Friuli
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Friuli (Furlan: Friûl , German: Friaul, Slovenian: Furlanija) is a historical-geographic region that corresponds to the province of Udine, Pordenone, Gorizia. The more important city of the Friuli is Udine, capital, in medieval age, of the Patriarchy of Aquileia. Main centers beyond to Udine, are Pordenone, Gorizia, Portogruaro, Sacile, Codroipo, Cervignano del Friuli, Cividale del Friuli, Gemona del Friuli, Tolmezzo.
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[edit] Geography
The Friuli is delimited to the west from the Livenza river, to north from the Alps Carniche, east from the Alps Giulie and the Timavo river, to south from the Adriatic Sea. Numerous are the rivers that slide from north towards south. Important, beyond to those already cited, are also Torre river, Natisone river, Stella river, Isonzo river, Ausa river, Tagliamento river. All the northern part of the Friuli is constituted by mountains: its more important reliefs, from the West to east, are: between the Dolomiti friulane the Top of Priests (2703 m), Duranno (2652 m) and Cridola (2580 m); between the carniche Alps the mount Peralba (2691 m), the mount Bìvera (2474 m) and the mount Coglians (2780 m); between the Alps Giulie, the Jôf Fuârt (2666 m), the Jôf di Montasio (2754 m), Mangart (2677 m) and the mount Canin (2587 m), that it dominates the plain. The Friulian mountains have as dorsal the course of the Tagliamento river, that in the latitude of Gemona del Friuli crosses first the hills that occupy the center of the Friuli, and then in the immense alluvial plain. The plain is commonly subdivided in high Friulian plain and low Friulian plain (Bassa Friulana) conventionally delimited from the Napoleonic road that connects the cities of Codroipo and Palmanova; to south of this road the zone of the risorgive, where water gushes out in natural way through the terrain everywhere on the territory. To the term of plains, towards south, the lagoons of Marano and Grado are opened, protected natural oases. The surface of the Friuli is of 8.240 km², subdivided between province of Udine (the 4,905 km²), Pordenone (2,178 km²) and Gorizia (466 km²), the total surface is of 7.549 km².
[edit] Climate
In the Friulian plain the climate is of humid sub-Mediterranean type and in the hill zones is transformed in continental and, on the reliefs, in alpine. On the coast the annual medium temperature is 14°C while in inner plains an light lowering is recorded, until 13°C - 13,5°C (Udine 13,1°C, Pordenone 13,3°C, Gorizia 13,4°C). More to north, in Tolmezzo, medium temperature is approximately 10,6°C. The lower values are recorded in the Alps: 4°C to the Passo di Monte Croce Carnico (1300 m) and between 5,5°C and 7°C in the Val Canale that is situated under the 850 m. The temperatures of the colder month (January) vary between the 4,5°C approximately of Monfalcone, to the nearly -5°C of Monte Croce Carnico, passing for 3°C of Udine and the -2°C or -3°C of the Valcanale. Gorizia, to short distance from Udine, enjoys, with its 4°C approximately, a particularly favorable microclimate. In the warmer month, July, the temperatures are 22,5°C - 24,0°C in the coast and plains, until the 14°C - 16°C in the Val Canale. The precipitations in all the Friuli are relatively abundant and are very distributed in the course the year. Minimum values in the southern part are generally comprised between 1,200 and i 1,500 milimeter (Gorizia beyond 1.350 milimeter and Udine beyond 1.400 milimeter), and prealpine and alpine maximum is approximately 3.000 milimeter. The PreAlps Giulie are the more rainy locality of Italy: Musi, with 3.300 milimeter of annual precipitations and 400 milimeter concentrates in a single month. Excessive rainfall has often provoked, in some zones of the Friuli, phenomena of erosion and overflowings of many rivers. The snowy precipitations are rather insufficient in southern plains (3 or 4 snowy days to Udine and Pordenone) but are more consisting to north (Val Canale 25 days, Sauris 23, Passo di Monte Croce Carnico 28).
[edit] Demography
The population of the historical Friuli is little more than a million people, is subdivided between two Regions (Friuli - Venezia Giulia and Veneto) and, specifically, in five province (Province of Gorizia, Province of Udine, Province of Pordenone, the District of Portogruaro in Province of Venice and Common of Sappada in Province of Belluno). One of the most important demographic phenomena in Friuli was emigration. It began in the last few decades of XIX century and it was stopped in the 70s. It was estimated that more than a million of Friulian people are emigrated definitively in approximately one hundred years. According to the last census of AIRE (2005) they are 134.936. Of these 56.0% reside in Europe, 24.0% in South America, 10.3% in North America and 4.7% in Oceania. This data regard only the Friulians and theirs descendants who have Italian citizenship. The descendants of Friulians are excluded because they aren't Italian citizens. Friulians in the world have given life to cultural associations called Fogolârs furlans, that they are 46 in Italy and 156 in the rest of the world.
