Matevž Režen von Segalla (1665–1722) – from a serf’s som from Sorško Polje to a lord from the Upper Sava Valley

Abstract

Matevž Režen (1665–1722), a serf’s son from Sorško Polje in Upper Carniola, attained an extraordinary social rise through trade, which had already been something of a traditional family business. He first became a so-called freeholder and then a citizen of Škofja Loka; in 1705 he was elevated to nobility by imperial decree and was, upon purchasing an extensive seigniory of Bela Peč in 1715, granted Carniolan provincial rights and privileges as a new member of the land estates. His social rise also entailed changes in his identity. After he had moved to the urban environment, his trading ties with Italy led him to change his family name into Italian Segalla; the emperor bestowed upon him the predicate von Segalla zum Winklern. The new social position enabled Režen to take as his third wife a young woman from an old Carniolan noble family. He also married his three daughters to noblemen, one of them to a baron. The von Segalla family, whose plebeian origin has until recently been unknown, died out on the male side already in the second generation and passed almost completely into oblivion.