San Giorgio della Richinvelda

The Richinvelda is the plain enclosed between the Meduna, the Cosa and the Tagliamento, and for centuries it was one single thing: a great ecclesiastical unit and at the same time a territorial unit of the Friulian march. The pieve appears for the first time in 1186, when pope Urban III recognised the bishop of Concordia's spiritual jurisdiction over forty pievi, and among them is that of San Giorgio; its jurisdiction came to include fifteen parishes, from Rauscedo to Valvasone, from Provesano to Domanins. In medieval documents it is called Plebis Sancti Georgii que dicitur Plebs de Cosa, and that double name tells of a division of duties: at San Giorgio lay the centre of religious jurisdiction, at Cosa that of lay jurisdiction. On this same plain, on 6 June 1350, Bertrand, patriarch of Aquileia, was set upon and killed in an ambush.

Then the Great Richinvelda fell apart, and it did so one piece at a time. On 3 February 1332 an agreement between the lords of Spilimbergo and those of Valvasone drew the boundary of their respective fiefs inside the territory of the pieve; in 1392 Provesano broke away and became an independent parish, in 1479 it was the turn of Domanins, in 1894 of Rauscedo. Meanwhile, from below, people were organising themselves: there were the vicinie, the councils of heads of households, led by a sindico who here was also called meriga or degan, and out of those communitas or universitas the modern parishes were born — on the arms of Valvasone the double V stands for Vniversitas Valvasonis. The modern comune came into being in 1816 with five hamlets, and the story closes with a rare thing: on 14 October 1871 the inhabitants of Provesano decided by popular referendum to join San Giorgio della Richinvelda, rather than remain under Spilimbergo. In the cemetery of that same hamlet lies buried the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who had a holiday home here.