The sites on individual Cities contain pages on their respective local histories.  This page contains a summary of the history of the region a a whole. 

Umbri

Link to page on Umbria before the Roman conquest.

Etruscans

Link to page on Etruscans in what is now Umbria, before the Roman conquest. 

Romans

Link to the page on Roman Umbria.

Early Christianity

It is unlikely that Christianity had a significant hold in Umbria before the reign of the first Christian emperor, Constantine I (306-37).  Indeed, the Rescript that he probably issued from Spoleto in 326 gave new life to an important pagan complex outside Hispellum (Spello).  It also refers to a similar complex at Volsinii (Orvieto).

The first references to bishops in Umbria arise in connection with the Arian schism that engulfed the Christian world after the death of Constantine I:

1. ✴St Facundinus, Bishop of Taino (Gualdo Tadino) subscribed to the anti-Arian findings of the Council of Serdica (342); and
   

2. ✴Pope Liberius wrote to Bishop Caecilianus of Spoleto in 353, seeking his support (apparently unsuccessfully) against the Arian dogma imposed by the Emperor Constantius II.
   

The only other Umbrian bishop documented in the 4th century is Bishop Spes of Spoleto (ca. 380-410), who discovered the relics of St Vitalis in the church of San Lorenzo, Terzo della Pieve (outside Spoleto) and erected an alter there in honour of the saint.  This emulated similar discoveries made by his (probable) contemporary, St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.  An inscription from SS Apostoli, Spoleto records that Spes was buried there after he had been bishop for 32 years.

For more detail, see the page on Early Christianity in Umbria.

Umbria in the Late Roman Empire

The Emperor Theodosius I was the last sole ruler of the entire Roman Empire.  When he died in 395, Italy was ruled by a series of increasingly ineffective western emperors.  Throughout the first half of the 5th century, they were menaced by King Alaric I of the Goths (in 410) and King Attila the Hun (in 452) from across the Alps as well as  by the Vandal King Genseric from North Africa (439-54).

These invasions were symptomatic of the rapid deterioration of the western Empire, which was also ravaged of disease and famine. Umbria found itself at the centre of this storm because the imperial capital moved to Ravenna in 402 and Via Flaminia became vital for its communication with Rome.  There is, however, little evidence of particular damage, although:

1. ✴Alaric I destroyed Vicus Martis and Carsulae at around the time of the sack of Rome, and Tadinum (Gualdo Tadino) and Nuceria (Nocera) may also have suffered as the Goths withdrew to Gaul; and
   

2. ✴the chronicles of Spello claim that Attila attacked their city in 450.
   

The Emperor Valentian III was murdered in Rome in 454 and a series of Roman nobles then fought for power. 

This period saw the rapid development of the dogma of papal primacy as a series of popes asserted their power within the Church and in the temporal sphere.  Reflections of this are seen in two Umbrian dioceses: at Gubbio and Spoleto.  Bishops from four other Umbrian dioceses attended the (otherwise unimportant) Council of Rome (465): Amelia, Bettona, Città di Castello and Terni.

For more detail, see the page on Umbria in the Late Roman Empire.

Odoacer and Theoderic (476-526)

By the 470s, the army in Italy was made up almost entirely of Goths who were organised into units on tribal lines.  They were badly paid, hungry for land and increasingly disillusioned with the ability of their political masters.  Odoacer, the leader of one of these units, deposed the titular Emperor Romulus Augustus in 476 to become the first Gothic King of Italy.  This marked the end of even the pretense of the existence of a Roman empire in the west. 

From this time, the Goths and the Italians seem to have lived in separate and parallel communities, with the former forming an Arian military class.  Umbria, like the rest of Italy, now emerged from a period of destruction, disease and famine into another of relative stability.  Bishops from six Umbrian dioceses, none of which have earlier documentation, attended a papal synod in Rome in 487: Amelia; Bevagna; Foligno; Otricoli; Spello; and Todi.

Odoacer never secured the complete support of the Emperor Zeno, and it was probably at his instigation that another Goth, Theoderic invaded Italy and took power (having treacherously murdered Odoacer) in 493.  under his rule, Italy continued to prosper.

Theoderic established Spoleto as the administrative heart of central Italy, and repaired its fortifications, as well as those of Orvieto, Perugia and Todi.  He also kept garrisons at Assisi, Narni and Norcia.  There were some 20 diocese in Umbria by this time, and both eremetic and cenobitic monasticism was established in the region.

For more detail, see the page on Umbria under Odoacer and Theoderic.

Gothic War

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For more detail, see the page on the Umbria during the Gothic War.

Lombards and Byzantines

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For more detail, see the page on the Umbria under the Lombards and Byzantines.

