For much of its history, Venice had its own church, managed by the Republic of Venice, and largely independent of the papacy.
How this came about is a complicated story — like most of early Venetian history — and it is more about politics than about religion.
Important elements of this story are:
- the Schism of the Three Chapters;
- the Lombard invasion, which resulted in two patriarchs claiming the same territory;
- the continued conflict between these two patriarchs, which dragged the papacy, the Lombards, the Franks and the Byzantines into the dispute;
- internal factional strife within Venetian society;
- and, finally, St Mark himself, or rather, what remained of him.
According to ancient legend, the Patriarchate of Aquileia was established in the 1st century by St Mark and St Peter.
St Mark had come to Aquileia — the capital of north-east Italy in Roman times — and chose Hermagoras to lead the local church. Together, they travelled to Rome, where Hermagoras was invested as bishop of Aquileia by St Peter himself.
In fact, it is much more likely that the church of Aquileia was established in the early 300s, and that Hermagoras — later sanctified — lived then.
Aquileia was, nevertheless, one of the first areas of Italy where Christians could preach freely, and the archbishop of Aquileia was — at least locally — considered second only to the pope.
Such an origin story of the church of Aquileia was highly useful — both for the local church and for the Venetians — as it placed the church of Aquileia on an almost equal footing with the Patriarchate of Alexandria, founded by St Mark, and the Papacy in Rome, founded by St Peter.
Much later, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius gifted the chair of St Mark — a throne carved in marble — to the cathedral of St Euphemia at Grado, probably due to this perceived bond between St Mark and the diocese of Aquileia.
The later translation of the bones of St Mark from Alexandria in Egypt to Venice, in 828, was based on this ancient bond between St Mark and Aquileia. If his remains couldn’t rest in his native Alexandria — where he had founded the Orthodox Church of Africa of which he was the first patriarch — Aquileia would be the next-best place. Or Grado, as things developed.
He ended in Rivoalto, however, because politics.
We’ll talk a lot more about St Mark and the related legends and stories in later episode.
The Schism of the Three Chapters
The Schism of the Three Chapters is in itself a complicated story, and mostly outside the scope of this podcast, so I’ll just do a quick overview.[^comment-1]
The early Christian church had several disputes over the nature of Christ. Was he human, divine, a human who became divine, or human and divine at the same time, and in that case, which was the dominant nature of Christ, how did the two natures interact, and so on? Furthermore, how was the divinity of Christ related to the divinity of God?
You might think that didn’t make one iota of difference, but you’d be wrong.
The debate over the nature of Christ and the nature of his divinity went on for centuries, and was central for several church councils through the 300s, 400s and 500s.
The idiom itself — one iota of difference — where does that come from?
One of the points of view in this debate, established by the Council of Nicaea in 325, was that the divinity of God and Christ was of the same essence — in Greek, homoousios.
The Arians — who were condemned as heretics at the council of Nicaea — believed that the divinity of God and Christ were of different, but of similar essence — in Greek, homoiousios.
This was a major split within early Christianity, but the Greek words for the two lines of thought only differ by one letter, a Greek iota. An iota is tiny, but in this case, it made a huge difference.
The Lombards, at the time of their migration into Italy in 568, were largely Arian, so those ideas were around for several centuries. The Lombards converted to orthodoxy later, once they were established in Italy.
Likewise, the Orthodox African Church, founded by St Mark in the first century, had a different view on this question than the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. The main division happened at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the churches of Constantinople and Alexandria parted ways.
In 543, emperor Justinian tried to reconcile these differences between the church of Constantinople, and the oriental churches of Africa and Asia. In an edict, he condemned certain writings of three long dead bishops of Antioch, which together became known as the Three Chapters.
These chapters had been accepted at the Council of Chalcedon, but were now condemned.
The schism in Italy
The western Churches, which supported the canons of Chalcedon, refused to accept the condemnation of the Three Chapters.
This only really mattered in the parts of Italy, which were under Byzantine control. The pope quickly acquiesced to pressure from Constantinople, but the bishops of Milan, Aquileia and from Istria didn’t, and were consequently excommunicated.
The courtesy was soon returned in kind.
At the time of the Lombard invasion in 568, the church of Venetia was therefore not in communion with the papacy and Constantinople.
The archbishop of Aquileia, Paulinus, held a synod around 560, where he excommunicated pope Pelagius, emperor Justinian and the praetorian prefect of Italy, Narses.
