141 2022 SPECIAL ISSUE UDK 616.9(497.4 Dolenjska)"15/17" Boris Golec PhD, Prof., Research Advisor, Milko Kos Historical Institute ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, SI–1000 Ljubljana E-mail: bgolec@zrc-sazu.si Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0367-0141 Plague Epidemics in Lower Carniola between Tradition and Reality* ABSTRACT The contribution deals with the consequences of infectious epidemics in Lower Carniola, thar is in the part of Car- niola where plaques between the 16th and 18th centuries took the most victims. By confronting contemporary sources and the exaggerated summary accounts on the number of the deceased the demographic consequnces of epidemics are in most cases given a more realistic image. Due to temporary closure of the roads the plaque caused most damage in economy, although it was fatal fort he people as well. With sources confirmed portion of the deceased town population during various outbreaks of the plaque exceeded one fifth. In the years 1599 and 1625 the plaque epidemic thoroughly vacated the town Novo mesto, badly affected Metlika and Krško in the years 1646–1647, and in the years 1691– 1592 Črnomelj. Not negligible were the human victims of the last large (infectiuos) epidemic in 1715. KEY WORDS Plague, Epidemics, Lower Carniola, Towns, Boroughs IZVLEČEK KUŽNE EPIDEMIJE NA DOLENJSKEM MED IZROČILOM IN STVARNOSTJO Prispevek obravnava posledice kužnih epidemij na Dolenjskem, v tistem delu Kranjske, kjer so kuge med 16. in 18. stoletjem zlasti v mestih zahtevale največ žrtev. S soočenjem sodobnih virov in pretiranih sumarnih navedb o številu umrlih so demografske posledice epidemij v večini primerov dobile realnejšo podobo. Kuga je zaradi začasnega zaprtja prometnic povzročila največ škode na gospodarskem področju, vendar je bila v posameznih primerih resnično zelo pogubna tudi za ljudi. Z viri potrjeni deleži umrlega mestnega prebivalstva so med različnimi izbruhi kuge presegali eno petino. Leta 1599 in 1625 je kužna epidemija dodobra izpraznila Novo mesto, v letih 1646–1647 huje prizadela Metliko in Krško, 1691–1692 pa Črnomelj. Tudi človeške žrtve zadnje velike (kužne) epidemije leta 1715 niso bile zanemarljive. KLJUČNE BESEDE kuga, epidemije, Dolenjska, mesta, trgi * This article is an updated version of the contribution published in the review Kronika 49, 2001, nos. 1–2, pp. 23–64. 142 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 Among all Slovenian provinces, Lower Carniola was probably most often visited by various kinds of contagious disease epidemics of the Early Modern Period and, along with Istria, also most severely af- fected by them. Such an impression is largely justi- fied, considering the downright alarming figures on deaths and devastation set forth either by contem- porary sources or by subsequent interpretations con- tained in various records and the literature, starting with Johann Weichard Valvasor. Sources primarily focus on towns and market towns—and quite un- derstandably so, because they stood out from the rest of the empire’s border province as population con- glomerates and social organisms performing specific, especially economic functions. Compared to rural areas, towns and market towns shouldered a heavier burden of epidemics, with a number of documents shedding light on their implications. Overall, among all Slovenian continental towns, those in Lower Carniola, mostly miniature in size and of marginal importance, undoubtedly bore the brunt of contagious disease epidemics, and none more so than Novo Mesto, the second most im- portant town in Carniola and the only one of seven Lower Carniolan towns with a population of more than a thousand. The small size of Lower Carni- ola’s urban settlements makes the excessively high numbers of deaths in sources even more striking and unparalleled elsewhere in Carniola. The credibility and weight of the number of deaths therefore rep- resents one of the key questions to which this arti- cle will aim to find a reasonably satisfying answer. Another, equally important question related to the demographic losses concerns the economic and so- cial implications of epidemics. Due to the practical impossibility of being measured with reliable indi- cators, these are even less ascertainable and for the most part do not allow historians to move beyond the descriptive content and the frame of reference offered in contemporary reports. In defining the problem of contagious disease epidemics, the author leaves aside one of the most essential questions, that is, what types of diseases oc- curred in the given examples. Sources of that time assigned them different names but the same under- lying meaning. They were referred to as the plague in the contemporary literature, including Valvasor (Pest), alongside other general designations, such as: laidige Contagion, laidige Infection, Sterbelauf, Seuche, and so on. Despite their varied manifestations, all plague epidemics broke out suddenly and violently. Incidences of some other similar epidemic can only be inferred from scarce indications of symptoms or dismissals of it being the “true plague.” For example, in the first half of 1599, Novo Mesto was merely af- fected by the “Hungarian disease,” whereas the so- called plague of 1634 in Krško raises some doubt for having primarily wreaked havoc among children. Due to a lack of distinction among different types of epidemics, the common term—plague—was es- tablished to denote nearly all types of contagious diseases that occurred during the Early Modern Pe- riod. In history and vernacular language, the plague stands for any type of contagious disease (epidemic) that suddenly breaks out in a certain area, lasts for a few weeks or months, causes a spike in mortality, and then gradually abates. In addition to the true plague (pestis), the name refers to about ten other diseases, including smallpox, typhoid fever or typhus, cholera, and influenza.1 Epidemic dimensions of different diseases and their indistinct designations therefore command the use of a compromise term—the plague epidemic. Finally, this notion also seems justified be- cause the article is not concerned with the nature of individual epidemics and because the latter remains largely unidentifiable drawing on scarce contempo- rary sources. Lower Carniola and its urban settlements were disastrously affected by six major and several minor epidemics recurring in decades-long intervals be- tween the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centu- ry. Conversely, there is no known connection between Lower Carniola on the one hand and late medieval plagues and recorded epidemic outbreaks elsewhere in Carniola during the first half of the sixteenth cen- tury on the other. Featuring prominently in reports are the plague of 1578, an epidemic wave with its peak in 1599, the epidemic of 1623–1627, the long- est plague of 1645–1650, a locally limited outbreak in 1691–1692, and the epidemic of 1715. Except for the penultimate plague wave, which occurred at the end of the seventeenth century in Črnomelj and its immediate surroundings but not elsewhere in Carni- ola, all above-mentioned epidemics had large-scale implications that often reverberated well beyond the Carniolan provincial borders.2 Not only did Lower Carniola suffer in all major waves of plague epidem- ics that affected Carniola, but as a gateway province lying on the empire’s frontier, it was also frequent- ly the first target of the Black Death penetrating through the nearby borders of the Ottoman Empire. The fundamental issue with the topic discussed is the lack of contemporary, particularly neutral re- cords of events, rendering the examination of facts a rather difficult task. A specific problem are poorly preserved sources from the time of individual epi- demics. Somewhat more proliferous are descriptions of their consequences written in later periods, indi- rect reports, and above all subsequent interpretations as the least welcome yet all too often inevitable (and the only) type of source, which may readily provide a fertile ground for erroneous conclusions and expla- 1 Cf. Zupanič Slavec, Epidemije na Slovenskem, p. 202. 2 Cf. Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 95 f.; Koblar, O človeški kugi, pp. 39 f. 143 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 nations. The discussion at hand undertakes an un- enviable task of verification through analogies and comparisons of all momentarily available data. In terms of structure, the sources available can be divided into two periods. The first one, lasting until the end of the sixteenth century, was characterized by extremely rare and limited contemporary reports without quantitative estimates of deaths. A few epi- demic outbreaks are only known from subsequent lapidary mentions, and one can only speculate on the number of deaths and the depopulation of set- tlements by establishing property ownership (dis) continuity in rent-rolls and towns’ tax registers. The second period, which started at the end of the six- teenth century, is slightly more generous with sum- mary information on the number of deaths, and it also improves the possibilities of verifying the data by allowing comparisons of more neutral and mainly indirect reports. The end of the seventeenth century eventually saw the emergence of a new and still quite rare primary source—death registers and lists of in- fected and deceased persons. The discussion at hand prioritizes two problems: the chronological sequence of events and the demo- graphic implications facing individual towns and market towns in Lower Carniola. In addition to high- ly limited official reports compiled by plague com- missioners, the developments can be reconstructed based on extremely rare contemporary sources, first and foremost, for example, on registry protocols and files of the Carniolan provincial estates, and excep- tionally for the town of Višnja Gora, on a few town judges’ annual accounts. As for the sources of more recent origins, town annals provide little detail, vari- ous town leaderships’ complaints and reports lack in credibility, and more neutral information is set forth in commission and vidame town visitation reports. As mentioned, the data for this poor part of Carniola and especially its towns and market towns characteristically convey shocking figures on deaths, followed by significant or complete depopulation and economic decline. After individual epidemics were quashed, the most alarming and sometimes hardly credible figures came from Lower Carniolan towns, including, for example, on more than eight hundred deceased from Novo Mesto in 1599, whose number grew to over a thousand according to another report a few years later. Two mutually independent reports for the plague of 1625 again state high figures for Novo Mesto (322 and 400, respectively), and the town re- portedly buried 331 corpses during the last plague epidemic in 1715. According