The invention of borders. Documentary falsification and community identity in the mountains of the Veneto in the late medieval and early modern period

Abstract

At the end of the fifteenth century and in the sixteenth century the non-Italian speaking communes of the Veronese mountains (later called «Tredici Comuni») and of the Vicentine mountains (later called «Sette Comuni») made up a large number of faked documents, dating at the age of Cangrande della Scala (the 20s of the fourteenth century) with the aim of establishing the boundaries of their territory, usurping pastures and forests belonging to institutions and citizens of Verona and Vicenza, or to the lords and the communities of the Vallagarina and the Valsugana subject to the Habsburg Empire. The research carries out a comparative analysis of these two largely different cases. In the Veronese mountains, in fact, human settlings and the creation of organized communities date only from the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, while the rural communities of the Vicentine mountains had long since established; in the case we analyze here, of particular importance is the ‘inter-state’ boundary between the territory of Vicenza and the territory of Feltre, and later between the territory of Vicenza and the Habsburg Empire, whose rule upon the Valsugana dates from the beginning of the fifteenth century. The research also discusses the attitude of the Venetian government, and its purposely acceptance, owing to political-strategic reasons, of these ‘invented boundaries’.