When the Lombards arrived at Aquileia, Paulinus fled to Grado, which was in Byzantine controlled territory, but didn’t change his stance. The main church in Grado — now a metropolitan church — was there dedicated to St Euphemia, just as the church in which the Council of Chalcedon was held. That was a clear statement against the imperial condemnation of the Three Chapters.
The Archdiocese of Aquileia — now called Patriarchate to underline its independence — was subsequently based in Grado — often referred to as New Aquileia to underline the continuity — and still undivided through the reigns of the patriarchs Probinus, Elias and Severus.
When Severus died in 606, the rebellious spirit in Grado was wearing thin, while the pressure from Constantinople to conform to imperial orthodoxy hadn’t diminished.
The canons in Grado therefore chose Candidianus as the new patriarch, who promptly returned the Patriarchate of Aquileia in communion with Rome and Constantinople.
Those who didn’t agree, returned to old Aquileia, in Lombard territory, in protest, where they chose Giovanni as the schismatic tri-capitoline patriarch of Aquileia.
Two Patriarchs
Consequently, from 606, there were two patriarchs of Aquileia — one in Old Aquileia, which was now in the Kingdom of the Lombards, and one of New Aquileia, which was in the Byzantine Venetia Maritima.
The schismatic line of patriarchs in old Aquileia continued until 698, when internal Lombard politics made it opportune to return to orthodoxy and communion with Rome.
However, the two competing patriarchates weren’t reunited.
It had at this point become customary for the borders of ecclesiastical jurisdictions to follow the main political divides. Old Aquileia was in the Kingdom of the Lombards, and New Aquileia — Grado — was in Venetia Maritima within the Exarchate of Ravenna, in the Byzantine sphere.
The two patriarchates therefore continued to exist side by side, each with jurisdiction over the dioceses with the same political entity.
The Patriarchate of Grado consequently oversaw the dioceses of Venetia Maritima from Grado in the north to Cavarzere in the south, near the Po estuary, and of the Istrian peninsula in modern-day Croatia, east of Grado.
The rest of ancient Venetia et Histria was in Lombard lands, and under the patriarchate of Aquileia.
Despite this political divide, both patriarchates continued to claim formal jurisdiction over the dioceses in the other polity.
Changing political borders
This division of ecclesiastical jurisdiction mostly worked as long as the political borders didn’t shift too much.
They did shift, however, either in the 750s with the demise of the Exarchate at the hand of king Aistulf, or in the 770s, during the reign of king Desiderius of the Lombards.
We have a single source — a chronicle from Salerno — which stated that king Aistulf conquered Istria in 750, the year before he took Ravenna and the rest of the lands of the Exarchate.
Other sources — contradicting the Salernitan chronicle — stated that king Desiderius embarked on a military campaign in Istria around 770, to take the province from the Byzantines. If that is so, either Aistulf didn’t take Istria in 750, or he did, but failed to keep it.
In either case, the Lombards successfully gained control over the peninsula of Istria, with the dioceses located there, which had traditionally been under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Grado.
Questions of territorial control, taxation and coercion led to a series of letters between Giovanni, patriarch of Grado, pope Stephen III in Rome and the patriarch of Aquileia, who had relocated to Cividale, the original Lombard capital of Friuli.
The patriarch of Grado name-dropped duke Mauricius in the first letter of complaint to the pontiff, and called him “consul” — the Byzantine title of hypatos — and “imperial duke” of “this province of Venetia,” giving the impression that Venetia was still — at least nominally — a loyal Byzantine province.
Pope Stephen, who had other problems with the Lombards, decided in favour of Grado, and sent a missive to the patriarch of Aquileia telling him off for interfering in matters of another ecclesiastical authority.
The Franks in Italy
From what we can gather, by the early 770s, the Lombards had managed to deprive the Byzantines of the peninsula of Istria, and the dioceses located there, but formally they remained under the Byzantine patriarch of Grado.
For all their successes, the Lombards were in turn replaced by the Franks. In 774, Charlemagne defeated and captured Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards, and made himself king.
The last stand of the last Lombard dukes happened in Friuli, but Charlemagne arrived there too and took control of the duchy, including Istria.
The Duchy of the Venetians was then surrounded by the Frankish Kingdom of Italy, and on the south by the territories of the Frankish aligned papacy.
The co-existence of the Venetians and the Franks don’t appear to have been easy, from the very scarce sources available.