to less credible reports from Metlika, written four decades after the events, this White Carniolan town lost seven hundred in- habitants in 1646 alone and another five hundred the following year. Most figures above were brought forth by the fathers of the affected towns, where the amount of time elapsed played no insignificant part, but the documents also contain some information of a (more) neutral provenance. Town leaderships penned several other disturbing figures expressed in overall percentages of town population and lev- els of abandonment, such as more than half of the population dead in Višnja Gora in 1599 or the half- deserted Novo Mesto, Metlika, and Črnomelj after the plague of 1623–1627. Lastly, complaints drawn by town dwellers themselves profusely blamed the plague for the economic and demographic decline. The more time elapsed since the events, the greater were the possibilities of generalizing and exaggerat- ing. Thus, for example, the inhabitants of Črnomelj wrote fifty years after the plague of 1691–1692 that the town had completely died out (ganz abgestorben) and been abandoned (verwiestet).3 Some statements and figures above became firmly ingrained in historical memory without being properly verified and considered. Moreover, having made their way into the historiographical literature more than a hundred years ago,4 they continued to be perpetuated uncritically in popular works and es- pecially various kinds of local historical surveys until the most recent period.5 Rather arbitrary summari- zations and errant interpretations of lapidary data would often wildly overstate rather dry descriptions offered by original records or Valvasor, for instance, as the only source for some facts. The demographic losses and their ramifications should be assessed variably, depending on the time distance and the authorship of reports. Sources are replete with overblown rhetoric and cliches, typical of the age. Shocking data on the dying town dwellers and the abandonment of towns underline not only reports that the town leaderships issued a few years after the plague but also statements produced fifty years later, or more neutral reports compiled by the provincial authorities. The style of writing therefore makes the task of extracting facts extremely difficult, especially in the face of lacking evidence provided by other contemporary sources. Particularly challenging are repetitive indications, highly emblematic of the period concerned in general, on the level of aban- donment of urban settlements and the overall share of deceased inhabitants: for example, one-quarter of the town abandoned, one-third, over one-third, half or more than half of abandoned houses or dead. The more precise the numerical data are, the greater at- 3 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 279, fasc. 142, lit. T II–5, May 22nd, 1744. 4 The data on eight hundred deceased inhabitants of Novo Mesto, obtained from an archival source, was published by Ivan Vrhovec (Vrhovec, Zgodovina Novega mesta, p. 79). The figure on 1,200 plague-related deaths in Metlika was already taken from a letter to the vidame of 1686 by A. Dimitz (Ge- schichte Krains, pp. 61–62) and cited from him or directly from the source by Podlogar, Požari v Metliki, p. 46. 5 Dular, Metlika skozi stoletja (1978), p. 11; Dular, Metlika skozi stoletja (1986), p. 13; Jarc, Iz preteklih stoletij, p. 44. 144 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 tention they attract, be it in terms of years, sums of money, or other numerical indications (houses, in- habitants, abandoned homes, and so on). By the logic of things, such data could be based on a relatively detailed verification, if not on (unpreserved) speci- fications, with the author’s integrity lending the sole guarantee for their validity. The numbers of plague- related deaths provided in this manner would also gain in credibility if produced immediately after the events or no more than a few years later. Another issue is presented by numerical data. The already scarce summary data on deaths can rarely be incorporated into the property and demographic structure of a town, on top of which not a single case features the following two comparable specifications: the number of the deceased and the number of all masters of the house before the plague. The assess- ment of the impact of deaths also crucially rests on the composition of the deceased; in other words, a plague that devastated the economically vital part of the population or the population at procreative age cannot be compared to an epidemic that primar- ily targeted children or the poor strata of the town population. In addition, the demographic implications pre- sented in sources are always associated with other, especially economic ones—quite understandably so, because plague epidemics often left profound and lasting scars on the economy. An outbreak of an epi- demic was usually followed by isolating (quarantin- ing) the infected area, which meant cutting commu- nications and suspending trade and traffic flows. In other areas, the provincial and various local authori- ties set up plague guards to prevent people and goods from crossing the border without health certificates known as “fede.” No matter how locally limited, an epidemic outbreak typically resulted in closing the provincial borders and restricting or completely sus- pending traffic, which had variably adverse impacts on the entire provincial economy. Lasting closures, in particular, could lead to devastating losses in a range of industries, the impoverishment of some social strata, the inability to pay tax (ultimately exhausting the provincial treasury), the shortage of life’s basic necessities and other items, and finally, hunger. The following sections provide a chronological presentation of the consequences of plague epidem- ics. Too little is still known about the factual basis to address the topic from a strictly problem-oriented perspective. Moreover, the work methods and the specificity of sources used require longer discourses and occasional distancing from the central problem. Minor plague epidemics until the end of the sixteenth century The scope of plagues in Lower Carniola before the mid-sixteenth century is open to speculation, and it will likely remain so unless new sources are chanced on. In the Littoral and Carniola, the first early modern plague raged especially in 1511–1512, with reliable data only available for Trieste. As for Carniola, according to V. Travner, the plague claimed many victims among White Carniolans. He arrived at this conclusion by drawing solely on L. Podlog- ar’s statement that the Chapel of St. Sebastian in Črnomelj’s town grove was erected after 1510.6 There are likewise no direct references to a likely pandemic in Novo Mesto, with twenty-four of its 272 non- peasant properties (Ger.: Hofstatt) abandoned or completely ruined pursuant to the oldest preserved census from 1515.7 The survey, conducted in the larg- est Lower Carniolan town for fiscal-military pur- poses, is especially revealing compared to a census carried out in the town of Kamnik a year later, which makes no mention of abandoned houses.8 Still, this does not necessarily suggest their non-existence, just as the abandoned houses reported in Novo Mesto are nowhere explicitly stated as an aftermath of the recent epidemic. Even without the Black Death, there were plenty of other reasons for the economic downturn and the consequent depopulation of this border town. The first plague that found its echo in sources swept across several parts of Carniola during the 1550s. The epidemic spread to the province in 1553 from the Croatian foci in Zagreb and Samobor. Even though contacts with the infected areas were prohib- ited, the disease engulfed Carniola one year later, forcing the authorities to suspend trade and close all roads to Italy.9 In Lower Carniola, it claimed the life of one person in Višnja Gora, the single docu- mented victim. A splendid neutral source for fol- lowing the developments—and one can only wish for more of those—is provided by three consecutive annual accounts (1552–1555) of Višnja Gora’s town judges, without which it would be impossible to even suspect that the epidemic also affected the Lower Carniola. The sheer nature of this invaluable source makes it worthwhile to examine the developments in Višnja Gora in full detail. The news of the plague first startled the inhab- itants of Višnja Gora on August 6th, 1553, when, apart from a regular feast, the provincial messenger was paid additional 6 pfennigs “because of the epi- demic.” The messenger was entitled to an extra fee for having been exposed to danger while making his 6 Cf. Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 95. Cf. Podlogar, Kronika mesta Črnomlja, p. 64. 7 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 105, fasc. 59, lit. R V–1, Der zaichnus abschrifft der hoffstett der statt Ruedolphswerth anno 1515. 8 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 108, fasc. 61, lit. S XVII–1, fols. 157v–160v. Publication: Luschin v. Eben- greuth, Ein Protokoll der Stadt Stein, pp. 38–67. 9 Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98. Cf. Travner, Kuga na Slo- venskem, p. 96. 145 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 rounds through towns and seigniories. However, the population of Višnja Gora still felt rather safe, given the bustling road reparations and stone-cutting at the town’s quarry for this purpose. Five days later, on August 11th, 1553, the provincial messenger brought some decree concerning the plague and on September 6th a general mandate. Meanwhile, the provincial authorities’ decree to close the roads due to the epidemic had caused the town judge Vincenc Steirer significant losses as the leaseholder of the town’s tollhouse. Therefore, it was already on Sep- tember 5th that he persuaded the town council to reduce his lease from 136 to 100 gulden, although the danger was still not imminent. A few days later, Višnja Gora held its annual onion fair and carried on with road reparations. The provincial messenger returned with new, obviously stricter epidemic man- dates from Ljubljana on September 23rd and Octo- ber 13th, which prompted the town council to assign a supervisor at each of the two town gates every Sun- day to prevent the entrance of travelers from the in- fected areas. On the day before Christmas, the town judge’s annual account focuses exclusively on the in- fected villages and then provides a list of payments to the supervisors. By January 7th, 1554, the two men had received 4 kreuzer each for every Sunday in an arrangement that was considered more a protec- tive measure rather than a complete closure, there being no plague in Višnja Gora. The only days that raised concern were Sundays when people from the surrounding villages and foreigners would flock into the town. After February 23rd, 1553, the provincial messenger