Slavia Friulana, which meansFriulian Slavia, also known as Venetian Slavia (Slovene:Beneška Slovenija), is a small mountainous region in northeasternItaly and westernSlovenia. It is so called because of its Slavic population which settled here in the 6th century AD. The Italian territory is located in the Italian region ofFriuli-Venezia Giulia, between the town ofCividale del Friuli and the Slovenian border. The Slovenian territory encompasses ten villages in the area of theBreginj Combe.[1]
The termSlavia Friulana could possibly be used to refer to all Friulian territories with a Slavic presence, including themunicipalities ofLusevera,Taipana,Torreano,Resia,San Pietro al Natisone,San Leonardo,Pulfero,Drenchia,Grimacco,Stregna,Savogna and the mountainous areas of the municipalities ofTarcento,Nimis,Attimis,Faedis,Prepotto andMontenars.
Since the beginning of the 8th century AD (c. 720), Slavic people settled in this area and in the Middle Ages they would have been calledSclavons. In the early 16th century, the Venetian authorities dubbed this border region of their Republic asSchiavonia Veneta, meaning "Venetian Slav-land". TheVenetian wordsSchiavoni andSchiavonia were general terms used for allSlavic peoples
In Slovene, the traditional term has beenBeneška Slovenija, which is a literal translation ofSchiavonia Veneta. Until the early 19th century, there was no distinction between the terms "Slav" and "Slovene" in Venetian Slavia. However, from the times ofRomantic nationalism onward, the termSlovenija, which had been sporadically used to denote lands inhabited by Slovenes/Slavs, took over a new meaning, denoting the idea of modernSlovenia. The old termBeneška Slovenija was thus assimilated to a new meaning, as its name now meant "Venetian Slovenia". As a more neutral colloquial term, the name Benečija came into usage, which however also means Veneto in Slovene.
After World War I, as soon as the Italian kingdom expanded its borders eastwards (including slavophone territories in Istria and in the so-calledHabsburgic Illyrian kingdom), the region started to be commonly calledSlavia Friulana instead of a genericSlavia Italiana.
In the late 6th century Slavic tribes settled the area. They stopped in front of the Lombard defensive line on the edge of Friuli, which today represents the approximate linguistic border between Slovenian and Friulian. TheAlpine Slavs western neighbors were the Lombards, with whom they frequently fought between the 7th and 8th centuries.
From the 9th century onward, the region belonged first to theDuchy of Friuli and later to thePatriarchate of Aquileia.[2]
In 1420 the Patriarchate of Aquileia was invaded by theRepublic of Venice. The Venetian authorities decided to absorb the Natisone Valley "gastaldia di Antro " in the Cividale's one, but at the same time they gave the localSlavs a remarkable autonomy. In fact, the territory was structured in two co-valleys (Antro and Merso) represented by their people's assemblies calledarenghi; each co-valley had also the right to elect its own judges and its own tribunals (banche) whose judiciary power extended to the villages that weren't the object of feudal investitures; the whole Schiavonia had important tax benefits and its only military duties were to provide 200 men for the border defense against the neighbouringHabsburg Empire and fortify the nearby city of Cividale and the fortress of Palmanova as well. The ancient and commercial road of the Natisone valley, which connectedCarniola to Italy, lost its importance soon after the Habsburgs inherited the county of Gorizia and conquered Upper Isonzo Valley; the Austrians built another road to Gorizia passing along the border and this caused economic damage to the whole area which became poorer than it was before.
In 1797, most of the Venetian Republic was annexed to theHabsburg Empire, including Schiavonia Veneta. The Habsburg authorities abolished the ancient privileges of the local Slav populations, as they had already done with a similar system of autonomy in neighboringTolmin County in 1717. In 1805, the region was submitted to French rule, which did not restore the privileges, but replaced the old boroughs with French-style townships, led by government-appointed mayors. In 1813, the region fell again under Habsburg domination and in 1815 it was included in theAustrian administrative unit ofLombardy-Venetia. Most of the reforms introduced by the French authorities were kept.