In particular, we have a letter from pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, dating to 787 or shortly thereafter. This is at the time, or just after, the death of duke Mauricius and the sole rule of his son Giovanni.
The letter stated:
We have informed the most gracious royal excellence, for while your royal command was issued in celebration of victory, ordering the Venetians to be expelled from the regions of Ravenna and the Pentapolis for trading, we immediately sent emissaries to those regions, fulfilling your royal will.
Moreover, I also directed that the archbishop be ordered that in any of our territories under the holy church of Ravenna, where the Venetians should have rights, presences, and possessions, that they should expel them completely and thus hold the rights of their church in his own hands.
In this letter, Adrian I confirmed to Charlemagne, that he had done as instructed by the king, and ordered the archbishop of Ravenna to expel all Venetians from the territories of the former Exarchate, to confiscate all their property, including what belonged to the Venetian church, and remove all rights of residence, property and trade the Venetians might have there.
We don’t know if the expulsion of the Venetians from the former Exarchate was carried out as described in the letter. However, the mere fact that Charlemagne made such a request, and the pope tried to fulfil it, tells us that the situation was at best on the brink of war.
It is also notable that all property of the Venetian church was to be confiscated too. The church of Grado was clearly seen as just as hostile to the Frankish interests as the Duchy of the Venetians.
The discord between the Frankish Kingdom of Italy — initially ruled by Charlemagne, later delegated to his son Pepin — and the Venetians would become open war in 809, which will be the topic of next episode.[^comment-2]
Discord within the Duchy
Internal strife was commonplace within Venetian society, and had led to repeated depositions, mutilations and killings in the immediate past.
Even though duke Mauricius appeared to have put a lid on most such outbreaks of violence within the Venetian elite, the underlying tensions had not gone away.
After the death of Mauricius in 787, his son Giovanni — who clearly did not have the same stature and standing in Venetia as his father — took over, and discord soon became conflict and violence again.
Regarding the Franks, the factions within Venetian society coalesced into two opposing groups.
One side wanted closer relations to the Franks on the mainland, and might even have accepted subordination of the duchy to the Kingdom of Italy under Charlemagne and his son Pepin.
The other side was either pro-Byzantine or pro-independence, which in any case meant that they would not accept a dependency or subordination to the Franks.
The dukes Mauricius and his son Giovanni were firmly on the Byzantine or independence side, while the patriarch of Grado from 766, another Giovanni, was as strongly on the pro-Frankish side.
The leaders of the two most important institutions within Venetia were on diametrically opposing sides of this fundamental dispute over the destiny of the Duchy of the Venetians.
The dukes, whose family originated in Heraclea, were of Venetian stock, while the patriarch — according to the Chronicon Altinate — came from Trieste, considered part of Istria, which was under Frankish secular rule. The Istrian dioceses had slowly, since the Lombard conquest in early 770s and the Frankish takeover in 774, been orienting themselves towards the Franks.
Such a change of allegiance was more economical than political or even theological. The dioceses, churches and monasteries relied on income from agricultural estates, which were predominantly in Frankish territory. If they opposed the Franks openly, those estates could be taken from them with a wave of the hand of the king, just as it had happened to the Venetians — and their church — in 787 in the former Exarchate, as Charlemagne had requested of the pope.
The conflict between duke and patriarch turned bloody in 802, when duke Giovanni sent a navy to Grado to force the patriarch into submission.
We don’t know the specific reason for this attack, but it was most likely because the patriarch had been getting to close to the Franks. From the point of view of the Byzantine or independence faction, he was openly fraternising with the enemy.
The navy was commanded by Mauricius, the son of Giovanni and grandson of duke Mauricius.
In a surprise attack on Grado, the Venetians quickly entered the city and captured the elderly patriarch.
John the Deacon, in his Istoria Veneticorum, wrote:
In the twenty-third year of the rule of the aforementioned Giovanni, seizing an opportunity, he sent his son Mauricius with a naval force to the city of Grado to kill Lord Giovanni, the most holy patriarch.
When he arrived there, eager to obey his father’s orders, he cruelly killed the same most holy man. His death caused the greatest sorrow to his fellow citizens, since he had been slain unjustly.
