rome.
Moyen-Age, tome 101, n2. 1989. pp. 377-399;
doi : 10.3406/mefr.1989.3052
http://www.persee.fr/doc/mefr_1123-9883_1989_num_101_2_3052
Defence in Byzantine and Longobard Northern and Central Italy, unpublished Ph. D
thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1985. For studies on the East see J. F.
Haldon & H. Kennedy, The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth
centuries : military organisation and society in the borderlands, in Zbornik Radova Vizan-
toloskog Instituta, 19, 1980, p. 79-116, P. Freeman & D. Kennedy eds. The Defence of
the Roman and Byzantine East, Oxford, 1986, and R.-J. Lilie, Die byzantinische
Reaktion auf die Ausbreitung der Araber, Munich, 1976.
4 Tabula Imperii Byzantini, I. Hellas und Thessalia, by J. Kder & F. Hild,
Vienna, 1976; C. Foss, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia, I : Kiitahya, Oxford,
1985; Id., Byzantine and Turkish Sardis, Cambridge, Mass., 1976; Id., Ephesus after
Antiquity, Cambridge, Mass., 1979; Id. & D. Winfield, Byzantine Fortifications. An
Introduction, Pretoria, 1987. G. Ravegnani, Castelli e citt fortificate nel VI secolo,
Ravenna, 1983 is a disappointing attempt to confront eastern and western evidence
for the sixth century.
5 The problem and the bibliography are usefully surveyed by C. Wickham, //
problema dell'incastellamento nell'Italia centrale. L'esempio di San Vincenzo al Vol-
turno, Florence, 1985, nb. p. 53-94.
380 THOMAS S. BROWN ET NEIL J. CHRISTIE
He points out that incastellamento did not always represent a break with
earlier settlement patterns and that some castra were established on
existing sites. He also demonstrates that other factors besides seignorial
initiative, such as collective peasant activity, could promote incastellamento,
and he makes a valuable distinction between incastellamento and
accentramento (the nucleation or concentration of population).
All these observations have a relevance to Byzantine Italy. Another
point worth making is that historians have tended to see incastellamento
as a phenomenon of the tenth century and later. In many cases this is
valid, because it fits into a context of Magyar and Saracen invasions, the
disintegration of the Carolingian state, and economic and demographic
recovery11. It has to be said, however, that this is in part a reflection of
the evidence, since in most areas of Italy archive material only becomes
abundant from the tenth century.
In Byzantine Italy, however, there is considerable evidence of change
in settlement patterns at an earlier stage made through public initiative in
response to security and military considerations. In some cases castra
were set up as purely military outposts, but in many cases they became
refuges or residences for larger population groups. Just as in Anatolia
we see peasants being relocated in fortified settlements in order to
protect a valuable fiscal resource from capture by Arab invaders12, two
illuminating letters of Pope Gregory the Great point to the settlement of
civilians in newly-established castra, Gallipoli in Apulia and Squillace in
Calabria13. In 1978 Brown tentatively applied the term "strategic hamlets"
(derived from a policy applied in the Vietnam War) to certain
promontory sites in the Ager Faliscus area of South Etruria in which finds of
Forum Ware pottery suggested settlement dating from the eighth
century 14. This hypothesis has been taken up over-enthusiastically by some
archaeologists who see these sites as defensive positions in the frontier
trs (as at Eraclea, the residence of the magister militum in the seventh
century)19. However, changes in the Veneto were probably not typical
of Byzantine Italy as a whole, because distinctive hydrographie changes
played a role, the local economy was less dependent on agriculture, and
the changes were more sudden and complete than elsewhere; a close
analogy is the occupation of islands in Greece as refuges in response to
Avar and Slav invasions20.
The Exarchate and Pentapolis - More representative - and always
the most prosperous and important of the Byzantine possessions in Italy
- were the provinces of the Exarchate and Pentapolis. For a long time
this area was surprisingly neglected by scholars : politically it was seen
as a distinct "aberration" in Italian historical development, while from
the economic viewpoint it was uncritically inserted into a supposed
general pattern derived largely from Lombard Italy. Our knowledge of this
area, however, has been transformed over the last twenty years, and
here one can single out the work of Guillou on Byzantine influences and
the growth of separatism, Vasina's studies of the organisation of pievi,
and Pasquali's surveys of the agrarian history of individual areas21.
Equally significant are the conference held in 1981 on the Institutions
and Society of the Early Medieval Marches and the recent edition of the
Codex Bavarus by Vasina and Rabotti together with an ancillary volume
of Ricerche e studi by a number of scholars22. So far archaeological
tis (Codice Bavaro). Secoli VII-X, ed. G. Rabotti & A. Vasina (Fonti per la storia
d'Italia, 110), Rome, 1985, A. Vasina et al., Ricerche e studi sul "Breviarium eccle-
siae Ravennatis" (Codice Bavaro), Rome, 1985.
