March of Verona

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The March of Verona and Aquileia was a vast march (frontier district) in northeastern Italy during the early Middle Ages, centered on Verona and Aquileia. It was created after 945 by Berengar II of Italy as part of a general restructuring of the realm. It replaced the old Duchy of Friuli. The March of Verona was an important province, which governed the Tyrol and commanded the southern approaches to the Alpine passes to Rhaetia.

The marca Veronensis et Aquileiensis was separated from the Kingdom of Italy by Otto I after the defeat of Berengar II in 952. The reichstag meeting at Augsburg that year confirmed its attachment to the Duchy of Bavaria. At that time the march of Istria was attached to Verona as a county.

At various times, the march of Verona was under the control of the Duchy of Carinthia and at other times not. From 952 to 975, both Carinthia and Verona were under the control of the duke of Bavaria, forming a massive Italian, German, and Slavic fief ruled by relatives of the Saxon dynasty.^[1] In 975, a commune was chartered in the city, when Otto I ceded to Verona the powers of the marquisate. From this time the city of Verona and other cities in the march developed into independent communes, and the title margrave of Verona became an essentially empty hereditary honour in the houses of the dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia. Henceforth the Holy Roman Emperors began to appoint vicars to represent them, instead of margraves, in Verona.

In 1004 some territories in the northwest were annexed by the prince-bishop of Trent with the permission of the Emperor Henry II, who gave the comital authority in the old county of Trent to the bishops. In 1070 Istria was resurrected into a margraviate again and detached from Verona. In 1077 the territories of Friuli in the east, with the patriarchal city of Aquileia were separated from the March to provide an ecclesiastical principality of the Patriarch of Aquileia, a direct vassal of the Emperor.

In 1164, the most important cities of the march formed the Veronese League, a Städtebund aimed at protecting their independence against the emperor. The League was led by Venice; other members were Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Treviso. In 1167, the Veronese League joined the Lombard League; this constituted the de facto end of the march. The emperors continued to name vicars into the fifteenth century, though by then the office was purely nominal, as most of the territory of the march was held by the Republic of Venice.

[edit] Margraves

• 951 – 955 Henry I
• 955 – 975 Henry II
• 975 – 978 Henry III
• 978 – 985 Otto I
• 1047 – 1055 Welf
• 1072 – 1073 Herman I
• fluorit 1095 Milo
• 1100 – 1115 Matilda
• 1112 – 1130 Herman II
• 1148 – 1151 Herman III
• 1155 – 1184 Herman IV
• 1223 – 1233 Ezzelino

[edit] Notes

[edit] Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.