Names of the Land

Peoples before Rome

Greek and Roman writers name several peoples around the northern Adriatic. The peninsula was home to the Histri, subdued by Rome in the war of 178–177 BC (Livy, book 41). Strabo places the Carni in the hinterland of Tergeste and below Mount Ocra, which scholars identify with Nanos or Hrušica; the Iapodes lived further east, behind the Kvarner. West of the Tagliamento lived the Veneti. According to Strabo the Celtic Taurisci settled in the Eastern Alps; archaeological finds show Celtic influence here from the 4th century BC.

At least two names still in use date from this time. Istria goes back to the Histri. Kras (Karst) derives from the pre-Roman root *kar(r)a “stone, rock”, already recorded in antiquity (Ptolemy's Carusadius mons), and entered Slovene through a Romance form.

Sources: Livy 41.1–11 · Strabo 4.6.9–10; 7.5.2 · Ptolemy 2.14 · Šašel Kos 2005 · Snoj 2009 (Istra, Kras)

Aquileia, the Julian Alps and the Tenth Region

Rome founded Aquileia as a Latin colony in 181 BC (Livy 40.34). The name Julian Alps (Alpes Iuliae) is attested from the 1st century AD (Tacitus, Histories 3.8). Its origin is disputed: it is linked either to Gaius Julius Caesar or to the market town of Forum Iulii (Cividale).

Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 3.126–130) describes the tenth, which modern scholarship calls Venetia et Histria. In the east it reached the river Raša (Arsia), which Pliny calls “now the boundary of Italy” (3.129; 3.139). Tergeste (Trieste) belonged to it; Tarsatica (Rijeka) already lay in Liburnia, part of Illyricum and later Dalmatia (3.140). Roman sources know no “Julian” land: the adjective Iulius attaches only to the mountains, to Forum Iulii and to the town of Iulium Carnicum (Zuglio).

Sources: Livy 40.34 · Pliny, Nat. hist. 3.126–140 · Tacitus, Hist. 3.8 · Šašel Kos 2005

The barrier of the Julian Alps

In the late 3rd and the 4th century Rome closed the passes from Pannonia into Italy with a system of walls, towers and forts. The sources call it the Claustra Alpium Iuliarum (Ammianus Marcellinus 31.16.7); the Notitia dignitatum records a command of the tractus Italiae circa Alpes. The barriers ran from Tarsatica (Rijeka) across Inner Carniola; the best-studied fort is Ad Pirum at Hrušica, on the Aquileia–Emona road.

In Diocletian's reorganisation of the empire the tenth region became the province of Venetia et Histria, governed from Aquileia. After 476 the territory was held by Odoacer and the Ostrogothic kingdom; Istria passed to Byzantium during the Gothic War (535–554). The barrier was not an ethnic border but a military defence of Italy against invasions from the middle Danube.

Sources: Šašel and Petru 1971 · Ammianus Marcellinus 31.16.7 · Notitia dignitatum, Occ. 24 · Ulbert 1981

Lombards, Slavs and Friuli

In 568 the Lombards under King Alboin entered Italy and first took Forum Iulii (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards 2.9). The first Lombard duchy was founded there, and the name Forum Iulii developed into Friuli.

At the end of the 6th century Slavs advanced into the Eastern Alps. Paul the Deacon reports their clashes with the Bavarians around 592–595 (4.7; 4.10) and their raids into Friuli in the 7th century. In 599 Pope Gregory I wrote to the exarch that the Slavs threatened Italy “through the entrance of Istria”. Around 745 the principality of Carantania under Prince Borut accepted Bavarian overlordship (Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, ch. 4). The Istrian towns and Trieste remained Byzantine until the Frankish occupation around 788.

At the Placitum of Rižana in 804 the Istrian townsmen complained that the Frankish duke John had settled Slavs (Sclavi) on their lands. This is the first documentary evidence of Slav settlement in the Istrian countryside.

Sources: Paul the Deacon 2.9; 4.7; 4.10 · Gregory I, Registrum 10.15 · Conversio 4 · Placitum of Rižana 804 (Krahwinkler 2004) · Štih 2010

The Franks: from duchy to marches

774: Charlemagne conquers the Lombard kingdom; Friuli remains a frontier duchy centred on Cividale. 788: he deposes Duke Tassilo of Bavaria and brings Bavaria, with dependent Carantania, into the Frankish realm; in the same year the Franks occupy Byzantine Istria with Trieste. Byzantium recognises this in the Peace of Aachen in 812.

