Giovanni IV (dec 31, 984 – jun 19, 1019)

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There is no certain information on the family origin and provenance of G. Already Pio Paschini wrote: "We know nothing for sure about the lineage from which Giovanni had left", nor did he have sources on him "during the stormy years of his childhood Otto III ». The first document that mentions it, an imperial diploma given in Frankfurt, is dated June 18, 990. There are therefore no positive elements to confirm the tradition that it comes from Ravenna. Certainly Giovanni was a "fidelis" of the sovereigns of the house of Saxony, as was normally the case at that time for the prelates of Aquileia and, more broadly, of the Italic Kingdom, often chosen from among the members of Germanic lineages.

The approximate date of his appointment as Patriarch of Aquileia can be deduced from a backward calculation. In a donation of 1015, which regulated the life of the canons of Cividale, G. said that he had reached the thirty-second year of episcopate, therefore he had to succeed Rodoaldo in 984.

An analytical reconstruction of G.'s long patriarchy is unthinkable, but the few surviving documents can still illuminate some salient features of his action. In the first instance, the solid relations with the Empire and the position of the Aquileian patriarchate in Italy and in Europe between the tenth and eleventh centuries emerge; more sporadic is the dialogue with the papacy, occasioned above all by the question of the Aquileian metropolis; only circumstantial is the trace of pastoral and organizational action in the diocese. The Aquileian bishops, starting from the reign of Charlemagne, they were often used as support in the policy of expansion and territorial control of the eastern limits of the Empire, with both pastoral and military connotations. To this end, at the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries, the sovereign had tried to reinvigorate the metropolitan functions of the patriarchs of Aquileia, redesigning a district that was confronted in the north with the new province centered on Salzburg and in the south with the claims on Istria and on the Adriatic coast of the patriarchs of Grado.

At the same time, during the ninth and at the beginning of the tenth century, the Friulian public district (duchy, brand, committee) did not identify itself with a locally rooted family so powerful as to claim an inheritance from office. The stable link with the Empire and the lack of a lasting noble lineage favored the slow development of the power of the patriarchs, who from the beginning of the ninth century had begun to accumulate rich patrimonial endowments and immune exemptions.

Berengario I contributed decisively to strengthening the positive public prerogatives of the Aquileian headquarters. The advent of the Saxon dynasty gave new impetus to the political and military role of the patriarchs. Otto I and Otto II favored Rodoaldo (963-983), the same did Otto III and Henry II with G. The ordinaries of Aquileia proposed themselves locally as the main, if not the only, interlocutors of the emperor, as pieces of a mosaic of European dimension, whose glue was the network of kinships and personal bonds of fidelity.

G. was fully inserted in this framework and this resulted in a further growth of power. An example of the bonuses that the emperors granted is undoubtedly the privilege, already mentioned, of 18 June 990, which confirmed a previous one, of 972, and concerned the supremacy of Aquileia over the episcope of Concordia (already granted by King Ugo, in 928 ) and on the abbey of S. Maria di Sesto. But the strengthening of patriarchy emerges above all from a charter of April 28, 1001 , with which Otto III conferred to G. and his successors half the property and rights on the castle of Salcano, on the village of Gorizia and on an extended border strip, up to the alpine yokes, which stretched between Friuli and today's Slovenia. The other half of this territory was entrusted to Count Guariento .

The advent of Henry II did not change relations. G. and his suffragans supported since 1007 the imperial will to erect a new diocese in Bamberg and the patriarch personally consecrated the new cathedral (1012). In exchange, the emperor granted the patriarch a diploma (30 April 1012) with which he confirmed the Istrian possessions of Pedena and Pisino and added some public prerogatives and the port of Flanona, with the right of free navigation in all the provinces of the Empire for those with ships in it. In 1017 Enrico at the request of the patriarch donated to the monastery of S. Maria di Pero, in the Treviso area, the villa of S. Paolo with the chapel of S. Martino and welcomed the monastery under his protection.

Many imperial concessions concerned ecclesiastical jurisdictions and benefits: individual churches, monasteries, episcopates. This responds to the normal practice of administration of power, which did not clearly distinguish the secular sphere from the ecclesiastical one. Specifically, the development of the metropolitan authority of the Aquileian patriarchs was at stake, which opens the chapter of relations with the apostolic see.

A diploma of Otto III of 26 June 996 entrusted G. the monasteries of S. Maria di Sesto, S. Maria in Organo of Verona and S. Maria in Valle di Cividale and six bishoprics, recently recognized as Concordia and Udine, in Friuli, Novigrad, Rovinj, Pedena and Trsat, in Istria. The diploma is controversial and not only for the identification of toponyms or the consistency of an episcopate, however it signals the intent to extend Aquileian control in Istria, which has long been disputed between Aquileia and Grado. However, the document requires a comparison with a letter from Pope Sergius IV to Andrew, bishop of Parenzo, confirming the jurisdiction of the Poreč prelate over Rovinj, Valle and Duecastelli, against the attacks of G., unsuccessfully opposed since the time of Silvestro II. In terms of documentation, the Istrian question is studded with false documents, which seem to have been purposely fabricated to shore up the claims put forward with particular vigor by G.

Beyond the suggestions, however, his role in the dispute with Grado remains obscure, even if it is probably important and linked to the intense work of the counterfeiters.In any case, the frequent recourse to imperial aid shows an unstable situation, where the solutions were neither predictable nor definitive, and also shows how in northern Italy even purely ecclesiastical issues fell into the hands of the sovereigns rather than the popes. The levers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction were often used by G. He convened provincial councils with relative frequency. Certain are those of 995 ( Verona) and 1015 (Aquileia), probable those of 1007 and 1016. The meeting of suffragans was a way to assert one's authority as metropolitan and the council assemblies could be moments of common political consultation (the dispute between Aquileia and Grado, in 1007 it was decided to support Henry II's projects for Bamberg), as well as to control, verify and organize the clergy and local churches. In the Veronese council G. ruled on the dependencies of the clergy of the city, while in the Aquileian one he was concerned with endowing the canons of Cividale with land assets, strengthening them and giving a signal of a purely religious nature, since the Cividalese canons were in control of a large number of well-kept churches in the hinge area between Latin and Slavic ethnic groups, not always fully Christianized.

Even if no further clues remain of the pastoral functions of G. Maria di Aquileia and the male one of S. Martino della Beligna, near Aquileia), better documented as existing and active under the immediate successor Poppone , but whose foundation or restructuring is probably due precisely to G. It is therefore justified and acceptable to an affirmation which, without being able to offer more elements of certainty, had already been expressed by Paschini: "His patriarchy is relatively little known to us , but its importance must have been considerable. '

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