Ente Friuli nel Mondo (Friuli in the World)
In 1953, to assist Friulians in foreign countries and to coordinate the activities of the Fogolârs Furlans, the Ente Friuli in the World was founded. It publishes a magazine, Friuli in the world, that it exceeds the 25,000 copies distributed in 78 states. The activities are informative, of connection and maintenance of Friulian identity for the new generations.
[edit] History
[edit] The origins and the Roman age
Interested in Protostoric age from the culture of the Castellieri, the region was pupulated, in the course of IV the century b.C., by Celtic people and in particular by the Carnics, that introduced new advanced technical of working the iron and silver. After, the Friuli was colonized by the Romans (from II the century a.C.) and it came deeply influenced from the Latin civilization, thanks also to the important city of Aquileia, 4th city of Italy and one of the main cities of the empire, also capital of X the Augustea Region Venetia et Histria. The archaeological diggings, with particular reference the extension of the walls and of the agglomerate inner to the same ones, gives one clear image to us of its exceptional development. Still today Aquileia is, with Ravenna, northern Italy's maximum archaeological site. The city was moreover most important fluvial port on the Natissa river, node of the Adriatic Sea traffics towards northern Europe (therefore called "Via Iulia Augusta") and l'Illiric province. Aquileia mainly had its importance to a strategically favorable position, under military and trading aspects: it was on the Adriatic sea and in proximity of the Alps, allowing Rome to contrast the coming barbaric invasions from east. In its military campaigns, Julius Caesar was usual to carry its legions to Aquileia during winter. The development of other centers beyond to Aquileia, which Forum Iulii (Cividale of the Friuli) and Iulium Carnicum (Zuglio) contributed to assure to the economic and cultural wealth that succeeded to maintain, although first barbaric incursions, until at the beginning of V the century. In the last few decades of the III century Aquileia became the center of one of the more prestigious bishoprics of the empire, racing in Italy with Milan and, subsequently, Ravenna, for the second place of importance, after Rome. In 381 an important conciliates, presided from Valeriano bishop but strongly wanted from St. Ambrogio, that preferred Aquileia to its episcopal center of Milan in order to publicly condemn Arians eretics. Hunnic invasion marked the start of the forfeiture: Aquileia, protect from meager forces, surrendered for hunger and was come stormed and shaved to the ground from Attila in the 452 (in some foundations has been found again the traces left from fires). Terminated the Hunnic wave, the survivors, that they had found shelter in the lagoon of Grado, returned in city, but they found it completely destroyed. The reconstruction of Aquileia, in order to bring back the old splendor of the capital of the X Regio was never effectively realized. The city remained however an ideal point of reference of enormous importance also after the empire's landslide, thanks to the constitution of the Patriarchy, natural successor of the bishopric of Aquileia to leave from the half of Vi century and center of the maximum Christian authorities of the time. The lack os security of the Friulian plain, crossway of all the great barbaric invasions, pushed many persons to find shelter in the islands or in the fortified villages on hills, determining the emigration of the more fertile part of the region a its general impoverishment.
[edit] Middle Ages
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire the Friuli entered to belong to the Kingdom of Odoacer and subsequently to the Kingdom of Theodoric the Great. The Byzantine recapture wanted by Justinian I (535-553) was, for the Region, of brief duration: in 568 the Longobards occupied it.
The capital was moved to Forum Iulii, strengthened during the Middle Ages to be able to withstand to other Barbarians. In longobard's age Forum Iulii imposed him as the more main point and populous center of the Region and, in the following centuries, changed her name in Cividale del Friuli. The city, even before to definitely lose her Latin denomination, turned her own name to the whole territory. With following linguistic passages in fact, the name Forum Iulii turned into Friûl, and it extended him thin to point out the totality of the Duchy of Friuli.
The Longobardis left a depth sign in the history of the Friuli, creating a strong dukedom known as Duchy of Friuli, that had again a military function and foreground politics within the longobard kingdom since his origins. During all of his existence, the Duchy of Friuli shaped him as a real barrier against the threats of the Eurasian Avars and the Slavics. Such strategic function was realized since the dawns of the longobard dominion: the Duchy of Friuli was in fact the first one to be constituted in Italy and the same Alboin wanted to submit it to the noble Gisulf, his relative and right arm. Not by chance, many dukes of the Friuli became also king of the Longobardis. Among these, Rachis (first halves the VIII century), sovereign of ample culture and deeply religious, was a convinced supporter of the process of fusion between the Germanic element and that Roman that by now both in Friuli and in the rest of longobard Italy could consider fully realized. The adoption of the Catholic religion (VII century) and of the Latin language had in fact permitted to the Longobardis of integrate themselves with the autochtonous populations and to actively participate in the development, also civil and cultural, of the territory. Longobardis of the Friuli were also Astolfo, successor of Rachis first as duke of the Friuli, then as king of Italy, and finally the historian Paolo Diacono, author of the Historia Langobardorum and teacher of Latin grammar at the court of Charlemagne.
