Ancona
Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 as of 2015. Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region; the city is located 280 km northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic Sea, between the slopes of the two extremities of the promontory of Monte Conero, Monte Astagno and Monte Guasco. Ancona is one of the main ports on the Adriatic Sea for passenger traffic, is the main economic and demographic centre of the region. Ancona was founded by Greek settlers from Syracuse in about 387 BC, who gave it its name: Ancona stems from the Greek word Ἀγκών, meaning "elbow". Greek merchants established a Tyrian purple dye factory here. In Roman times it kept its own coinage with the punning device of the bent arm holding a palm branch, the head of Aphrodite on the reverse, continued the use of the Greek language; when it became a Roman town is uncertain. It was occupied as a naval station in the Illyrian War of 178 BC. Julius Caesar took possession of it after crossing the Rubicon.
Its harbour was of considerable importance in imperial times, as the nearest to Dalmatia, was enlarged by Trajan, who constructed the north quay with his Syrian architect Apollodorus of Damascus. At the beginning of it stands the marble triumphal arch with a single archway, without bas-reliefs, erected in his honour in 115 by the Senate and Roman people. Ancona was successively attacked by the Goths and Saracens between the 3rd and 5th centuries, but recovered its strength and importance, it was one of the cities of the Pentapolis of the Exarchate of Ravenna, a lordship of the Byzantine Empire, in the 7th and 8th centuries. In 840, Saracen raiders burned the city. After Charlemagne's conquest of northern Italy, it became the capital of the Marca di Ancona, whence the name of the modern region. After 1000, Ancona became independent turning into an important maritime republic clashing against the nearby power of Venice. An oligarchic republic, Ancona was ruled by six Elders, elected by the three terzieri into which the city was divided: S. Pietro and Capodimonte.
It had a coin of its own, the agontano, a series of laws known as Statuti del mare e del Terzenale and Statuti della Dogana. Ancona was allied with the Republic of Ragusa and the Byzantine Empire. In 1137, 1167 and 1174 it was strong enough to push back the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. Anconitan ships took part in the Crusades, their navigators included Cyriac of Ancona. In the struggle between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors that troubled Italy from the 12th century onwards, Ancona sided with the Guelphs. Differently from other cities of northern Italy, Ancona never became a seignory; the sole exception was the rule of the Malatesta, who took the city in 1348 taking advantage of the black death and of a fire that had destroyed many of its important buildings. The Malatesta were ousted in 1383. In 1532 it definitively lost its freedom and became part of the Papal States, under Pope Clement VII. Symbol of the papal authority was the massive Citadel. Together with Rome, Avignon in southern France, Ancona was the sole city in the Papal States in which the Jews were allowed to stay after 1569, living in the ghetto built after 1555.
In 1733 Pope Clement XII extended the quay, an inferior imitation of Trajan's arch was set up. The southern quay was built in 1880, the harbour was protected by forts on the heights. From 1797 onwards, when the French took it, it appears in history as an important fortress. Ancona, as well as Venice, became a important destination for merchants from the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century; the Greeks formed the largest of the communities of foreign merchants. They were refugees from former Byzantine or Venetian territories that were occupied by the Ottomans in the late 15th and 16th centuries; the first Greek community was established in Ancona early in the 16th century. Natalucci, the 17th-century historian of the city, notes the existence of 200 Greek families in Ancona at the opening of the 16th century. Most of them came from northwestern Greece, i.e. the Ionian Epirus. In 1514, Dimitri Caloiri of Ioannina obtained reduced custom duties for Greek merchants coming from the towns of Ioannina and Avlona in Epirus.
In 1518 a Jewish merchant of Avlona succeeded in lowering the duties paid in Ancona for all “the Levantine merchants, subjects to the Turk”. In 1531 the Confraternity of the Greeks was established which included Orthodox Catholic and Roman Catholic Greeks, they secured the use of the Church of St. Anna dei Greci and were granted permission to hold services according to the Greek and the Latin rite; the church of St. Anna had existed since the 13th century as "Santa Maria in Porta Cipriana," on ruins of the ancient Greek walls of Ancona. In 1534 a decision by Pope Paul III favoured the activity of merchants of all nationalities and religions from the Levant and allowed them to settle in Ancona with their families. A Venetian travelling through Ancona in 1535 recorded that the city was "full of merchants from every nation and Greeks and Turks." In the second half of the 16th century, the presence of Greek and other merchants from the Ottoman Empire declined after a series of restrictive measures taken by the Italian authorities and the pope.
