Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/477

Rh ducal throne as peasants. In the year 1286 the ritual — markedly modernised and relaxed — was of the following nature:

For the installation of the duke the oldest member of a certain peasant family, the so-called duke-peasant, had to sit on the "prince's stone" which lies in the Zollfeld near Klagenfurt. The new duke, in a coarse peasant's dress with a staff in his hand and leading a bull and a mare, is conducted by four nobles before the carelessly seated peasant, who has to question those nobles in the Slovene tongue and to find out who the man is, whether he is a just judge, mindful of the country's well-being, of free standing and full of zeal for the Christian faith. This they must swear to. Thereupon the peasant says: "By what right shall he remove me from this my seat?" They answer: "With 60 pfennigs, these two brindled beasts, and the peasant dress which he is wearing; he will also make thy house tax-free." Thereupon the peasant gives the duke a light cuff on the cheek, bids him be a good judge, vacates the seat for him, and takes the beasts. The duke takes his seat upon the stone and swings his drawn sword in all directions. He also takes a drink of fresh water.

The successful revolt of these Slovenes from the Avars took place, as we shall see presently, about 603. The first prince of the Carinthians whose name is known was Walluc (after 641), dux in Marca Vinedorum, independent of the Avars as well as of the Bavarians and Lombards. About the year 745 the Avars attempted to subjugate the Carinthians afresh, and their duke, Borut, sought help from the Bavarians. These indeed drove off the Avars but made the Carinthians dependent on the Frankish king, under native princes, of whom the last mentioned is Woinimir in 796; and Arnulf (emperor 896), if not the first, was one of the first German princes who as duke of Carinthia submitted (in 880) to the peasant ceremony.

The peasant revolt was not limited to Carinthia, rather it embraced a great part of the Avar Slavdom from the Alps to the Erzgebirge and the Vistula, for the Bohemian dynasty of the Přemyslids and the Polish dynasty of the Paists were of peasant origin. The Přemyslids were always conscious of this, and Lutold (died 1112), vassal prince of Znaim (Slav. Znoyem), had the chapel which he built there decorated with frescoes which still remain, among them the scene of the election of his ancestor with the hazel-stick, the bast-bag, and bast-shoes. Pulkava, court-chronicler to the Emperor Charles IV, king of Bohemia (1346-1378), states that Přemysl's bast-shoes and bast-bag were "to this day" carefully preserved. "And on the day of the coronation of the Bohemian king, the canons and prelates in procession receive the king that is to be and shew him the bast-shoes and lay the bast-bag on his shoulders so that he may be mindful that he sprang from poverty and may not be presumptuous." This is a poor survival of a more ample ritual which, unlike the Carinthian, had lost all its original