Andrea Dandolo, writing centuries later in the Chronica Extensa, added more details, which at least in part, came from the Chronicon Altinate:
During these days, duke Giovanni, seizing the opportunity, sent his son Mauricius, with a naval force, to Grado to kill Patriarch Giovanni. However, Mauricius, in a fury, invaded the city; in this invasion, the patriarch was captured, severely wounded by the Venetians, and thrown from the highest tower of his palace where he died; his blood, as a testament to his death, still appears on the stones; and he was buried in the chapel of Saint Mark, behind the mausoleums of the holy martyrs.
None of the chroniclers bothered to specify what the mentioned opportunity was, but it sounds like the dukes were simply waiting for a pretext — any pretext — to rid themselves of a troublesome patriarch.
The factional conflict wasn’t resolved by killing the patriarch.
His successor, Fortunatus, was a relative of his slain predecessor, from the same diocese in Istria, and of the same pro-Frankish faction. He immediately fled Grado for Treviso on the Frankish mainland, where a group of like-minded Venetians gathered around him.
Fortunatus then travelled to Aachen to seek help from Charlemagne, while the others descended on Venetia.
Seeing what was coming, the two dukes Giovanni and Mauricius fled, and the pro-Frankish side took control of the duchy.
Interestingly, both Giovanni and Mauricius fled to the Frankish controlled mainland, rather than towards Byzantine controlled territories across the Adriatic.
Giovanni went to Mantua, and Mauricius too travelled to Aachen. None of them would return to Venetia again, but we don’t know how and when they died.
Our sources for these events are few and sparse, and while they allow us to perceive a fracture in Venetian society between Byzantine or Frankish oriented factions, we definitely don’t have the whole picture. Most likely, the details and dynamics of the relationships and political intrigues within the Venetian elite were far more complex that we’re able to reconstruct.
The role of the church
What is clear from the story about the assassination of the patriarch Giovanni, and what followed, is that the church organisation — that is, the Patriarchate of Grado — was an important power base in Venetian politics.
It is also evident, that the church organisation at the time was outside the control of the ruling factions within the duchy.
Patriarch Giovanni governed the church for most of the combined reigns of Mauricius and Giovanni, from 766 to 802, while representing a political line opposite that of the dukes.
Furthermore, at this time, the patriarchs were elected by the clergy, not by the political leadership of the duchy.
Even in a situation where the dukes had physically taken control of the city of Grado, and had killed the patriarch, the next patriarch was not somebody acceptable to the dukes. Rather, the leaders of the patriarchate doubled down, and chose a new patriarch who not only represented the same political line as his predecessor, opposite of the dukes, but also a relative of the slain patriarch, and therefore with a personal axe to grind.
Within Venetia, the two main power structures — the duchy and the patriarchate — ended under the control of two opposing sides in what was probably the main political fight of the period.
It definitely didn’t help that half the nominal territory of the patriarchate was in Istria, which was de facto Frankish territory, and that both patriarchs, Giovanni and Fortunatus, came from there.
The Synod of Mantua
A couple of decades later, the issue of two patriarchates on the same territory — and in particular the jurisdiction over the dioceses of Istria — was still unresolved.
The Patriarchate of Aquileia appealed to the pope in Rome for a solution, and he called a synod to be held in Mantua in 827.
The Synod of Mantua was in essence a kind of tribunal, set up against Grado.
The accuser — the Patriarchate of Aquileia — claimed to be the mother-patriarchate, founded by St Mark and St Hermagoras, second only to Rome, and therefore superior to Grado, which was nothing more than a secessionist parish, who had usurped the metropolitan title during the initial Lombard invasion.
In ancient documents, Aquileia was described as a civitas — a city — while Grado was designated as a castrum — fortress, which disqualified Grado as a metropolitan see.
The accused — the Patriarchate of Grado — claimed to be the legitimate successor to Aquileia because the legitimate patriarch of Aquileia had moved it in 568, and consequently that the later re-constituted Patriarchate of Aquileia was illegitimate.
They backed this up with the presence in the cathedral of St Euphemia in Grado of the cattedra of both St Mark and of St Hermagoras. A cattedra — the origin of the word cathedral — was the throne of a bishop, or his seat, hence the term “see” for a diocese. The cattedra was an important symbol of authority.
The throne of St Hermagoras had been moved from Aquileia in 568, and the seat of St Mark had been gifted to the church of Grado by the Byzantine Empire.
According to John the Deacon, the seat of St Mark was donated to Grado by emperor Heraclius in 640. The chronicle of the individual patriarchs has a slightly different story. Here the throne was moved from Alexandria to Constantinople during the reign of Heraclius, and later gifted to Grado as compensation for a sacking of the city and metropolitan church in 662, by a Lombard duke who brought much of the metropolitan treasure, including the relics of St Hermagoras and St Fortunatus, back to Aquileia.
