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Border pacts and frontier areas in Carolingian Italy

  • Stefano Gasparri

Border pacts are an Italian peculiarity in the early Middle Ages. They indicate the existence of a traditional and specific practice of agreements between different powers coexisting on the Italian territory, which is much older than the Carolingian age. This paper, however, focuses only on the latter period, examining first of all the pacts between the Lombards of Benevento and the Neapolitans, then, in the North, the pact of Lothar with the duchy of Venice (840). All these pacts concern rural life and commercial activities and give rise to interesting situations, such as the condominium on the lands and the peasants of Liburia (a land between Naples, Caserta and Capua), or the recognition of commercial activities that took place across the borders, under the protection of political powers (both in the South and in Venice). None of these texts proves the existence of military frontiers. On the contrary, the most important element that has emerged is the existence of border areas of a politically mixed character, in which the daily life was not conditioned by the existence of a frontier, but by the needs of the agricultural and commercial work.

  • Keywords:
  • Middle Ages,
  • 8th century,
  • Carolingian Italy,
  • duchy of Naples,
  • duchy of Venice,
  • southern Lombards,
  • Lothar,
  • boundary pacts,
  • frontier areas,
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Stefano Gasparri

Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-1374-504X

PDF
  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Pages: 193-205
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2024 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Border pacts and frontier areas in Carolingian Italy

Authors

Stefano Gasparri

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0416-3.15

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Carolingian Frontiers: Italy and Beyond

Editors

Maddalena Betti, Francesco Borri, Stefano Gasparri

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

354

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0416-3

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0415-6

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0416-3

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0418-7

Series Title

Reti Medievali E-Book

Series ISSN

2704-6362

Series E-ISSN

2704-6079

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