23 Comacchio : S. Patitucci Uggeri, Testimonianze archeologiche del "Castrum
Comiaclum". Relazione preliminare degli scavi 1975, in Archeologia medievale, 3,
1976, p. 283-291. Ferrara: F. Bocchi, Note di storia urbanistica ferrarese nell'alto
medioevo, Ferrara, 1974; S. Patitucci Uggeri, // "castrum Ferrariae", in
Insediamenti nel Ferrarese. Dall'et romana alla fondazione della cattedrale, Florence, 1976,
p. 153-8. Argenta : S. Gelichi, La pieve di S. Giorgio di Argenta (Ferrara). Relazione
della prima campagna di scavo 1982, in Corso di cultura sull'arte ravennate e
bizantina, 30, 1983, p. 292-309. Imola : M. G. Maioli, La campagna di scavo 1979 a "Villa
Clelia" (Imola). Relazione preliminare, in Studi romagnoli, 29, 1978 (pubi. 1982),
p. 329-346. For a general survey see S. Patitucci Uggeri, Aspetti dell'insediamento
nell'area lagunare a nord di Ravenna tra tardoantico e altomedioevo, in Corso di
cultura sull'arte ravennate e bizantina, 30, 1983, p. 391-412. Excavation reports from
Ravenna and the immediate area appear regularly in the Corsi and in Felix
Ravenna. N.b., nowever, G. Bermond Montanari, ed., Ravenna e il suo porto : venti anni
di ricerche archeologiche tra Ravenna e Classe, Imola, 1983.
24 G. Fasoli, Profilo storico dall'VIII al XV secolo, in A. Berselli, ed., Storia
dell'Emilia Romagna, I, Bologna, 1975, p. 366.
25 F. Bocchi, Le citt emiliane nel medioevo, in Berselli, Storia, p. 405-433 ;
V. Fumagalli, L'agricoltura durante il Medio Evo. La conquista del suolo, in ibid.,
p. 465, 470.
26 . Alfieri, L'insediamento urbano sul litorale delle Marche durante
l'antichit e il medioevo, in Thmes de recherches sur les villes antiques d'Occident, ed. P. M.
Duval & E. Frzouls, Paris, 1977, p. 88-96; Id., Le Marche e la fine del mondo
antico, in Istituzione e societ (cited at . 22), p. 9-34.
WAS THERE A BYZANTINE MODEL OF SETTLEMENT IN ITALY? 385
ing administrative and economic foci such as large curies and rural
abbeys27.
Secondly, there seems to have been broad continuity in Roman
settlement patterns in the countryside. Settlement remained generally
dispersed, Roman toponyms remained common (but not universal), traces of
centuriation remain evident in certain areas (except where affected by
changes in the course of rivers), and the Roman fundus continued to be
the most commonly used territorial measurement and reference point,
though ceasing to denote an actual working unit28.
Despite this broad degree of continuity, there were changes in the
forms of organisation. Most Roman villae recorded earlier in the area
disappear, units of cultivation were small, often the smallholdings of
leaseholders (here we believe Carile is mistaken to see such plots as official
beni militari29) and extensive clearances took place from about the eighth
century30.
The agrarian picture of the Exarchate and Pentapolis offers a
number of significant divergences from the Lombard pattern. Large
bipartite estates (curies) are very rare. As Fumagalli first pointed out, peasant
rents were significantly lower. Ecclesiastical sub-divisions associated
with plbes (local baptismal churches) played a major administrative role
from the late eighth century in contrast with the secular territories
centred around curies and castelli in the Lombard area31.
nell'Italia superiore dall'VIII al X secolo, in Studi medievali, serie 3a, 10, 1, 1971,
p. 436-8, and Id., La tipologia dei contratti di affitto con coltivatori al confine tra
Longobardia e Romania (secoli IX-X), in Studi romagnoli, 25, 1974, p. 205-214.
Pievi : a vast literature has accumulated over recent years ; as well as the studies of
Vasina (cited at n. 21) we can note A. Cherubini, Le antiche pievi della diocesi di
Jesi, in Studia Picena, 47, 1981, p. 20-157 and D. Balboni, Masse e pievi ferraresi nei
secoli X-XII. Contributo alle ricerche sulla storia della diocesi di Ferrara, in Ravenna-
tensia, 3, 1972, p. 425-462.
