Key to Umbria: Perugia

Etruscan Perusia

Romans

Early Christianity

According to tradition, San Costanzo was Bishop of Perugia in the 2nd century. His ability to perform miracles aroused the ire of the authorities and he was imprisoned at Perugia and then at Spello before being beheaded at Spoleto in 178. His body was recovered and buried at the site of the present church of San Costanzo outside Porta San Pietro. San Costanzo became a patron saint of Perugia in 1310, and his relics were apparently discovered there in 1781.

Perugia formally became a diocese in the second half of the 5th century. The church of Sant’ Angelo belongs to this period.

The first securely attested bishop of Perugia, Maximianus, was documented at Roman synods in 49, 501 and 502.

Goths

Almost nothing is known about the history of Perugia from the formation of Perusia Augusta in ca. 30 BC until the Byzantine re-invasion of Italy in 536. Belisarius' garrison at Perugia formed part of a defensive ring that he threw around Rome when he captured it in 536.

When Spoleto and Assisi fell to Totila in 545, he sent an agent to murder the Byzantine general Cyprian at Perugia, but despite this, the city resisted his advance. He therefore left a force to besiege it, while his main army marched on Rome. In 547, a Byzantine force managed to escape from Perugia and to join a force from Rome in a successful attack on the fortifications that the Goths had recently built at Spoleto. Totila retaliated by reinforcing the siege of Perugia, and matters deteriorated further when Belisarius was recalled to Byzantium.

According to the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I, St Herculanus, the bishop of Perugia led the city's resistance during the siege (which Gregory I believed had begun in 542). In 549, as starvation took hold, he fattened a lamb with the last remaining grain in the city and threw it over the wall to convince the Goths that their siege would fail. However, the Totila was not deceived and the city fell. St Herculanus was beheaded on a spot near the Porta Marzia and his body was thrown into a ditch. When his body was recovered after his execution, the head was found to be re-attached. According to the Dialogues, the relics were interred at San Pietro. (This is the earliest reference to a church on the site of the present Abbazia di San Pietro). St Herculanus later became the most important of the patron saints of Perugia.

According to the Liber Pontificalis, Bishop John of Perugia was among the bishops who consecrated Pope Pelagius I in 556.

Lombards and the Duchy of Spoleto

In 591, Pope Gregory I wrote to the clergy and people of Perugia to express his amazement that they had been without a bishop for “tanto tempore” (such a long time).

In 592, shortly after he succeeded his father as Duke of Spoleto, the Lombard Ariulf seized Perugia, while Duke Arichis of Benevento threatened Naples. In the face of this duel threat to Rome itself, Pope Gregory I hastily agreed a truce with the Ariulf, without the permission of the Emperor Maurice (who accused him of having fallen for deception). The Exarch Romanus (the representative of Byzantium) refused to recognise this truce, and withdrew forces from Narni and Rome in order to retake Perugia. Gregory I bitterly described Romanus’ action as “abandoning Rome so that Perugia might be held”. In fact, Romanus managed to take a number of cities from the Lombards (including, according to Paul the Deacon, Todi and Amelia as well as Perugia).

Since a large stretch of the Via Flaminia lay in the Duchy of Spoleto, the Via Amerina (which had originally swung west from Perugia to Chiusi) was subsequently extended to the north east to provide an alternative route from Rome to Ravenna through what is usually called the Byzantine corridor. This territorial division between:

✴the Lombard Kingdom to the north;
✴the Byzantine corridor from Rome to Ravenna; and
✴the independent Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento;

provided the backdrop to the history of central Italy for the next two centuries.

Perugia became a garrison town at the heart of a newly constituted duchy, an administrative division administered by a duke who reported to the exarch at Ravenna. One noted historian regarded it “something of a historical accident, whose only reason for being was to secure communications between Rome and Ravenna”. However, the Byzantine corridor and the Duchy of Perugia within it also served to separate the Lombard kingdom from the Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento.

In ca. 594, King Agilulf retook Perugia and marched on Rome. However, Gregory I persuaded him to withdraw, and then began a diplomatic initiative aimed at securing a wider peace between the Lombards and the Byzantines. The exarch Romanus died in 597, and was replaced by the more amenable Callinicus, who finally agreed a truce with Agilulf in 598. This led to a long period of uneasy peace that nevertheless lasted for more than a century.

[7th century ?]

After the Italian revolt of 726, the Duchy of Perugia came effectively under the direct control of the papacy and, together with the Duchy of Rome, formed the kernel of the emerging Papal States. King Ratchis besieged the city in 749 but Pope Zacharias was able to persuade him to relent.

Carolingians

The city remained under nominal papal control throughout the Frankish period.

The church of San Prospero, which was founded in the 7th or 8th century, offers a glimpse of the culture of the early Christian community in the city.

Perugia was named in the donations of the Emperor Louis I in 817.

Bishop Ruggiero translated the relics of Sant’ Ercolano from San Pietro to San Lorenzo in ca. 936.

In 964, Bishop Onesto gave San Pietro to St Peter Vincioli.

Early Christian Foundations: