Original scientific paper
The Noble Čubranići Kindred of Vrhrika and Hlivno until the Middle of the Fifteenth Century. Their Social Position, Geographical Placement, Estates and Economic Ability
Ivan Jurković
Abstract
The Čubranići kindred were described by their contemporaries, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, as a noble kindred (Lat. genus or generatio, Cro. pleme) of Vrhrika and of Hlivno. In the earlier period this group of noblemen was defined by using a kind of predicate or “old kindred’s name,” Chleuinianin, and mentions of its members were sometimes accompanied by terms referring to their social position (comites). Thus it does not seem that the development of the terminology used for denoting the Čubranić kindred and its branches (e.g. Lat. domus, Cro. hiža) or the position of the kindred in larger territorial units was very different from the developments of other Croatian kindreds of the same social stratum, such as the Šubići of Bribir. Besides the importance that the estates, common residences, and burial places played for the kindred’s cohesion, these aspects of kinship structure and power also show the contemporary social position of, and economic and proprietary differences between, members and branches of the Čubranići. The archaeological excavations of the territory of Vrhrika district, regardless of how unsystematic they were, have nevertheless shown a long continuity of settlements in this territory (along the upper course of the Cetina river), as well as establishing the fact that the development of the Čubranići reached its peak during the last decades of the fourteenth and at the very beginning of the fifteenth century, in that way augmenting insufficient and rare data from the extant written sources regarding the Čubranići.
Keywords
nobility; the Middle Ages; the district of Vrhrika; the County of Hlivno; historical toponomastics
Hrčak ID:
7480
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2006.
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