brought another plague mandate and, not long after that, the town messenger took some docu- ments concerning the epidemic to the parish priest at Šentvid pri Stični. By spring, the threat neither grew nor did it completely abate. Provincial messen- gers continued to bring various ordinances and gen- eral mandates, including an undated ban related to the plague, together with a general mandate on tax backlog. Shortly afterward, Judge Vincenc Steirer and his attendant could ride to Ljubljana without restrictions. On May 22nd, the town held the Feast of Corpus Christi and the annual fair as usual. Af- ter no reports on “plague supervisors” were hung on the town gates between the Epiphany and the early summer of 1554, they were again posted every Sun- day, starting with July 1st. On July 25th, the plague also broke out in Višnja Gora, in the house of Hans Šeluti, who died after contracting it. There may have been a connection between his death and two town dwellers searching for a surgeon in Ljubljana, where they traveled to bring the collected tax. The town council immedi- ately hired three male and an old female gravedig- ger to bury Šeluti and then instructed them to wait for the deaths of others and bury them as well. The male gravediggers were promised a crown each and the woman a Rhenish gulden, earning a total of 5 gulden and 36 kreuzer according to a statement of payments drawn up a month later. Five days after the plague struck the town, on July 30th, the town council again posted two supervisors, one at each town gate, to prevent the entrance of people from the infected areas. Judging from the weekly pay of 15 kreuzer, this time they must have been posted every day of the week and continued to control the town gates until July 1555. The plague seems not to have spread after the death of Šeluti, whose life was most likely the only one claimed, as no later than August, the inhabitants of Višnja Gora already went ahead with road reparations and stone-cutting in the town’s vicinity, holding their regular onion fair in Septem- ber, engaging in vibrant trade, and traveling to Lju- bljana in search of various necessities.10 On the other hand, as stated, nothing is known about the plague elsewhere in Lower Carniola. It highly likely left Novo Mesto unaffected, or else its inhabitants would not have forgotten to mention it in their report to the sovereign in 1564, exhaustively describing the town’s tribulations and the reasons be- hind them.11 Nonetheless, the plague did make its way into Lower Carniola in the above-mentioned 1564, after it spread from Gorizia to Carniola, where it devastated Ljubljana and drove the provincial es- tates to Kamnik. In Lower Carniola, the plague took the heaviest toll in Šmarje and Šentrupert.12 It then visited again twelve years later, on crossing the border with Styria at Radeče pri Savi in 1576, and then raged across Upper Carniola and the Lit- toral.13 In November, the provincial estates’ registry protocols report on the plague in Radeče, the nearby Kum, and Zagorje. By 1577, the Black Death had already spread throughout Carniola. Special mention is made of Ljubljana and its surrounding area, while in Lower Carniola the peasants around Šentrupert resisted the general mandate on the plague. In De- cember, the parish priest of Trebnje was ordered to stop conducting burials at Šentjurjeva Gora “during the time of infection” and move them to the nearby succursal church.14 Valvasor mentions this plague only once, when describing the market town of Radeče, which, as he writes, God scourged with an infectious disease.15 The severity of Divine retribution can only be specu- lated on using a rather unreliable method of com- 10 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account books 1552/1553, 1553/1554, and 1554/1555. 11 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–1, April 25th, 1564. 12 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 96; Koblar, O človeški kugi, p. 50. 13 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 97. 14 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 854, re- gistry protocols no. 6 (1567–1577), pp. 391, 403, 409, 409, 427, and 430. 15 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 464. 146 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 paring property holders’ surnames. Some insight can be gathered by comparing the names of the Radeče market town dwellers in the provincial princely rent- roll from 157616 and on the list of firearms owners, compiled six years later, in 1582.17 The rent-roll con- tains the names of thirty-four property holders in the market town and another thirty-five in the part called Krakovo, altogether sixty-nine, whereas the list of the market town’s firearms owners contains no more than fifty-two. The lower number comes as no surprise because not every house had a man fit for battle, and it in no way suggests that the number of populated houses had shrunk by seventeen or nearly one-quarter. A more revealing piece of information is that only twenty-six surnames had been preserved in this six-year period, eighteen borne by the same mas- ters as in 1576, who in 1582 accounted for merely 50 % of the same families as six years earlier. Although the two censuses use different sampling frames— applying to property holders and firearms owners, respectively, in the market town of Radeče—they clearly point to demographic discontinuity. At the worst, the plague could have partially or complete- ly emptied forty-three or three-fifths of altogether sixty-nine houses, and further considering the dif- ferent sampling frames, this share would still amount to about half of all homes. Such dramatic changes in property ownership could not have been possible in a short six-year span without a brutal external inter- vention. In other words, the changes that occurred in the period between 1576 and 1582 are numerically equal to those that took place in the twenty-year pe- riod between 1582 and the next rent-roll of Radeče from 1602.18 Over these twenty years, the market town had retained the same twenty-one masters and five surnames or precisely half of families appearing on the list of 1582. In the quarter of the century that transpired between 1576 and 1602, the number of property holders in Radeče had declined from sixty- nine to sixty-five, with surviving twelve masters and eleven surnames, i.e., altogether about one-third of surnames from 1576.19 There are several other examples available to compare the dynamics of changes in property own- ership during the second half of the sixteenth cen- tury. Strong continuity of property holders’ surnames is best illustrated by the market towns of Litija and Ribnica. During the twelve-year period between 16 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 107, fasc. 60, lit. S X–1, rent-roll of the Žebnik or Radeče seigniory 1576, s. p. 17 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, I. reg, carton 424, fasc. 289, pp. 863–878. 18 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 107, fasc. 60, lit. S XI–2, rent-roll of the Radeče seigniory 1602, s. p. 19 Of the latter, three masters and four surnames cannot be found on the list of firearms owners from 1582, which tes- tifies to its incomplete status vis-à-vis the total number of property holders. the rent-rolls of 1566 and 1578, Litija had seen a decrease in the number of property holders from nineteen to eighteen, the disappearance of only three surnames, the emergence of two new ones, and the continued presence of as many as fifteen (or 83.3 %) masters.20 In 1619, Litija still counted eighteen mas- ters, three the same as before, and seven surnames identical to those from 1578, representing a high 55 % of unchanged surnames in the forty-year period.21 Slightly poorer continuity was recorded in the sei- gniorial rent-rolls of 1564 and 1573 for the market town of Ribnica, where the number of masters had increased in nine years from thirty-three to thirty- five and forty, respectively, taking into account that some property units were divided between two or more masters. Compared to 1564, fourteen (42.4 %) persons and ten (30.3 %) surnames had remained unchanged, and nine (27.3 %) old families had dis- appeared. In the meantime, ten new masters and co- masters had settled in the market town, and nearly three-quarters of old families had remained.22 The difference between the two above-mentioned market towns and the market town of Radeče, where up to half of families had disappeared in no more than six years, is more than obvious. According to contemporary sources, the plague of 1576 affected not only Radeče but also the nearby area of the Kum Mountain. The rent-rolls of the sei- gniory of Radeče for 1576 and 1602 draw the fol- lowing picture on eighteen villages around Radeče and the Kum Mountain. The number of masters had slightly increased from 135 to 138, fourteen (10.7 %) masters or at least their namesakes had remained the same as had sixty-two (47.3 %) surnames, and fifty-five (42 %) new surnames had emerged on the old property units, many already widely used in the area during the time of the earlier rent-roll. The most prominent discontinuity of surnames is recorded in two rent-rolls, one for the market town of Radeče and the other for its two nearby villages of Spodnje Radeče and Njivice. Compared to the elevated areas, the rapid change in property ownership in these low- land villages was undoubtedly owed to several fac- tors; however, according to the list of Radeče’s fire- arms owners from 1582, the time of intense changes clearly coincided with the plague. Out of sixty-four market town surnames in 1602, only twenty-three (35.9 %) were known in 1576, or precisely one-third 20 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 124, fasc. 70a, lit. W XXIII–3, rent-roll of the Višnja Gora seigniory 1566, s. p.—SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 205, no. 35, rent-roll of the Višnja Gora seigniory 1578, s. p. 21 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 205, no. 36, rent-roll of the Višnja Gora seigniory 1619, s. p. 22 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 105, fasc. 59, lit. R I–5, Ribnica tax register 1564, s. p.