32 Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, passim, and cfr. G. Fasoli, // dominio degli
arcivescovi di Ravenna fra l'VIII e l'XI secolo, in / poteri dei vescovi in Italia e in
Germania nel medioevo, ed. C.-G. Mor & H. Schmiedingen, Bologna, 1970, p. 87-140.
On the continued importance of cities see the studies cited in n. 25, and M. Tavoni,
Le citt romagnole conquistano la loro autonomia, in Berselli, ed., Storia
del 'Emil a Romagna, p. 435-460.
33 Pasquali, Agricoltura e societ, p. 153-9, 184-209.
34 Cfr. C. Curradi, / conti Guidi nel secolo X, in Studi romagnoli, 28, 1977,
p. 17-64; A. Castagneto, Enti ecclesiastici, Canossa, Estensi, famiglie signorili e vas-
salatiche a Verona e a Ferrara, in Structures fodales (cited at . 27), p. 396-7.
35 G. Pasquali, Pievi, massi e castelli nel Ferrarese nei secoli IX-XI, in his
Agricoltura e societ, p. 204-9.
WAS THERE A BYZANTINE MODEL OF SETTLEMENT IN ITALY? 387
What was their precise relationship with pievi, the main centres of
ecclesiastical and administrative organisation from c. 800? How much
control over them was exercised by the Ravenna see, the main inheritor of
the public powers of the imperial administration? Continued historical,
archaeological and topographical research will hopefully resolve these
questions.
Before discussing Liguria and the Duchy of Rome, note must first be
made both of the nature of the archaeological evidence which provides
our main source of information regarding Byzantine settlement in these
provinces, and above all of factors impeding the assimilation of these
data.
Early investigations regarding Byzantine settlement and defence in
Italy contained two basic flaws : firstly, in the general absence of
standing remains, Italy was considered in the light of evidence from Africa;
and secondly, historians like Hartmann and Schneider were at pains to
identify Byzantine origins to castra, rarely considering earlier origins
except where documentation allowed. This view has largely persisted,
despite the fact that Italy patently lacks the evidence of Byzantine Africa
as described in Procopius' De aedificiis, and as scrutinised by Diehl and
more recently Pringle45.
The extensive structural evidence in Africa, supplemented by the
comparative wealth of building inscriptions, resulted chiefly from the
rapidity of the conquest over the Vandals and the immediate
consolidation of the province against the Moors : clearly funds had been reserved
for the extensive restoration and refortification of decayed towns and
forts here. In contrast, Justinian badly neglected the logistics for a
decisive conquest of Ostrogothic Italy, and well before the close of the war
resources had become so exhausted that an overhauling of Italy on the
scale of Africa or the East was impossible. Although it is certains that
Justinian sought to embellish at least Rome and Ravenna with
magnificent churches, it is unlikely that funds stretched to more extensive works.
MEFRM 1989, 2. 26
390 THOMAS S. BROWN ET NEIL J. CHRISTIE
tory : for example, the late Roman dioceses of Terni, Bevagna and Spello
were incorporated into the Spoleto diocese, while Plestia, Tadino and
Nocera Umbra were later amalgamated60. This decay is also discernable
in Pope Gregory the Great's rearrangements of imperial bishoprics : the
bishop of Volsinii, though named in the Rome Synods, no longer resided
at Bolsena, but rather at Orvieto; similarly, the seat of Ferentium was
transferred to Bomarzo whose bishop in 649 was denominated Ferentopo-
lymartius, and only in 680 Polymartiensis. The Greek-Latin mixture of
the name suggests either a Byzantine foundation, or a renaming of a
garrison site61.
These moves occurred for a variety of motives, whether
depopulation, exposure to attack, weak defensive capabilities, or enforced
abandonment. In some cases, new castra like Bagnoregio attracted sufficient
population to request the provision of a bishop. This should demonstrate
official policy in border territories, whereby the threatened population
was encouraged (if encouragement was needed) to transfer to local
garrison centres. Often this transfer consolidated an earlier trend of gradual
movement away from the open countryside and from exposed towns :
such appears the case with Bolsena, and indeed with Falerii Novi, whose
fortified location beside the via Amerina was abandoned in favour of the
former oppidum of Falerii Veteres (Civit Castellana)62.
Duchy of Rome - A similar settlement pattern is discernible in the
border territories of the Duchy of Rome, where there is notable reoccu-
pation of Etruscan oppida locations. This is especially apparent in the
Viterbese, on the west flank of the Duchy, where military fortresses were
raised on the tufa spurs of San Giovenale and Luni sul Mignone to
supplement road-centres like Bieda and Norchia which were revitalised in
this epoch.