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Sutri
Sutri is an Ancient town, modern comune and former bishopric in the province of Viterbo, about 50 kilometres from Rome and about 30 kilometres south of Viterbo. It is picturesquely situated on a narrow tuff hill, surrounded by ravines, a narrow neck on the west alone connecting it with the surrounding country; the modern comune of Sutri has a few more than 5,000 inhabitants. Its ancient remains are a major draw for tourism: a Roman amphitheatre excavated in the tuff rock, an Etruscan necropolis with dozens of rock-cut tombs, a Mithraeum incorporated in the crypt of its church of the Madonna del Parto, a Romanesque Duomo. Ancient Sutrium occupied an important position, commanding as it did the road into Etruria, the Via Cassia: Livy describes it as one of the keys of Etruria, nearby Nepi being the other, it came into the hands of Rome after the fall of Veii, a Latin colony was founded there. It was besieged by the Etruscans in 311–310 BC, but not taken. With Nepi and ten other Latin colonies it refused further help in the Second Punic War in 209 BC.
Its importance as a fortress explains, according to Festus, the proverb Sutrium ire, of one who goes on important business, as it occurs in Plautus. It is mentioned in; the war of 41 BC, received a colony of veterans under the triumviri. Inscriptions show that it was a place of some importance under the empire, it is mentioned as occupied by the Lombards. Sutri retained its strategic importance as a fortified place near the borders of the Duchy of Rome; the Donation of Sutri was an agreement reached at Sutri between the Lombard king Liutprand the Lombard and Pope Gregory II in 728. At Sutri the two reached an agreement, by which Sutri and some hill towns in Latium were given to the Papacy, "as a gift to the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul" according to the Liber Pontificalis; the pact formed the first extension of Papal territory beyond the confines of the Duchy of Rome. An important hoard of jewellery dating from this time, known as the Sutri Treasure, was found near the town in the 19th century.
It is now in the British Museum. Sutri, the seat of a bishopric, was retrieved for the Papacy after the defeat of the Lombards. Pope Gregory VI abdicated at Sutri on December 20, 1046, following the Synod of Sutri convened at the request of Emperor Henry III. In 1111 it was the seat of the treaty between Paschal II and Emperor Henry V. In 1244 it was conquered by Pietro di Vico, but was taken by Pandolfo, count of Anguillara, who gave it back to the Papal States; the city witnessed the struggles between Ghibellines. In 1433 the condottiero Niccolò Fortebraccio set fire to Sutri, from that point onward the city declined in favour of Ronciglione. Established circa 500 as Diocese of Sutri or Sutrium, without direct predecessor. In 900 it gained canonical territory from the suppressed Diocese of Monterano. Pope Gregory VI abdicated at Sutri on December 20, 1046, following the Synod of Sutri, a non-ecumenical council convened at the request of Emperor Henry III to resolve three rival claims to the papacy in favor of an imperial German protégé, Pope Clement II.
On 1435.12.12 it was suppressed itself, its territory and title being merged into the newly renamed Diocese of Nepi-Sutri. Recorded incumbent Bishops: Tommaso, Dominican Order The diocese was nominally restored in 1991 as Latin Titular bishopric of Sutri or Sutrium, it has had the following incumbents, of the fitting episcopal rank with two archiepiscopal exceptions: Titular Archbishop: Paolo Sardi, nbetween Roman Curia offices: Vice-Assessor for General Affairs of Papal Secretariat of State Vice-Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church of the Apostolic Camera, Pro-Patron of Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, created Cardinal-Deacon of S. Maria Ausiliatrice in Via Tuscolana, promoted Patron of above Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta Titular Bishop: Christoph Schönborn, Dominican order as Auxiliary Bishop of Wien; the cathedral, of Romanesque origin, is modern: of the medieval edifice the belltower and the crypt, from the Lombard period, with seven naves divided by twenty columns of different origin.
