Motovun was first mentioned in 804 in Rižanski placit. Over time, in the Middle Ages and later in the New Age, it will become one of the most important and striking fortified settlements in Istria, especially in its central part. To this day, the village will maintain its continuity. This great anniversary is also the reason for the scientific conference held in Motovun on 11 May 2024, entitled ‘Motovun – the emergence of a city and a medieval municipality. On the 1220th anniversary of the first mention of Motovun’. What immediately attracts attention is that the gathering is not general or thematically wide, but that it thematically concentrates on the period from late antiquity to about 1000 AD, it would be said about the formative period of the local fortress, its walls, but also the municipal organization. And the topic is just Motovun and its truly immediate surroundings are covered by the boundaries of today's Motovun Municipality.
One third of the presentations at the event are dedicated to one of the key events related to Motovun's legal history – the Rižanski placito, in which the city is, after all, mentioned for the first time. All presentations about him were presented by lawyers. This proves to be justified because Rižanski placit is primarily a legal act, i.e. a document with normative (regulatory) content, and only then and to a lesser extent a testimony about history and the past. So far, too little space has been devoted to the legal approach to this document and its regulatory basis, which is only logically and scientifically sustainable given that it is a legal act, while most of the questions were carried out with a historical approach. This topic was discussed by law professors specializing in general and national legal history and epochs, with the central presentation of prof. dr. sc. Anamari Petranović from the Faculty of Law in Rijeka with a presentation entitled ‘From the Public and Private Treasury of Rižanski placit’, followed by Prof. dr. sc. Željko Bartulović, also from the Faculty of Law in Rijeka, with a presentation entitled ‘Ownership of lands in Rižanski placit from 804’, and finally prof. dr. sc. Zrinka Erent-Sunko and doc. dr. sc. Miran Marelja with the presentation "Rižanski placit and the first mention of Motovun in the context of the development of Frankish public law in the time of Charlemagne".
By mentioning Motovun in 804, Rižanski placit records a settlement that exists and hints at a kind of then existing municipal organization. However, it is quite unknown how and when a settlement on the Motovun hill was built. Because despite the claims that there was a prehistoric fort here, this not only cannot be confirmed, but the Motovun hill has no stone deposits at all as the basic substrate for the construction of any stone structures without the stone being dragged out of a distance of at least a few kilometers. Prof. dr. sc. Ivan Milotić from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb thoroughly analyzed the transition of late antiquity to the Middle Ages, late antiquity, Byzantine and Avar settlements under the Motovun hill and the Benedictine abbey of the Frankish origin. When questioning the objective time frames for the formation of settlements on the Motovun hill, he asserted that this was a much later time than usual thought by making claims about the late VII or more about the VIII century.
The sign of Motovun's fortification is recognizable, to which was dedicated the second central presentation at the gathering presented by Michele Benčić, mag. hist. In a presentation entitled ‘Creation of Walls, Creation of a City: the shaping of Motovun fortifications through time’ has brought about the status of Motovun’s system of defence through time, that is, from the earliest existence of Motovun to the peak of fortifications. Since the data on fortifications for older periods are scarce, in the first phase the geographical position and relief as fortification elements that enabled permanent settlement and fortification in the first place and as such are the literal and figurative basis of the creation of Motovun were more exhaustively processed. The second presentations consisted of a review of the occurrence of fortifications with their detailed analysis.
Professor Livio Prodan, an honorary citizen of the Municipality of Motovun, and certainly the best connoisseur of Motovun, gave his last presentation at the conference, titled ‘Sveti Spas nad Kaldira’. The thematic framework of his presentation focused on the Byzantine and Lombard and diocesan determinants of the settlement of Sveti Spas located on the eponymous hill, the highest point in the Municipality of Motovun. The emphasis of his presentation is on the document that mentions this settlement in 1017 and one specific social group - arimane - as a typical offshoot of the Lombard socio-legal stratification.
The second part of the scientific conference consisted of an open, public and pluralistic debate on the urban layout of Motovun for two critical years – 1508 and 1615. – to reconstruct the urban raster. The year 1508 is the last year mentioned. The Motovun Statute and from which derives the last legal regulation of the statutory provenance, while in 1615 the time when the present parish church was built and when the central part of Motovun took on a stable raster of city streets. Each participant of the discussion came to the smart board and on it had the opportunity to intervene in an argumentative way in the proposed reconstruction of the city raster by adding, changing, erasing and otherwise intervening in the proposed ideal drawing of the city. All contributions to the discussion have been documented and will lead the special commission to carry out analyses and studies in order to bring the reconstruction as close as possible to objective reality.
For more than a decade, the Municipality of Motovun has continuously invested strong efforts in the study of all the determinants and factors that have built Motovun and its overall identity (legal, historical, canonical, ecclesiastical, cultural, demographic, artistic, musical, ampelographic and oenological, etc.). The scientific conference on the 1220th anniversary of the first mention of Motovun is scientifically and thematically narrow, but also specialized memento at the formative age of Motovun and its municipality, at its very end, at the time when it all began. By valuing this aspect of heritage, the organizers of the gathering obviously value not only the material (physical), but also what exceeds the limits of it, and much more, but more intangiblely, it builds the culture of a local (municipal) universe such as this Motovun. The organizers of the meeting are the Municipality of Motovun, the Tourist Board of the Municipality of Motovun, the State Archives in Pazin, the Photographers' Association Fotovun and Josip Turčinović together with the Legal History Commission of the Municipality of Motovun.
Taken from: iPress, https://www.ipress.hr/istra/82944-znanstveni-skup-u-motovunu-povodom-1220-obljetnice-njegova-prvoga-spomena (13.5.2024.)
Materials:
- Invitation - Programme (.jpg, 247 kB)