To the Longobard domination followed the Franks' one, that began from the last decades of the VIII century. Franks reorganized the Duchy of Friuli on basic comitale and they inserted it in the Regnum Italiae. It was turned then into Brand of the Friuli in the 846. Between the centuries IX and X the Friuli had involved in the struggle for the control of Italy, when the marquis Berengario made him crown first king of Italy in the 888 and therefore emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 915. The Friuli extended then his territory to the lake of Garda, while the capital was moved to Verona constituting the March of Verona and Aquileia. With the dismemberment of the Carolingian State (IX century) it assumed greater importance for the destinies of the Friuli the Germanic component of the empire.
The 3 April of 1077 is a date that will stay forever engraved in the history of the Friuli: in this memorable day in fact the emperor Enrico IV granted to the Patriarch Sigeardo, for his fidelity to the imperial power, the county of the Friuli with ducal prerogatives. Such thread-imperial line, also follows from the successors of Sigeardo, that will be all of Germanic origin for long time, it allowed them to consolidate the State, the Countries from the Friûl, that besides such region it also included in different historical periods Trieste, the Istria, the Carinthia, the Styria, the Cadore. The patriarchal State of the Friuli imposed himself as one of the amplest and powerful political formations of Italy of the time, endowing itself, since the XII century, also of a Parliament, maximum expression of the friulian civilization under the institutional profile. Such organism also foresaw besides a representation assembleare of the communes and not only of the noble and of the clergy. The life of this great Institution extended him for over six centuries, maintained even under the Venetian domination, even if partly emptied to be able: he gathered in fact for the last time in 1805. It was be abolished from Napoleone Bonaparte. The Patriarch Marquardo of Randeck (1365-1381) picked up all the laws emanated in precedence in the Constitutiones Patriae Foriiulii or rather Constitution of the Country of the Friuli. The actual Cividale del Friuli was the main center of the Patriarchy of the Friuli up to 1238, year when the Patriarch moved himself to Udine where he had a superb building, for if and for his own successors. Udine assumed in such way greater importance becoming with the time the institutional capital of the Friuli.
[edit] Venetian domination to Bourbon Restoration
The experience of the Patriarchy, concluded in 1420, when the Friuli was attached to the Venetian Republic, one of the great powers of that time, with a territory in full expansion. The historical debate on the relationship between Venice and its colonial territories has still opened and to a large part isn't based on historical motivations properly to connect himself to the myth of the lagoon city. According to the most traditional historiography in fact «the civil quiet and the pacific state of its dominant class would have been the principles on which the myth of Venezia was founded». For the new international historiography instead: «for long time is not been possible to dissociate the reality (of Venice) from the image, extraordinarily flattering and deformed (of Venice)... the Venetian political myth has for centuries distorted the approach and the analyses. At least up to the XIX century, the myth of Venice has weighed on the writing of the history, since the history had as principal end to comfort the myth». Only from few years is begun to investigate on the supposed deficenzes of the oligarchical political Venetian system and on the relationships deeply conflictual existing between Venice and the other territories territories that belonged to her State. The researchers are almost unanimously in agreement nowadays in to consider this period as one of the most tormented and difficult of the whole long history of the Friuli. The Friuli, used often as shield in anti-Turkic funcrion, was repeatedly devastated by a long series of wars for his possession between Venice and the House of Habsburg. Such wars involved for the rural classes uneasiness and poverty, with the impossibility to cultivate the country crossed by the armies in struggle and with the forced requisition of all the breeding animals for the provisioning of the soldiers. Necessity to give him lumber for Venetian boats caused besides the deforestation of the totality of the Bassa Friulana and the middle Friuli. Venice took possession him some collective earths of ownership of the rural friulian communities seriously impoverishing her. These earths will be sold then by the State during the '600 to overcome its serious statement of affairs and to make box.
On the other hand beginning from the third decade of the XVII century the Venetian Republic entered a due process of irreversible decadence to the loss of many her traditional markets, to the canalization of the saving and important financial resources in unproductive investments (above all of land character), and to the loss of competitiveness of its industries and its services. A speedy trial of impoverishment also struck the Friuli, subject to an oppressive fiscal pressure more and more and to the total crisis nearly of its industries and of the commerces.