In the cliffs opposite the town on the south is the rock-cut church of the Madonna del Parto, developed out of one of the numerous Etruscan tombs of the area. The most striking edifice is the
Agilolfings
The Agilolfings were a noble family that ruled the Duchy of Bavaria on behalf of their Merovingian suzerains from about 550 until 788. A cadet branch of the Agilolfings ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards intermittently from 616 to 712, they are mentioned as the leading dynasty in the Lex Baiuvariorum. Their Bavarian residence was at Regensburg; the dynasty's eponymous ancestor is Agilulf, a semi-legendary prince of the Suebi and descendant of Hermeric, the 5th-century Suevic king of Galicia identical with one Agilulf, a steward of the Visigothic king Theoderic II, executed in 457. The first duke identified with the Agilolfing line in German historiography is Garibald I. However, doubt has been cast on Garibald's membership in the Agilolfing family in modern scholarship, which makes Tassilo I the first ascertained member of the dynasty; the Agilolfings had close ties to the Merovingians. Garibald I himself married Waldrada, the widow of Merovingian king Theudebald, in 555, after her marriage to Chlothar I was annulled on grounds of consanguinity.
As they had their fate intertwined with the Merovingian dynasty, they opposed the rise of the Carolingian majordomos, who deprived the Agilolfings of their power. Garibald I, Duke of Bavaria 548–591 Tassilo I, King of Bavaria 591–610 Garibald II, Duke of Bavaria 610–630 Theodo, Duke of Bavaria 680–716 Lantpert, son of Theodo, murderer of Emmeram of Regensburg Uta, daughter of Theodo Theodbert, son of Theodo, Duke in Salzburg ca. 702–719 Theobald, son of Theodo, Duke of parts of Bavaria ca. 711–719 Tassilo II, son of Theodo, Duke in Passau ca. 716–719 Grimoald, son of Theodo, Duke in Freising ca. 716–725 ruling all of Bavaria Hugbert, son of Theudbert, Duke of Bavaria 725–737 Odilo, son of Gotfried of Allemania, Duke of Bavaria 737–748 Grifo, 748 Tassilo III, son of Odilo, Duke of Bavaria 748–788, deposed by Charlemagne Theodo, son of Tassilo III, became a monk Gundoald, Duke of Asti, son of Garibald I Theodelinda, daughter of Garibald I of Bavaria, Queen of the Lombards Adaloald, son of Agilulf and Theodelinda, King of the Lombards 616 to 626 Gundeberga, daughter of Agilulf and Theodelinda, married King Arioald Aripert I, son of Gundoald, King of the Lombards 653–661 Godepert, eldest son of Aripert, King of the Lombards 661–662 jointly with Berthari, younger son of Aripert, King of the Lombards 661–662 and 672–688 Cunincpert, son of Berthari, King of the Lombards 688–700 Liutpert, son of Cunincpert, King of the Lombards 700–701 Raginpert, son of Godepert, King of the Lombards 701 Aripert II, son of Raginpert, King of the Lombards 701–712 Chrodoald, nobleman at the court of Dagobert I, killed in 624 Fara, opponent to Sigebert III Oman, Charles.
The Dark Ages, 476–918. London: Rivingtons. ASIN B008WI02H8. Pearson, Kathy Lynne Roper. Conflicting Loyalties in Early Medieval Bavaria. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0754600114. Biographies of some Agilolfingians Tentative Genealogy of Early Agilolfings, according to Jörg Jarnut
Osimo
Osimo is a town and comune of the Marche region of Italy, in the province of Ancona. The municipality covers a hilly area located 15 kilometres south of the port city of Ancona and the Adriatic Sea; as of 2015, Osimo had a total population of 35,037. Vetus Auximum was founded by the same Greek colonists of Ancona; the walls were made of large rectangular stones. It was a colony until 157 BC; the family of Pompey were its protectors and resisted Caesar in 49 BC. Inscriptions and monuments in its town square attest to the importance of Osimo during imperial times. In the 6th century it was besieged twice by Belisarius and Totila. Osimo was a free commune by 1100 A. D, it was returned to the Pope by Cardinal Gil de Albornoz. In 1399–1430 it was a fief of the Malatesta family, who built a rocca, or "castle", no longer intact. Osimo was again made a part of the Papal States, remained so until the unification of Italy in 1861. Osimo retains a portion of its ancient town wall. Under the town is a large series of tunnels with esoteric bas-reliefs.
The town hall contains a number of statues found on the site of the ancient forum. The new castle, of which parts remain today, was built by Baccio Pontelli. Among the churches in the town are the following: Osimo Cathedral: The restored Romanesque-Gothic church has a portal with sculptures of the 13th century, an old crypt, a fine bronze font of the 16th century and a series of portraits of all the bishops of the old diocese of Osimo; the baptistery is from the early 17th century and has a notable baptismal font. Basilica of San Giuseppe da Copertino: was founded as a church dedicated to St Francis, but with the canonization in 1753 of Joseph of Cupertino, the church was rededicated and refurbished to house his relics. San Marco Evangelista: Erected in 14th century by Augustinian order. San Niccolò: 16th-century church Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine Addolorata: 20th century Neo-Romanesque church outside of the town center Andrea Cionna, holder of the world record for the fastest marathon run by a blind man.
