Edition of Aquileian documents (until 1251)

Research project P 14518 Edition of Aquileian documents Reinhard HÄRTL 09.10.2000 Aquileia was a center in the ancient world and a patriarch`s seat in the Middle Ages, whose jurisdication reached from Lake Como to the Hungarian border and who also had quite a great secular power, the center of which comprised today`s Friuli, tempoarely also Istria. And because of ist close interconnection with it s close interconnection with it s northern and eastern neighbourhood the medieval patriarchate of Aquileia has frequently been the subject of research in Austria and in Slovenia, and in no way only during the Habsburg Monarchy. The critical investigation and edition of the historical sources, however, at least concerning the documents from the beginning to the 13th century, has not kept pace with the zest of historical research in general. This fact has led, alongside with journeys of the applicant to Italian archives for the purpose of collecting documents concerning Styria, to the project of editing the documents of the patriarchate of Aquileia. So far the applicant has been working for a considerable time on the critical edition of the documents to the year 1251 which show a personal, institutional or local connection either to the patriarchs or to Friuli. For many years the applicant has collected documents and has edited a large number of relevant publications of specific studies. Now the time has come to continue the book series which was found by the Austrian Academy of Science exactly for this purpose, which was started with the edition of the documents of the monastry of Moggio. This series is to be continued with the edition of the documents concerning a series of institutions in the city of Aquileia itself, i.e. the Benedictine nunnery of S. Maria, the Benedictin monastry of Beligna, the churches of S. Stefano and S. Felice, as well as the few documents of secular pwersons. Perhaps the number of at least 230 documents does not seam to be extremely high. But many documents have come down of preliminary studies in order to find out the proper version in each case. The edition will of corse be completed be the seals of the patriarchs, the seals of which have to be partly reconstructed from different fragments. The edition replace many very old prints (partly of the 18th century) and provide much unpublished material to the scintific world. This material is deeply connected with the Austrian and with the Slovene neighbourhood and is therefore of international importance.