Duchy of Tridentum
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The Duchy of Tridentum ( Trent ) was an autonomous Lombard duchy, established by Euin during the Lombard interregnum of 574 – 584 [1] that followed the assassination of the Lombard leader Alboin . The stronghold of Euin's territory was the Roman city of Tridentum in the upper valley of the Adige , in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, where the duchy formed one of the marches of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy . There he shared power with the bishop, who was nominally subject to the Patriarch of Aquileia . [2] In 574 – 75, Lombard raiding parties pillaged the valley of the Rhône, incurring retaliatory raids into the duchy by Austrasian Franks , who had seized control of the mountain passes leading into the kingdom of Burgundy . [3] Euin was at the head of the army loyal to Authari that went into the territory of the duke of Friuli in Istria , c 589, and he was sent by Agilulf to make peace with the Franks his neighbors, in 591. [4] After Euin's death c 595, Agilulf installed Gaidoald , who was a Catholic, rather than an Arian Christian . [5] After some friction between king and duke, they were reconciled in 600. [6] The separate Lombard duchy of Brescia was united with Tridentum in the person of Alagis , a fervent Arian and opponent of the Lombard king, Perctarit , who was killed in the battle of Cornate d'Adda (688).
With the collapse of the Lombard kingdom in 773 – 74, the duchy of Tridentum passed into Frankish control and was transformed. After German king Otto I had subdued the Italian kingdom in 952 he incorporated Tridentum into the March of Verona . Its strategic position controlling the Alpine mountain passes encouraged the eleventh-century Holy Roman Emperors to invest the Bishop Ulrich II of Trent with temporal powers over a sizable territory, [7] as an independent prince of the Empire , with the powers and privileges of a duke. A succession of Prince-Bishops ruled, except for a few short intervals, [8] until 1802, when the bishopric was secularized and became a part of Austrian Tyrol .
Notes
- ↑ Paul the Deacon , Historia Langobardorum , ii.32 ( on-line text Archived January 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine ); Henry Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines , vol. II (1880) s.v. "Euin".
- ↑ Catholic Encyclopedia , 1912, s.v. "Trent" ( on-line text ).
- ↑ Wace, op. cit .
- ↑ Historia Langobardorum , iii.9 and 27; iv.10; A.H.D.A. in Wace, op. cit. , suggests that Paul's information was obtained from abbot Secundus of Tridentum .
- ↑ Historia Langobardorum calls him " vir bonus ac fide catholicus ", "a good man and of Catholic faith" (iv.10 and 27); Wace, op. cit , s.v. "Gaidoaldus".
- ↑ Wace, "Gaidoaldus"
- ↑ In 1004 and 1027 the counties of Bozen/Bolzano and Vintschgau/Val Venosta were added to the Bishop of Trent's territories.
- ↑ Albert III, the last of the Counts of Tirol (d. 1253), was able to unite the duchies of Trent and Brescia .