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named. All three were linked to established centres and the traditions of ancient Noricum. The
church dedicated to Mary at Maria Saal was near the ancient capital of Noricum, Virunum,
and, together with the castle Karnburg standing opposite it, was the political and religious
centre of the Carantanians. Popular tradition states that Modestus’ grave lies here. Another
church lay in the ager of the more recent Norican capital, Teurnia, near Spittal an der Drau,
perhaps in Molzbichl or its surroundings. The third church, ad Undrimas, was consecrated
near the upper Mura river, in the surroundings of Judenburg, where a Roman continuity is
also attested. Modestus remained in Carantania until his death in 763. Yet his death unleashed
the first reaction from Carantanians opposed to the Christian faith and the prince so closely
associated with it. This may also have been a response to the contemporaneous revolt and
rejection of fealty by the young duke of Bavaria, Tassilo III, against the Frankish king, Pippin.
In 765, the revolt rose once more, but again Hotimir quickly crushed it. His death in 769,
which may have been connected to a change in the princely dynasty, led to the third and most
violent revolt, and for many years to come there were no longer any priests in Carantania. It
was only by the direct military intervention of the Bavarian Duke Tassilo III, in 772, that the
Carantanian rebels were crushed and the previous order restored. This was an event with
repercussions far beyond the local region, and contemporaries compared Tassilo’s victory to
Charlemagne’s destruction of the Irminsul, the Saxon sanctuary.
However, Tassilo had initially intended to resolve matters peacefully. To that end, in
769, he established a monastery in Innichen at the source of the Drava, on the border with
Carantania. The monastery had the expressly missionary purpose, “that the faithless Slavs be
brought to the path of truth.” Co-operation in the Christianisation of the Carantanians has
sometimes erroneously been attributed to a monastery in Kremsmünster, between Traun and
Enns in today’s Upper Austria, which was founded in 777 by Tassilo III, and the founding
charter of which includes the first written mention of the Slavic term jopan (župan). However,
the recent archaeological discovery of the oldest Carinthian monastery at Molzbichl, near
Spittal, needs to be ranked alongside Innichen, where there are good grounds for dating its
founding to the time after Tassilo’s victory over the Carantanians in 772. The extremely rare
dedication to St. Tiburtius, shared with a monastery in Pfaffmünster (near Straubing in the
Bavarian diocese of Regensburg) where a group of Irish monks operated, probably also
indicates the identity of the monks who came to Carantania. An Irish name Dublittir
(Dupliterus) also had a priest operating as a missionary in Carantania around 775, without
even giving particular emphasis to the Irish origin of Virgilius (Fergil), the bishop of
Salzburg. The personal names of missionaries reported in the Conversio Bagoariorum et
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Carantanorum,
a source that, despite its pro-Salzburg bias, offers us priceless information
from earliest Carantanian history, also reveal the important role played in the Carantanian
mission by ‘Romans’ from the Salzburg area.
The victory by Tassilo III in 772 brought the longstanding political crisis in Carantania
to an end. Carantania’s new prince was Valtunc, now even more closely linked to Bavaria, and
was probably chosen in a similar manner to Borut’s successors. The links with Salzburg were
re-established, and by the time of Virgilius’ death, in 784, six groups of missionaries had
come to Carantania. Virgilius’ successor, Arno, initially continued the same policy. One of the
missionaries to Carantania at that time was a priest called Ingo, who for a long time was taken
to be a legendary prince of Carantania. Another figure increasingly seen as having been a
historical person is Domicianus who, according to legends that arose around the start of the
fourteenth century, was the Carantanian prince who converted his people to Christianity and
founded a church in Millstatt. Arno’s policy changed after his elevation to archbishop in 798,
and in 799, together with Gerold, prefect and brother-in-law of Charlemagne and the most
powerful man in Bavaria, he appointed a regional bishop, Theoderic, to hold office in
“Sclavinia”. This restored the institution of regional bishop to Carantania, to which Virgilius
had appointed Modestus, and which was maintained until the mid-tenth century, with an
interruption in the third quarter of the ninth century. The institution also served as a model to
Gebhard, the archbishop of Salzburg, in the founding of the first Carinthian diocese, in Gurk,
in 1072.
Salzburg’s role in the Christianisation of the Carantanians was decisive, but not
unique. The pro-Salzburg source, the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum suppressed
the role of other ecclesiastical centres, such as Aquileia, Regensburg and Freising, in this
undertaking. Freising in particular was closely linked to Carantania in the eighth and ninth
centuries. The Freising mission, which was characterised by an expansion down the Drava
river into Upper Carinthia, where the diocese already had an estate near the former city of
Teurnia in the ninth century, took Innichen as its starting point. As early as 822, a Carantanian
Bavarian by the name of Matheri bequeathed his lands between Trixen and Griffen to the
monastery in Innichen. The first mention of the Freising church of Sts. Primus and Felician at
Maria Wörth, near the lake of Wörthersee, dates from the ninth century. And finally, the most
convincing arguments suggest that Freising’s upper Carinthian properties were also the place
where, around the turn of the millennium, three short but truly invaluable religious texts were
written, the texts now known as the Freising Manuscripts (Slov. Brižinski spomeniki).
The missionaries undoubtedly propagated the new faith in the vernacular, so a Slavic