THE BORDERS OF THE STATE OF VOLTERRA: a protagonist of history, from lucumonia to federated city, from municipality to ecclesiastical diocese
As a starting point for reconstructing the Volterra area in antiquity, we will consider the perimeter of the ecclesiastical diocese. There is no doubt that the early Christian diocese was modeled exactly on the Roman municipality and encompassed the city (=urbs) and the territory divided into parishes and the parishes into parishes.
One difficulty lies in identifying the changes that occurred in the ecclesiastical territorial order after the fall of the Roman Empire; and this in order to be able to draw the original diocesan circumscription equivalent to the municipium: and from municipium to trace back, where possible, to the Etruscan Lucumonia.
Let’s start by saying that for Volterra, there is a strict historical continuity between lucumonia, federated city, municipality, and diocese. The oldest historical sources list Volterra among the Etruscan cities that, allied with the Latins, waged war against Tarquinius Priscus; the people of Volterra are among the eight peoples of the dissolved Etruscan Dodecapolis who, during the Second Punic War, provided aid to the Roman consul Cornelius Scipio.
As a federated city Volterra obtained, for the Lex Iulia de civitate of 90 BC, Roman citizenship and was assigned to the Sabatina tribe. Under the Augustan territorial organization, Volterra was among the municipalities that formed the VII region, Etruria, and there is no indication that the new administrative organization, attributed to Diocletian, which united the Tuscia and Umbrians into a single district, modified the ancient city’s jurisdiction. This jurisdiction, within the Tuscia annonaria, constituted the ecclesiastical diocese of Volterra.
The documents which, prior to the mutilations suffered by the diocese of Volterra to erect the diocese of Colle Val d’Elsa and then expand that of Siena, list in detail the parishes, churches and monasteries subjected to the ecclesiastical government of the bishop of Volterra, are the tithes of the years 1275-76 and 1302-1303, which were confirmed by the census of the churches of the diocese at the time of bishop Filippo Belforti (1356).
The perimeter of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Volterran episcopate had also been summarily outlined in a papal bull that Pope Alexander III addressed to Bishop Ugo in the year 1179: “Termini autem ipsius episcopatus his finibus distinguntur: ab Elsa usque ad mare et a termino qui est iuxta Stichium et ab alio qui est prope Sufficillum et ab alio qui est prope Tocchi et Sancta Sicut Erat, usque ad S. Cassianum in Carisi”. That is, from the Elsa River to the sea; from the boundary stones placed at S. Giovanni a Stecchi on the slopes of Montemaggio, at Sovicille, at Tocchi and at Santa Sicutera below Scalvaia in the Val di Merse to the Carigi monastery in the Val d’Era.
This circuit includes the lands listed in the tithes of the 12th century and in the census of 1356: we can therefore affirm that, despite the political struggles involving the municipality, the bishop-count and the empire, the diocesan boundaries remained unchanged from the dawn of the municipal age until the sixteenth century.
Article by Enrico Fiumi. Contents transcribed from the book “Volterra Magica e Misteriosa” by Franco Porretti, published in 2001 by Pacini Editore. We thank Brunello Porretti for his kind permission.
