Urbarialni zapisi o lovstvu na območju med Sava in Sotlo v prvi polovici 17. stoletja
Notes on Huntsmanship in the Region Between Rivers Sotla and Sava in the First Half of 17th Century According to Seigneuries' Landed Registers

Summary/Abstract: Hunting and huntsmanship have so far not been given sufficient attention in the Slovene historiography. Reasons for that are various. Lack of interest for the mentioned topic, as well as shortage of historians and researches, who occupy themselves with Early Modern period. Mentionable reason is also lack of preserved sources. Nevertheless some of them survived the ravages of time and are today safely kept in archives. Important, but fragmentary sources for the history of Styrian hunting in the Early Modern period represent the so called landed registers, which were kept and run by seigneuries, that is, their owners or employees. Landed registers were books, in which the seigneuries’ incomes and rights were described. Some of them contained notes on hunting and huntsmanship, the others did not. It depended on which occasion the register had been drawn up. Notes on hunting in landed registers are mainly in connection with the seigneury and its size of hunting grounds, the different sorts of hunting, the obligations of the serfs towards hunting, and the rights, which every seigneury was allowed to execute on its hunting ground. Notes on hunting techniques and weapons, descriptions of hunt and similar are very scarce. Landed registers mainly differentiate between two different sorts of hunting. One is the big-game hunting; the other is the small deer hunting. The latter included foxhunting, hare hunting, bird catching, dormice hunting etc. Whenever seigneuries’ owners or other nobility went on big-game hunting they hunted wild boar and red deer. The privilege of big-game hunting was mainly reserved for Land Sovereign, nobility and members of the Estates, who were also at the same time owners of seigneuries. Namely every seigneury, which was also a seat of provincial court, had its hunting ground for big-game hunting and also for small deer hunting. There were 14 seigneuries in the region between the rivers Sava and Sotla in the first half of the 17th century, of which ten had seats of provincial courts. The hunt of smaller animals was a little bit complicated, concerning the hunting ground and the hunter. It was not only a privilege of holders of provincial courts, but was also in a limited way allowed to owners of smaller dominions and some serfs. The serfs were mainly engaged in hunting in other way. Not as hunters, but much more like beaters and bearers of hunting instruments. That was of course not of there’s own accord, but part of their soccage.

• Details
• Contents