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in Aquileian territory some time after the Magyar raids of the mid-tenth century had ended.
Large proto-parishes centred on parish churches began to develop on territory that generally
had no previous ecclesiastical organisation. With a few privileged exceptions, these held
exclusive rights to baptisms and funerals, and to collect tithes. The first network of parishes
was still very sparse. According to some estimates, the original Carniolan March, which
covered just upper Carniola, the Ljubljana basin and eastern inner Carniola, was covered by
only six proto-parishes: Rodine (north of Radovljica), Kranj, Mengeš, Šentpeter pri Ljubljani,
Stara Loka pri Škofji Loki and Cerknica, which are thought to have formed around the mid-
eleventh century. The old episcopal missionary centres of the ninth century formed part of the
basis for the development of the parish network; a number of typical and very old patron saint
dedications support this for modern-day Slovenia. The missionary centres organised by the
Aquileian patriarch south of the Drava were characterised by the cult of the Aquileian
martyrs, Hermagoras and Fortunatus. Churches in Hermagor (Slov. Šmohor) in the Gail
valley and at Gornji Grad were dedicated to them, and this may well go back to the
Carolingian period. The cult of Cantius and companions is also typically Aquileian, with very
old churches, such as those in St. Kanzian (Slov. Škocijan) in Jaunstain in Carinthia and in
Kranj, dedicated to them. Dedications to St. Rupert, on the other hand, typically suggest a
connection with Salzburg. Some churches dedicated to St. Peter or St. Martin, typical
Carolingian dedications, were also founded in the tenth or even ninth century. These include
the presumed Aquileian missionary centres at Šentpeter pri Ljubljani and Šempeter in the
Savinja valley. St. Peter’s church at Rajhenburg (Brestanica) may be the proprietary church of
the very Waltuni who perhaps in 895 received an allod in that territory from the emperor,
although it is more probably that it could be the Salzburg institution that was the centre of the
cult of St. Peter in the eastern Alpine area and also the owner of Rajhenburg from 1043. The
church of St. Martin’s in Villach (south of the Drava), founded before 979, was also
proprietary. Along with the episcopal missionary churches, proprietary churches represented
the main foundation for the subsequent development of the parish network. The first three
proprietary churches in Carantania had already been consecrated by Modestus in the mid-
eighth century, while the two oldest documented churches in modern-day Slovenia, built in
Ptuj between 840 and 874 by Pribina and Kocel, were also proprietary. One of these,
mentioned in 977 with regard to tithes, became a parish church. In 1043, many of Hemma’s
proprietary churches in Carinthia became parish churches, after the archbishop of Salzburg
renounced “all his ecclesiastical rights, the right of baptism and burial, and the tithe” relating
to them. In exchange, Hemma made gifts to the archbishop, including Rajhenburg
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(Brestanica) at Sava river. In a similar vein, five Andechs-Weichselburg
churches in White
Carniola formed the basis for the patriarch’s establishment of a proto-parish centred on
Črnomelj, in 1228.
Despite this very late exception, the basic network of parishes, which underwent
numerous changes in the Late Middle Ages, had largely formed in the twelfth century, and
probably before that in Carinthia. The regulation of tithes collected within parishes – which
represented their main source of regular income – provides evidence of the consolidation of a
territorial ecclesiastical organisation. In Carinthia and Styria north of the Drava, in other
words the Salzburg area of the former Carantania, this was carried out at the time of
Archbishop Gebhard (1060–1088), who introduced the canonical tithe, replacing the lower
missionary or Slavic tithe that had existed since c. 800. The tithing issue was also being
resolved at the same time by a series of bilateral pacts with lay lords or ‘external’ bishops and
landowners. The tithe agreements between the Aquileian patriarchs, Ravengerius (1063–1068)
and Sigeard (1068–1077), and the bishop of Brixen and Freising reveal that the same
regulation process was also underway in the Aquileian province.
A few isolated reports also indicate that remnants of former pagan customs were
preserved well into the Late Middle Ages. According to Patriarch Berthold of Aquileia,
writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century, many adults died without sacraments in
remote parts of the Slovene part of his metropolis. A document dated 1228 from the same
patriarch states that the inhabitants of White Carniola lived “captive to blind error and tribal
customs.” In 1300, a knight, Veitl of Bresternica near Maribor was accused of “shaming his
Creator” by worshipping a tree that grew by his house and calling on the devil. And, in 1331
in Kobarid, over 30 kilometres east of Udine (see of the Aquileian patriarch from 1238), we
find “countless Slavs worshipping a tree and spring in the roots of the tree as a god, giving the
veneration to created things that by faith is due to the Creator.”
One cause of this pagan persistence probably related to the general use of Latin, which
most of the populace could not understand, as the liturgical language; people of course prayed
and sang in their own language, as testified by the Slovene text of the Stična Manuscript from
the first half of the fifteenth century. The language barrier was also bridged by parish priests
who did not know the language of the parish making use of representatives, vicars, who did.
Only in Istria, in the hinterland of Koper, did Glagolites operate – Catholic priests using a
Slavic liturgy and Glagolitic script. The Slavic ancestors of the Slovenes had already come
into contact with the Glagolitic script, Slavic books, and Slavic liturgy in Kocel’s Pannonia,
where Methodius also operated briefly around 870, but that contact did not leave lasting