APPENDICES the Boundaries of Romagna

APPENDICES APPENDIX I The Boundaries of Romagna THE Italian state of today has no administrative subdivision known as Romagna, and accounts of the boundaries of the province are confused and contradictory. The name itself arose in the era of Byzantine domination. The Lombards called the whole of the Roman-Byzantine territory, 'Romania '. 1 Gradually the word came to be used in a more restricted sense, though there was little agreement as to where exactly Romagna was. (a) The Northern Boundary In 1396, a legal process was held, to define the northward extent of the province ; even at this date, witnesses gave varying interpretations : that the Romagna began at the Po ; at the Gari senda and Asinelli towers in Bologna ; at the Sillaro, etc. 2 This uncertainty continued throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To Biondo da ForB, the province consisted of the area between the rivers Foglia and Santerno; Emilia proper lay north of the Santerno.J To Pius II, however, Romagna was the whole of Emilia. 4 In this he was followed in the sixteenth century by Don Alberti, who attempted to reconcile the two traditions by dis tinguishing between Romagna, and Romagna Transpadana.s When d' Azeglio, in x859, led the insurgent nationalists of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, and ForB, he claimed to speak for' i popoli delle Romagne ', and the province he formed was called ' lc Romagne '. 6 Following d' Azeglio, some modern scholars have claimed that the term Romagna should imply the territory formerly included in all Emilia to the River Panaro. Among those who maintain this, Rimini, which strictly formed part of the Pentapolis, is none the less incorporated within the province. Certainly, as they point out, there is no geographical or economic unity, in the land south of the Bolognese contado, to distinguish it from the rest of Emilia. 7 Others appeal to the authority of Dante, who in Purgatorio, XIV, 92, appears to define the Romagna as the land : ' tra il Po e il monte e Ia marina e il Reno '. s zo6 The Lords of Romagna During the thirteenth century the statutes of Ravenna or dained that their podestd should be chosen from those, ' qui non sint de romagna, set bononia sit excepta ... non ... de romagna, praeter quam de bononia '. 9 Here, Bologna was clearly considered part of the province. Yet Salimbene, in the same era, described it as the land, ' inter marchiam Anconitanam et Bononiam civita tem '.10 When, in 1278, Bologna and Romagna were incorporated within the papal states, the administrative documents of the curia dis tinguished the two, and were to continue to do so throughout the fourteenth century. 'Guilelmus dei gratia Episcopus Muritiaten sis provinciarum Marchie Anconitane ac Romaniole, Civitatis quoque Bononie et Comitatus Brictonorii Rector ' - such is the typical form, even though the rector of Romagna almost invariably acted as the rector of Bologna too. u Again, Cardinal Anglic, in his celebrated Descriptiones, separated the two quite distinctly. If the authority of Dante is to be given weight, as a contrast to Purgatorio, XIV, 92, already cited, one can refer to Inferno, XXVII, where Dante, asked to describe the condition of the Romagnols, makes no mention of Bologna. One might make a tentative attempt to reconcile the two passages in the Divine Comedy by claiming that, although at line 99, he pauses to condemn the ' Romagnoli tornati in bastardi ', yet the poet in Purgatorio, XIV is not attempting to describe Romagna, but rather the whole area where the Calboli were famed. In Inferno, XXVII, on the other hand, Guido da Montefeltro has asked for specific information of the Romagnols, and here, one could say, Dante has restricted himself to information on the Romagna. In support of this thesis it could be pointed out that in the De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante distinguished in chapter XIV, De idiomata Romandiolorum, the dialect of the Romagnols from that of the Bolognesi. I do not know how much weight this argu ment carries12 ; it may be that to praise the poet for ' quella mira bite coscienza storica e geografica ', as Casini does, precisely in that passage where he asserts that Dante in Purgatorio, XIV is des cribing Romagna, is to lay a mistaken emphasis upon his genius. Dante's remarks upon Romagnol dialect are difficult to inter pret correctly.13 He emphasises its softness, yet to the ear of the foreigner it appears harsh in comparison with Tuscan. Again, it seems difficult to equate dialect with provincial identity, when the speech of Imola is as different from Riminese as Bolognese. 1 4 The cephalic index, which Comelli uses to show a distinction of race between those north and south of the Sillaro, seems, to the layman The Boundaries of Romagna 207 in such matters, highly suspect. None the less, I follow Comelli in his general conclusions ; for the purpose of this study the northern demarcation of the Romagna will be fixed at the River Sillaro, which forms the boundary between Bologna and Imola. Such in fact is the general consensus of opinion today. 