—SI AS, AS 774, Gospostvo Ribnica, vol. 1, rent-roll of the Ribnica seigniory 1573, s. p. 147 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 of the sixty-nine property holders listed in the ear- lier rent-roll. The same share of surnames (six out of eighteen) had remained unchanged in Spodnje Radeče, and in Njivice only one out of nine units of property had disappeared by 1602, whereas surnames had changed on six units and remained the same on two (22.2 %). A considerable change in surnames was observed in the villages at the foot of Kum Mountain, where the plague was also mentioned in November 1576. By 1602, over half of homesteads had changed surnames in Završe (three out of five), Briše (five out of seven), Spodnje Jelovo (three out of four), and slightly less farms scattered across Pod- kraj (five out of ten), Kum (three out of seven), and Spodnje Vode (three out of seven). Given the ordi- narily lasting presence of surnames on isolated farms, the changes in the above-mentioned villages around Kum are rather noticeable: in the twenty-six years’ period, sixty-seven units of property in two lowland and six elevated places had changed forty-one (61.1 %) surnames and retained no more than twenty-six (38.9 %), including those of four unchanged mas- ters. By contrast, the remaining ten villages under the Radeče seigniory exhibited a much stronger conti- nuity of property holders, with sixty-eight units of property having retained no fewer than fifty (73.5 %) surnames, including those of ten unchanged mas- ters.23 The almost reverse ratio of continuity and dis- continuity in both halves of farm holdings must have been the result of a sudden shock—most probably the plague of 1576. A detailed outline of events that unfolded dur- ing this plague can only be traced in Višnja Gora, thanks to the annual account that the town judge Marx Raab compiled for 1576/77. Life was almost normal, except for the annual fair on the Ascension Day in 1577, which saw less trading and poorer turn- over due to the plague and fairs concurrently held in other towns. A decree on safety measures to be taken in view of the plague that erupted in the Venetian area reached the town no later than July 22nd, 1576, followed by a general mandate and another decree, both shortly before and after All Saints’ Day. As stat- ed in the town judge’s account, some master carpen- ter performed his work in May or June 1577 outside the town walls during the epidemic (in Sterbleuff).24 Unfortunately, the Višnja Gora judicial account has not been preserved for 1578, considered the “year of the plague” in Carniola, and the discontinuity of householders’ surnames between the first (1567) and the second tax register (1581) does not point to any spike attributable to the epidemic.25 Nor was the 23 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 107, fasc. 60, lit. S XI–1, rent-roll of the Radeče seigniory 1576, s. p.; XI–2, rent-roll of the Radeče seigniory 1602, s. p. 24 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account books 1576/1577. 25 Ibid., fasc. II, tax registers 1567 and 1581. plague in Višnja Gora mentioned by Valvasor or any other contemporary source. The plague ravaged many areas across Carniola two years later, in 1578; however, its chronological course is poorly documented. In the provincial es- tates’ registry protocols, the first decrees were im- posed on individual Inner Carniolan seigniories at the end of September 1578. In July the following year, a general mandate was issued, banning fairs and assemblies as well as instructing to avoid the in- fected areas. In August 1578, the provincial estates considered transferring their offices to Škofja Loka after the plague in Ljubljana showed no sign of re- lenting. In October, the secret court council in Graz reported that the transfer had indeed taken place— however, not to Škofja Loka, which was no longer secure, but to Kranj. The epidemic wave appears to have died down before January 1580, with a single isolated case of infection reported in June that same year in the Moravče Valley.26 Barring a few men- tions of places in Inner and Upper Carniola, there were no news about the epidemic in Lower Carni- ola. Limited reports on the plague can only be found in subsequent writings, including, first and foremost, Valvasor’s. Valvasor states that the plague reached and decimated the town of Krško in 1578. He men- tions Novo Mesto in relation to the plague of 1590 and maintains that it also claimed a heavy toll both in the small province and town of Kočevje.27 The more recent literature then mentions it in Ljubljana and Cerknica, as well as Lower Carniola in the Te- menica Valley, Šentrupert, Krško, Novo Mesto, and Kočevje.28 Although the epidemic delivered an especially devastating blow to Novo Mesto, which had burned down only two years before that in 1576, no men- tion is found on the plague itself, except in Valvasor’s writings. The same holds for Krško, where the com- parison of property holders, drawing on the Krško provincial princely rent-roll from 1575 and the list of armed subjects in the plague year of 1578, neverthe- less allows for certain conclusions regarding the im- pacts of the epidemic on the local rural population. However, as the more recent list bears no precise date, it is impossible to determine whether it was com- piled after or already before the plague. In the brief three-year period (1575–1578), the entire seigniory of Krško recorded a change in surname on 20.1 % farm holdings and the abandonment of 3.9 %. The “mountain office” registered a new surname on 12.7 % farms along the Sava, and on no less than 26.8 % units of property in Krško Polje. Nearly twice as many 26 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, reg- istry protocols no. 7 (1578–1584), pp. 91, 96, 101, 121, and 146. 27 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, pp. 242, 488, and 199. 28 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 97, citing Valvasor (Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, pp. 199 and 717). 148 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 farms (4.8 %) were abandoned on the plains than in the hills (2.8 %). The changes are especially evident compared to those that occurred in the period be- tween 1570 and 1575, which witnessed a peasant up- rising in 1573, followed by harsh retaliation. In those five years, householders’ surnames had changed—to a large extent, also due to the uprising—on a roughly the same share of farms in both rent-roll offices and the seigniory as a whole (between 16 % and 17 %). About 5 % of units of property had been abandoned. Comparisons to the dynamics of changes in land- ownership in other periods show that the seigniory of Krško suffered many hardships during the 1570s. Moreover, given that the situation between 1575 and 1578 was even more extraordinary than in the years prior to the peasant uprising, it seems safe to assume that the changes in property ownership were largely owed to the plague.29 After that, Carniola experienced the plague in the 1580s and the 1590s, when the epidemic took an especially devastating toll among the inhabitants of Škofja Loka (1580 and 1582) and Ljubljana (1586– 87) and staged the ghastliest danse macabre yet on the eve of the new century.30 The plague of 1599 At the end of the sixteenth century, Carniola was hit by the thus far most severe—and, as previously, poorly documented—epidemic. Still highly lapidary, the provincial estates’ registry protocols from that period provide little else than references to general decrees and correspondence with the provincial es- tates of the neighboring provinces. Between July 1598, when the plague first appeared in sources, and November 1600, when it found its belated echoes, the protocols make not a single mention of it in Lower Carniola but only associate it with Ljubljana and the province of Carniola as such.31 Although from an overall perspective, the correspondence of the provincial estates’ committee of four noble del- egates (Verordnete Stelle) is equally scarce, it happens to provide a better overview precisely of the plague in Lower Carniola than in other parts of the province. The epidemic reached Carniola in the spring of 1599 through Lower Carniola, where it was spread from Rijeka and its surroundings.32 On May 1st, the 29 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 81, fasc. 46, lit. G VIII–4, rent-roll of the Krško seigniory 1570, s. p.— SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 141, no. 29, rent-roll of the Krško seigniory 1575, pp. 481–529.—SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 81, fasc. 46, lit. G VIII–1, list of firearms owners 1578. 30 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 98–100.—Koblar, O človeš- ki kugi, pp. 50–51. 31 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 444, fasc. 291 d, pp. 739–744, May 1st, 1599, ad May 1st, 1599.—Cf. Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98. 32 Cf. Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98. provincial vidame and estates sent two plague com- missioners appointed from among Ljubljana’s city councilors to thoroughly investigate the situation. The undated commission report, undoubtedly drawn that same month, mentions incidences of the plague in Šmarje, Šentjanž, Šentrupert, Radeče, and Raka, as well as the seigniory of Spodnji Mokronog and around Krško, where not a single village was report- edly left unaffected. Novo Mesto and its surround- ings attract more attention owing to a more recent report from 1606 on the dramatic mortality with over eight hundred deceased town dwellers, where- as in May 1599 the town leadership reassured the plague commissioners that only six persons had died by that date in Novo Mesto and even those deaths were, as the physician, the pharmacist, and the witch doctor affirmed, owed to the so-called Hungarian disease rather than the plague. On the other hand, the local parish priest wrote about three hundred deaths within a short period in the nearby parishes of Šmarjeta and Št. Peter, and a high death toll was reported from the settlements of Trška Gora and Ba- jnof north of Novo Mesto. According to the report, the plague had thus far spared Višnja Gora, Stična, Trebnje, and Velika Loka.33 By June that same year, it had reached Ljubljana and then gradually spread toward Upper Carniola.34 In Ljubljana, the plague first erupted precisely in the homes of both plague commissioners on their return from Lower Carniola, where they had most likely contracted the disease. The provincial offices were immediately transferred from the capital to Kamnik, and despite safety meas- ures in place, the disease spread to the north unhin- dered, and it continued to intensify until the end of the year.35 Exhaustive reports, written while the epidemic was still running rampant in the provincial capital, shed a highly informative light on the chronology of the disease, safety measures, and various other de- tails. Disproportionately less is known about the de- velopments in Lower Carniola, where high mortality was reported for three towns: Novo Mesto, Višnja Gora, and Kočevje. A few years later, the inhabitants of Novo Mesto provided fairly accurate figures on the deceased and masters of the house, which, for this reason alone, are considered worthy of attention. Because early historiography accepted them uncriti- cally and without consulting contemporary refer- ence sources, the figures on over eight hundred dead inhabitants, including 149 masters of the house, in 1599 were insistently stated all until Ivan Vrhovec 33 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 444, fasc. 291 d, pp. 739–744, May 1st, 1599, ad May 1st, 1599.