Aquileia claimed both cattedra legally belonged there.
The presence of relics and items associated with saints was important, as it created a bond between the place and the divine.
Likewise, the gift of the cattedra of St Mark meant imperial recognition of the claim to apostolic succession from St Mark and through him to St Peter, which in turn was the basis of the claim of both patriarchates of Venetia et Histria to be second only to the pope.
The verdict of the Synod of Mantua was a complete defeat for Grado.
Aquileia was vindicated in every matter. It was declared superior to Grado, which was recognised as little more than a parish, and the jurisdiction of all dioceses of Istria was awarded to Aquileia.
The Patriarchate of Grado could have put up a stronger defence. For example, where was the Patriarchate of Aquileia between 568 and 606?
The reason was probably that the new patriarch of Grado, Venerius, knew that the decision was political rather than ecclesiastical, and that he had little leverage.
Aquileia and Istria were parts of the Carolingian Empire, the synod was convened by the Frankish aligned papacy, and emperor Louis the Pious participated, and so did Lothair I, then king of Italy under the Carolingian Empire.
The cards were stacked in favour of Aquileia, and patriarch Venerius knew it, even more so, as he was of Venetian descent, not from Istria like his predecessors Giovanni and Fortunatus.
The outcome of Mantua
Had it been left there, there would never have been a separate Venetian church, and a Patriarch of Venice, as there is today.
The dioceses of Istria passed under the control of Aquileia. That fight, which had been ongoing for over half a century, was definitively lost for Grado. Even much later, when the Republic of Venice acquired control over Istria, the dioceses remained under Aquileia.
That left the Patriarchate of Grado with a much smaller territory, which, however, coincided almost perfectly with the territory of the Duchy of the Venetians.
On that territory, the pontiff in Rome, the emperor of the Carolingian empire or the Frankish king of Italy could do little to control or exert control over the church organisation.
The Duchy of the Venetians simply kept their ecclesiastical organisation as it was.
In effect, they just ignored the Synod of Mantua as far as they could.
The year after the Synod of Mantua, in 828, the relics of St Mark arrived in Venice, giving the Venetian church a much weightier argument for being the church founded and protected by St Mark himself.
The treasure of the relics was not, however, given to the patriarch in Grado, to be kept in the church of St Euphemia, nor was handed to the bishop of Olivolo, of the diocese where the seat of government of the duchy was located.
The relics of St Mark were taken directly to the palace — or rather fortress — of the dukes of the Venetians, and stored in the duke’s private chapel within the walls of the palace.
St Mark therefore became the property of the Venetian duchy, not of the Venetian church, but that is a tale for another episode.
In practice, the papacy accepted the existence of a Venetian church separate from Aquileia, despite the ruling from the Synod of Mantua.
When patriarch Venerius died in 852, the pope sent the pallium — a decorative band of cloth worn around the neck as a symbol of ecclesiastical jurisdiction — to his successor, as is customary for archbishops and patriarchs.
A state church
With time, the power of investiture of the patriarch of Grado passed from the clerics and canons of the chapter in Grado to the duke of the Venetians.
Consequently, the Patriarchate of Grado effectively turned into a Venetian state church, where all clerics, from the patriarch to the parish priests, were loyal to the duchy and later the republic.
The Patriarchate of Grado therefore never acquired any kind of independent agency, unlike the patriarchates of Constantinople and Rome. For most of the history of Venice, the Venetian church was little more than an appendage to the republic.
Having its own church became another piece of Venetian independence — and not an unimportant piece — in a world and a time when religion and faith were of prime importance, also in politics and international relations.
Later in its millennial history, sharing a border with the Papal state, Venice regularly had conflicts, even armed, with the papacy. Each time that happened, Venice found itself excommunicated. However, having a church organisation entirely controlled by the state, allowed Venetian daily life to continue with little or no changes, thereby negating some of the effects of an excommunication.
In such situations, when the pope ordered all priests, friars and other clerics to leave Venice, the only ones who obeyed were generally the Jesuits. The rest were almost all Venetians, who kept saying mass, and performing baptisms, weddings and funerals, as if the pontiff had said nothing. They were loyal to their country, to their people, and to their church, without perceiving any contradiction or incoherence in that.