Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Early Slavs
In the middle of the 5th century AD, the Huns, led by Attila,
invaded Italy via Slovenia, attacking Poetovio, Celeia and
Emona along the way. On their heels came the Germanic
Ostrogoths and then the Langobards, who occupied much of
Slovenian territory. The last major wave was made up of the
early Slavs.
The ancestors of today's Slovenes arrived from the Carpath-
ian Basin in the 6th century and settled in the Sava, Drava and
Mura River valleys and the eastern Alps. In their original
homelands the early Slavs were a peaceful people, living in
forests or along rivers and lakes, breeding cattle and farming
by slash-and-burn methods. They were a superstitious people
who saw
vile
(both good and bad fairies or sprites) everywhere
and paid homage to a pantheon of gods and goddesses. As a social group they made no
class distinctions, but chose a leader - a
župan
(now the word for 'mayor') or
vojvoda
(duke) - in times of great danger. During the migratory periods, however, they became
more warlike and aggressive.
Reminders of
the Roman
Presence
» Citizen of Emona statue in
Ljubljana
» Roman necropolis at Šem-
peter near Celje
» Mithraic shrines outside Ptuj
From Duchy to Kingdom
In the early 7th century the Alpine Slavs were united under their leader, Duke Valuk, and
joined forces with the Frankish kingdom. This Slavic tribal union became the Duchy of
Carantania (Karantanija), the first Slavic state.
Within a century, a new class of ennobled commoners called
kosezi
had emerged, and it
was they who publicly elected and crowned the new
knez
(grand duke). Such a process
was unique in the feudal Europe of the early Middle Ages.
In 748 the Frankish empire of the Carolingi-
ans incorporated Carantania as a vassal state
called Carinthia and began converting the
people to Christianity. By the early 9th century,
religious authority on Slovenian territory was
shared between Salzburg and the Patriarchate
(or Bishopric) of Aquileia, now in Italy. The weakening Frankish authorities began repla-
cing Slovenian nobles with German counts, reducing the local peasantry to serfdom. The
German nobility was thus at the top of the feudal hierarchy for the first time in Slovenian
Lake Balaton in Hungary, which the early Slavs
reached in their roamings, takes its name from the
Slovenian word
blato
(mud).
