Introduction

Introduction mong the phenomena of late mediaeval society towns as highly Aorganized settlement agglomerations held a very special position. Their appearance determined, to a greater extent than churches or castles, the level of culture or civilization reached by a certain province in its development, and, at the same time, they reflected the social controversies of their age. In the face of this it is only natural that experts from various fields take part in the study of towns, i.e. geographers and town planners, art historians and so ciologists, each of them from his (or her) specific point of view. All of these professions have, each in its field, rendered far-reach ing discoveries, yet their observations have, to a large extent, re mained partial. A balanced structural analysis, which would, through the consideration of all historical data, facilitate a more complex evaluation of town textures and the basic characteristics of the ir development, is therefore stili one of the most provocative challenges, particularly for those who do not only analyse historic towns, but also determine their future development. The establishment and development of large towns that sooner or later grew into regional or even state capitals was always deter mined by large rivers. This held true of ancient Egypt and Meso potamia as well as of large European towns. Aachen as the capital of Charlemagne was located by the Rhine, and four of the present day state capitals developed along the Danube: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade, besides the ancient imperial independent town of Regensburg. On Slovene land there were no rivers that could measure up to the Danube and other great European rivers, therefore other factors played a more decisive role in the establishment of towns, although they similarly came into existence in the valleys and always adja cent to rivers. One of these factors was the Roman imperial com munication network with a number of important, partly military and primarily trade posts. A brief survey of the famous Karta Peutingeria reveals that the origins of most of the larger Slovene settlement agglomerations can be traced at the locations of classi cal towns or in their direct proximity. It is possible to deduce from the map that Rome followed the well-known principle according to which towns or larger settlements were located within walking distance of a single day on Slovene territory as well. The itinerary between major posts on the map was marked in Roman miles. When substituted with the settlements, the locations of which were indicated by inscriptions on Roman stelae and confirmed by ar chaeological excavations, the posts yield a network of urban agglomerations almost identical to the present one. The definition of a town (municipium, urbs, civitas) turns out to be more complex, on second thought. The legal definition is the !east complicated: a settlement granted civic deeds, first by the sover eign, and since the twelfth or thirteenth century by the prince of the province or the feudal lord. The deeds included municipal jurisdiction and the right of ownership of town walls. The town proves more difficult from the aspect of its meaning. It was a settlement with a differential social structure of inhabitants, consisting mostly of craftsmen, and additionally of an 'amphibi ous' population that lived at !east partly on the cultivation of land, 9 particularly in smaller places, yet they were no longer subjects of the feudallord. An other stra tum of the population were hired hands that were free, and a substantial one comprised clergymen and the secular aristocracy, in exceptional cases, while the part of trades men was negligible in contrast to Italian towns (i.e. coastal towns in the case of Slovenia) and larger European cities. The major part of trading activities too k place in fairs, and trade was fostered by foreign professional merchants without permanent residence in the towns in question. Therefore the role of patricianship was negligible in Slovene towns, if it existed at all, in contrast to for eign towns where it had already assumed a vital position in their social structure. The composition of inhabitants as described above was reflected in the structure of Slovene towns that were mostly formed over long periods of time; individual acts of granting civic deeds were therefore only formal confirmations of the already existing state of affairs. In contrast to villages and rural market settlements, the outward characteristics of towns comprised primarily market-places and serried stone houses pierced by narrow passages and streets. Houses were mostly one storey high, covered with steep roofs, and facing the main street or square. The houses of urban plebe ians in auxiliary parallel streets were single-storey buildings and at lea st partly built of wood. The interna! structure of media eval towns in Slovenia was largely dictated by the natural features of their loca tion and by their development. They could develop organically or from an artificial plan; evidently the former variety prevailed. In view of the estimation that severa! Slovene towns were posi tioned at the location of Roman municipia of two millenniums ago, a certain continuity would have been expected in the urban plan ning of Ljubljana, Celje and Ptuj; yet this was not so. Ancient Roman towns that were devastated during the period of migration of peoples, were disregarded by new settlers, particularly the Sla vs, and no attempt was made at their reconstruction. The ruins of these towns served as convenient repositories of building materi als during the Middle Ages, and that was all. The mediaeval street network of towns therefore almost never overlapped the previous Roman network, with some coincidental exceptions. Even Roman town walls that could have been renovated and used to advantage for the protection of mediaeval settlements were neglected in most cases; perhaps because Slovene media eval towns were generally much smaller than their classical predecessors. Possible exceptions were Celje, where the western part of the mediaeval city wall was based on classical walls, and Ajdovščina, where the outline of the military settlement Castrum ad fluvium jrigidum was utilized as the border within which a borough developed, quite irregularly, subsequently. Before the attempt to delineate the basic characteristics of medi aeval towns the difference between their plans and those of classi cal towns must be highlighted. Classical towns were much more regular and the role of Roman forums cannot be compared to mediaeval market-places. There was another difference derived from the mentality of classical and mediaeval man, respectively: the former was more inclined towards earthly considerations, de spite his faith in the next world, since his world of the living was strictly separated from the world of the dead; for the mediaeval Christian the situation was quite different. He considered earthly life as merely transitory since the real, eternallife began only after death. The Romans therefore always buried their dead outside town areas and town walls, to the left and right of town roads, whereas mediaeval people located them in their close proximity, in grave yards by parish churches within the walled-in areas, since they believed their parting from the dead was merely transitory. These are facts that are often disregarded, although they should be sub ject to thorough analysis. A decisive moment for the establishment of mediaeval towns in most parts of Slovene territory, again with the exception of the coast, was often their location near feudal strongholds and cas- 10 tles, possibly additionally protected by rivers on the external boundaries. In such cases there was no space in abundance, since it was restricted to a narrow zone between the steep castle hill and the river-bed. The most typical Slovene example is Ljubljana, the others being Ptuj, Gornja Radgona, Kamnik, Lož and even Maribor; it is striking that there was often a direct connection between the castle and the settlement. Such a connection, in the form of the city wall, was evident in Ljubljana, Škofja Loka and Ptuj, and it was further typical of boroughs like Rogatec and Postojna. Settlements at the foot of castle hills customarily ac quired an urban character at an early stage on account of court economy that facilitated the development of that stratum of the population that defined settlements as urban - the artisans. A case in point was Ptuj in the fourteenth century, with a butcher, a smith, a keeper of the baths and even a goldsmith, in addition to the obligatory magistrate. Locations sheltered by castles were equally important for the es tablishment of organic mediaeval towns like those at the conflu ence of rivers or by meanders, whereas merely ha ulage settlements along vital routes had never developed into towns. Locations at river confluences were typical of Kranj, Radovljica, Škofja Loka and Celje, and var!o us towns sprung up by the meanders of rivers, e.g. Novo Mesto, Crnomelj, Kočevje and Kostanjevica. In the case of the latter, it is interesting that the tongue of land by the mean der of Krka was transformed into an island by a canal, like in the nearby castle of Otočec, or Gradac in White Carniola, and maybe even elsewhere. In the case of the above-mentioned mediaeval towns their designs and growth were conditioned primarily by their locations, which, on the other hand, did not bold true of new urban settlements established ad hoc, especially in the thirteenth century. There are no definite analyses yet to prave the view that the original rural settlements, Jater called Stari Trg ('the old borough'), Stara Loka and similar, suddenly became too small; at any rate, it was usually much easier to establish a new settlement according to the needs and desires of the founder than to reconstruct the old one that grew gradually.

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