Duchy of Aosta Duché d'Aoste (French)
11th century–1766
Coat of arms
Duchy of Aosta in 1749
Status	Duchy of theSavoyard State
Capital	Aosta
Common languages	Official French
Religion	Catholicism
Government	Duchy
Duke of Aosta
History
• Raised to duchy	11th century
• French made official language	1561
• Disestablished	1766
Succeeded by Doire
Today part of	Aosta Valley

TheDuchy of Aosta, originally theCounty of Aosta (French:Duché d'Aoste), was a realm ruled by theHouse of Savoy from the early 11th century until the late 18th, when its independent institutions were aligned with those of thePrincipality of Piedmont. The title "Duke of Aosta" continued to be used by the second sons of the Savoyard monarch. The land of the duchy is today a part ofItaly.

The county of Aosta was originally ruled by thebishops ofAosta in the 10th and early 11th centuries. Upon the death ofBishop Anselm in 1026, however,Conrad the Salic ensured that the secular powers of the important Alpine territory passed to the bishop's brother-in-law, his allyHumbert the White-handed, rather than remaining tied to the diocese, which fell to Anselm's unfriendly nephewBurchard.^[1] Humbert's sonOdo then wedAdelaide, securing theMarch of Turin.^[2] The county was elevated to aduchy byFrederick Barbarossa.^[3]

DukeEmmanuel Philibert madeFrench the official language of the duchy in 1561,^[4] but it retained its own traditional institutions as late as 1766.^[5] It received its first intendant in 1773. It had its own taxation system down to 7 October 1783, when it was brought under thecadaster.^[6] According to Jean-Baptiste de Tillier (died 1744):

The duchy of Aosta has always been a state, forming a single undivided body. The seventy-eight church-towers, or rather the cities, towns, parishes and separate communities which exist in the Valley, are members of this state.

Reflecting trends often found in the Italian states as a whole, many Aostanknights were familiar with both the localcastlecourt cultures of the lands they often helped to govern and the larger-scale courts of theSavoyard state which variously competed with, governed over, hired from, and worked withnoble families that produced knights.^[7]

During the disappearance of feudalism, knights and other nobles "transformed into a class ofcourtiers andofficials" for theduke.^[7]

• Diocese of Aosta
• Aosta Valley

• Farrell-Vinay, Giovanna (2005), "Welfare Provision in Piedmont",Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th- and 19th-century Southern Europe, Burlington: Ashgate, pp. 250–88.
• Kain, Roger J.P.; et al. (1992),The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rule, Martin (1883),The Life and Times of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the Britons,Vol. I, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.,ISBN 978-1-9741-1907-3{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
• Street, Jack D. (1998), "The Independence of Savoy and Autonomy of the Valle D'Aosta",The French Review,Vol. 71, No. 3, pp. 396–404.

• History of Aosta Valley
• Duchies of the Holy Roman Empire
• Dukedoms of Italy
• Savoyard state
• 11th-century establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
• 1766 disestablishments in the Holy Roman Empire

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing French-language text
• CS1 errors: ISBN date