101
dioceses.
As long as Gurk’s complete dependence on the archbishop was unique in the western
Church, the metropolitan’s special rights over it must have fostered incredulity and
opposition. After the three more recent proprietary dioceses – whose full subordination to the
archbishop was indisputably documented – there were no longer any doubts about Gurk’s
status, since it was now just one of four subordinate dioceses. This led to a settlement being
reached between Archbishop Eberhard and the Gurk cathedral chapter in 1232, soon after the
establishment of the fourth (Lavantine) diocese, which did not encroach on the metropolitan’s
rights.
Monasteries
Two years before the Gurk settlement, in 1230, Archbishop Eberhard ordered
Dominican monks from Friesach in Carinthia to settle in Salzburg-controlled Ptuj. The joint
founders of the new monastery were the local lords of Ptuj, ministerials of the archbishop who
had a greater reputation and more power than many of the higher or free nobility. Around
1200, they themselves dispossessed the Hungarians of land previously “waste and
unpopulated” around Ormož along the present-day Slovene-Croatian border, thus moving the
then German-Hungarian border further to the east. They brought members of the Teutonic
Knights, the German crusading military order, in to settle Velika Nedelja and gave them
responsibility for colonisation and cura animarum in the land between the Drava and Mura.
The Dominicans and Teutonic Knights were referred to as the newer monastical
orders. These include the Minorites (Franciscans), Augustinians, the Order of St. John (later
the Knights of Malta), the Poor Clares, and Dominican sisters, to mention just a few of the
most important that had a presence in Slovene territory. Their rise is connected in part to the
flourishing of towns, where these monastical foundations were built. They were generally
involved in exercising the duties of cura animarum, and expressed a commitment to poverty,
hence they are also known as the mendicant orders and orders of preachers. In this way they
consciously differentiated themselves from older orders, such as the Benedictines, Cistercians
and Carthusians. The very existence of a monastery of one of the mendicant orders in a
settlement is sometimes decisive proof that it already had a burgher culture and was of
sufficient size to support such an institution. For example, the mention of a Minorite
monastery in Celje in 1310 bears witness to the fact that by the start of the fourteenth century
at the earliest the settlement already had the character of a notable urban settlement, although
102
it actually only formally became a town in law (with walls, town law and autonomous
governing bodies) very late – the second quarter of the fifteenth century.
Although the first monasteries in the territory of modern-day Slovenia were only
established in the twelfth century (with the exception of a convent in Koper, mentioned just
once in 908), the Slavic ancestors of the Slovenes had already come into contact with
Benedictine monks in the eighth and ninth centuries. The fact that most of the Slovene
religious and prayer formulas preserved in writing, and partially in popular song, up until the
end of the Middle Ages – such as those formulated in the vernacular in Bavaria in monasteries
– probably date as far back as the eighth, and certainly the ninth centuries, indicates the
importance of the series of monasteries which, despite being outside Slavic territory, were
vital to the mission to the Carantanians and their neighbours. Worthy of particular attention
are the monastery on the island of Auua (Herreninsel) in Chiemsee lake – where the hostages
from the line of Carantanian princes lived – and the monastery of St. Peter in Salzburg, which
was both home to a monastic community, and the see of the bishop of Salzburg. Two thirds of
the 17 Carantanian missionaries listed by name in the Conversio were linked to this
monastery, as their names are also listed in the monastery’s confraternity book (Liber
confraternitatum), the list of all those who felt a special link to the monastery, and whose
names were mentioned individually or summarily at mass. The Innichen monastery, founded
in 769 by Duke Tassilo of Bavaria with the express task of mission to the Carantanians, was
no less important. Probably soon after 772 in Carantania, the same duke founded a monastery
at Molzbichl near Spittal, a recent archaeological discovery, which is the oldest known
monastery in Carinthia and on Old Slovene soil. The monastery at St John in Duino, on the
Roman-Slavic and Friulian-Istrian borders, was probably founded at the beginning of the
seventh century. Carolingian Friuli, which included a significant amount of present-day
Slovene territory at the beginning of the ninth century, had a dense pattern of monasteries,
which, with the exception of Sesto, were all located east of the Udine-Aquileia line, and were
of differing origin: three dated back to early Christianity in the region, four were of Byzantine
and Lombard origin, while the monastic cell at Antro (Landar) in Venetian Slovenia (Beneška
Slovenija) was either a Lombard or Carolingian institution. At the end of the eleventh century,
two Benedictine monasteries were founded on the western edge of the Slovene ethic territory,
in Rosazzo and Moggio Udinese, while to the north in the Carantania-Carinthia region, eight
Benedictine communities were founded during the eleventh century: two female (St. Georgen
am See, Gurk) and six male (Ossiach, Admont, Millstatt, St. Paul, St. Lambrecht, and
Arnoldstein; the latter at the start of the twelfth century).