Luigi Fagioli, motor racing driver Bruno Giacconi, Olympian Copertino, Italy Armstrong, Argentina Treaty of Osimo Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ancona-Osimo This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Ashby, Thomas. "Auximum". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 20. Cambridge University Press. P. 50
Pavia
Pavia is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 35 kilometres south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,000. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards from 572 to 774. Pavia is the capital of the fertile province of Pavia, known for agricultural products including wine, rice and dairy products. Although there are a number of industries located in the suburbs, these tend not to disturb the peaceful atmosphere of the town, it is home to the ancient University of Pavia, which together with the IUSS, Ghislieri College, Borromeo College, Nuovo College, Santa Caterina College and the EDiSU, belongs to the Pavia Study System. Pavia is the episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Pavia; the city possesses many artistic and cultural treasures, including several important churches and museums, such as the well-known Certosa di Pavia. The Central Hospital of Pavia is one of the most important hospitals in Italy.
Dating back to pre-Roman times, the town of Pavia known as Ticinum, was a municipality and an important military site under the Roman Empire. It was said by Pliny the Elder to have been founded by the Laevi and Marici, two Ligurian tribes, while Ptolemy attributes it to the Insubres; the Roman city most began as a small military camp, built by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio in 218 BC to guard a wooden bridge he had built over the river Ticinum, on his way to search for Hannibal, rumoured to have managed to lead an army over the Alps and into Italy. The forces of Rome and Carthage ran into each other soon thereafter, the Romans suffered the first of many crushing defeats at the hands of Hannibal, with the consul himself losing his life; the bridge was destroyed, but the fortified camp, which at the time was the most forward Roman military outpost in the Po Valley, somehow survived the long Second Punic War, evolved into a garrison town. Its importance grew with the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to the Po River, which it crossed at Placentia and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum and the other to Ticinum, thence to Laumellum where it divided once more, one branch going to Vercellae - and thence to Eporedia and Augusta Praetoria - and the other to Valentia - and thence to Augusta Taurinorum.
It was at Pavia in 476 AD that the reign of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire ended and Roman rule ceased in Italy. Romulus Augustulus, while considered the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was a usurper of the imperial throne. Though being the emperor, Romulus Augustulus was the mouthpiece for his father Orestes, the person who exercised power and governed Italy during Romulus Augustulus's short reign. Ten months after Romulus Augustulus's reign began, Orestes's soldiers under the command of one of his officers named Odoacer and killed Orestes in the city of Pavia in 476; the rioting that took place as part of Odoacer's uprising against Orestes sparked fires that burnt much of Pavia to the point that Odoacer, as the new king of Italy, had to suspend the taxes for the city for five years so that it could finance its recovery. Without his father, Romulus Augustulus was powerless. Instead of killing Romulus Augustulus, Odoacer pensioned him off at 6,000 solidi a year before declaring the end of the Western Roman Empire and himself king of the new Kingdom of Italy.
Odoacer's reign as king of Italy did not last long, because in 488 the Ostrogothic peoples led by their king Theoderic invaded Italy and waged war against Odoacer. After fighting for 5 years, Theoderic defeated Odoacer and on March 15, 493, assassinated Odoacer at a banquet meant to negotiate a peace between the two rulers. With the establishment of the Ostrogoth kingdom based in northern Italy, Theoderic began his vast program of public building. Pavia was among several cities that Theodoric chose to expand, he began the construction of the vast palace complex that would become the residence of Lombard monarchs several decades later. Theoderic commissioned the building of the Roman-styled amphitheatre and bath complex in Pavia. Near the end of Theoderic's reign the Christian philosopher Boethius was imprisoned in one of Pavia's churches from 522 to 525 before his execution for treason, it was during Boethius's captivity in Pavia that he wrote his seminal work the Consolation of Philosophy. Pavia played an important role in the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogoths that began in 535.
