57
consolidation was the creation of seigneuries, which were the basic units of feudal economic
organisation and judicial administration. With the exception of Carinthia, where the first
seigneury is attested as early as 822, and partially of Istria, where the Diet of Rižana
document from 804 already bears witness to the beginnings of feudalism, during the ninth
century the Frankish state – as far as can be ascertained and deduced from preserved
documents – did not generally encroach on the existing Slavic social and economic structures
across most of modern-day Slovenia, and did not change them. A detailed microstudy of the
Blejski Kot basin has indicated that the structure of old-Slavic župe was kept unchanged until
the second half of the tenth century. Feudalisation and the related establishment of seigneuries
largely occurred in the second half of the tenth and in the eleventh century on modern-day
Slovene territory. The basic network of seigneuries developed from the granting of royal lands
i.e. all lands not yet claimed, for which the right of disposal therefore fell to the monarch.
There was an abundance of such land in the newly created marches. By granting royal lands
in this way, the monarch was not only rewarding individual high-ranking ecclesiastical and
secular feudal lords for their fealty and making payment for their services, but also
significantly increasing the wealth of individual regions, as the establishment of seigneuries
significantly increased the exploitation of natural resources. Seigneuries also developed the
first power infrastructures in the marches. The centres of individual seigneuries – often these
were the first castles on Slovene territory – also became hubs of administrative, judicial and
military networks.
The first recipients of large estates, often several hundred square kilometres in size,
included a number of dioceses. The diocese of Salzburg had owned a number of manors on
lands occupied by ancestors of the Slovenes (particularly in Carinthia and Styria) since a grant
made in 860. Perhaps even before the end of the ninth century, it had acquired extensive lands
around Ptuj and, before the middle of the eleventh century, the Rajhenburg castle (Brestanica)
in the Sava valley. Two gifts made by Emperor Otto II and centred on Škofja Loka in upper
Carniola laid, in 973, the foundations for the seigneury of the Bavarian Freising bishops there.
In 1062 and 1067, Henry IV granted the Freising bishops fisc lands in Istria, in Piran, and in
Novigrad and seven villages, including Kubed on a vital route into the Istrian interior.
However, despite the probable desire of the diocese to obtain its own salt and olive oil from
these estates, it was unable to keep them. North of the Škofja Loka seigneury, at the start of
the eleventh century, another seigneury centred on Bled Castle grew from a royal land grant.
The earliest mention of this is from 1011 (castellum Veldes). It was owned by the bishops of
Brixen in modern-day South Tyrol. In 1001, the Aquileian patriarch received, from the crown,
58
half of a large complex of land between the Soča (Isonzo) and the Vipava and the Trnovska
Planota plateau, with the castle of Solkan (castellum Siliganum) at its centre. In 1040,
Henry III opened Carniola up to the patriarch, granting him Cerknica and a large belt of
territory from Logatec to Lož, practically all of inner Carniola, which was part of the original
Carniola.
Some of these grants were the consequence of bringing the church into the service of
the state. The educated bishops provided a sound support to the crown, given that there was
no possibility of them bequeathing the lands to heirs. In the Ottonian-Salic state church
system, public authority was placed in the hands of individual dioceses. Bishops were
bequeathed entire counties, becoming counts themselves and protectors of royal interests.
These included control of the strategically important Alpine passes connecting Italy and
Germany. Brixen on the Brenner route had a particularly important role in this regard. Having
an alliance with the Brixen bishop meant access to this route. This led to the crown granting
Brixen a county in the Inn valley in 1027 and a county in the Puster valley in 1091. On his
first expedition into Italy in spring 1004, King Henry II granted Albuin, Bishop of Brixen,
“his possession, known as Bled, lying in the region known as Carniola, in Watilus’s county of
that name.” The Aquileian patriarchate played a similar geographic and strategic role between
the Alps and the Adriatic, and its importance grew significantly when opponents of the
emperor in the Lombard lowlands closed routes over the Alps. For this reason, until the
middle of the thirteenth century, when the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty signalled the end
of the idea of an empire ruling Italy and Germany, the patriarchate was always subject to
considerable attention from the crown, which was reflected in the grants mentioned above. In
1077, at the height of the Investiture Crisis, King Henry IV returned from his ritual
humiliation before the pope at Canossa. On the basis of Ottonian-Salic traditions relating to
the state church and the contemporary political situation, Henry IV in 1977 first granted the
County of Friuli to Sigeard, his former chancellor, now the patriarch of Aquileia, which was
soon followed by the March of Carniola and the County of Istria. The same year, Liutold of
Eppenstein, another of the king’s supporters, became the duke of Carinthia and the balance of
power in the Investiture Crisis in the eastern Alps temporarily moved towards Henry IV. For a
short time, the patriarch of Aquileia became the principle holder of public office for nearly all
the territory once ruled by the Frankish margraves of Friuli (Sigeard’s successor lost Istria and
Carniola due to his pro-papal leanings; the patriarch of Aquileia only regained the title of
margrave of Istria in 1209, and of Carniola in 1093).
The opportunity to grow exceptionally rich, to advance politically and socially, and, of