Under the rule of the Austrian Empire, the clergy began to teach standard Slovenian to the population.Peter Podreka (1822–1889) gave the young people the Slovene Alphabet (1852) and the Slovene Catechism (1869), with which they began to learn standard Slovenian for the first time in history.[2]
Slavia Friulana came under Italy only in 1866 when Prussia and Italy managed to defeat the Austrian Empire militarily. Despite the fact that the Kingdom of Italy was not successful in the war, it still managed to gain Venetia because Prussia defeated the Austrian army in Bohemia. Thus, the Venetian Slovenes came to the new state. On October 7, 1866, King Victor Emmanuel II issued a decree that the inhabitants of Venice must decide whether they wanted to belong to Italy or not. A plebiscite was not foreseen in the peace treaty, the outcome was only supposed to reflect the will of the population. In the case of theVenetian plebiscite, this was precisely what became fatal for the local Slovenes: their massive ›Si‹‹ was later interpreted by the authorities as a free path to Italianization. A plebiscite is characterized by a popular vote deciding whether a territory belongs to a certain country, and in 1866 the territory was already assigned by the peace treaty. The plebiscite is carried out under international control, which was not the case in Venice. Legal experts believe that this was more of a referendum – confirmation of the will of an authority. The result of the plebiscite was almost entirely in favor of the Kingdom of Italy, where almost everyone who could vote voted for the Kingdom of Italy. The inhabitants of Venetian Slovenia decided for Italy in the plebiscite because they had good memories of the Venetian Republic, which granted them favorable economic and political conditions, and they wanted Italy to implement these laws again, but this did not happen.[2]
Italian became the sole official language. The local population were considered "Italians with a Slav origin"; the local traditions were mostly respected with the exception of the Slovenian language, which was seen as less important and due to nationalistic reasons, it was not taught in schools where the only language of instruction was Italian until the establishment of a bilingual school inSan Pietro al Natisone in 1978. While Slovenian was taught only by priests in churches. By establishing Italian schools and providing education in Italian, the Kingdom of Italy wanted to create among the people the idea of a common Italian national identity, since this idea had not previously existed among the inhabitants of this region.
During this period, the region became a major focus of historians, linguists and ethnologists, interested in its archaic customs, dialects and common law. Scholars who wrote about Slavia Friulana included the Italo-SlavsCarlo Podrecca andFrancesco Musoni, the Polish linguistJan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay, the SlovenesSimon Rutar andHenrik Tuma.
After 1870, when Italy conquered Rome, reducing the Pope's territories to theVatican City, the Italo-Slavic priests (who had fought for the union with Italy in the preceding decades) started a hard political action against the new kingdom: for this reason and because of the Slovenian national movement in Austria-Hungary they refused to consider themselves Italians but Slovenes. This trend became even more pronounced after the annexation of theJulian March to the Kingdom of Italy in 1920, when a large Slovene-speaking minority was included within the borders of the Italian state.
After 25 years of the Fascist regime, all public and religious use of other languages were forbidden. This feature was further emphasized by the Slovene anti-fascist and nationalist propaganda (both left-wing and conservative-Catholic), which frequently portrayed the Slavia Friulana as the symbol of Slovene resistance to FascistItalianization, often simplifying the complex linguistic and social realities of the region. The best-known literary portrayal of the area was written in 1938 by the Slovene writerFrance Bevk fromGorizia in his novel "The Vicar Martin Čedermac" (Kaplan Martin Čedermac).[3]
DuringWorld War II theSlovene partisan resistance, led by theLiberation Front of the Slovenian People, penetrated the region. TheKobarid Republic was established as a temporary administration after theItalian armistice in early September 1943.[4]
In early November 1943,Nazi German forces crushed the insurgency, and incorporated the whole area into theOperational Zone Adriatic Coast. In 1944, theItalian resistance movement also became active in the mountains of Slavia Friulana. Tensions between the Yugoslav (Slovene) and Italian resistance movements rose. The Liberation Front of the Slovenian People wanted to annex the region to aYugoslav Communist federation, while the Italian resistance was split between theCommunists who partially supported the Yugoslav claims, and the Liberal-democratic who wanted Slavia Friulana to remain part of Italy.
In February 1945, thePorzus massacre occurred, in which the communist and filo-Yugoslav Italian partisans killed several members of the Italian liberal-democratic resistance members. In May 1945 the whole area was invaded by theYugoslav People's Army, which however withdrew a few weeks later after the British arrival. Liberal-democratic-catholic partisans, members of the Royal Army and the defeated fascist soldiers joined up together to fight the communists and the Yugoslavs.
