Patriarchate of Aquileia

The Patriarchate of Aquileia was an episcopal see and ecclesiastical province of north-eastern Italy, centred on the ancient city of Aquileia on the northern Adriatic. It became a metropolitan province in the fourth century, over Venetia et Histria, and its bishops took the patriarchal title in the sixth century. In 568, after the Lombard conquest, the patriarchs moved to Grado, and in 606 an internal schism split the office in two: one line at New Aquileia, Grado, over the Byzantine-held coast, and another at Old Aquileia, later Cormons, Cividale and finally Udine. The patriarchs of the second line were also feudal lords of the Patriarchal State of Aquileia, the Patria del Friuli, which traditionally began in 1077 when Sieghard of Belstein received the ducal title of Friuli from King Henry IV, and which lasted until Venice stripped it of its temporal powers in 1420, a loss the patriarch Ludovico Trevisan accepted in 1445. Under Wolfger von Erla and Berthold in the early thirteenth century the patriarchate was prosperous, with good roads, industry and cultural life, but the old city of Aquileia, ruined by earthquakes, was nearly abandoned, and the capital of the state moved to Cividale and then, from 1238, to Udine.