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codification) in Ormož and Brežice.
Otherwise the Carantanian-Carinthian region had a special role in the earliest phases
of development of centres of trades and crafts. In 975, Ima, an ancestor (possibly
grandmother) of Hemma of Gurk – it is the same name with a different spelling – acquired the
right to hold a market, and to have a mint and a toll, at Lieding in the Gurk valley of
Carinthia, from Emperor Otto II, although a settlement did not arise there. In 1016, Hemma’s
husband, Wilhelm, received the same rights for what became the renowned Salzburg-owned
town of Friesach and, in 1060, King Henry IV granted similar rights to Bamberg Villach,
Carinthia’s most important traffic junction. In all three cases, a charter of privileges from the
crown lay behind the initial rise of the town. At the time, only the crown could grant market
rights; this regalian right was formally renounced by Emperor Frederick II in 1232 (with the
Statutum in favorem principum), which relinquished the right to the princes of the Länder.
The higher nobles that owned (or held) large seigneuries therefore began to found
urban settlements. They granted the relevant rights – such as the right to hold a fair and build
town walls – to settlements to qualify them as a town or market (town). A seigneur on whose
territory a town was founded became a town lord, with the pertaining rights in town
administration and legal jurisdiction. Lordship over towns in the interior is therefore rooted in
territorial lordship, while the town extricated itself territorially, economically, socially and
legally from the primarily agrarian structure of the seigneury through the formation of a
special legal sphere under town jurisdiction. The law of most Slovene towns in the interior
was defined by a charter of privileges issued by the town lords. The charter-based law of the
continental towns differed from the statute-based law of the coastal towns in that it was not
established autonomously, and did not generally codify existing customary law, but regulated
actual, individual cases. In that manner, individual towns gradually developed a book of
privileges, in which individual town privileges were recorded, and which the town lord then
confirmed as a whole. For example, in 1566, Archduke Charles, the prince of Carniola,
affirmed the manuscript charter of privileges of the town of Ljubljana, in which were written
around 100 privileges acquired by the town since 1320. On the other hand, the Kostanjevica
town law, written around 1300 as a privilege, which provides a good overview of the most
important cases of a small medieval town in Slovene territory, formed the basis for the later
privileges of Metlika, Črnomelj and Novo Mesto. The formula later passed from Novo Mesto
to Kočevje and Lož. This created a special family or genealogy of town law, which did not, in
contrast to the situation in Germany, adhere to a significant ‘mother-daughter’ relationship
between individual towns.
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Even without attributing excessive value to first mentions that
are sometimes made
only in passing, there is no doubt that almost all important towns on the territory of modern-
day Slovenia were founded in the thirteenth century. They usually grew up at well-frequented
locations, often on the ruins of their ancient predecessors and below the major castles of the
higher noble lords. In this manner, the Andechs towns of Kamnik and Kranj, to mention just
two examples, became urban settlements around the first quarter of the thirteenth century;
Spanheim Ljubljana also developed around the same time. Freising Škofja Loka grew into a
town around the end of the thirteenth century while, in 1365, the prince of the Land,
Rudolf IV, founded Novo Mesto ‘from scratch’. Later, in the 1470s, the market towns of
Krško, Kočevje, Višnja Gora and Lož were elevated to town status for strategic reasons, in
response to the threat of Turkish incursions, and hence acquired town walls as a defence. In
Carinthia, Salzburg Friesach acquired walls in the first third of the twelfth century, while
other Carinthian towns – Sankt Veit, Villach, Völkermarkt and Klagenfurt – were founded in
the thirteenth century. In the south of Styria, Salzburg-controlled Ptuj became a town at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, and Babenberg Maribor somewhat later; Andechs Slovenj
Gradec joined them a little after the thirteenth century, and Celje of the Cillis in the first half
of the fifteenth century. In the west of Slovene territory, only Gorizia of the counts of Gorizia
was elevated to town status, at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
During the formation of the Länder in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – one
consequence of which was the creation of the principal towns of the Länder, where bodies
responsible for territorial administration would generally have their seat, particularly after the
Habsburgs had inherited the Cilli possessions – the towns generally became part of the
prince’s fisc. The main exceptions were the Freising Škofja Loka (in Carniola), and (in
Carinthia) Bamberg Villach and, from 1518, Klagenfurt, which the prince granted to the
Estates of the Land as their see. In Styria, Ptuj belonged to Salzburg until 1479.
Burghers represented a new social group in the feudal social structure, with a role and
status that made them legally distinct from the agrarian surroundings. Their most definitive
characteristic was the fact that they had personal freedom, and that they performed an
economic activity (as merchants or craftsmen) that was reserved for them by law. They also
had the right to participate in town governance, which was expressed in town autonomy. The
main duty for burghers was to protect and defend the town, which included maintaining the
walls. However, not every inhabitant of a town was yet a burgher, so not every person within
the walls was entitled to the same rights, but nor were they subject to the same obligations.
Generally, a burgher was a person with property in the town in the form of a house, who lived