Šterna

«Alli 12 9bre 1777. Cepich. Cargna. Bortolo figlio del q. Gio: Batta de Franceschi dalla Cargna, Diocese d'Udine, ha contratto legitimo Matrimonio coll'Ill.ma Sig.a Zanetta Gravisi figlia dell'Ill.mo Sig.r Marchese Nazario della Villa di Cepich di questa Pieve, e ciò previo il di lui libero stato ottenuto dall'Ill.mo Monsig.r Gio: Domenico Stratico Vesc.o di Cittanova… nec non essendo stati dispensati dalle trine pubblicazioni solite farsi…»** Read off the film at full magnification on 13 September 2026.

This is the entry that had never been found. The Svetvinčenat reading page says it plainly: «What the film has not given is an origin. Not one entry in fourteen years of baptisms says where these people came from. No «da Carnia», no «di Mione», no «q. di Agrons». The Carnian identification of this household still rests entirely on the company it keeps.» Here the priest writes it himself, in the body of the entry and again in the margin: Cepich. Cargna.

And the bride is a Gravisi — not a coincidence of spelling but the Capodistrian marquisal house, named in full: the Illustrious Signor Marchese Nazario, of the village of Cepich in this parish. A man from Carnia whose father is already dead marries a marquis's daughter, with the Bishop of Cittanova certifying his free status because nobody in Istria could, and with the three readings of the banns waived.

A correction to this page, published within hours of the claim it corrects. This archive wrote on the morning of 13 September that «Gio Batta De Franceschi and Zanetta Gravisi… stand behind two entries in the marriage book as the parents of the groom». They are not the parents. Zanetta Gravisi is Bortolo's wife. The index lists groom, groom's father, bride, bride's father, and this archive read the four names as two couples. The page says otherwise and the page wins.

So the household reads: Gio: Batta de Franceschi, of Carnia, dead before 1777 and never in an Istrian register. His son Bortolo × Zanetta Gravisi, married 12 November 1777 — and their children baptised at Šterna from the following September: Felice Anto 27 September 1778, Mariana February 1786, Federico 14 March 1794, Catarina 11 August 1797, with a Francesco «of Bortolo» buried on 20 December 1787. The mother written Zannetta, Zanetta, Giovana and Giovanna by four hands is the same marchese's daughter. Then a second Gio: Batta and Maria baptising in 1807 and 1809 — the grandfather's name come round — and in July 1819 the burial of a Bartolo, son of that Gio: Batta and Maria. (Corrected: this page first read that 1819 burial as Bortolo the elder «at the end of it». The entry names parents, so it is a child — a grandson carrying the grandfather's name. Bortolo's own death has not been found.)

The reading is confirmed twice. Filmed with the register is an archivist's pencil finding-aid slip listing the book's notable entries, and it independently records: «12/XI 1777 Bortolo figlio del q. Gio: Batta de Franceschi dalla Cargna con Ill.ma Sig.a Zanetta Gravisi figlia dell'Ill.mo Sig. Marchese Nazario — pag 39». FamilySearch's index counted that slip as a second record, which is why this archive expected two marriages and found one.

And the parish is older than this page first said. Šterna's filmed books were given here as running 1723–1836. They do not: the first volume is a composite of births from 1667, with marriages from 1688 and deaths from 1667, running to 1727. It holds no De Franceschi at all — 207 images, tested one by one against every record of the name this archive can reach. Which fits: there is no family of the name here in the seventeenth century, and then a man arrives from Carnia and marries a marquis's daughter in 1777.

Who the Gravisi were. Josip Banić's Venetian Istria in the embrace of a nascent Dominium (CEU doctoral dissertation, 2021) sets it out from the archival record. Niccolò de Gravisi, son of the late Vanto, of Piran — distinguished citizens, not nobles — uncovered a conspiracy against Venice at Padua. By a ducale of Doge Francesco Foscari dated 10 March 1440, he was invested with the fort of Petrapilosa in Istria as a hereditary fief of the Republic: «overtaken by the zeal of true loyalty… he revealed the conspiracy plotted against us and our state in Padua», so that «the very city of Padua remains preserved under our Republic». The fief was worth 150 ducats a year, the balance of his pension paid by the treasury of Koper; he was to guard the castle at his own expense and give Venice, every St Mark's day, one candle weighing ten pounds for the Church of St Mark. He was not given the merum et mixtum imperium — blood justice and civil appeals stayed with the podestà of Koper.

Because Petrapilosa had been the seat of the Istrian margraves, the house took the title marchiones — the Marquises of Petrapilosa, whom Banić calls «the most prestigious noble house of late medieval Istria», nobles «unlike any other on the entire Istrian peninsula». (He also corrects the standard account: Venturini's 1906 family history credits Niccolò with uncovering the 1435 Marsilio conspiracy; the documents say the 1439 Scrovegni one.)

Petrapilosa's country is this country. Its jurisdiction sits in the Buzet uplands with Hum and Roč — the same small world as Šterna, Sovinjak and Draguč. So «the Ill.mo Sig.r Marchese Nazario» whose daughter Bortolo married in 1777 is of that house, in its own territory. What that does and does not mean. Three hundred and thirty-seven years separate Doge Foscari's grant from this wedding, and by 1777 the Gravisi were many branches deep; a marchese living at a village like Cepich is a cadet line, not the seigneur of the castle. What the entry shows is a man who arrived from Carnia with a dead father and no Istrian parish to vouch for him marrying into the titled family of the district. <span class="chip inf" style="padding:2px 7px;font-size:10px">Inferred — that this Nazario is of the Petrapilosa house, from the title and the district</span>

And one structural thing worth keeping. Banić's population tables name only two feudal jurisdictions in Venetian Istria: Petrapilosa and Svetvinčenat. Those are the two places this archive finds the surname thickest — Svetvinčenat with 118 records from 1628, and the Šterna household in Petrapilosa's country. Seigneurial lords recruited settlers in a way communes did not, which is exactly the mechanism a Carnian immigration would use. <span class="chip inf" style="padding:2px 7px;font-size:10px">Inferred — the coincidence is suggestive, not demonstrated</span>

And the district has a name and a shape. Banić's population tables put Buzet at 151 hearths with «300 in the contado, including Petrapilosa» — and the district's later count of 4,844 is given as «including Hum and Roč, Sovinjak, Vrh and Draguč, and the villages around Rašpor». So Šterna, Sovinjak and Draguč — three places this archive has been treating separately — sit inside one documented administrative block, the Buzet contado with Petrapilosa's feud in it. When Venice took the Margraviate over, «the old tributes were confirmed and no new taxes introduced» in Roč and the villages of Petrapilosa — the citation for which is Klen's edition of the 1425 Petrapilosa tax roll, at pages 96–97.

The fief was the castle and twelve villages. In 1483 Niccolò's four sons — Vanta, Michele, Pietro and Gravis — divided the holding: the castle itself stayed in common, «and the brothers took turns administering it, a year each». Which twelve villages they were is the one thing this archive now wants and does not have. They are in Danilo Klen, «Urbar Petre Pilose iz 1425. godine», Starine 58 (1980): 85–124 — a household-level tax roll of this country, edited and printed. It is not online. Starine 58 is catalogued at the Croatian Academy's digital library as In Copyright, with no scan; four physical copies sit in the HAZU Library in Zagreb (A1-003-058, A-003-058, ČA-003-058, PA-003-058). It is a reading-room or scan request, not a download.