during the 139 years, and, where there was formerly one, three or four occupied the paternal inheritance either undivided or in divided estates. As they all bore the title, but only one of them could be magistrate of the village, župan here signified the member of an hereditary class and not the holder of an office. The župans paid far more tribute than the peasants on estates of equal size, the higher taxation consisting in swine, subsidiarily swine-pence — this proves that they had greater rights of pasture than the peasants.
The old Slovene župan is a village-magistrate only where there are peasants under him. What was he originally? What he was among the Elbe Slavs (senior) and the Serbs (princeps, dominus), viz. landlord, as descendant of the Avaro-Bulgar herdsman class. Under the German dominion he lost his former seigniorial character; the Germans seized a considerable part of the territory, especially what was uncultivated, including the wasted plains and valleys, and left what remained to those whom they found there — up to that time nomad župans and their Slav peasants — reckoning two hides (praedia) for a župan and one for a peasant. In consequence the župans were so huddled together that they were forced to give up the wandering herdsman life, and as they could no longer keep large herds, they had to adapt themselves to husbandry, contenting themselves with a smaller flock of sheep, and finding compensation in swine-breeding. Their former monopoly in cattle-breeding was also abolished, as under the Germans the peasants also were allowed to engage in cattle-breeding though not to the same extent as the župans. This is shewn by the taxation. The peasants still remained subordinated to the župans, but they were newly distributed among them, with the land, so that a precisely defined number of peasants was allotted to a definite group of župans. Thereupon each group of župans shared the peasantry allotted to them according to a definite principle — evidently hereditary. This follows from the fact that the percentage of župans and peasant hides is repeated in several districts remote from one another, although the individual župans appear so very unequally provided with peasants, some indeed having none at all.
Thus we can see how the German domination forced the former wandering herdsman to become a settled cattle-breeder and little by little a grower of grain, and how the cattle-breeding of these župans was preponderant up to late times. Their social position was in earlier times by no means slight: in a list of witnesses (1322) a župan was not cited among the peasant witnesses but mentioned before the burghers of Laibach[1] — thus he was at least equal to them in rank. In the thirteenth century in the manorial estates of Tüffer and Lichtenwald one of the village župans acted as Schepho — chief official of a larger administrative district — and this also points to the higher position of a župan.
- ↑ Levec, III. p. 73, or Peisker, Beziehungen, 159 [345].
