Local Churches and Lordship in late antique and early medieval northern Italy

The objective of this paper is to show the complexity of the ecclesiastical network of churches in the countryside, triying to analyze the functions, jurisdictions and interrelations of these buildings through time. Such an study can only be accomplished if limited to a restricted territory, which in our case will be the Lake Garda in northern Italy, taking into account the interaction of churches with the evolution of the territory and the transformation of settlement patterns. This global approach is the only which can help to clarify why a church was built in a certain place, the function of these different buildings, whom they served and who built them as well as the relationship between these constructions and the economic, social and political landscape to which they belonged.