—Cf. Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98. 34 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 857, re- gistry protocols no. 11 (1598–1601), pp. 11, 20, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 49, 67, and 84. 35 Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98. 149 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 published his Zgodovina Novega mesta (The His- tory of Novo Mesto; 1891).36 In 1606, Novo Mesto reported these figures to the vidame’s commission, shortly before it visited to examine the destitute, de- populated, and partially burnt town.37 The credibil- ity of the figures is further questioned in view of the thousand deceased stated in Novo Mesto’s appeal for assistance a few years later, in 1615.38 Whereas the growing time distance alleviated the affected popu- lation’s grievances over the recent events, reports of over eight hundred and eventually the spectacular thousand deaths partly stemmed from the belief that the provincial authorities’ understanding of what ac- tually took place in Novo Mesto in 1599 had mean- while been blurred. Far less ascertainable is the figure on the deaths in Višnja Gora, stated a decade after the epidemic. In 1609, Archduke Ferdinand received a petition from the judge, council, and municipality of Višnja Gora for a tax waiver and a visit by an assessment commis- sion. The petition stated that the plague of 1599 had killed no less than half of the town’s inhabitants and landless peasants, leaving desolated and unpopulated houses in its wake, and that the massive death toll had brought the outstanding personal income tax to the staggering 152 gulden in 1599 alone. It is impos- sible not to notice what the authors really tried to convey. In the continuation, they blamed the town’s failure to pay its tax debt on Vlach troops that had torched and demolished houses and granaries while advancing toward Kaniža (1601), and by causing mayhem decimated its population, households, and the craft industry.39 Like in the slightly earlier report from Novo Mesto, the plague suddenly no longer figured as the principal evil, despite having purport- edly killed half of the town’s population. Not even a carnage of such magnitude sufficed to undermine the town’s foundations; it was essential to state other reasons to conceal the blatant exaggeration. The inhabitants of Kočevje, too, wrote about the plague, and they were the first to do so in the early 1601, in a petition for assistance addressed at the court chamber in Graz. Their statements are only known from a summary report, according to which the plague (Infection) had been rampant in Kočevje for two years, taking the lives of the most promi- nent town dwellers and landless peasants, causing this small town to suffer a significant demographic decline. Yet the epidemic should not have been par- ticularly severe, being only mentioned in passing to substantiate the request for a few-years’ tax waiver 36 Vrhovec, Zgodovina Novega mesta, p. 79. 37 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2, September 24th, 1606. 38 Ibid., July 2nd, 1615. 39 StLA, Innerösterreichische Hofkammer-Akten (hereinafter I.Ö. HK–Akten) 1611–III–105. after the fire of 1596.40 To compensate for the lack of hard facts, the inhabitants of Kočevje resorted to sweeping statements about the deaths of prominent figures and the town’s declining population. Trans- lated from an official language, the Black Death had reaped a minor harvest, smaller than in Novo Mesto and Višnja Gora. What should also be borne in mind is that the short time distance between the events and the writing of the petition undoubtedly kept a tight rein on the authors’ desire to exaggerate. At the same time, Kočevje’s example stands as elo- quent proof of how quickly facts could be distorted and fabricated. Immediately after the plague had run its course in April 1600, its inhabitants sent to the provincial estates a request to defer payment of tax, merely stating that the town had been closed off af- ter God struck them with the plague (vns armen mit einer ruetten der straff, der infection heimbgesucht), and that the ban on movement had plunged the popula- tion into extreme poverty and distress.41 Aside from the economic downturn, the town of Kočevje there- fore suffered no demographic decline, about which its inhabitants wrote much more daringly to the dis- tant Graz a year later. The question of who copied the descriptions of the plague’s aftermath in the first decade of the sev- enteenth century and whether they indeed did so is of marginal importance. Given that all towns whose reports have been preserved from that period pointed their fingers at the plague, the epidemic was certain- ly not an innocent event but one that had become deeply embedded in the collective memory, gradually shaping the belief that the true evil began with the outbreak of the plague and that the disease itself had caused all the hardship and the ensuing economic decline. In fact, the plague of 1599 coincided exactly with the time of major political and economic tur- moil, which was particularly injurious to Lower Car- niola as the province bordering on the battlegrounds of the Long Turkish War (1593–1606). In their subsequent explanations as to when and where the “Golden Age” had ended, the town leaderships most often dwelled on the events of that period, painting the dramatic decline in transit trade primarily as an aftermath of the fall of Bihać and Kaniža.42 Returning to the question of what actually un- folded in 1599 in the three indisputably infected Lower Carniolan towns, it should be stressed that, 40 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 274, fasc. 139, lit. G I–8, June 16th, 1601.—The petition was also summa- rized by the administrator of the vidame’s office Filip Ko- benzl in his report to the court chamber (StLA, I.Ö. HK-Ak- ten, 1601–VII–40, June 16th, 1601. 41 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 446, fasc. 291 d, p. 513, April 9th, 1600. 42 E.g., SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–3, s. d. Bericht A (the last-mentioned year is 1651). 150 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 in connection to the plague, both Valvasor’s writings and contemporary sources—especially the registry protocols of the provincial estates and records on the provincial estates’ matters—refer solely to Novo Mesto and not once to Višnja Gora and Kočevje. Moreover, when describing the past of Višnja Gora, Valvasor mentions no specific calamity43 and, on highlighting the deadly plague that devastated the town and province of Kočevje in 1578, he says not a word about the plague of 1599 but writes about the fire from three years before that.44 Also, a care- ful reading of his lines on the two plagues in Novo Mesto reveals no distinction between the epidemic of 1578 and that of 1599, which he erroneously sets in 1590:45 “Massen sie /Pest=Seuche/ im 1578 Jahr/ und gleichfalls /!/ im 1590/ viel Leute weggerissen/ und so wenig derselben übrig gelassen/ daß das Graß/ auf dem Marckt=Platz/ so hoch gewachsen/ daß man es mit Sensen abmähen können.”46 There is some inter- nal logic to the statement and its dramatic tone. The grass overgrowing the town’s Market Square was not necessarily owed to the dramatic population decline but primarily to the fact that its trade area had not received visitors for weeks and months due to town and road closures. The unpaved square, which ordi- narily hosted a bustling wheat market twice weekly, may have quite quickly turned into a grassy area. As for the demographic losses that Novo Mesto and Višnja Gora suffered in 1599, new sources and discoveries strongly relativize the tendentious state- ments by their respective town leaderships. Con- temporary surveys of the towns’ taxpayers and aban- 43 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, pp. 628–629. 44 Ibid., pp. 199, 200. 45 Attention to the error was already drawn by I. Vrhovec (Zgodovina Novega mesta, p. 79). 46 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488. doned houses lend particularly valuable support to the common-sense “incredulity.” They completely contradict the petitions raised by the inhabitants of Novo Mesto and Višnja Gora to alleviate their fiscal burdens and, notwithstanding all mitigating factors, point to nothing less than deliberate deceit and dis- tortion of facts. At least some figures on the living and the deceased were deliberately changed, either amplified or played down, depending on whom they were addressed at. Because they can only be fully un- derstood in the context of the property and demo- graphic structure of both towns, they will be given further consideration below. One thing is certain: the plague that rampaged in Novo Mesto at the end of the sixteenth century was indeed remorseless. According to the vidame’s re- sponse to Archduke Ferdinand regarding the situa- tion in the town, chronologically the very first source mentioning the plague in Novo Mesto, dated March 16th, 1600, the town and its surroundings suffered a heavy population loss (an bevölkerung entplöst) to the plague in the previous year.47 Barely seven years after the events, the inhabitants of Novo Mesto would, of course, not dare to fabricate the figures completely, least of all in their report to the commissioners who visited the town to assess the level of devastation and could easily verify their claims. Another question is how many inhabitants of Novo Mesto really died because of the plague or how credible are the indi- cations of more than eight hundred dead, including 149 masters of the house. Not impossible per se, the numbers strike terror, representing more than half of the town’s population. A hundred and fifty years 47 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 277, fasc. 140, lit. S XXI–9, March 3rd, 1600, March 26th, 1600. Johannes Clobucciarich’s sketch of Novo Mesto (1601–1605) immediately after the plague of 1599. 151 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 later (1754), Novo Mesto had 1,485 inhabitants48 or 5.67 persons per household in a total of 262 hous- es.49 During the second half of the sixteenth cen- tury, ravaged by firestorms, economic setbacks, and emigration,50 the population count was most likely even lower. For example, in the mid-eighteenth cen- tury, the same number of houses (248)51 were un- der the town’s jurisdiction as there were populated non-peasant properties (Ger.: Hofstatt) in 1515.52 A slightly lower number of 242 hearths is provided in chronologically the closest summary data from 1541.53 As for the number of victims that the plague of 1599 claimed throughout Carniola, the only figure apart from the eight hundred in Novo Mesto is 350 persons in Ljubljana, brought forth by Valvasor.54 Counting about seven hundred houses at the time, the Carniolan capital and its suburbs were home to approximately five thousand inhabitants according to Valenčič’s estimate,55 converting the 350 plague victims into 7 % of the total population. The differ- ence from the more than 50 % share of deaths estab- lished for Novo Mesto is more than obvious. However, rather than being simply rejected due to its “improbability” and the silence in contempo- rary reports, the staggering number of eight hun- dred victims in Novo Mesto56 is contradicted by 48 According to the register of marriages kept by the chapter parish, the town had the following number of inhabitants over four consecutive years: 1485 in 1754, 1466 in 1755, 1441 in 1756, and 1390 in 1757 (KANM, carton 66, P/4 1754–1771, s. p.). 