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involved command of the army of nobles. The path to princely authority was neither short,
nor simple. The starting point can be found in the large complexes of land held by individual
feudal lords (counts, margraves, dukes). These figures, also known also territorial lords or
seigneurs, exercised various forms of jurisdiction on their territory that would to modern
understanding belong exclusively to the state. They were responsible for law and order, and
exercised lower judicial authority, as well as the right to exercise high justice, or blood justice.
They maintained their own armed forces, largely comprising lower nobility (ministerials and
knights), and some also minted their own coinage and founded towns. This meant that a
number of essential spheres of jurisdiction were not held by the state. Territorial seigneuries
were, therefore, the main bearers of particular law, yet also the starting points for unification,
as some territorial seigneurs, by fair means or foul, used the power at their disposal to
eliminate all competitors for princely authority. If de facto jurisdiction over individual
seigneuries was combined with the formal function of holder of public authority in a region
delegated by the state (particularly via the office of margrave or duke), then this generally led
to the faster transformation of a territorial seigneur into the prince of a Land.
Relations between the king and the nobility in each Land were embodied in relations
between the prince and the territorial nobility, with the Länder essentially functioning as
states within the state. In that sense, even the Habsburgs, who held the crowns of the Roman-
German king and emperor almost without interruption from the mid-fifteenth century to the
start of the nineteenth century, did not rule over the ‘Slovene’ Länder as kings or emperors,
but as princes. It was therefore the Land – and not the Roman-German empire – which
provided the framework within which the (early) modern state i.e. the state or polity of the
Estates (Ständesstaat), appeared and was consolidated.
The appearance of the Länder was connected to a major social process that led to the
appearance of a legally unified territorial nobility. Previously, in around the twelfth century,
there were two main categories of nobility. On one side were the free lords (Freiherren),
relatively few in number, including the dynasties of counts and dukes such as the houses of
Andechs, Spanheim, Babenberg, Traungau, Gorizia, Ortenburg, and Haimburg, as well as
houses such as those of Sanegg (Žovnek), Weichselburg (Višnja Gora), Scharffenberg
(Svibno) or the original house of Auersperg (Turjak). The second, and far more numerous
group, were the ‘unfree’, lower nobility, the ministerials and knights. These received noble
estates from a free lord as a benefice, primarily for military service (ministerium). Their status
was characterised by a personal dependence on their lord, which was expressed in ways such
as ministerials and knights requiring their lord’s permission to marry. In relation to the
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appearance of the
Länder in the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth, only a
few of the free noble houses succeeded in establishing princely authority – i.e. military and
judicial authority over the entire nobility of a specific territory – regardless of their previous
status. Now the entire nobility in a Land were equal in their relations with the prince, while
the few free noble houses which had not died out, but which had failed to successfully
achieve princely authority, retained their free status. In contrast, the wide set of privileges the
ministerials and knights gained due to their importance as a social group gradually increased
their personal freedom, making them equal with the older free nobility. In legal terms, a
single, territorial nobility developed in relation to the prince, for whom the Slovene term
deželani (deschelany) meaning ‘people of the Land’ is attested in the mid-sixteenth century.
The territorial nobility formed the decisive core of the later Estates of the Land, and were the
main bearers of Land identity.
Each Land developed in its own way, with major differences in main areas of
development as well as the timescale of the change from fragmented territories into Länder.
Nevertheless, the processes they underwent did share a common starting point across the
wider Slovene region, which can be traced to the formation in the middle of the tenth century
of the string of border marches to the east and to the south of the Duchy of Carinthia. This
was to form the basis from which the individual historical Länder would develop.
Styria
In its later extent, the
Land of Styria (Štajerska) spread across the March of Savinja,
the March of Drava, and the March of Mura (Carantanian March), yet its origins are primarily
connected to the latter. Between 970 and 1035, the Eppensteiners established themselves as
the first margraves of the Carantanian March, which originally covered a relatively small
band of territory along the middle course of the Mura river, from Bruck in the north to
Radgona in the south. As duke of Carinthia (1012–1035) and margrave of the Carantanian
March, Adalbero re-established the link between the duchy and the march that was inherent in
its name (the Carantanian March). After his political defeat in 1035, the counts of Wells-
Lambach took control of the Carantanian March, finally separating it from Carinthia. At the
same time, four counties along the upper Enns and Mura rivers (later to be known as upper
Styria) became more closely linked with the march. Between 1050 and 1056, the margravate
passed to a new higher noble house, the Traungauers or Otakars. Like their ancestors, the
Otakars also first ruled the march from Traungau. Their estates reached north as far as the