Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/474

446 two, three, or four župans. On the other hand, south of this in some districts of Carniola and north of the Drave in Lower Styria (in the dominium of Arnfels) there was no such župan class at all. There (in Carniola) the village-presidents (also called župans) were chosen, but only village-magistrates — likewise called župans — appointed for a fixed period of time, by the village peasantry, here (in the Arnfels dominium) they were nominated for a certain time by the landlord. In what is now Eastern Carinthia too thre was no župan class; the land was ruled by a peasant duke.

In the various doomsday books (Urbar) we find all the villages belonging to the landlord concerned with a definite statement of the number of the peasant estates, and the enrolled župans with all the dues and services. These villages originated at various times, some before and some after the German occupation, and we can determine many which were Old Slavic. Those which were first established by the Germans, even when they were colonised with Slav peasants, are for the most part large and often very regularly and artistically laid out in German fashion, and their dues too are purely German. They cover most of the broad valleys and river plains. The carefully planned villages of the plains are therefore new. In another area of the large districts their origin is uncertain; their nucleus may be old, but they were remodelled, and enlarged by the attachment of new clearings. Yet other districts are so markedly non-German that they must be pre-German. These are not really villages, but tiny hamlets. Large villages were unknown to the early Slavs, and the districts of the Elbe Slavs are thickly set with little villages; the Serbs likewise, for the most part, live in hamlets and isolated farms; the Bohemian and Polish large villages are later foundations after the German fashion, and the large Russian villages were only formed from small villages in modern times.

At the head of almost every village in Lower Styria and Carniola whether large or small, old or new, there is a župan, and even the mayor of Laibach (Slav. Lyublyana), the capital of Carniola, bears this title. Thus, since the German occupation, the expression župan covers various meanings among the Slovenes to which the magistrate's office is common, but with different rights and duties. In a Slovene village first established by the Germans — usually large — the župan is nothing more than an ordinary magistrate, judex, magister villae, living in a farm exempt from taxes, as a rule two hides (praedia, mansi, hubae). But in tiny little hamlets of the Tüffer domain, the župan — who here too has everywhere two hides (praedia) — cannot be a judex, magister villae, as he pays tribute, and in certain hamlets he is the only inhabitant, and therefore has no one to preside over. Indeed, in the neighbouring domain, Rann-Lichtenwald, in 1309 there were also villages with two, and in 1448 with even three and four župans; two magistrates in a village belonging to one and the same landlord would be absurd. Here the župans considerably increased