Aquileia, Patriarchate and Synods

AQUILEIA, ɑ̄´´cwi-lê´yɑ̄, PATRIARCHATE AND SYNODS: Aquileia, or Aglar, a town at the north end of the Adriatic (45 m. e.n.e. of Venice), was originally a Roman outpost against the Celts and Istrians and was a place of commercial importance as early as the reign of Augustus. Tradition ascribes the founding of its church to Mark the Evangelist, who is said to have come from Rome and consecrated St. Hermagoras (alleged to have died as a martyr) as its first bishop. Somewhat less legendary is the tradition that its bishop, Helarus or Hilarius, suffered martyrdom there about 285. Its bishop, Valerianus (369-388), the fellow combatant of Ambrose against the Arians, appears as metropolitan, and presided at the first Aquileian provincial council (381), which was attended by thirty-two bishops from Upper Italy, Gaul, and Africa; it excommunicated and deposed the Illyric bishop Palladius who leaned toward Arianism. When the Lombards invaded Upper Italy, the metropolitan Paul transferred his seat from Aquileia to the isle of Grado (568). The Aquileian metropolitans riding there refused to acknowledge the fifth ecumenical council of 553, convened by Justinian I., and remained in this schismatic opposition nearly 150 years. An effort of Gregory the Great to bring them back to the Roman Church failed, since the synod convened by the metropolitan Severus (586-607) at Grado (c. 600) still refused to acknowledge the council. The successor of Severus, Candidianus (died c. 612), accepted the catholic orthodox tradition, but the schism continued, nevertheless. Under the protection of the Lombards a number of schismatic antibishops were created, who resumed their seat in Aquileia and took the title of Patriarch, and the bishops of Grado soon followed their example. The controversy did not cease when in 698 the Aquileian Patriarch Peter (induced by Sergius I. of Rome) abjured his schism. On the contrary, both patriarchates, that of Aquileia and that of Grado, maintained themselves side by side till the middle of the eighteenth century. Repeated efforts of the popes (such as that of Leo IX. by the bulla circumscriptionis of 1053) to effect a reconciliation were unsuccessful. When Nicolaus V. in 1451 abolished the patriarchate of Grado, and established one for Venice, the incumbents of the Aquileian see were placed in a difficult position; both Venice and Austria, to whose territory Aquileia belonged, as well as Udine and Cividale, where the Aquileians had commonly resided since the early Middle Ages, obtained the right of appointment. The difficulties were finally adjusted 300 years later by Benedict XIV., who abolished the Aquileian patriarchate by the bull Injunctum (1751) and founded in its place two archbishoprics, one at Udine for Venetian Friuli to be filled by Venice, and the other at Görz for Austrian Friuli to be filled by Vienna. Several synods more or less noteworthy were called by the Aquileian patriarchs during the Middle Ages. One at Friuli (Forum Julii) in 796 under Paulinus (787-802), the friend of Alcuin and theological counselor of Charlemagne, declared against the Greek dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit. There were several in the fourteenth century (1305, 1311, 1339, etc.). The last of importance met in Cividale in 1409 at the call of Gregory XII. in opposition to the reform-council at Pisa.

O. Zöckler†.

Bibliography: B. M. de Rubeis, Monumenta ecclesiæ Aquilejensis, Strasburg, 1740; G. Fontanini, Historia litteraria Aquilejensis, Rome, 1742; Hefele, Consiliengeschichte, ii. and vi.; P. B. Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiæ catholicæ, pp. 772 sqq., 791 sqq., Regensburg, 1873; Meister, Das Concilium von Cividale, in Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres Gesellschaft, xiv. 320 sqq., Munich, 1893.