About the social organization that developed in this region, which in Latin sources from the neighbouring Germanic Lombard and Bavarian states from the beginning of the 7th century was referred to as the Slav province, we have little reliable information. Some rare sources say that until 626 the nomadic Avar horsemen ruled over a Slav serf population in this region. Numerous other sources and more serious investigations speak of the independent life of the Slavs here and of their tribal organization, but as a community they were subordinate to the military and political ruling role of the Avars. Their mutual relations were the relations of military alliance and of Avar incursions into the region, as there were few permanent Avar settlements in Karantanija and the area along the Sava River. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Slavs together with the Avars invaded eastern parts of the Lombard State and besieged Cividale.
Through contact with the Lombard and the Bavarian society, the Slav society developed in a Slav province called Karantanija. In this tribal society a new social class with special moral and political status began to develop, the Kosezi or military escort of the highest prince. While this class did not enjoy any economic privileges, it was a pillar of princely authority and of a kind of Slav protostate. This state grew from the revolt of the Slavs between 626 and 630 against Avar authority, which only a short time earlier had been considerably weakened by the Avar defeat before Byzantium.
This Slav state of Karantanija in the area of the present-day Austrian province of Carinthia that possibly included the present-day Styria-Drau Regions is the first Slav state mentioned in written sources. Until the 13th century the name "Karantanci" for the inhabitants of Karantanija was the first to be found in written documents for the present-day Slovenes. The Karantanci, who in their predominantly tribal society were free members of village communities and represented the majority along with the serfs originating from the captured Romanic Christian natives, elected their dukes at a special ceremony at the Duke's Stone at Krn Castle which was the centre of the state. Before all the assembled free people, the duke had to swear that he would respect and defence the people's will and their rights. Only then did the peasant or "kosez" sitting on the Duke's Stone, the capital of an Ionic column from ancient Virunum which had stood in the vicinity of Krn Castle, relinquish his seat, for which the duke gave him a horse and a specked bull in return. Nowhere else in Europe was such a ceremony then known. The ceremony was preserved into the late Middle Ages long after the Slavs had lost their political independence and the feudal Duchy of Carinthia was ruled by the German aristocracy. At that time the ceremony of the enthronement of the provincial duke was conducted in a Slav language and was so interesting that it was recorded by numerous chroniclers between the 12th and 14th centuries.
Some of these medieval chronicles were known to the French lawyer and philosopher Jean Bodin in the 16th century, and he described the ceremony in his legal world as a democratic act of inaugurating a ruler. The work of Jean Bodin drew the attention of the American lawyer and politician Thomas Jefferson, Father of the American Constitution and the third President of the United States.
The state of Karantanija survived as an independent entity until the middle of the 8th century.
Excerpt from the book
"A Brief History of Slovenia" by Janko Prunk
Ljubljana, 2000 (Zalo¾ba Grad)