49 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 242 (mesto Novo mesto), no. 23, rent-roll 1756; N 11 (kapitelj Novo me- sto), no. 4, February 28th, 1753. 50 Cf. Vrhovec, Zgodovina Novega mesta, pp. 76 f. 51 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 242 (mesto Novo mesto), no. 23, rent-roll 1756. 52 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 105, fasc. 59, lit. R V–1, Der zaichnus abschrifft der hoffstett der statt Ruedolphswerth anno 1515. 53 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 294, fasc. 151, 6/1549, no. 9, s. d. (Gemainer statt Ruedolfswerdt auszug).— Cf. [Dimitz], Beiträge zur fünfhundertjährigen Gründungs- feier, 34. 54 Summarizing the data from Schönleben (Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 718).—Having thoroughly studied materials from the Ljubljana City Archives, Ivan Vrhovec wrote that he could not find any statistical data on the numbers of the infect- ed and the deceased but only tentative indications at best (Vrhovec, Die Pest in Laibach, p. 131). 55 Valenčič, Prebivalstvo in hiše, p. 118.—In 1600, the town’s authority covered 359 houses within the town walls, alto- gether about four hundred, including the forty-two identified houses under other authorities (ibid., p. 112). 56 To substantiate her doubt about the credibility of the data, M. Smole maintained that A. Koblar, whom she cited, did not provide any sources and that the data did not correspond to contemporary conclusions drawn by the provincial com- missioners (Smole, Kuga na Kranjskem, p. 98). However, she was not aware about Vrhovec’s publication of citations from the original source, and she also neglected the fact that the plague commissioners’ reports on the epidemic in Novo Mes- to and Lower Carniola only referred to the first half of 1599. far more reliable numerical sources—two lists of Novo Mesto’s abandoned houses—and commission reports from the early seventeenth century. These are undated commission surveys of abandoned and burnt houses, and insolvent taxpayers. They may be labeled as lists A and B57 and placed in the late sum- mer of 1606, when the town received a visit from the provincial estates’ commission.58 The surveys were compiled for an investigation into the aban- donment of the town following the plague of 1599 and especially the fire in the autumn of 1605. List A registers abandoned, burnt, and still-populated im- poverished houses (109), whereas List B focuses on completely abandoned houses (80), that is, burnt and ruined buildings and uncultivated agricultural land. After subtracting the names of masters appearing on both lists (twenty-seven), the total number amounts to 162 abandoned houses.59 Had the third commis- sion list—a survey of still-populated houses—from 1606 also been preserved, historians could dispose of a first-rate contemporary source on the town’s prop- erty and demographic structure, but instead, we can only rely on the summary report at the end of List A. The sum of 162 abandoned houses corresponds to the overall figure on more than 160 depopulated, abandoned, ruined, and burnt houses that paid no tax whatsoever. It also reveals the amounts neces- sary to cover for the 149 deceased masters and eight hundred deceased in total if multiplying every aban- doned house by the usual coefficient of five persons per household. On the other hand, the summary provides a disproportionately low figure of “no more than 125” so-called real, mostly poor masters of their own house. The rest, not stated quantitatively, are labeled as landless peasants (inwohner) and thrash- 57 List A (1606): SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 258, fasc. 133, lit. R V–4.—List B (1606): ibid., carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2. 58 Dating both lists to 1606 seems reasonable, given the ex- tremely high numbers of burnt and abandoned houses con- tained in both lists as well as an indication on List A that the house of Hans Dlaka in the Market Square had already been “abandoned for thirty years since the first fire” (1576). Furthermore, the merchant Adam Gričar declared himself unable to pay the entire amount of tax because he had not en- gaged in any craft and trading activity for seven years (since the plague of 1599!). Even more accurate is the dating of List B, which sets forth the sum of tax loss amounting to 236 gul- den and 27 kreuzer, mentioned in the commission report of September 24th, 1606. The sum refers to the revenues from widows, orphans, and landless peasants registered on List A (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2). 59 With only twenty-four names duplicated, most masters of the house on lists A and B were different individuals. Also, instead of three masters from List A, List B states widows and heirs. The conclusion that List A classifies all twenty-seven twice registered houses as completely depopulated and aban- doned points with certainty that List B indeed focuses exclu- sively on completely empty and ruined households. Also, two of four houses that are not explicitly classified as abandoned had long been deserted according to List A. 152 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 ers (drescher) who paid little or no tax. In fact, these houses should be considered as part of the above- stated 160 abandoned homes, which were nonethe- less occupied, albeit by landless peasants. The aban- donment of Novo Mesto was therefore first and foremost a structural one: solid masters of the house were replaced by fiscally insolvent occupants, and the aggregate of both summary items reflects a realistic picture of about 285 former homes.60 This also seems to solve the mystery of how pre- cisely the inhabitants of Novo Mesto had arrived at the 149 deceased masters and a total of over eight hundred victims of the epidemic—or it allows for at least one probable answer. If the estimate of 162 abandoned houses is reduced by those thirteen clear- ly listed as newly depopulated homes after being razed by the fire in the autumn of 1605, there re- main exactly 149 abandoned houses with the names and surnames of their former masters. This number of completely abandoned and half-emptied homes, which now housed the town’s impoverished, could have been presented at any given moment to the visi- tation commission for whom the information was in- tended. Yet the inhabitants of Novo Mesto shrewdly portrayed all former homes, many already abandoned for decades, as casualties of the plague. From here, it was only one step to reach the total of over eight hun- dred deaths. The town fathers merely had to multiply each deceased master by 5.4 family members, which was a slightly lower coefficient than the average of household members in 1754. And finally, as noted, the number eight hundred could also be arrived at us- ing a much simpler calculation: about 160 abandoned households, multiplied by five persons. To dwell a little longer on the analysis of the 149 of altogether 162 abandoned (completely and partially depopulated) homes; after subtracting the thirteen burnt houses that were completely aban- doned after the fire in 1605, it becomes clear that not a negligible part of houses had already been de- 60 In 1515, 272 non-peasant properties (Ger.: Hofstatt) fell un- der the town’s jurisdiction, 248 populated and twenty-four abandoned (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 105, fasc. 59, lit. R V–1). The next complete fiscal source is from 1726, stating 249 populated and forty-seven abandoned houses, altogether 296 house-lots (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–3, 3. 10. 1726). Although the summary from 1606 affirms that many aban- doned land plots in the surroundings of Sv. Jurij were still not registered and that, in the past (vor zeiten), the town count- ed as many as 337 fully occupied houses (wolbesezte heiser), there is no source to confirm this in the sixteenth century. The commissioners could arrive at such a high number with a census of all built up or empty house-lots, but a document that refers to a completely unspecified time in the past rais- es doubt about its credibility. The same source, for example, also states that, “von jarn,” the town had over 150 granaries (gödner), and yet List B only specifies forty-five abandoned granaries. One could come close to the number 337 by aggre- gating the latter, all (un)populated house-lots and taxpayers possessing various kinds of land plots. populated before 1599. List A alone states thirty-one old, abandoned houses, whereas List B says nothing about the level of abandonment and sets forth above all, if not exclusively, houses that had been consigned to ruin for many years. What remains after subtract- ing the thirty-one demonstrably old, abandoned houses, some expressly labeled as having been unoc- cupied for twenty or thirty years, are no more than 118 homes that could have been depopulated by the plague. However, given the above, it seems reasonable to assume that the actual numbers were considerably lower. Besides, no plague would have ravaged with such razor-sharp precision to kill off certain families while leaving others entirely intact. If the plague had indeed claimed the lives of 149 masters, they would have left behind many more widows instead of twelve appearing in both lists combined. To reiterate, the reference to 149 masters of the house was most likely used to cover the same number of completely or partially abandoned houses left without their real, taxpaying owners. After all subtractions, the number of completely vacated homes and the total death toll taken by the plague of 1599 remains open to debate. It is redundant to speculate whether the number of victims was more or less than stated in the source from 1625 (322, including fifteen masters of the house).61 Suffice it to provide a broad estimate of up to several hundred deceased and certainly much fewer than 149 masters. Rather than decisive, the epidemic of 1599 was a relatively incidental reason behind Novo Mesto’s demonstrably poor demographic and economic sta- tus. The investigating commission, which compiled a detailed survey of tax assessments and losses suffered by each house in the late summer of 1606, stated in its final report to the provincial prince that a looming emigration of the remaining inhabitants would drive the town to the brink of collapse without the desper- ately needed tax relief. The main cause of this calam- ity were purportedly the Turks, who were blamed for the collapse of the once booming trade with Croatia and the Slavonian Military Frontier.62 However, the desolation and dramatic impoverishment among the remaining population of Novo Mesto could not have been so much a consequence of the turbulent bor- der as it was of an overall decline in non-agrarian economy, followed by a series of consecutive natural disasters. As if by an unfortunate coincidence, these struck precisely when trade and crafts were undergo- ing an acute crisis. In a relatively short period, the town was devastated by no less than four fires—1540, 1576, 1584, and 1605—which then various petitions and descriptions persistently described as the fun- 61 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2, May 9th, 1626.