In 1945, Slavia Friulana again became an integral part of Italy. It was included in theregion ofFriuli-Venezia Giulia. Between 1945 and 1947, Slavia Friulana was a region on the border with theCommunist Bloc, and it was listed as a special operational zone ofGladio, a clandestineNATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II, intended to counter a possibleWarsaw Pact invasion ofWestern Europe. The activists of Gladio were mostly local members of theAlpini troops.[5]
After the war, discrimination against Slovenes continued, as the Italians equated Slavs with communism and saw them as potential traitors and spies, even though they were fairly loyal to Italy, unlike the Slovenes in the Gorizia and Trieste regions.
In the following decades, the presence of a militarized border didn't allow an economic and infrastructural development and this situation caused a widespreademigration during the same period. Europe's ideological division ignited in this area an ethnic one: local communists continued to support the Yugoslav socialist regime claiming the recognition of aSlovene minority; also a few priests continued to identify the population as Slovene. On the other hand, some locals consider themselves as Italo-slavs or nedižouci (inhabitants of the Natisone valley; singular: nedižovac) and rečanji (inhabitants of the Alberone, Erbezzo and Cosizza valleys; singular: rečanj). They claim to speak nediško, with ethnical differences by the Slovene neighbours. Although Yugoslavia started its dissolution afterJosip Broz Tito died in 1980 and the cold war ended in 1989, this ethnic debate hasn't been cleared yet and it's still caged within an ideological contest.
| Municipality Italian/Nediško | 1871 | 1881 | 1901 | 1911 | 1921 | 1931 | 1936 | 1951 | 1961 | 1971 | 1981 | 1991 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drenchia/Dreka | 1036 | 1278 | 1389 | 1424 | 1562 | 1458 | 1285 | 1392 | 1128 | 599 | 359 | 255 |
| (%) | 66.3 | 81.8 | 88.9 | 91.2 | 100 | 93.3 | 82.3 | 89.1 | 72.2 | 38.3 | 25.4 | 16.3 |
| Grimacco/Garmak | 1324 | 1560 | 1570 | 1678 | 1780 | 1621 | 1543 | 1737 | 1645 | 929 | 760 | 591 |
| (%) | 74.4 | 87.6 | 88.2 | 94.3 | 100 | 91.1 | 86.7 | 97.6 | 92.4 | 52.2 | 43 | 33.2 |
| Pulfero/Podbuniesac | 3256 | 2492 | 3779 | 3991 | 4066 | 3864 | 3681 | 3735 | 3306 | 2237 | 1831 | 1307 |
| (%) | 80.1 | 85.9 | 92.9 | 98.2 | 100 | 95.0 | 90.5 | 91.9 | 81.3 | 55 | 45.1 | 32.1 |
| S. Leonardo/Svet Lienart | 2188 | 2382 | 2639 | 2623 | 2637 | 2424 | 2222 | 2283 | 2077 | 1375 | 1220 | 1128 |
| (%) | 83 | 90.3 | 100 | 99.5 | 100 | 92.6 | 84.3 | 86.6 | 78.8 | 52.1 | 46.9 | 42.8 |
| S.Pietro al N./Špietar | 2811 | 3182 | 3313 | 3525 | 3544 | 3039 | 3077 | 3088 | 2842 | 2331 | 2066 | 2173 |
| (%) | 79.3 | 89.8 | 93.5 | 99.5 | 100 | 85.8 | 86.8 | 87.1 | 80.2 | 65.8 | 58.1 | 61.3 |
| Savogna/Sauodnja | 1820 | 2017 | 2078 | 2026 | 2143 | 2044 | 1867 | 2077 | 1741 | 1226 | 1017 | 786 |
| (%) | 84.9 | 94.1 | 97 | 94.5 | 100 | 95.40 | 87.1 | 96.9 | 81.2 | 57.2 | 48 | 36.7 |
| Stregna/Srednje | 1616 | 1710 | 1805 | 20 00 | 1908 | 1908 | 1722 | 1883 | 1554 | 952 | 730 | 538 |
| (%) | 84.7 | 89.6 | 94.6 | 104.8 | 100 | 100 | 90.3 | 98.7 | 81.4 | 49.9 | 38.3 | 28.1 |
| Total | 14051 | 15621 | 16573 | 17267 | 17640 | 16358 | 15397 | 16195 | 14293 | 9649 | 8051 | 6869 |
| (%) | 79.7 | 88.6 | 94 | 97.9 | 100 | 94.3 | 87.3 | 91.8 | 81 | 54.7 | 45.6 | 38.9 |
| Italy (in millions) | 27.30 | 28.96 | 32.97 | 35.85 | 38.45 | 41.65 | 42.99 | 47.52 | 50.62 | 54.13 | 56.57 | 56.41 |
| (%) | 71 | 75.3 | 85.7 | 93.2 | 100 | 108.3 | 111.8 | 123.6 | 131.7 | 140.8 | 147.1 | 146.7 |
Many of the villages lost more than two thirds of their populations, as Slavs from Friulian Slavia moved to larger urban areas inNorthern Italy,Switzerland,Belgium andGermany. In May and September 1976, two earthquakes hit Friuli, causing large scale damages.
