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At the turn
of the thirteenth century, with the various rivals for princely authority in
Carniola caught in a singular form of stalemate, the Istrian margrave and Carniolan
‘landgrave’ Henry IV of Andechs gradually gained the upper hand. The European reputation
and power of the dynasty to which he belonged (most powerfully expressed by his sisters’
marriages: Agnes Maria was the wife of the French King Philip II Augustus, Gertrude, wife of
King Andrew II of Hungary, while Hedwig married Henry I, the duke of Silesia; negotiations
were also held in Niš in 1189 to marry an unnamed oldest sister to the nephew of Stefan
Nemanja, the Serbian grand prince), placed his local policy in Carniola within a wider
framework. A suitable marriage with Sophia of Weichselburg (Višnja gora) brought Henry IV
of Andechs the large Weichselburg heritage, after the death of her father (after 1209). The
core of this territory were the former possessions of Hemma, which stretched from the
Weichselburg lands (excluding the estates left by the Weichselburgs to the new monastery at
Stična in 1136), along the upper and middle course of the Krka river, down to White Carniola.
Henry also added ecclesiastical fiefs to the territorial aggregations of his own and those
acquired through marriage. The most notable of these were the Salzburg Krško on the Sava,
the Freising market town of Otok near Krka river and the large Gurk seigneury of Ljubek over
Litija, which linked Henry’s possessions in upper and lower Carniola.
In the midst of these grandiose plans, Henry IV of Andechs was outlawed in 1208 due
to his alleged participation in the murder of king Philip of Swabia. After the imperial princes
judged him guilty of lèse majesté (crimen laesae maiestatis), he lost his fiefs, including
jurisdiction as margrave of Istria and Carniola (which had been enfeoffed to him by the
patriarch of Aquileia), as well as his own allodial possessions and his honour (honor). Yet
nothing speaks more clearly of the medieval state’s lack of means to enforce its declared will
than the fact that this ban failed. Despite these serious threats, Henry’s position remained
secure. The patriarch of Aquileia was granted Istria, where he also began to exercise public
authority, but in a document of 1209 issued from his capital of Kamnik, and with which he
also granted his own allodial property, Henry styled himself as “margrave of Istria, by God’s
grace.” Any dispute that could have arisen from Henry’s failure to renounce this title was
prevented by the election in 1218 of his brother, Berthold, as patriarch of Aquileia. This
balanced out the contentions between the Andechs and Aquileian interests. Henry retained the
title in Istria, while Berthold energetically wielded his margravial authority. The patriarch
therefore left authority over Carniola – in which he did not set foot until Henry’s death – in
his brother’s hands and only retained the title.
Bolstered by castles, estates and numerous ministerials, Henry was able in some points
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to start to establish princely authority. One such measure was the enforced use of the Tuhinj-
valley road. This imposition probably goes back to the first quarter of the thirteenth century,
when the Andechs founded a
hospital on the road at Kozji Hrbet, later known as Špitalič.
Traders travelling from Savinja towards Carniola and vice versa were forced to use the road
via Kamnik and Tuhinj valley, rather than the Trojane road which had linked Pannonia with
Italy since antiquity. The Andechs used their possessions and castles to control both routes,
and closing the Trojane route was of economic benefit to Kamnik, while harming the fortunes
of Spanheim Ljubljana. This may well have been the dispute that allegedly arose due to
“Carniolan issues” between Henry of Andechs and the duke of Carinthia, Bernhard of
Spanheim, in which the duke of Austria and Styria, Leopold VI, mediated at a famous joust
held in 1224 in Friesach, Austria. Regardless of whether the Friesach tournament actually
took place or was a fiction created by the Styrian knight and minnesinger (singer of courtly
love) Ulrich of Liechtenstein, who recorded it in his poetic work Frauendienst, completed in
1255, the text offers a lively account of the spirit of chivalry and the world between the
Danube and the Adriatic, a world that Ulrich lived in and knew well.
Henry of Andechs died without issue in 1228, which led immediately to a struggle for
the Andechs-Weichselburg inheritance and seigneury in Carniola. This was to bring
Frederick II the Quarrelsome of Babenberg, duke of Austria and Styria, into the region. In
spring 1229, Frederick’s father, Leopold, acquired the diocese of Freising’s fiefs in the
Slovene March from Henry’s bequeathed properties, which marked the Babenberg’s first
entry into territory south of the Sava. They had, however, already built a stone bridge (Zidani
Most) across the Sava at its confluence with the Savinja, which marked one boundary of their
large Laško seigneury. The same year, Leopold arranged for his son Frederick to marry
Agnes, daughter of Duke Otto of Merania, the eldest of the Andechs brothers. The bride’s
dowry brought the Babenbergs almost all of the Andechs-Weichselburg inheritance, including
Kamnik, Kranj, Višnja Gora (Weichs
elburg), Otočec, Mehovo and Metlika. By 1232,
Frederick had already added the title “lord of Carniola” (dominus Carniolae) to his style of
duke of Austria and Styria. This clearly expressed his claims to princely authority over
Carniola. This is made even clearer in the draft of a document from 1245, which gives
evidence of plans by the Emperor Frederick II to elevate the duchies of Austria and Styria into
a kingdom within the empire, and to make Duke Frederick a king, which would also have
permitted him to make “a duchy of the province of Carniola.” However, this carefully
prepared plan have never been realised, and a realty was quite different: Frederick’s princely
authority within the march was limited at least by the counts of Haimburg and the dukes of