—Cf. Vrhovec, Zgodovina Novega mesta, p. 82. 62 Ibid., September 24th, 1606 (commission report). 153 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 damental reason for the town’s decline.63 Already in 1564, the inhabitants of Novo Mesto complained about their fellow townsmen emigrating and leaving behind empty houses or tenants.64 Three years later, after the town was almost completely razed by the fire in 1576, its leadership lamented the departure of a no small number of families, which had left as much as one-third of the town abandoned or unde- veloped (öder oder unausgebaut verbleibt).65 What is particularly striking is that after this fire and that in 1584,66 all petitions for tax relief fail to mention a single word about the consequences of the plague of 1578, for which Valvasor remains the only known source.67 The town already suffered significant demo- graphic losses before the plague year of 1599. When they requested for a commission inspection of the town to yield a realistic tax base assessment in 1595, Novo Mesto’s inhabitants reported that the big- gest and most magnificent houses stood empty and deserted, while smallholdings (Ger.: Keusche) lan- guished in poverty,68 which only grew deeper during the Long Turkish War. The town fathers’ petitions remained unanswered until the fire of 1605 turned the wealthiest and most vital part of the town into ashes,69 eventually branding Novo Mesto as desolate and providing a sufficient ground for sending a visi- tation commission. The plague, included at the last minute in Novo Mesto’s report among the causes for the deplorable situation, is solely mentioned there. Unlike the fires and impoverishment, the plague is conspicuously also missing from both the lists of abandoned houses and the final commission report. Similar conclusions were drawn on the demo- graphic and economic implications of the plague in Višnja Gora, which were substantiated with even more reliable numerical sources. Compared to Novo Mesto, the developments in Višnja Gora are also much better documented in a contemporary source, 63 E.g., SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2, September 24th, 1606; carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–3, s. d. (Gravamen, after 1637). All three fires were also known to Valvasor, who further added the fourth one of 1664 (Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488). 64 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–1, April 25th, 1564. 65 StLA, I.Ö. HK-Akten, 1579–VI–11, May 29th, 1579. 66 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 855, re- gistry protocols no. 7 (1578–1584), p. 301). 67 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488. 68 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 278, fasc. 141, lit. S XXII–16, s. d. (ad June 23rd, 1595). 69 According to Valvasor, the fire engulfed the Market Square and turned sixty houses into ashes (Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488), whereas around 1640 the inhabitants of Novo Mesto wrote about fifty-six burnt houses (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–3, s. d., Gravamen, after 1637). The most reliable source, the commission’s List A from 1606, does not deviate appreciably from the indications above, stating that fifty-two of 162 abandoned houses were burned down, thirty in the Market Square and the rest in the nearby streets. penned by the local town judge Janez Zore—his an- nual account for the one-year term of office from June 24th, 1599, to the same date the following year.70 The document is less revealing than its pre- decessor for 1553/1554 and paints a picture of an almost ordinary year. Albeit containing no mention of plague-related deaths or specifying the plague gravediggers’ names, it nevertheless provides enough information to demonstrate that the risk of infec- tion was real. On the other hand, the epidemic could not have claimed a heavy death toll, which would have manifested in the abandonment of (half of ) the town. Again, according to the May report to the pro- vincial estates, Višnja Gora had until then escaped the plague,71 and the town’s complaints to Archduke Ferdinand that reached Graz on June 12th, 1599, say nothing about its outbreak while reporting on no less than one-third of the town abandoned.72 Consider- ing that it traveled for no more than two weeks, the letter describes the situation in Višnja Gora at the end of May or in early June. The undocumented time up to June 24, 1599, during which the plague should have claimed the heaviest death toll, was less than a month, but on Zore’s taking up his one-year term of judicial office, there were still no signs of turmoil and no plague closure, which should have been imposed in the event of mass burials. The newly appoint- ed judge took a lease of the tollhouse at the usual amount (104 gulden and 50 kreuzer), and the town feast cost as much as it did in previous years. The dis- ease must have occurred only later and disappeared by mid-March the following year. Namely, on March 20th, 1600, the town judge set out for Ljubljana in the company of the town clerk to visit the vidame regarding the confirmation of his term of office and the elimination of the plague closure (Wando), and on the same morning, the town councilors already met for breakfast at Zore’s house without fear. Para- lyzed traffic and trade thus delayed the confirmation of the town judge, which ordinarily followed on the heels of the election, for almost nine months, but not necessarily “through the fault” of Višnja Gora’s inhabitants. Specifically, in the autumn of 1599, the provincial offices were transferred from the plague- ridden Ljubljana to Kamnik and less urgent matters were postponed to a safer date. The judicial account of Višnja Gora does not provide the exact date on which the closure was imposed on the town, nor does it describe its direct impact. No restrictions seem to have been placed at any time on the passing from and to the town by locals and foreigners, respectively. 70 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account book 1599/1600. 71 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 444, fasc. 291 d, p. 743, ad May 1st, 1599.—Cf. Smole, Kuga na Kranj- skem, p. 98. 72 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko carton 284, fasc. 145, lit. W I–3, June 12th, 1599. 154 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 As always, the regular council meeting was held in the autumn, the town envoys journeyed to Graz and back, Višnja Gora received provincial messengers, beggars, and other foreigners, and the town fathers continued to appoint officials.73 Life in the town was equally busy during winter months: tax was collected on the last day of January and a deal was concluded for the town messenger’s house on February 21st, after which the inhabitants of Višnja Gora and the parish priest spent a few days discussing matters concerning the spiritual assistant and teacher—all this during the closure, which was still in place on March 20th. The town judge’s bill of costs only refers to the plague indirectly, through occasional mentions of burials. Between July 28th and August 8th, 1599, for example, two representatives of the town were sent to the parish priest “to discuss the burial of those from the village of Kriška Vas,” and in mid-November the town paid for a boy’s burial. At the end of 1599 or the beginning of the next year, the town messenger died and was promptly replaced by another, and in January 1600 the town judge included a swineherd’s post-burial feast among the expenses. On April 10th, after the town judge and clerk returned from Lju- bljana and the closure was lifted, the former grave- digger Matija Arbeiter, who interred the swineherd in January, received the promised payment for his burials (wegen seiner zuegesagten besoldung der be- grebnus halber). The word “burial” in plural form and the item “1 gulden and 36 kreuzer” suggest that he had buried at least a few people. Interestingly, how- ever, this time one gravedigger was enough, unlike in 1554 when the town hired four and paid them for a month’s work an amount almost four times higher than the sum now paid to Arbeiter. Moreover, unlike its predecessor from a little less than fifty years be- fore, which makes several mentions of the epidemic, the town judge’s annual account for 1599/1600 con- tains a single direct reference to the disease, made only after the danger had passed, on June 14th, 1600, when the provincial messenger brought a general mandate on “Infection alda.” Meanwhile, the inhab- itants of Višnja Gora had been vigorously restor- ing town buildings, collecting taxes, and litigating, apart from which they also held the Feast of Corpus Christi and the annual fair. In the light of the above, the contemporary source provides no basis to substantiate the reported deaths of half of the town’s inhabitants and landless peasants. In addition, for Višnja Gora there exists a continuous series of annual tax registers issued every 73 A partial standstill in view of the “ex silentio” of dates can only be observed between August 15th and November 11th, and even that period saw autumn assemblies, an overview of the judge’s and chamberlain’s accounts for the previous year, and a visit from the provincial debt collector, accompanied by indispensable feasts. few years, starting with 1567. Clearly specifying the composition of the town’s population and its ability to pay tax, the registers represent a credible source, also because a vast majority have been preserved in original in the town archives.74 Yet precisely the registers from 1605–1607, the closest in time to the plague, are only known through doctored transcripts held by the provincial vidame and the Inner Aus- trian government, respectively.75 These are dismissed by appreciably different data provided in a tax survey that was carried out the following year, in 1608, for the town’s internal use.76 An