After the Avar wars (791–796) the Duke of Friuli controlled the whole south-eastern frontier: Friuli, Istria, Carantania, Carniola and Lower Pannonia. 828: after Duke Baldric is deposed, this area is divided. Carantania and Pannonia pass to the Bavarian prefect of the eastern frontier; Friuli and Istria are governed by separate counts. In Carantania the native princes are replaced by Frankish counts.

952: Otto I places the March of Verona (Verona, Friuli, Istria) under the Duke of Bavaria. 973: first mention of Carniola as a march (Carniola quod vulgo Creina marcha vocatur). 976: Carinthia becomes a separate duchy and takes over the March of Verona. The land between the Alps and the Adriatic was then administratively bound to the dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia.

Sources: Annales regni Francorum a. 788, 812, 828 · MGH DD O II 47 (973) · Kos 1955 · Štih 2010

Patriarchs of Aquileia, Counts of Gorizia, Venice

In 1001 Emperor Otto III granted the Patriarch of Aquileia half of the castle of Solkan and the village “which in the Slav language is called Gorica” (quae Sclavorum lingua vocatur Goriza). This is the first mention of Gorizia, and the charter also attests the Slovene language in its surroundings. In 1077 Emperor Henry IV granted the patriarch the county of Friuli and, in the same year, the marches of Istria and Carniola. The name Patria del Friuli for the patriarch's state came into use later.

The Counts of Gorizia, attested from the early 12th century, ruled Gorizia, part of the Karst and inner Istria (the County of Pazin), and from 1253 also Tyrol. Trieste submitted to Duke Leopold III of Habsburg in 1382. The Republic of Venice took over the western Istrian towns (Poreč, Koper) between 1267 and 1283, and the patriarch's Friuli in 1420. With it Venetian Slovenia came under Venice; until 1797 it kept its own self-government with assemblies (arengo) at Antro and Merso.

Sources: MGH DD O III 412 (1001) · Kos 1955 · Štih, Simoniti and Vodopivec 2008 · Snoj 2009 (Gorica)

Gorizia, Trieste, Istria: the Austrian Littoral

On the death of Leonhard, the last Count of Gorizia, in 1500, his lands passed to Maximilian I of Habsburg. Gorizia, Trieste and inner Istria then belonged to the Habsburgs. With the Peace of Campo Formio in 1797 they also took Venetian Istria, Dalmatia and Venetian Slovenia.

After the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces (1809–1813), the Austrian constitution of March 1849 created the crown land of the Littoral (Küstenland, Litorale). It comprised the princely county of Gorizia and Gradisca, the imperial city of Trieste and the margraviate of Istria. From 1861 each of the three had its own diet, under a common lieutenancy in Trieste.

Sources: Štih, Simoniti and Vodopivec 2008 · Cattaruzza 2007

A name that announced a claim

In August 1863 the Gorizia-born linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli published the article Le Venezie in the Milan newspaper L'Alleanza. The Kingdom of Italy was then two years old and reached only as far as Lombardy; Verona, Venice, Trentino, Gorizia, Trieste and Istria were all Austrian.

Ascoli proposed that all the Austrian lands from Lake Garda to the Kvarner be called “the three Venetias”: Venezia Propria, Venezia Tridentina and Venezia Giulia. By linking them to the Roman region of Venetia et Histria and to the Julian Alps, he gave an Italian name to lands Italy did not yet possess. The name did not describe a reality; it announced a claim.

Sources: Ascoli 1863 · Cattaruzza 2007

From Julian Venetia to the Julian March

After the Italian occupation of 1918, Venezia Giulia became the official name of the region. Slovenes at first translated it literally as Julijska Benečija (Julian Venetia); then the name Julijska krajina, the Julian March, took hold: a krajina is a border territory.

When Josip Vilfan told the Rome parliament on 21 June 1921 that Venezia Giulia was not a historical name, the right shouted back: “Since Julius Caesar!” (Atti parlamentari, p. 117).

Sources: Kacin-Wohinz 1972, p. 77 · Atti parlamentari, Camera, leg. XXVI, 21 June 1921

Primorska and Friuli Venezia Giulia

The Paris Peace Treaty, signed on 10 February 1947, assigned most of the Julian March to Yugoslavia; in Slovene this area is called Primorska. Trieste with its surroundings and north-western Istria became the Free Territory of Trieste. Under the London Memorandum of 5 October 1954, Zone A with Trieste passed to Italian administration.

Article 116 of the Italian Constitution of 1948 provided for the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, established by Constitutional Law no. 1 of 31 January 1963. In official use Ascoli's name today covers only the provinces of Gorizia and Trieste on the Italian side of the border.

Sources: Cattaruzza 2007 · Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana, art. 116 · Legge costituzionale 31 Jan 1963, no. 1