Charlemagne

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria under Charlemagne.

9th Century

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria in the 9th Century.

Early 10th Century

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria in the Early 10th Century.

Ottonians

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria under the Ottonians.

11th Century

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria in the 11th Century.

12th Century

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria in the 12th Century.

13th Century

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14th Century

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15th Century

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Monti di Pietà

In the 15th century, banking in Italy was well-developed and mainly in the hands of Jews, Flemings and Lombards, who often charged interest rates of 30-40%.  Itinerant preachers, particularly from the Observant wing of the Franciscan Order, fulminated against this sin of usuary.   In 1460-2, Barnaba Manassei and Fortunato Coppoli, two friars at the Convento di Monteripido, Perugia persuaded the city authorities to set up what was in effect a “not for profit” provider of credit that was capitalised by charitable donations.  This initiative received the support of the papal legate to Perugia, Monsignor Ermolao Barbaro.

Similar organisations were opened at Orvieto (1463); Foligno (1465); Terni (1467); and Assisi (1468) and the concept subsequently spread throughout Italy.  The concept met with some resistance, mainly because interest was often charged, even though not for the purpose of profit.  However, Pope Leo X gave it formal approval in an encyclical letter (1519), "Inter multiplices". 

16th Century

For more detail, see the page on the Umbria in the 16th Century.

17th century

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Wars of Castro

The First War of Castro (1641-4) arose when Pope Urban VIII (1623-44) and sought to enrich his nephews, Francesco, Antonio and Taddeo Barberini.  Among other measures, he invaded and occupied Castro, which belonged to Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Ronciglione (1622-1646), in October 1641.

Farnese forged an alliance with the Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany, Venice and Francesco I d' Este, Duke of Modena in August 1642.  He defeated a papal army led by Taddeo Barbarini at Bologna in September 1642 and advanced to Acquapendente, from where he threatened Rome.  This phase of the war came to an end with the Truce of Castelgiorgio in late 1642, but tension remained.

In February 1643, Farnese tried unsuccessfully to retake Castro from the sea.  He resumed the earlier alliance in the following May.  Grand Duke Ferdinand II occupied Città della Pieve and laid siege to Castiglione del Lago in June.  He laid siege to Perugia in October.  The war ended with the return of Castro to Farnese in 1644, and Pope Urban VIII died soon after. 

18th Century

Treaty of Tolentino (1797)

General Napoleon Bonaparte assumed command of the Army of Italy in 1796 and soon defeated the Piedmontese and then the Austrians in northern Italy.  His immediate plan was to press on to Vienna, but he first needed to secure his southern flank.  He therefore occupied the Papal Legations of Ferrara and Bologna and marched on Ravenna.  Pope Pius VI was forced to sign the Armistice of Bologna (1796) in order to avoid further incursions into the Papal States.  Under it terms, he was required to pay huge reparations that included the donation of about 100 important works of art.

The Austrians managed to hold Mantua for a period and Pius VI wrongly calculated that this would provide the springboard for a counter-attack.  He therefore delayed making the agreed reparations, a decision that proved to be disastrous when Mantua fell to the French early in 1797.  French troops swept through the Marches and then occupied both Perugia and Foligno (where they were generally welcomed by the people). 

This occupation ended after only a month with the signing of the Treaty of Tolentino (1797), under the terms of which Pius VI was required to pay even higher reparations.  He was also forced concede both Ferrara and Bologna to the French.  In June 1797, all the territory that the French held in northern Italy was consolidated as the Cisalpine Republic.

Roman Republic (1798-9)

When a French general was shot during a riot in Rome in December 1797, the French re-invaded the Papal States.  General Louis Alexandre Berthier took Perugia and  Foligno.  He entered Rome unopposed on February 10, 1798 and proclaimed the Roman Republic.  When Pius VI refused to renounce his temporal authority, General Berthier  arrested him and took him to Siena.

The Roman Republic was split into eight administrative units, two of which covered Umbria:

1. ✴the Dipartimento del Clitunno, with its capital at Spoleto; and
   

2. ✴the Dipartimento del Trasimeno, with its capital at Perugia.
   

Although many citizens in Umbria welcomed the French and enthusiastically erected trees of liberty, others supported the Church.  The number in the latter camp increased when the exactions of the French became clear.  This led to a number of revolts, one of the most serious of which occurred at Città di Castello in April 1798.  One of the triggers for the revolt seems to have been the illegal seizure of the “Marriage of the Virgin” by Raphael.  Rebels from the countryside took the city, replaced the tree of Liberty with a crucifix and massacred the French garrison and the hated governor, Giulio Bufalini.  A French force sent from Perugia retook the city some weeks later.  Many of the rebels escaped into Tuscany, but the city was sacked.

