North-east Italy (Friuli and Veneto), a key area in the late Lombard period, mantained its importance in the Carolingian period due primarily to military reasons, i.e. the defense of the border against Avars and Slavs. The consequences of the Frankish conquest in the north-east were far more devastating than in other areas of the kingdom, because the Friulian aristocracy was the only one to put up an armed resistance against the Frankish armies. Defeating the Friulians, Charlemagne made many efforts to extend Frankish influence over Venice and Istria, in competion with the Bizantine empire. The eastern regions of Italy remained at the forefront of Carolingian interests even after the Peace of Aachen in 812. The second reason why this area of the kingdom was of such strategic importance for the Carolingians was its commercial traffic. The volume of diplomas issued confirms that the Carolingians attributed great importance to regulating the commercial traffic travelling upriver from the Adriatic. In this frame, the pactum Lotharii of 840 reveals the profound link between the kingdom and the Venitian duchy.

How does one study the Carolingian vassals after the renewal of historiographic paradigms following the publication of Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassalls? In this chapter, I tried to answer this question. It focusses on the reconstruction of the meaning given to the term vassus in the so-called Italic capitularies; the latter, although they certainly cannot be considered a homogenous genre, do, nevertheless, share a specific and coherent political vocabulary. Carolingian vassalage–whether Italian or not – is thus clearly far from being a ‘conceptual black hole’, but nor was it merely a bulwark against the dissolution of the state, as hypothesized by Ganshof. Vassalage was, in fact, a very flexible instrument, which could be adopted by the government in newly conquered territories in relation to ‘agents’ who supported the king/emperor, the counts and the bishops in their functions. It could also be adopted by individual ‘magnates’ for services related to their own domus. Therefore in Italy, as elsewhere, two models of vassalages emerged. This flexibility was the reason for the success of vassalage in Carolingian Italy.