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Land’s prince over the church
and nobility, which had held such a decisive influence over the
fate of Carinthia, would only be achieved in the second half of the fifteenth century. Only then
did a significant increase in Habsburg power take place, related to the reacquisition, almost
permanent, of the German imperial crown, and the fall of the Counts of Cilli. The Peace of
Pusarnitz, agreed at a small village north of Spittal an der Drau in January 1460, ended the
struggle for the Cilli inheritance that followed the murder of Ulrich II of Cilli in Belgrade, as
the counts of Gorizia conceded to Emperor Frederick III. This not only handed the Habsburgs
the Cilli lands in Carinthia and elsewhere, but also – with the exception of the Puster valley –
the entire Outer County of Gorizia, including Lienz, which was then returned to the counts of
Gorizia in pledge. This was the decisive event in the establishment of the Land of Carinthia,
doubling the princely territory and princely jurisdiction of the Land in one move. In 1535, the
Bamberg estates were incorporated into the Land of Carinthia, which finally achieved the
territorial unity of the duchy; credit for this final step lay largely with the Estates and a very
strong ‘national’ or Land consciousness, rather than with the Habsburgs. In a dispute that
culminated in the issue of whether the Bamberg holdings were in any way subordinate to
Carinthian princely jurisdiction, the administrator of the Land, Veit Welzer, justified the
Carinthian position in 1523 by stating that the “Carinthian archduchy ... derived from
antiquity from a foreign and not a German nation, and compared to other duchies of the
German nation (the German state) it was endowed with special freedoms and customs.” Here
he was, of course, referring to the famous enthronement ceremony of the dukes of Carinthia.
Although over 100 years had passed – when Welzer was writing – since Ernst the Iron
had been the last duke of Carinthia to undergo the ancient custom (in 1414), the ceremony’s
two material symbols, the Prince’s Stone and ducal throne, preserved to the present day, still
bore living witness to a “ceremony that one does not hear the like of anywhere else,” as the
humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini – later Pope Pius II – wrote in the middle of the fifteenth
century. At least since the installation of Meinhard, the Gorizia-Tyrol count in 1286, the
ceremony had involved the duke appearing before a Slovene peasant, a kosez, sat upon the
Prince’s Stone. When the peasant received an affirmative response from his retinue to the
question of whether the duke was a fair judge, whether he cared for the wellbeing of the
duchy, whether he was a freeman, and a respecter and defender of the Christian faith, the
peasant ceded the stone to his ‘equal’ (the duke was dressed in peasant attire), symbolically
conferring jurisdiction over the duchy. The new duke would have already received the duchy
of Carinthia from the crown as a fief, but only after the ceremony, which took place at
Karnburg where the stone was located, and which was sealed by the duke’s oath, did the
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bishop of Gurk give the duke his blessing during a mass at the church of Maria Saal. After
noon, the duke was then able to distribute fiefs from the ducal throne at Zollfeld.
The fact that an ordinary peasant symbolically handed over power to the duke was so
remarkable because it was so different from the customs, understanding and mentality of the
late medieval world. For this reason, the whole ceremony seemed “fun and games” to the
retinue of Otto of Habsburg, enthroned in 1335. It also led Frederick III, who found the
peasant ritual too humiliating for his royal dignity, to avoid the enthronement in 1443
following lengthy negotiations with the Carinthian Estates, effectively bringing an end to the
longstanding tradition. Yet the ceremony would continue to attract the attention of many
writers, including famed French jurist, Jean Bodin, who introduced the enthronement
ceremony to discourse on the theory of sovereignty. Later, it became a case study for the
social contract theory stating that a monarchy derived its authority from the people. Thomas
Jefferson, principle author of the Declaration of Independence and later president of the
United States, became familiar with the enthronement ceremony via Bodin’s work. The fact
that the ceremony already seemed archaic by the late Middle Ages clearly indicates that the
roots of the enthronement, which underwent many changes over its lengthy existence, lie in
pre-feudal times, and that it was a remnant of the old tribal constitution of the Carantanians.
This is also confirmed by the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum which reports that the
Carantanians first “made” Gorazd, and then Hotimir, their prince.
Carniola
As with Carinthia, the development of Carniola into a
Land was very late. And just as
Carinthia’s history was rooted in that of Carantania, the tradition of the Ottonian March of
Carniola, first mentioned in 973, went back via the Frankish county to the tribal principality
of the Carniolans. Yet, while the early medieval Carniola probably stretched as far as the
Savinja river basin, as well as the Sava basin, Ottonian Carniola included only present-day
upper Carniola (Gorenjska), Ljubljana and surroundings, and eastern inner Carniola
(Notranjska). Most of present-day lower Carniola (Dolenjska), from the Sava to the lower
Krka valley, belonged to the March of Savinja. Until around 1000, the Carniolan margrave
was subject to the jurisdiction of a Bavarian or Carinthian duke, later, directly to the crown.
Being raised to an imperial march introduced rapid changes to Carniola. At that time, strategic
positions in Carniola were held by the Ebersbergs, a house named after their castle to the east
of Munich. They were one of the most important higher noble dynasties in the south of the