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Witigowo, the Pannonian
count and prince Pribina, and the Croat prince Trpimir. The list of
Eberhard’s library includes over 25 volumes, including a codification of Germanic tribal law
(Leges), works of geography, natural science and medicine, and complex theological
literature. This all bears witness to a broad collection of knowledge and very wide-ranging
interests. According to the best information available, the largest collection of writings in a
medieval monastery in Slovenia was to be found in the Carthusian foundation in Žiče, about
which Paolo Santonino left a precious report in his travelogue. As secretary to the patriarch of
Aquileia, between 1485 and 1487 he accompanied Bishop Peter of Caorle on a canonical
visitation around Carniola, Carinthia and Styria south of the Drava. Santonino wrote: “After
Vespers the same day, the subprior led us into the monastery sacristy, built with arches and
thick walls. There were many and varied precious paraments there. He then led us up
concealed stairs to the library and another sacristy, built above the church arch and the lower
sacristy. In the library you can see over two thousand books of every subject, mainly on
parchment, but also very old, written with reed pens, not printed as is the custom today.”
Monastery libraries were started as soon as individual monasteries were founded, as
the first monks would bring a certain selection of essential books from the mother monastery.
Soon after the mid-
twelfth century, and two decades after its founding, the Stična monastery
already had its own librarian (armarius), which indicates that the library already possessed a
significant collection before the major additions made during the time of Abbot Folkland (d.
1180), when the monastery scriptorium produced more codices in the relatively short period
of ten years than the 36, some only fragmentary, that have been preserved to this day.
Folkland was undoubtedly a great lover of books, as seen from his crypto-portrait in an initial
within a Stična codex with the text of Augustine’s City of God, where he is depicted with a
book opened on his knees in which it is written that he “ordered this book written for common
use.” The wonderful initials of the Stična codices, which are not completely in line with the
somewhat ascetic rules of the order that they must use “letters of a single colour and not
illustrated”, bear witness to his efforts to create a library that was rich in content and pleasing
to the eye. Folkland created the monastery’s scriptorium, in which many masters worked.
They did not only come from the ranks of monks, but included lay scribes, who came to
Stična from French and German territories. A detailed analysis of Stična codices found that
there were probably eleven scribes copying books, nine illuminators, seven parchment-makers
turning sheepskins into parchment, and a bookbinder. The Stična scriptorium, so successful
despite working for less than a decade, in all likelihood came to an end with the abbot’s death.
Nevertheless, it created the most important corpus of medieval manuscripts on the territory of
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modern-day Slovenia.
The codices written in Slovene monasteries were largely copies of older texts; there
were very few originally authored works. Most were produced in the Carthusian monasteries,
but the scribes were all of foreign origin, coming into Slovene territory for all their life, or for
a specific period, and thereby creating a link between the region and the rest of Europe.
Writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, Siegfried of Swabia (a monk and author of
rhyming verse of historical importance) tells us of Leopold VI Babenberg, the second founder
of the Jurklošter Carthusian monastery: “He, a Swabian, in Jurklošter lives off the Slovene
land.” Michael of Prague (at the end of the fourteenth century) and Nicholas Kempf of
Strasbourg (in the fifteenth century) both lived for some time and produced literary work at
Jurklošter. At the start of the fourteenth centu
ry, in Žiče, Philip, who had come from the
northern German lands, copied over 10,000 verses of a Latin epic on the life of Mary into
German. His work went on to dominate two centuries of German spiritual epic poetry and
over one hundred copies have been preserved – a major success in its time. Stefano Maconi of
Siena, the Prior General of Roman obedience within the Carthusian order, also left literary
work. Another arrival, perhaps from France, was Johann the abbot of the Viktring monastery
in Carinthia, author of the Liber Certarum Historiarum, which is considered one of the
fourteenth century’s most important works of European historiography. A German-language
chronicle of the counts of Cilli, preserved from the fifteenth century, is probably the work of a
Minorite from Celje.
SOCIETY IN MOTION
The Nobility and Castles
The Middle Ages is symbolised, more than anything else, by castles and the noble
houses associated with them. Their physical location, often on isolated, inaccessible heights
that visually dominate and command the landscape also manifests their military,
administrative and political dominion over the local environment. A castle separated the ruler
from the ruled and was an instrument for enforcing lordship. Therefore, a castle and a lordship
or seigneury were often synonymous. The lord of a castle ruled the surrounding land and its
inhabitants. The possession of a castle represented power, and it was for this reason that
military success in a war was measured by the number of castles captured, occupied or
destroyed.
The role of castles was essential to the exercise of lordship; without a castle, one could