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included the modern-day region of Dolenjska.
Urban settlements known as civitates formed the internal structure of the provinces. In
contrast to later towns founded in the Middle Ages, the surrounding area (ager) also came
under their jurisdiction. For example, the ager of Tergeste included the entire Karst region up
to Nanos and Javorniki, while the ager of Celeia covered approximately the entire Savinja
valley and Kozjansko region, i.e. the area from Trojane to Sotla. Large farming compounds,
known as villae rusticae, were developed in the hinterlands of such towns. Over 150 have
been identified on Slovene territory. In areas where continuity from the Roman period to the
Early Middle Ages prevailed, such as Poreč and Pula in the peninsula of Istria, traces of the
cadastral division into agri have been preserved to the present day. The first Roman city
founded on the territory of modern Slovenia was Emona (Ljubljana). It held the rights of a
Roman colonia, and by 14 or 15 AD had already expanded beyond its city walls. The first
colonists of Emona came primarily from cities in the Po valley and from Aquileia,
accompanied by some veterans of the XV Legion. Around the middle of the first century CE,
five Norican settlements – Aguntum (near Lienz), Iuvavum (Salzburg), Teurnia (near Spittal),
Virunum (at Zollfeld) and Celeia – were granted the status of municipium, granting their
inhabitants additional rights. Exceptional examples of provincial monumental art have been
discovered at Šempeter, in a necropolis for the aristocracy and wealthy citizens of nearby
Celeia. The same status was extended between 70 and 80 AD to Neviodunum (Drnovo) in
Dolenjska region, which in the fourth century became a major river port and horse-changing
station. The town of Poetovio developed from a settlement surrounding a legionary camp, and
was awarded the rights of a colony by Emperor Trajan at the end of the first century. At the
crossroads of the major routes that crossed the territory, and the location of the stone bridge
over the Drava river, Poetovio, which developed into medieval Ptuj, was the most important
urban settlement in Slovene territory for the first millennium and beyond.
Poetovio was also home to the first organised Christian community, a diocese, in
today’s Slovene territory. Towards the end of the third century, during the pre-Constantine
period before the granting of religious freedom, the bishop and martyr Victorinus of Poetovio
(d. 304) lived here. His ecclesiastical writings make him the first known literary author from
any of the Danubian provinces. The ecclesiastical organisation of dioceses reflected the
administrative structure of the Roman provinces, with individual towns (civitates) being made
the sees of bishops. There is evidence of a bishop of Emona from the second half of the fourth
century, a bishop of Teurnia is mentioned in the fifth century, while bishops are recorded for
Aguntum, Virunum and Celeia in the sixth. Around 530, the bishop of Celeia was Gaudentius,
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now known for the exceptional verse of his epitaph at the church of St. Paul near Prebold. In
599, a Christian community with a bishop is mentioned in Koper (Insula Capritana) in Istria,
where there were already another five dioceses: Pola, Cissa, Pedena, Parentium and Tergeste.
Numerous Christian monuments from Late Antiquity have been preserved in modern-day
Slovenia, such as examples of ecclesiastical architecture (churches, baptisteries), Christian
inscriptions, liturgical artefacts and everyday objects featuring Christian symbols, testament
to t
he powerful impact of the new faith. It was also in this region, between Ajdovščina and
Vipava in the Vipava valley, that Emperor Theodosius, a Christian,
defeated his pagan rival
Eugenius in the Battle of the Frigidus river in 394. The Christian victory was ascribed to the
miraculous occurrence of a fierce tempest. Ancient writers and, following their example,
medieval writers recognised the battle as a turning point in world history – the final victory of
Christianity over paganism.
The church in Aquileia was the seat of metropolitan authority over the dioceses
mentioned above, and probably existed as a diocese from the middle of the third century – in
contrast to legends that assert that the first bishop of Aquileia was St. Hermagoras, a disciple
of Mark the Evangelist, who was martyred around 70 AD. Aquileia achieved metropolitan
status in the middle of the fifth century. The title of patriarch for Aquileian metropolitan
bishops is attested from 558/560, while more detailed information on the dioceses included in
the metropolitan province dates back only to the late sixth century. For example, according to
the bishops’ signatures in an ecclesiastical assembly in Grado, traditionally dated to 579, five
dioceses in Istria, nine in Venetia and three in Noricum Mediterraneum came under the
jurisdiction of the Aquileian metropolitan, as well as one each in Pannonia Prima and Raetia
Secunda. The drastic deterioration in conditions in the fifth and sixth centuries, as barbarian
peoples, such as the Goths and Lombards, started to attack and take control of the eastern
borders and even the interior of the Empire, saw the Roman state begin to decline (the Vita
Sancti Severini, written by Eugippius at the beginning of the sixth century is an excellent
source addressing this process in the area of Noricum Ripense). Cities and other lowland
settlements on the main traffic routes regressed and collapsed, and some researchers suggest
that dioceses moved their sees to newly fortified settlements on higher ground, drawing back
from the major traffic routes to less accessible locations (refuges). It is so suggested that the
bishop of Celeia retreated to the fortified settlement of Ajdovski Gradec, above Vranje. These
fortified hilltop settlements are the most common form of settlement from Late Antiquity
found on modern-day Slovene territory, and archaeological excavations have uncovered
numerous Christian churches, often more than one in a single settlement. Nevertheless, the