1s It may be justified by the administrative distinction drawn by the papal curia in the fourteenth century, and still more by the fact that today, the peasants of Castel San Pietro will assert that the men south of the Sillaro are Romagnols, but that they themselves are not. (b) The County of Bertinoro Although set firmly within the boundaries of Romagna, and subject to the same jurisdiction as other places in the province, Bertinoro was always distinguished from the r~st of Romagna in papal documents. The explanation of this is that the county had fallen to the papacy by inheritance in II78, a century before the rest of the province. 16 (c) San Marino Though undoubtedly a part of the Romagna, San Marino in the middle ages led a life remote from the rest of the province, and Dante fails to mention it. In consequence I omit any con sideration of it. (d) The Montefeltro Tonini declared that the Montefeltro was not in Romagna17 and in present-day Italy it is incorporated within the boundaries of the Marche.1s However, Guido da Montefeltro, in Inferno, XXVII, obviously believed himself to be a Romagnol ; Anglic includes it within his Descriptio, and Franciosi has assembled sufficient evidence to justify its being considered a part of the province. 19 (e) The Massa Trabaria Like Bertinoro, the Massa Trabaria which consisted of the upper valleys of the Marecchia, Foglia, and Metauro, and included Sant' Agata Feltria, Penna, and Valbona, had been subject to the Roman see before 1278. In 1288, Nicholas IV drew the boundaries between Romagna and the Massa. These fluctuated 208 The Lords of Romagna throughout the fourteenth century; in Grimoard's description, villages designated earlier to the Massa, were incorporated within the Montefeltro. None the less the greater part of the Massa was always administered separately from Romagna, and the area as a whole, must be considered to lie outside the province.20 Today it forms part of the Marche. APPENDIX II Fumanteria and the Population of Romagna in IJ7I THE DESCRIPTIO ROMANDIOLE IN 1371 Cardinal Anglic Grimoard, papal legate of Romagna and Bologna, compiled for his successor three documents, giving guidance on the government of the provinces which he ruled. The first was a description in general terms of the political problems of the territories. 1 The other two consisted of detailed statistical information concerning, first, Bologna and its contado,2 and second, the various parts of Romagna. 3 These last two documents gave an account of the castles, routes, papal garrisons and officials, the town governments, and papal and communal revenue. Finally they gave the number of focularia, or ' hearths ', in each town and village. The document dealing with Romagna did not include infor mation on the upper Marecchia, or part of the Savio valleys, for these were ascripted at that time to the administration of the Massa Trabaria ; nor did it take into account the inhabitants of the upper Santerno and Savio valleys, who then obeyed Florence and the Tusco-Romagnol house of the Ubaldini. But otherwise it gave statistics of all the Romagna within its traditional boundaries. In this it has been regarded as the most important source for esti mates of the population of the province in the fourteenth century and as a primary document towards the understanding of the historical demography of the papal states. II THE CONCLUSIONS OF BELOCH AND GAMBI The Descriptio provinciae Romandiolae assessed the total number of focularia or fumantes of the province as 34,644. Du Cange de fined Focus and FUMANS as meaning domus, familia, commenting ' in Italia censentur per focos, maxime in pagis et vicis '. The tax itself was called FUMANS, FOAGIUM, or FUMANTERIA. In Romagna only the last form is found, sometimes spelt fumantaria. FOCULARE p 209 210 The Lords of Romagna and FUMANTE were the names of those liable to this tax. Thus Beloch, in his examination of the Descriptio, correctly associated fumantes with the fumanteria, and confidently assumed that the word meant ' all fathers of families '. Taking then an estimate of five souls to each family, he claimed that the population of Romagna in 1371 equalled the total number offumantes multiplied by five.4 This conclusion did not meet with the entire approval of Gambi. In a very much more detailed examinations he noticed that Anglic had cited three villages twice in the same document. Accordingly he cancelled these from Anglic's total of fumantes. He also removed from the total the fumantes of certain villages beyond the Po, that he believed should not be considered as part of the province.

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