The political populist practised from Venice (not reported particularly to the Friuli) it looked for in every way, according to some historical ones, of «to limit the most oppressive and anachronistic effects of the feudalism»[48]. Of different notice other researchers that affirm that the Venetian aristocratic government bore in Friuli, the survival of the heaviest feudalist rights. This politics to make sure herself the support of the urban and rural populaces as I counterbalance to the tendencies autonomists and centrifuge of the local oligarchies, also aristocrats, could not have put the Thirty Years' War anymore into effect.
An important popular revolt, done historical very known and known as Joibe grasse1511 (fat Thursday 1511), it was initiated to Udine on February 27 from hungry citizens udinesi subsequently supported by the farmers and it subsequently extended him to the whole territory of the Countries of the Friûl. Such insurrectionary movement was one of the vast of Renaissance Italy and he extended for the whole 27 February and on February 28, up to when, on March 1º, it was drowned in the blood from Venice that it sent some hundred riders to soothe the motions. The financial starvation suitable forced the Venetian managing classes not to listen anymore to the aspirations and popular demands already increasing the elevated taxes level and connecting again the relationships with the friulian aristocratic classes, natural custodians of the constituted order. Such politics determined a loss generalized of the already scarce consents of which it enjoyed Venice near the popular classes. You finally tried, to various resumptions, to replace or to integrate the friulian aristocratics with Venetian ones, or of make the Venetians in various way, also through the linguistic tool. To halves the XVI century the inhabitants of the Country of the Friuli were 198.615, in 1599, according to the respect of the Lieutenant of the time, Stephen Viario, 97.000 were alone. The rate of childish mortality was elevated and reached his maximum historian in 1629.
With the 1516 Noyon pacts the confinements between the Venetian Republic and the County of Gorizia and Gradisca by now in the hands of the House of Habsburg, were redefined. Venice lost the tall basin of the Isonzo (that is the gastaldia of Tolmino with Plezzo and Idria), but it maintained Monfalcone. Marano remained to the archduke of Austria (up to 1543) and a series of shed feudal islands in the Western Friuli. Among 1615 and the 1617 Venice and Austria were again faced militarily for the possession of the fortitude of Gradisca d'Isonzo. The so-called war of Gradisca concluded with the return to the preceding status quo.
Beginning from 1516 the Habsburg Empire checked the oriental Friuli, while the western and central Friuli was Venetian up to 1797, year of the Treaty of Campo Formio, when following the Napoleonic countries also this part of the Friuli was surrendered to Austria, that the lost ones for a brief period in which it belonged to the italic Kingdom, from 1805 up to the Bourbon Restoration- The contiguity between the Venetian Friuli and the Austrian Friuli allowed comparisons and, according to some studious ones, these were not quite flattering for the Serenissima.
[edit] Italian unification to present
In 1866, the western part was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy with the region of Venetia.
In 1921, after World War I, the whole of Friuli became part of Italy, but strong ties with Austria still remain. To some extent, Friuli keeps stronger ties with other regions of Mitteleuropa (Central Europe) than it does with Italy. This identity is in part the reason (the other are the presence of Slovenian speakers and the lost of the territories in the formerly province of Trieste and Gorizia) for the autonomous status of the region and a policy of promoting the region's own customs and traditions (including promotion of the Friulian language).
[edit] Regional languages and dialects
While standard Italian is the first official language of the region, several other regional languages and dialects are spoken in Friuli.
Friulian is spoken in the provinces of Udine, Gorizia and Pordenone.
Venetian and its sub-dialects are usually spoken (for historical reasons) in the western border regions (i.e. Pordenone), sparingly in a few internal towns (i.e. Udine, Gorizia, etc.) and by ancient time in some places on Adriatic coast.
Also in south-eastern border exists a venetian-kind transictional dialect, called Bisiaco, that have influeces of Slovenian and Friulian and marks the border with the historical region of Trieste and Venezia Giulia.
Slovenian dialects are spoken in the largely rural border mountainous region known as Venetian Slovenia. German (Bavarian dialect) is spoken in Val Canale (mostly in Tarvisio and Pontebba); in some of Val Canale's municipalities (particularly in Malborghetto Valbruna), Carinthian Slovenian dialects are spoken, too. German-related dialects are spoken in several ancient exclaves like Timau, Zahre (Sauris) and Plodn (Sappada).
Slovenian is spoken in the Collio area north of Gorizia. In the Resia valley, between Venetian Slovenia and the Val Canale, most of the inhabitants still speak an archaic dialect of Slovenian.
Note: only Friulian, Slovenian and German are allowed to be locally second-official languages in their historic areas, but not their related dialects or languages.
[edit] See also
- Venetian Slovenia
- List of Friulian place names
- List of Dukes & Margraves of Friuli
- County of Gorizia
- Austrian Empire
[edit] External links
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