Probate inventories of Styrian social elites in the early modern period

The proposed postdoctoral research project will explore Styrian noble families in Slovenia in the early modern period. In Slovenian historiography there is a great lack of such research and it is therefore urgently needed. The research will be conducted primarily on the basis of probate inventories, documents of a legal nature, which have in previous research on nobility and material culture proven to be a very useful and reliable cultural-historical source. According to the historical division, the spatial framework of the research represents the territory of Slovenian Styria (Štajerska). At the time this project will be considered, this was the territory of Lower Styria, the southern third of the Habsburg Duchy of Styria. The time frame of the proposed research project represents the period between the 16th and 18th century. The focus will be on the 17th and 18th century, as the research project is expected to have the largest number of preserved probate inventories from this period. Noble families made during this period an important mark on this area, also from an artistic point of view. Primarily, the project will compile a corpus of all probate inventories from nobility kept in the Styrian Regional Archives (Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv) in Graz in an extensive law of the land (Landrecht) fond. For each inventory, data on the deceased person, the date and place of the inventory, the value of the assessed property, the scope of the inventory and the place of storage (signature) will be displayed. From this data it will be possible to make a basic analysis of the Styrian nobility (according to their noble title, gender, assets, etc.). The corpus will be available to those interested in the form of an online-publication on the website of the Milko Kos Historical Institute, the applicant's home institute. Based on the current insight into the aforementioned fond, it is estimated that at least around 1,500 probate inventories have been preserved. Inventories of the Lower Styrian nobility with the greatest research potential will be selected from this corpus for more detailed analysis and interpretation. On this basis, by attracting other sources (such as parish registers, diplomas of nobility, marriage contracts and especially testaments), more accurate genealogical research of the nobility in the selected area and period and their material culture will be possible. The expected results of the project include the online publication of the nobility's probate inventories corpus with a basic analysis of the Styrian nobility, scientific-critical edition of probate inventory/-ies, publication of a scientific article on one of the most important Lower Styrian noble families in a high-ranking open-access historiographical journal, and preparation of a scientific monograph on one of the most important Styrian noble families in general. A systematic overview of noble families in (Lower) Styria in early modern period will lay a good basis for further in-depth research on the nobility. The results of the project will help historians in their further studies, but will also be useful to other humanities and social sciences (e.g. architecture, ethnology, art history). Also, the results of the project will not only provide original and up to date research for Slovenia, but also for the wider (Central) European area.