Archivistic sources for the history of Pazin and the Pazin County in administrative collections in the Archive of the Republic of Slovenia 1492-1783

Abstract

The paper presents the list of sources for the history of the Pazin region and the Pazin County for the period between 1492 to 1783, which are today to be found in administrative collections of the Archive of the Republic of Slovenia* The list includes documents from the four oldest administrative collections of the Archive which finished with 1784. These are: the collection of the Vicedom’s office for Krain (1492-1747), the collection of the County diet for Krain, 1st series (1493-1782), the collection of the Representation and Chamber for Krain (1747-1763), and the collection of the County Government for Krain (1764-1783). The documents inside single collections are divided into small volumes which are deposited in one or more boxes. In the boxes, the documents are divided into bundles, properly marked. As single archivistic tools for the use of documents are generally not well laid out (the reasons for which being repeated reorganizations of documents) the aforesaid collections are variously described in detail. The collection of the Vicedom’s office, dept, ecclesiastica, is best catalogued, because Majda Smole made the inventory for this part of the collection. The collection of the County diet is in the worst situation, because it was reorganized seven times, so that the original order is completely lost. The documents presented in this list give an only partial picture of the collections in the Archive of the Republic of Slovenia which contain material interesting for the history of Istria. These collections were neglected in the research on the history of Istria, or were used only in part. The Author mentions, for example, the documents on the Lupoglav feud (there are four lawbooks, a number of income surveys, other economic data, sale contracts, facts on borders with the Venetian Republic and conflicts for border questions), of the Paulist monasteries of Sv. Petar u Šumi and Čepić (mostly regarding the suppression of the monasteries with lists of properties at the time), on the Pićan diocese, the only one with its seat inside the Austrian part of Istria, on the Pazin County (with economic data, sale contracts of the County, documents regarding its debts and balances, the various owners, the relations between the owners of the County and the Habsburgs), on many insurrections which made the County tremble in the 18th century (riots on the lands of the gentry and ecclesiastical possessions), etc. This list of documents on the Pazin region does not include many collections in the Archive of the Republic of Slovenia. These are collections of more recent sources without administrative character (e.g. cadastral data, economic collections, juridical collections, collections of feudal possessions and so forth). They, too, deserve our attention, although they could not be included into these lists, for reasons of quantity and of lack of time the Author had at his disposition. I intend to work on them in the near future, in order to complete our knowledge on the history of the Pazin region from documents kept in various institutions outside the Republic of Croatia.