Spazi e forme di azione del clero delle chiese episcopali. Una comparazione tra Toscana e Veneto nell'VIIII secolo

At the conference on the communities in times of threat, which took place at the University of Tübingen in 2017, I made a comparison between the urban communities of Verona and Lucca immediately after the Carolingian takeover of 773-774. In that occasion I have underlined how different research strategies allow the comparison of specific aspects related to communities even geographically distant and differently documented. In this article I use again different sets of documents which differ both in their thickness and formation (Pisa, Lucca, Verona), in order to underline some specificity related to the ecclesiastical communities bounded to the cathedral churches in the investigated areas. Starting from the analysis of the written evidence, I have focused my attention to the main features related to the formation and composition of the leading group of clerics engaged at Lombard and early Carolingian Tuscan bishoprics. I have also enlarged my analysis to Verona, which is sketched mostly through its collections, while I have more deeply analyzed an unknown reform that took place in Lucca in second half of the 8th century. The unpredicted evidence of the attempted reform at Lucca cathedral church has been fully discussed in this essay and in another publication in Early Medieval Europe 2023