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traces. The Glagolitic script found in the Slovene coast areas did
not arise locally, but was
introduced by priests from Dalmatia and Istria, as indicated by the language of the
inscriptions. The same applies to the relatively numerous Glagolitic fragments discovered in
the interior of Slovenia, in upper, lower and inner Carniola. The Glagolitic priests at the
Franciscan monastery founded in Koper in 1467 also originated in Zadar. Three years later, a
Glagolitic seminary was founded there for Slavic priests who were not proficient in Latin, and
who exercised their office (cura animarum) among the Slavic population in the town and the
hinterland, and the many sailors and soldiers from Istria and Dalmatia.
The spread of the parish network, and the difficulty of directly controlling such
parishes from the remote centres of Salzburg and Aquileia, led to the organisation, in the
eleventh century, of interim levels of ecclesiastical administration – archdeaconries and
dioceses. Archdeaconries linked a number of parishes into one administrative district.
Originally, they could extend as wide as an entire march. The Carniolan archdeaconry was
particularly large, with 40 (later testified) parishes covering upper and inner Carniola (the
original Carniolan March) and lower Carniola (the part of the Savinja March lying south of
the Sava that was adjoined to Carniola); it was broken up in the mid-twelfth century. Only
later were these large archdeaconries sub-divided. They were administered by archdeacons,
who came from the ranks of parish priests, and had direct authority over individual parishes.
In the thirteenth century, the network of archdeaconries covered the entire Slovene ethnic
territory, regardless of their division between the various ecclesiastical provinces. There were
two archdeaconries in Carinthia and Styria north of the Drava in the Salzburg province. There
were also two archdeaconries in Prekmurje, one under the Györ, the other under the Zagreb
diocese. The highest number of archdeaconries, eight, was found in the Aquileian province
south of
the Drava, to the Soča (Isonzo) and Kolpa rivers, where the archdeacons represented
the only interim level between parish priests and the bishop (patriarch) at least until the mid-
fifteenth century. Archdeacons in that area in the Late Middle Ages often carried out canonical
visitations on behalf of the Aquileian patriarch. Later, the bishops of Pićan in Istria established
themselves as the patriarch’s representatives in ecclesiastical matters (vicars-general) in the
region; some of them even resided in Carniola, particularly during the fifteenth century. By
that time, even the patriarch himself had fled from the Venetians to the court of Cilli, after
losing temporal power in Friuli (1420).
In 1237, the Aquileian patriarch, Bertold of Andechs, attempted to found a new
diocese between the Soča and the Drava, citing the impossibility of performing his pastoral
duties due to the vast size of his diocese, which spread ten days walk and more towards
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Hungary. He therefore proposed to Pope Gregory IX that the church of the Benedictine
monastery at Gornji Grad be made a cathedral with a diocese under the patriarch’s direct
jurisdiction, or that the diocese of Pićan, “which is so neglected that it has but few canons or
none, and there is also no hope of it reviving,” be transferred to Gornji Grad. Berthold’s
proposal was not well received and a separate diocese only appeared in the area in question –
between the Soča and Drava – over two hundred years later, in 1461/1462, with the founding
of the Ljubljana diocese.
To the north, Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg, Berthold’s contemporary, had
greater success establishing dioceses. He also used the impairment of pastoral service due to
the large size of his metropolis as justification for founding new suffragan dioceses in his
letters to the pope. Three dioceses were founded in a relatively short period during his time as
archbishop: Chiemsee in 1216 in present-day southeast Bavaria (its see was on the island of
Herreninsel in Chiemsee lake, where the eminent Carantanian hostages were Christianised
around the mid-eighth century), followed by the Seckau diocese in Styria in 1218, and the
diocese of St. Andrä in the Lavant valley in 1228, from where Bishop Slomšek transferred his
see to Maribor many years later (in 1859). All three institutions were completely subordinate
to the archbishop, and were proprietary dioceses of Salzburg. The pattern for these churches
was set by Salzburg’s suffragan diocese established in Gurk, Carinthia, in 1072. The material
basis for the diocesan church was the Benedictine convent, founded in 1043, but abandoned at
the time of the diocese’s establishment. The Salzburg archbishop had the exclusive right to
elect, ordain and consecrate the bishop of Gurk, with an example of this exceptional right
being found in the institution of regional bishop to Carantania, completely dependent on the
Salzburg metropolitan, introduced by Virgilius in the latter half of the eighth century. This
was such a singular privilege within the Roman Catholic church that still Pope Pius IX
greeted the archbishop of Salzburg, Cardinal Tarnóczy (1851–1876) with the words: “Ecco il
mezzo papa, che puo far dei vescovi” (“See the demi-pope, who can make bishops”). The
incredible wealthy territorial possessions of the Gurk diocese, its age and the Gurk bishop’s
status as archiepiscopal vicar made it the most important of Salzburg’s four proprietary
dioceses, which were otherwise quite small and comparable to the Istrian urban dioceses.
Gurk’s wealth and power was well reflected by its monumental Romanesque basilica, which
was constructed in the second half of the twelfth century, a time in which the Gurk diocese
was attempting to emancipate itself from Salzburg’s total dominance. It was this long-running
struggle for the right to control Gurk, rather than the formal concern for believers expressed in
the documents sent to the pope, that led Eberhard II to establish the other three proprietary