Nonetheless, the results of the South Etruria Survey demonstrate
that the period of Byzantine rule and of Byzantine-Lombard conflict did
not wholly overturn the classical patterns of settlement. This is best
illustrated in the marked contrast between the modes of settlement in the
Ager Faliscus, the northernmost zone surveyed, and the Ager Veientanus
to the south. In the Ager Faliscus a transfer from exposed villas to
defensive promontories probably took place between the early seventh
and eighth centuries : occupation of the latter sites is first documented by
the presence of Forum Ware, a distinctive green-glazed ceramic
produced at Rome63.
Recently Potter and Whitehouse proposed, on the basis of White-
house's revised chronology for Forum Ware, that these promontory
settlements operated as "strategic hamlets" in the frontier zone of the Rome
Duchy from the later sixth century64. There are a number of faults with
this hypothesis. Firstly, in the light of recent excavations, Forum Ware
should date from the mid-eighth century, as Whitehouse himself
original y argued. Secondly, excavations in the promontory sites of Castel Por-
ciano, Mazzano Romano and Ponte Nepesino revealed Forum Ware alone
in the earliest levels; indeed, the finding of ARS at some villas argues
against a major disruption of the Roman settlement mode at this time.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the region did not properly form a "
frontier zone " : the Ager Faliscus certainly saw much devastation in the 580s
and 590s when the Lombards directly threatened Rome and deprived her
of her northern communications, but this is equally valid for the Ager
Veientanus, then as indeed in the Gothic War. The region did not lie in
direct contact with the northern confine of the Duchy in the late sixth
century, but rather was buffered by a number of castra and their territo-
ria. To the south, this buffer, and the immediate proximity of the Rome
garrison, gave even greater protection to the Ager Veientanus, where in
general open classical farming persisted beyond the rise of the domuscul-
tae, breaking up only after the Arab invasions, if not later65.
63 South Etruria survey : cfr. Potter, The Changing Landscape (cited at n. 14)
nb. p. 138f.
64 Whitehouse & Potter, The Byzantine frontier (cited at n. 15), p. 206-210.
65 For the controversy over the dating of Forum Ware : D. Whitehouse, in
J. Hurst et al., Red-painted and glazed pottery in Western Europe from the eighth to
the twelfth century, in Medieval Archaeology, XIII, 1969, p. 93-147; Idem, The
medieval pottery from Santa Cornelia, in Papers of the British School at Rome, XL VIII,
1980, p. 125-156; with his revised dating, Idem, Forum Ware Again, in Medieval
Ceramics, 4, 1980, p. 13-6. New dating evidence, however, has come from the
Crypta Balbi excavations in Rome : Archeologia urbana a Roma : il progetto della
Crypta Balbi. 3. Il giardino del Conservatorio di S. Caterina della Rosa, Florence,
1985, nb. p. 206-224. For Forum Ware and castelli : T. Potter, Recenti ricerche in
Etruria meridionale : problemi della trasizione dal tardo antico all'alto medioevo, in
Archeologia medievale, II, 1975, p. 215-236; D. Whitehouse, Sedi medievali nella
WAS THERE A BYZANTINE MODEL OF SETTLEMENT IN ITALY? 397
Campagna romana, in Quaderni storici, 24, 1973, p. 861-876; and, most recently,
N. Christie, Forum Ware, the Duchy of Rome and incastellamento : problems in
interpretation, in Archeologia medievale, XIV, 1987, p. 451-466.
66 Lombard expansion : 0. Bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai
Longobardi, in Storia di Roma, vol. IX, Bologna, 1947, nb. p. 435f ; Id., Le relazioni politiche
di Roma con i ducati di Spoleto e di Benevento nel periodo del dominio longobardo,
in Atti del I Congresso internazionale di studi longobardi, Spoleto, 1951, p. 37-49;
Bavavant, Le duch byzantin (cited at . 1), p. 7 If.
67 Brown, Settlement, p. 329-330.
68 Ponte Nepesino : F. Cameron et al., // Castello di Ponte Nepesino e il confine
settentrionale del ducato di Roma, in Archeologia medievale, XI, 1984, p. 63-147.
Excavations have also occurred at Castel Porziano : M. Mallett, D. Whitehouse,
Costei Porziano : an abandoned medieval village of the Roman Campagna, in Papers
of the British School at Rome, XXXV, 1967, p. 113-146; and at Mazzano Romano :
T. Potter, Excavations in the medieval centre of Mazzano Romano, in PBSR, XL,
1972, p. 135-145.
398 THOMAS S. BROWN ET NEIL J. CHRISTIE
Thomas S. Brown
Neil J. Christie