After the Eastern Roman general Belisarius's victory over the Ostrogothic leader Wittigis in 540 and the loss of most of the Ostrogoth lands in Italy, Pavia was among the last centres of Ostrogothic resistance that continued the war and opposed Eastern Roman rule. After the capitulation of the Ostrogothic leadership in 540 more than a thousand men remained garrisoned in Pavia and Verona dedicated to opposing Eastern Roman rule; the resilience of Ostrogoth strongholds like Pavia against invading forces allowed pockets of Ostrogothic rule to limp along until being defeated in 561. Pavia and the peninsula of Italy didn't remain long under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire, for in 568, a new people invaded Italy; this new invading people in 568
Ravenna
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476, it served as the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Byzantine Empire. Afterwards, the city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, after which it became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards. Although it is an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal, it is known for its well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture, with eight buildings comprising the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna". The origin of the name Ravenna is unclear; some have speculated that "ravenna" is related to "Rasenna", the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, but there is no agreement on this point. The origins of Ravenna are uncertain; the first settlement is variously attributed to the Etruscans and the Umbrians.
Afterwards its territory was settled by the Senones the southern countryside of the city, the Ager Decimanus. Ravenna consisted of houses built on piles on a series of small islands in a marshy lagoon – a situation similar to Venice several centuries later; the Romans ignored it during their conquest of the Po River Delta, but accepted it into the Roman Republic as a federated town in 89 BC. In 49 BC, it was the location. After his battle against Mark Antony in 31 BC, Emperor Augustus founded the military harbor of Classe; this harbor, protected at first by its own walls, was an important station of the Roman Imperial Fleet. Nowadays the city is landlocked, but Ravenna remained an important seaport on the Adriatic until the early Middle Ages. During the German campaigns, widow of Arminius, Marbod, King of the Marcomanni, were confined at Ravenna. Ravenna prospered under Roman rule. Emperor Trajan built a 70 km long aqueduct at the beginning of the 2nd century. During the Marcomannic Wars, Germanic settlers in Ravenna revolted and managed to seize possession of the city.
For this reason, Marcus Aurelius decided not only against bringing more barbarians into Italy, but banished those, brought there. In AD 402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna. At that time it was home to 50,000 people; the transfer was made for defensive purposes: Ravenna was surrounded by swamps and marshes, was perceived to be defensible. However, in 409, King Alaric I of the Visigoths bypassed Ravenna, went on to sack Rome in 410 and to take Galla Placidia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius I, hostage. After many vicissitudes, Galla Placidia returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III, due to the support of her nephew Theodosius II. Ravenna enjoyed a period of peace, during which time the Christian religion was favoured by the imperial court, the city gained some of its most famous monuments, including the Orthodox Baptistery, the misnamed Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, San Giovanni Evangelista; the late 5th century saw the dissolution of Roman authority in the west, the last person to hold the title of emperor in the West was deposed in 476 by the general Odoacer.
Odoacer ruled as King of Italy for 13 years, but in 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great to re-take the Italian peninsula. After losing the Battle of Verona, Odoacer retreated to Ravenna, where he withstood a siege of three years by Theoderic, until the taking of Rimini deprived Ravenna of supplies. Theoderic took Ravenna in 493 slew Odoacer with his own hands, Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Theoderic, following his imperial predecessors built many splendid buildings in and around Ravenna, including his palace church Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral and Baptistery, his own Mausoleum just outside the walls. Both Odoacer and Theoderic and their followers were Arian Christians, but co-existed peacefully with the Latins, who were Catholic Orthodox. Ravenna's Orthodox bishops carried out notable building projects, of which the sole surviving one is the Capella Arcivescovile. Theoderic allowed Roman citizens within his kingdom to be subject to Roman law and the Roman judicial system.
The Goths, lived under their own laws and customs. In 519, when a mob had burned down the synagogues of Ravenna, Theoderic ordered the town to rebuild them at its own expense. Theoderic died in 526 and was succeeded by his young grandson Athalaric under the authority of his daughter Amalasunta, but by 535 both were dead and Theoderic's line was represented only by Amalasuntha's daughter Matasuntha. Various Ostrogothic military leaders took the Kingdom of Italy, but none were as successful as Theoderic had been. Meanwhile, the orthodox Christian Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, opposed both Ostrogoth rule and the Arian variety of Christianity. In 535 his general Belisarius in 540 conquered Ravenna. After the conquest of Italy was completed in 554, Ravenna became the seat of Byzantine government in Italy. From 540 to 600, Ravenna'
Medieval Corsica
The history of Corsica in the medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the invasions of various Germanic peoples in the fifth century AD, ends with the complete subjection of the island to the authority of the Bank of San Giorgio in 1511. In the early decades of the fifth century, effective Roman authority all but vanished from Corsica; the island became disputed between the Ostrogoths, Roman foederati who were settled in the lands along the Riviera, the Vandals, who had established a kingdom in Tunisia. Both groups were sometimes allies, sometimes enemies of the Romans and both followed a pattern of taking over Roman legal forms and structures and maintaining nominal deference to the empire while de facto creating autonomous kingdoms within its former borders. In 469, the Vandal king completed the subjugation of the isle. For the next 65 years the Vandals maintained their domination, the valuable Corsican forests supplying the wood for their pirate fleets. After the Vandal state in Africa crumbled in the early sixth century under the onslaught of the Roman general Belisaurius, his lieutenant Cyril restored imperial rule of Corsica in 534, the island was placed under the government of the newly organized Praetorian prefecture of Africa.
