Padua claims to be the oldest city in northern Italy. According to a tradition dated at least to Virgil's Aeneid, and rediscovered by the medieval commune, it was founded in 1183 BC by the Trojan prince Antenor, who was supposed to have led the people of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia to Italy. The city exhumed a large stone sarcophagus in the year 1274 and declared these to represent Antenor's relics.
Patavium, as Padua was known by the Romans, was inhabited by (Adriatic) Veneti. They were reputed for their excellent breed of horses and the wool of their sheep. Its men fought for the Romans at Cannae. The city was a Roman municipium since 45 BC (os 43. It became so powerful that it was reportedly able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. Abano, which is nearby, is the birthplace of the reputed historian Livy. Padua was also the birthplace of Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus and Thrasea Paetus.
The area is said to have been Christianized by Saint Prosdocimus. He is venerated as the first bishop of the city.
Late Antiquity
The history of Padua after Late Antiquity follows the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy. Padua suffered severely from the invasion of the Huns under Attila (452). It then passed under the Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. However during the Gothic War it was reconquered by the (Eastern) Romans in 540. The city was seized again by the Goths under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses in 568.
Then it fell under the control of the Lombards. In 601, the city rose in revolt, against Agilulf, the Lombard king. After suffering a 12-year long and bloody siege, it was stormed and burned by him. The antiquity of Padua was seriously damaged: the remains of an amphitheatre (the Arena) and some bridge foundations are all that remain of Roman Padua today. The townspeople fled to the hills and returned to eke out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for Venetian Lagoon, according to a chronicle. The city did not easily recover from this blow, and Padua was still weak when the Franks succeeded the Lombards as masters of northern Italy.
Frankish and episcopal supremacy
At the Diet of Aix-la-Chapelle (828), the duchy and march of Friuli, in which Padua lay, was divided into four counties, one of which took its title from the city of Padua.
The end of the early Middle Ages at Padua was marked by the sack of the city by the Magyars in 899. It was many years before Padua recovered from this ravage.
During the period of episcopal supremacy over the cities of northern Italy, Padua does not appear to have been either very important or very active. The general tendency of its policy throughout the war of investitures was Imperial and not Roman; and its bishops were, for the most part, Germans.
Emergence of the commune
Under the surface, several important movements were taking place that were to prove formative for the later development of Padua.
At the beginning of the 11th century the citizens established a constitution, composed of a general council or legislative assembly and a credenza or executive body.
During the next century they were engaged in wars with Venice and Vicenza for the right of water-way on the Bacchiglione and the Brenta. This meant that the city grew in power and self-reliance.
The great families of Camposampiero, Este and Da Romano began to emerge and to divide the Paduan district among themselves. The citizens, in order to protect their liberties, were obliged to elect a podestà. Their choice first fell on one of the Este family.
A fire devastated Padua in 1174. This required the virtual rebuilding of the city.
The Cathedral of Padua
The temporary success of the Lombard League helped to strengthen the towns. However their civic jealousy soon reduced them to weakness again. As a result, in 1236 Frederick II found little difficulty in establishing his vicar Ezzelino III da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities, where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants. Ezzelino was unseated in June 1256 without civilian bloodshed, thanks to Pope Alexander IV.
Padua then enjoyed a period of calm and prosperity: the basilica of the saint was begun; and the Paduans became masters of Vicenza. The University of Padua (the second in Italy, after Bologna) was founded in 1222, and as it flourished in the 13th century Padua outpaced Bologna, where no effort had been made to expand the revival of classical precedents beyond the field of jurisprudence, to become a center of early humanist researches, with a first-hand knowledge of Roman poets that was unrivalled in Italy or beyond the Alps.
However the advances of Padua in the 13th century finally brought the commune into conflict with Can Grande della Scala, lord of Verona. In 1311 Padua had to yield to Verona.
Jacopo da Carrara was elected lord of Padua in 1318. From then, nine members of the moderately enlightened Carraresi family succeeded one another as lords of the city, with the exception of a brief period of Scaligeri overlordship between 1328 and 1337. The Carraresi period was a long period of restlessness, for the Carraresi were constantly at war. Under Carrarese rule the early humanist circles in the university were effectively disbanded: Albertino Mussato, the first modern poet laureate, died in exile at Chiogga in 1329, and the eventual heir of the Paduan tradition was the Tuscan Petrarch. |
County of Padua
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