Self-governing boroughs had full authority over fiscal, legislative and judicial matters in their respective areas.Īlthough many locals hoped that Italy would restore their autonomy which had been abolished after the downfall of the Republic of Venice, the centralist policiesĬontinued.

Organized into two large communities ( banke), one in San Pietro degli Slavi (Slovene: Špeter Slovenov) and the other in San Leonardo (Slovene: Šent Lenart). The local autonomy was practiced in small rural boroughs (called sosednje), which were in their turn That they would serve as border guards against the neighbouring Habsburg Empire.

The Venetian authorities gave the local Slovenes full internal autonomy, on the condition The dissolution of the Patriatchal State in 1420, the whole region was included in the Republic of Venice. In the 9th century they were incorporated into the Frankish Empire, and they were Christianized by missionaries fromĪquileia, then one of the most important centers of the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Italy.įrom the 9th century onward, the region belonged first to the Duchy of Friuli and later to the Patriarchate of Aquileia. In theįirst two centuries, the Slavs were organized in independent communities. Paulus Diaconus, a Lombard historian at the court of Charlemagne, mentioned the local Slavs from the region in his magnum opus Historia Langobardorum. They settled on the border of the Lombard Kingdom, which comprised Slavic tribes settled the area in the late 6th century A.D. Slovenia, but avoided in written and official use in order to avoid confusion because it is also the Slovene name for the Italian Veneto region. The latter denomination comes from the Slovene word Benečija, a very common alternative name for Venetian To simply call it Benecìa, which is also used by most of the local media. In recent decades, there is a tendency to replace the name Slavia Veneta with Slavia Friuliana, emphasizing its belonging to the traditional Friuli region. In the late 19th and early 20th century the term Slavia Italiana was also In modern Italian, the region is most commonly known as Slavia Veneta. In the local Slovene dialects, the term has been literally translated as Beneška Slovenija 'Venetian Slovenia'. This name has been in use for almost sixĬenturies, but it has no connection to the modern concept of Slovenia as a polity of the Slovenes, which emerged only with Romantic nationalism in the 1840s. The Venetian words Schiavoni and Schiavonia were general terms used for all South Slavic peoples with which they came in direct contact, Slovenes as well as for CroatsĪnd Serbs from Dalmatia. In the 15th century, the Venetian authorities dubbed this border region of their Republic as Schiavonia Veneta, meaning 'Venetian Venice, which held the area when the name was coined. The adjective 'Venetian' refers to the Republic of

The English denomination 'Venetian Slovenia' is a translation of the traditional Slovene name for the region.

Kaplan Martin Čedermac by France Bevk