However, the exarchate was not able to protect the island from the raiding by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, who moved down into Italy from the north beginning in 568. After the loss of the African mainland territories of the exarchate to the Umayyad dynasty in 709, the empire's power in the West deteriorated further. Saracen raiders began to prey on Corsica, leading Liutprand the Lombard to invade circa 725 to preempt Saracen designs; the first Muslim raid on Corsica took place in 713. These Muslims were Berbers from North Africa. After this, Byzantine authority, nominal under Lombard rule, waned further and in 774, after conquering the Lombard Kingdom of Italy, the Frankish king Charlemagne proceeded to conquer Corsica for the Frankish hegemony, the Carolingian Empire, which he was establishing in western Europe. In 806, the first of a series of Moorish incursions occurred from Spain; the Muslims were defeated several times by Charlemagne's lieutenants, among them his constable Burchard. Throughout 807, the Moors continually returned, in 810 suffered a major defeat by an alliance of local powers and Charles the Younger.
Nonetheless their assaults continued. In 828, the defense of Corsica was entrusted to Boniface II of Tuscany, who conducted a successful expedition against the Muslims and built the fortress, to bear his name in the south. For the next century, Corsica was a part of the March of Tuscany. Boniface' son Adalbert I continued to push back against the Muslim invaders after 846; the island was hit by a Fatimid raid in 935. During his conflicts with Otto I of Germany, King Berengar II of Italy managed to make himself master of Corsica. In 962, Berengar was defeated and his son, fled to Corsica, whence he launched two separate attacks on Ottonian Italy, before going into exile in Burgundy. Following Otto II's reestablishment of imperial authority over Corsica, a period of political turmoil began, although the island remained subject to the margraves of Tuscany, who periodically made their power felt there; the island at this time appears to be divided, as it is down to the present time, into a north and a south.
Throughout the island petty lords and more powerful regional potentates fought for supremacy and land. Among the lords of the south, the Counts of Cinarca soon gained preeminence. Soon after 1000, at a central location in the valley of Morosaglia, a sort of national diet or assembly was held with the intent of establishing peace and the rule of law over the whole island; the movement for peace, reminiscent of the contemporary Peace and Truce of God movements in Languedoc, was headed by Sambucuccio, lord of Alando. The movement succeeded in establishing order in the north, establishing the Terra di Comune, but the south—and the Cap Corse—remained in turmoil; the Terra was composed of autonomous communes. Each commune, or parish, elected a council of "fathers of the commune" who were in charge of the administration of justice under the direction of the podestà; each podestà of an enfranchised district in turn elected a member to the supreme council, or magistracy, as it were the legislature of the Terra.
The supreme council was called the Twelve because, the number of enfranchised communes. As a check on their power and that of the podestà, the fathers of each commune elected a caporale charged with looking out for the interests of the poor and defenceless. In 1012, in a final effort to subdue the wild barons of the south and the northern cape, the Terra called in William, Margrave of Massa. By 1020 he had succeeded in driving the count of Cinarca out of the island and enforcing peace, or at least reduced violence, on the southern barons, he allied with the communes and was able to hand Corsica on to his son, but his legacy was not one of unity and central government. Towards the end of the eleventh century, the Papacy laid claim to Corsica, saying it had been donated to the Church by Charlemagne. In fact, all Charlemagne had done; the clergy of Corsica supported the Papacy. In 1077, Pope Gregory VII wrote a letter addressed to the Corsican church, regretting that the Papacy had for so long neglected the island and announcing that he was sending Landulf, bishop of Pisa, as his apostolic legate to the island.
In 1092, Pope Urban II raised the bishopr
