Tržič market rights and autonomy from the founding of the market town to the mid-nineteenth century

Abstract

The contribution discusses the market rights and market autonomy of Tržič until the mid-nineteenth century. Tržič constitutes a peculiarity in Slovenian territory for having been officially elevated from a village to a market town with a provincial princely privilege in 1492, even though the market itself had been in operation for at least a century. The inhabitants of Tržič recognised the provincial princely privilege as the foundation for their market rights and continued submitting it for confirmation until the end of the eighteenth century. Conversely, little is known about the functioning of the market town autonomy. The fundamental source on this subject is the market town regulations issued by Count Auersperg in 1777, according to which Tržič, despite its strictly non-agrarian character, size and economic power, did not have a well-developed market autonomy with its own magistrates’ court and the classical bodies – the elected market town judge and market town council. The said bodies were documented in 1491 and 1666, with no clear specification of their nature, and dissolved at the end of the seventeenth century. Another peculiarity of this market town was its more than three hundred years’ division between two seigniories, a major obstacle to the development of its autonomy.