The Material Culture of Nobility in the Territory of Slovenia in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

The proposed research project is going to deal with material culture of nobility in the territory of Slovenia in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Slovenian historiography devotes attention to this topic only since the 1990s, but the studies remained limited to a small geographic area and a narrow time frame. They are mainly focused on Carniolan nobility and on 17th and 18th centuries, therefore they are unable to give us a more comprehensive overview of the material culture of the leading social class through a longer period of time. To achieve desired results we must include all historical provinces and regions on the territory of present-day Republic of Slovenia, this are Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, Littoral and Prekmurje. This small geographic area was very diverse in sense of the material culture of nobility. It was a vital crossroad of influences from all sides, most important came from German and Italian speaking lands. We can notice significant differences between individual provinces, because standard of living of Carniolan and Carinthian nobility was lower than that of Styrian. But not only that, we can perceive a deep social stratification of the nobility in particular provinces. Title of nobility did not necessary mean living in a luxurious mansion, since the preliminary studies have shown that many nobles lived a very modest and to their social status completely unsuitable life. The proposed research project is going to lean on a wide spectrum of all kinds of historical sources. Existing studies are based almost entirely on the analyses of archival material and have neglected cultural-historical collections in the museums and intangible monuments. Significance of written sources for the discussed topic is indisputable, but only by taking into account all kinds of historical sources we can get a better overview. Among archival sources the most important are probate inventories, which contain a survey of tangible property of a deceased. One of the main goals of the research will be to link this surveys with the cultural-historical collections in the museums and at the same time to find out, if it is possible to find any of the museum objects in the probate inventories. In this way we will get an insight into their property status, taste, interests, habits, etc., and at the same time we will improve our knowledge of history of the museum collections. We will consider also intangible cultural heritage, e. g. castles, mansions, houses, and tombstones, because they are also valuable source of informations. With the help of the fieldwork we will gather more important data and add them to the results of study of archival and museum material. Our focus will be devoted also to the Provincial Museum of Carniola, predecessor of the modern National Museum of Slovenia. As institution founded by Provincial Estates it had at first reflected mostly the history of the provincial social elite, especially nobility, therefore it received many cultural-historical material in the first decades of it's existence that can be linked to the material culture of the nobility in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Most of it originates from Carniola, for this reason we will have to analyse also the holdings of other domestic and foreign (Austrian and Italian) museum institutions. The same applies to the archives. Preliminary results of the research work will be regularly published as original scientific papers and reports at the conferences in Slovenia and abroad. At the beginning of the third year of the research project duration we are planning to organize an international symposium to deal with the material culture of the European nobility in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Reports will be the foundation for the publication of a collection of scientific papers, in which the results of our research work will be presented.