In August, there were a series of revolts in the countryside around Spoleto, including Monteleone di Spoleto, Casci, Norcia and Trevi.  These threatened the French lines of communication, and General Paul Thiébault was sent from Rome to suppress them.  This he did without needing to resort to force.

In November 1798, King Ferdinand IV of Naples attempted to drive the French out of central Italy.  The Austrians sent him General Karl Mack von Lieberich to command his army.  The British provided Sir John Acton as an advisor, supported by the British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and a British naval squadron under Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson.   General Jean Étienne Championnet, commander-in-chief of the  French army abandoned Rome and established his headquarters at Civita de Castellana, south of Perugia.  From there, he launched a counter-offensive that took him back to Rome after 17 days.  By the end of the month, he had driven the Neapolitan army  back behind its own frontier and he went on to take Capua and Naples.

the Clitunno battalion (quartered in the abbey of San Nicolò) had to be completed with volunteers with a swarm of convalescent men and beggars. Analogous it was the formation of the other battalions. The 2

In November 1798, the regions of the Roman Republic were required to from battalions of soldiers.  In Umbria:

1. ✴the French Major Farje led the Trasimeno Battalion; and
   

2. ✴the Pole Giovanni (Jan) Turski led the Clitunno battalion.
   

When the forces of the so-called Second Coalition (Austria, Russia and Britain) invaded Italy in 1799, Pius VI was taken to France and he died there shortly afterwards. 

Neapolitan forces loyal to the allies drove the French from Rome in September 1799 and the Roman Republic ended.

19th Century

Italian Republic

Austro-Russian forces drove the French from the Cisalpine Republic in 1799.  However, the Russians left the alliance shortly afterwards, and the tide of fortune turned to favour the French.  Italy ceased to be a theatre of war with the Treaty of Luneville (1801) between Austria and France.  (War between Britain and France continued until 1803).  The Austrians recognised French hegemony in northern Italy and the Cisalpine Republic was reconstituted.  It was renamed in 1802 as the Republic of Italy (with Milan as its capital).

Concordats

Pope Pius VII was elected in Venice in 1800 at an enclave held under Austrian protection.  They also persuaded the Neapolitans to leave Rome so that the Pope could return and resume temporal control over at least part of the Papal States.  He reached a concordat with Napoleon (by now First Consul) in 1801 under which Napoleon recognised Catholicism as the religion of the people of France.  He also acknowledged the Pope’s sovereignty over the rump of the Papal States, while the Pope acknowledged his sovereignty over Romagna (including Bologna).  He reached a similar concordat with the Italian Republic in 1803, under the terms of which Catholicism was recognised as the official religion of the region. The Pope attended Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor in Paris in 1804.

Kingdom of Italy

In 1805, Napoleon had himself crowned with the iron crown of Lombardy in Milan Cathedral, thereby announcing to the world his status as the new Charlemagne.  The erstwhile Italian Republic (which now included most of the Veneto) became the Kingdom of Italy.  Napoleon appointed Eugene de Beauharnais (the son of his wife, Josephine) as Viceroy in Milan. 

Venice was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1806.  In the same year, Napoleon deposed King Ferdinand IV of Naples and installed his brother, Joseph as King of Naples.

Annexation of the Papal States

Despite Napoleon’s concordats with Pope Pius VII, he occupied Ancona and much of the Adriatic coast in 1805 as a defensive move against the threat from the renewed coalition of Austria, Russia and France.  Although the renewed threat on land was ended with the French victory at Austerlitz in December of that year, the naval threat from Britain (the victors at Trafalgar earlier in the war) remained.  He therefore ordered King Joseph of Naples to take Ostia and Cività Vecchia (the ports of Rome) in 1806.  These were but two of a series of events that progressively soured his relations with the Pope (who renounced his formal sovereignty over Naples only in 1807).

Napoleon ordered the magnificently named General Sextius Alexandre François de Miollis to occupy Rome in February 1808, and followed this with the formal annexation of the Papal States in May 1809.  The Pope, who was bunkered in the Quirinal Palace, excommunicated “all robbers of Peter’s patrimony”.  He was arrested and interned at Savona. 

General de Miollis was appointed governor of the newly annexed territory, which was organised into two administrative units:

•the Dipartimento del Tevere, with its capital at Rome, under the prefect Count Camille de Tournon; and

•the Dipartimento del Trasimeno, with its capital at Spoleto, under the prefect, Baron Antoine-Marie Roederer.

