Aquileia Nostra 82 (2011)

Since the first half of the 19th century, interesting archaeological remains have been almost continually found in the area of S. Lorenzo di Sebato (Sebatum) in South Tyrol (Italy). The objects belong to a wide temporal range, from the Mesolithic to the late Roman age. The time of the greatest prosperity of the Roman Sebatum should be dated to the time of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD), when the Roman province of Noricum was founded and the city of Aguntum (near to modem-day Lienz) was raised to the rank of municipium. In autumn 2008, at the feet of Mount Amtmannbichl, an extraordinary archaeological rest was found, a funerary stele. Unfortunately it was decontextualised, it was probably reused and moved in order to built the embankment of the nearby Roman street. Built along this road, Sebatum was an important roads-joint like a village (vicus) or even a town (civitas). The stele was broken on the upper and lower right-side. On the basis of a preliminary reading it can be dated to around 100 AD. The inscription is engraved on nine lines, though it is eroded and washed away by the weather. It refers to a man of high rank, whose name is probably Tiberius Crispus, who possessed the Roman citizenship and was a duovir. That is to say he was one of the two magistrates at the top of the city's senate, most likely the municipium of Aguntum. In addition the dedication mentions other people belonging to his family, including Volusia, the daughter of Caius. We know her name from three other inscriptions from southern Noricum, which were compared with the new inscription. Tiberius Crispus was perhaps a romanized native, born in Sebatum, he moved to Aguntum to do his cursus honorum where he gained fame and achieved politica! success. At the end of his life he returned to his native village, where he died and was buried. The new inscription stimulates interest in studies about the roman Sebato/Sebatum, as well as adding a fundamental piece to South-Tyrolean epigraphic heritage.

In 2011, the Department of Studies of Central European Archaeology of the Austrian Archaeological Institute started a new research project in the western part of the ancient town of Aquileia. The research project will focus on the diachronic development of the western part and the suburbium of the ancient town. The results of the first field campaigns in 2011 allow new conclusions regarding the urban development and the fortification system. Below the circus, constructed towards the end of the 3rd century, a suburban workshop quarter adjacent to a river or a canal could be recognised. In the south it was possible to identify a structure which is similar to the warehouses of the river harbour in the east of the city at the Natisone. Thus, in the Roman Imperia! period, there must have been at least two harbour ports at Aquileia, namely at the Canale Anfora in the west and at the Natisone in the east. Therefore, with the abandonment of the workshop quarter and of the harbour at Canale Anfora in the late 3rd century A.D. , and with the new construction of the city wall which enclosed the circus, the entire area underwent a transformation in function from suburban to urban area. Furthermore the results of the geophysical survey now allow us to reconstruct the complete outline of the defensive wall and its towers in the area of the circus .

The paper describes the internal decoration of the "Casa Bertoli", inhabited by canons of the chapter of the Patriarchal Aquileian Basilica, dating between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, until now neglected by scholars attentive in the past on existing fourteenth-century frescoes in the hall on the first floor and in the room entirely covered by fake textiles of orientai inspiration. In 1489 the canon Doimo of Valvasone, an eminent figure of prelate in contact with the papal court and the great Roman culture of the fifteenth century, had made decorations, opening in the façade the window with his epigraph. Inside he erected a stone fireplace, beautifully carved, in a room on the first floor, and he hàd to paint a fresco, very abraded, depicting a Pietà according to an iconography that refers to the contemporary Venetian painting (John Bellini), flanked by two shields with the arms of the family Valvasone (the wolf and the lion). The canons who lived in the building between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries have left other traces: between the depicted arms one is due to the noble Francis di Prampero ( dating back to the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century); other not identifiable are housed in the rooms on the first floor. Interesting is the presence of some pieces of preserved fresco on the wall of the landing of the stairs leading to the first floor. The figuration, perhaps with moral significance of Susanna with the old men, had a grotesque subject and reveal a popular taste: it can be assigned to locai painter of the seventeenth century, characterized by a pungent vernacular accent.

The study of Casa Bertoli in Aquileia pointed out architectonical details typical of the laical society - the office fireplace with the arms of the Prampero family - that paradoxically allowed usto investigate the relations of the lords of this manor with the Curch of Aquileia, i.e. with the ecclesiastical power of the Patrarchs. Starting from the fire-place - probably ordered by the Patrarchal Vicar Gio Francesco (1530-1617) - who lived for many years in Rome in the heart of the Renaissance as a secretary of the cardinals Pisani and Rambouillet, the research extended from the Middle Ages to the end of the Patrarchate, allowed usto highlight also the biography od Odorico (died 1310), Celso (1618-1694), Giovanni Francesco (1630-1681) and Francesco (1662-1740) , members of the Prampero family as well as Canons at Aquileia.

The research work in diplomatics done by the author in the course of the past decades concerning the Aquileian documents up to the 13th century has led to a new valuation of a number of patriarchal documents, above all of those of patriarch Poppo (1019-1042). These results have changed to a considerable extent the traditional ideas of what the city of Aquileia and its surroundings were like at that time. The repopulation and cultivation of the area around Aquileia after the period of Hungarian invasions did not take place in the first half of the 11 th century, but not until the first half of the 12th century. The first reliable mentioning of malaria (and consequently the first written proof of bog) does not date from the forties of the 13th century, but at least from 1213 and possibly even from the time around 1113. The earliest mentionig of a mill in Aquileia was believed to date from 1062, but this is no longer certain. Finally can be seen how illegal building activities of the 13th century go parallel with the interpolation (or even forgery) of a privilege of patriarch Poppo.