Although the area was largely depopulated after 1977, the political pressure was lifted after theTreaty of Osimo between Italy and Yugoslavia, but with no economic improvement. In the late 1970s, the first elementary and high school with Slovene as a language of instruction was established inSan Pietro al Natisone, and in 2001, the Italian state recognized the local population as a Slovene minority living in the area, guaranteeing it full rights but ignoring the claims of those who consider themselves as non-Slovene.[2]
After Slovenia's entry into theEuropean Union in 2004, the relations between the Slavia Friulana and the borderingGoriška region have intensified.
Most people in Slavia Friulana (considering the whole slavophone area) speak three different Slovene dialects, named after the major valleys that form those territories: first of all theNatisone Valley dialect, theTorre Valley dialect and theResian dialect. The first two are closely related to each other and to other dialects in theLittoral dialect group. While the Resian dialect is more closely related to the Slovenian Carinthian dialects.
Almost all of the inhabitants are fluent inItalian, which is taught in schools and present in the media and in the administration.Friulian is also widespread, especially in the municipalities ofMontenars,Tarcento,Nimis,Attimis,Torreano, andPrepotto. Because of the lack of education in Slovene in the Resian and Torre valleys, some of the inhabitants do not master standard Slovene. Many do not understand it either, especially in the areas where the Slovenian TV and radio are not accessible, since standard Slovene is not entirely intelligible with the dialects spoken in the region, due to the large number of Friulian and Italian loanwords. They are however intelligible with the neighbouring Slovene dialects spoken in theSlovenian Littoral, especially theSoča andBrda dialects.
The vast majority of the people belong to theRoman Catholic Church and the religion plays an important role in the local culture. The Roman Catholic priests have traditionally been the most important promoters of the Slovene language and culture in Slavia Friulana. Anyway, the linguistic matter hasn't been clarified yet. In the late 19th century, the Polish linguistJan Baudouin de Courtenay considered the four local languages as different Slavic ones, rich in Slavic archaisms which make them often sound closer to Serbian. He classified the four Friulian Slav groups as those of the Resia Valley, Torre Valleys, Natisone Valleys, and Judrio Valleys.
Slavia Friulana is known for its rich folk traditions. Numerousfolk andethno music bands come from the region, and many of them are popular throughoutSlovenia and theFriuli-Venezia Giulia. The best-known of these bands are probably theBeneški fantje ("Venetian Lads"), which are considered to be oldest still existing Slovene band. Besides its archaic traditional music and dances, theResia valley is also known for its folk tales, mainly animal fables; these were edited and translated into standard Slovene by the scholarMilko Matičetov, and published as a children's picture book byMladinska knjiga in 1976. The book saw eight editions and was adapted into a puppet show ("Beasties from Resia") byRTV Slovenija in 1976, with a huge impact in popularizing the Friulian Slav folk culture in Slovenia.
Since the late 1980s, Slavia Friulana has also emerged as one of the major centres of high quality Slovene dialect poetry. The best-known poets from the region areSilvana Paletti,Francesco Bergnach, andMarina Cernetig.
Since 1994, the artistic projectStazione di Topolò – Postaja Topolove or "Topolò Station" takes place every summer in the small village of Topolò (Slovene:Topolovo, known asTopolove orTopoluove in the local dialect). The project, which is the most important cultural and artistic event in the region, is an attempt to bring together contemporary visual art with and the local folk traditions.
Media related toSlavia Friulana at Wikimedia Commons46°8′22″N13°27′39″E / 46.13944°N 13.46083°E /46.13944; 13.46083