In 1810, Napoleon pressed the moderate General de Miollis “to show more vigour” in relation to decree of that year that abolished religious houses.  It seems that the rabidly anti-clerical Baron Roederer needed no such encouragement.  (He nevertheless conceded that Bishop Francesco Maria Locatelli would be missed when he died in 1811. He never forgot his 5 years in Spoleto, although he was forced to flee in disguise in 1814.  He subsequently maintained a correspondence with the Spoletan engineer Pietro Fontana)

In 1812 followed another decree that General de Miollis could not moderate, which required the citizens of the region to take an oath of loyalty.  He also deported Pope Pius VII to France.  These measures engendered widespread resentment.

The confiscation of ecclesiastical property and the suppression of religious orders and lay confraternities meant that a vast number of works of art passed to the ownership of the French crown.  This offered a new opportunity to add to the collection of the Musée Napoléon in Paris and to endow the Museo Capitolino in Rome.

Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon, the director of the Musée Napoléon, gave Baron Antoine-Marie Roederer, prefect of the Dipartimento del Trasimeno, a list of the works to be confiscated for dispatch Paris. 

He mandated Tofanelli to find the works on the list and send them to Paris.  He duly assembled another 48 works of art in a single day in 1812.  However, after he left the city, Giulio Cesarei, the indefatigable mayor of Perugia managed to arrange that those works that were still used for cult purposes should be returned to the appropriate churches.  Unfortunately, these concessions were later revoked and the original 48 works finally left for Rome in November, 1813.

These works arrived in Paris in 1814 just as the allied forces entered the city, after which Baron Denon was ordered to restore all the works that had been confiscated from Italy to their lawful owners. 

The British government contributed some £30,000 to defray the expenses that Pope Pius VII incurred.  He sent Canova to find and transmit the works back to Italy, but he was given only a short time to accomplish the task.  In the ensuing chaos, many of the confiscated works (particularly those that had been sent from Paris to provincial galleries) remained in France. 

Many others were detained in Rome.  Cardinal Consalvi wrote to Cesarei on October 8th, 1817 to explain that the pictures were all presented by the allied forces to the Pope as Head of the Pontifical states from which they had been taken, and that they were exposed in Rome for the education of the students who came from all over Europe.

Pope Pius IX (1846-78)

Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Archbishop of Spoleto 1827-32) and subsequently bishop of Imola, became a cardinal on 1840 and was elected as Pope Pius IX in 1846.  He was popular because of his sympathy for reform: he appointed Cardinal Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi, a leading liberal, as his secretary of state, relaxed censorship and announced an amnesty for political prisoners.  Thus he was affectionately known as “Pio Nono”.  Cardinal Gizzi resigned in 1847, when he went so far as to permit the towns and cities of the Papal States to form civic guards, which involved the arming some of their citizens.

In January 1848, revolution broke out in Naples.  In order to reduce tension in Rome, Pius IX  formed a liberal ministry under Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli with a new constitution for the Papal States.  Revolution against the Habsburgs broke out soon after in Vienna, prompting Metternich to flee and unleashing similar uprisings in Milan and Venice under King Charles Albert of Piedmont and Sardinia.  Pius IX was equivocal in his support and this led to revolution in Rome in November 1848.  The unpopular Minister of the Interior, Pellegrino Rossi, was murdered, and people took to the streets demanding was against the Habsburgs.  Pius IX fled south to Gaeta. 

Pius IX refused to negotiate with the Roman Republic, which had been formed in February 1849, and called on the Catholic powers to crush it.  The republican government, which included Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi, received military support when Giuseppe Garibaldi and his "Italian Legion" entered Rome in April 1849.  However a French army took Rome for the papacy in July. 

Garibaldi left Rome with about 4,000 volunteers on 2nd July 1849.   He reached Terni , where some 900 volunteers under the English Colonel  Forbes joined him.  He then progressed to Todi, Orvieto, Chiusi and Città della Pieve.  He came to a stop outside Arezzo later in the month, and many of his followers melted away.  He also failed to obtain entrance to  Città di Castello.  He therefore switched his attention to Venice, then under an Austrian siege, and decided to head for a port of the Adriatic.

Pius IX, who distrusted the French, did not return to Rome until 1850.  By this time, he had completely abandoned liberalism.

Pius IX refused to negotiate with the Piedmontese and  would not recognise the Kingdom of Italy when it was formed in 1860.

His encyclical of 1864, “Quanta cura”, denounced any suggestion that the temporal power of the papacy should be abolished and condemned liberalism, nationalism and the separation of church and state.  The counter-offensive culminated at the Vatican Council (1870) with the declaration of papal infallibility.

Casse di Risparmio

“Casse di Risparmio” (savings banks) began to replace the Monti di Pietà in the 19th century.  The first of these was formed in Padua in 1822.   Monsignor Gioacchino Pecci, the papal legate in Perugia, introduced the concept to Umbria in 1843.

20th Century

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