interesting light on Višnja Gora’s allegation from 1609 that the plague had killed over half of its population is shed by their above-mentioned com- plaints to Archduke Ferdinand, which arrived in Graz on June 12th, 1599. More specifically, it was already before the epidemic that more than one- third of houses in the debt-ridden and deteriorat- ing town were abandoned and dilapidated (!). The town leadership also lamented the total absence of trade and crafts, adding that since the onset of the war in 1593 various armies had passed through the town, forcibly grabbing whatever they chanced on and paying for nothing.77 According to the tax register of 1591, when Višnja Gora had more tax- payers than ever in the following two centuries, the dramatic abandonment should have taken place in a short span of eight tumultuous years. In the year mentioned above, Višnja Gora counted eighty-nine homes, eleven free tenants and landless peasants, and twelve granaries—but no empty houses or insolvent taxpayers.78 The one-third of abandoned houses from 1599 could correspond to the situation presented to the higher authorities in the tax registers from 1605, 1605, and 1607, when the heavily abandoned town recorded between fifty-nine and sixty-three popu- lated houses.79 However, the three surveys above served to substantiate the petitions to cancel the out- standing tax debt, whereas the original register for the following year 1681 already listed many more homes (seventy-six). The probability that seventeen abandoned houses became populated within a year should be flatly dismissed. According to the compar- ison of the stock of masters’ names, certain persons and surnames only appeared in 1591 and 1608 and were simply suppressed or attributed to abandoned 74 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, tax registers 1567– 1740. 75 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 284, fasc. 145, lit. W I–4, tax register 1605, 1606.—StLA, I.Ö. HK-Akten, 1611–III–105, Steuer register 1607. 76 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, tax register 1608. 77 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko carton 284, fasc. 145, lit. W I–3, June 12th, 1599. 78 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, tax register 1591. 79 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 284, fasc. 145, lit. W I–4, tax register 1605, 1606.—StLA, I.Ö. HK-Akten, 1611–III–105, Steuer register 1607. 155 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 homes in the registers for 1605–1607. Even before 1608, the actual number of populated houses must have been higher than about sixty, and it could not be significantly lower than seventy-six, at which it stabilized for at least the following two decades. Bearing eloquent witness to that is the popula- tion continuity in Višnja Gora. Although the discon- tinuity of property holding families was higher in the seventeen years between 1591 and 1608 than in the ten years between 1581 and 1591, the different dura- tions of the periods make the difference negligible. In the first period (1581–1591), 48.2 % of all house- holding families remained on the same property and 32.6 % in the second. In other words, between 1581 and 1591, 4.4 households changed their master each year, and during the crisis-, war-, and plague-ridden period 1591–1608 no more than 3.5 households, in- cluding the thirteen abandoned ones.80 Still, it is important to note that between 1591 and 1608 the number of householders in Višnja Gora dropped from eighty-nine to seventy-six or by a little more than one-seventh (14.61 %) com- pared to the initial situation. Since the changes from eight years before 1599 and in the six years leading up to 1605 are not documented, the popu- lation fluctuations that took place in the meantime and during the plague year can only be speculated on. What the figures above nevertheless confirm is that one-third of the town’s houses could not have been abandoned just before the plague in 1599, let alone that the disease had killed half of the popula- tion. Knowing about its rampaging in other parts of the province, ten years later, in 1609, the inhabitants of Višnja Gora simply inserted the epidemic in their petition for the cancellation of tax debt. The number of deaths, which could at most reach a double-digit figure, was inflated to half of the town dwellers and landless peasants, amounting to over two hundred persons in view of the eighty-nine populated houses in 1591. The plague thus only played a marginal role in the devastation of Višnja Gora, which is also why its mention is completely omitted from both the vid- ame visitation report in 1609 and from the report to the provincial prince on the town’s status, which oth- erwise provides an exhaustive list of every possible reason for stagnation.81 At the end of the sixteenth century, Višnja Gora suffered from the same economic crisis as the rest of the province. According to the vidame, crafts and 80 Between 1581 and 1591, thirty-one homes (36.5 %) retained the same master and ten (11.8 %) the same surname, and five persons and seven surnames were passed on to other houses and immovable properties. Between 1591 and 1608, eighteen masters of the house (20.2 %) remained the same and eleven homes (12.4 %) retained an unchanged surname, in addition to twelve surnames of householders around the town (13.5 %). 81 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 284, fasc. 145, lit. W I–4, July 11th, 1609.—StLA, I.Ö. HK-Akten, 1611– III–105, January 24th, 1610. trade took a severe blow, forcing much of the popula- tion to live off the land.82 A conglomerate of reasons ushered in the first stage of the town’s abandonment, which did not end until the early seventeenth cen- tury. How much the plague of 1599 directly or in- directly contributed to the weakening of the town’s economy remains unclear. That year, for example, the town judge Janez Zore collected almost half the amount of tax less (63 gulden and 40 kreuzer) than his predecessor in 1596 (116 gulden).83 The plague was at least partially responsible for this, given the town’s closure and the restricted movement of people and goods throughout the province. The plague between 1623 and 1627 The next major epidemic threatened Carniola indirectly from Gorizia and Styria since the spring of 1623, when strict safety measures and provincial border closures were put in place. The plague first visited Upper Carniola in 1624 and then settled for two years in Lower Carniola.84 The estate registry protocols first recorded it on Carniolan soil in March 1624, after a series of closures and guards had been set up since February 1623 to prevent the spread of the disease from the infected neighboring provinces. In December 1624, the secret court council in Graz issued a decree to put Ljubljana under guard, a meas- ure that the provincial estates criticized as unneces- sary. The provincial princely infection decree was is- sued no earlier than August 1625, when the plague had already reached full swing both in Carniola and, again, in Styria. The regest of reports, bans, and de- crees, issued between December 1624 and the end of 1625, lists the following places in Lower Carniola: Žužemberk, Ribnica, Soteska, and Novo Mesto with its surroundings. Before the end of 1625, the plague receded for a while and then hit with full force again in May 1626, prompting the provincial estates to renew the patent of the plague commissioner for Lower Carniola, after which the abbot of Stična demanded to impose a ban on fairs. The epidemic finally came to an end sometime before November 1626, when the provincial estate registry protocols began to feature nothing but physician and commis- sioner reports, and costs incurred.85 Among Lower Carniolan towns and market towns, the plague was best documented in Novo 82 Ibid. 83 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account books 1596/1597 and 1599/1600. 84 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 102–103; Koblar, O človeški kugi, p. 51.—SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 480, fasc. 295 b, p. 999–1001, October 20th, 1625. 85 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, reg- istry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), pp. 261, 267, 271, 272, 274, 275, 276, 279, 291, 300, 308, 320, 337, 339, 344, 364, 377, 385, 390, 395, 398, 405, 415, 419, 421, 424, 428, 440, 455, and 478. 156 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 Mesto, for which two numbers of the deceased have been preserved. The impact of the plague is best il- lustrated in the report compiled by the Novo Mesto town judge and council of May 9th, 1626, request- ing the provincial vidame to grant the town the right to collect bridge fee. According to the report, the town was undergoing even greater distress and decline after 322 persons had died of the plague in the previous year (laidige Infection), including fifteen masters of the house, condemning their widows and children to extreme poverty. Households remained empty and unable to pay tax, whereas the town coun- cil, in extending its Christian outreach to everyone, had already drained too much of the town’s treasury and their own income to help the poor. The plague hit Novo Mesto in May and ended on November 4th, 1625, although it was still running rampant else- where at the time (i.e., May 1626). A few grudgers then reportedly spread rumors and smears to prevent the town from reopening all until March 21st, 1626, leaving the town dwellers with no work, while the excessively long closure caused damage and devas- tation in the fields and vineyards. The local popula- tion was also adversely affected by the exchange of coins in 1624, and all town revenues were used up for treating the infected and for other purposes. The town ordered 100 gulden’s worth of medicines from Ljubljana, after which the town pharmacist sought to use the receipt to extort another 300 gulden, in- creasing the total amount of the town’s debt to al- most 1000 gulden. The inhabitants of Novo Mesto also owed the provincial estates an outstanding tax debt for 1625 and other liabilities, which they now hoped would be written off.86 The indications in the petition seem highly real- istic. Even though the plague had ended in the town itself by early November 1625, the closure contin- ued for another four months and a half, hitting the town’s non-agrarian and agrarian economy the hard- est. That the danger had indeed passed can be gath- ered from the fact that in January 1626 the physician Janez Scheidt called on the provincial estates for the second time to reopen the town, but they remained unwavering and in June that same year even threat- ened the town with a tax warrant.87 Many details re- garding the epidemic itself could be obtained from a report on Scheidt’s work during the plague that the provincial estates’ delegates required from the town leadership;88 however, no such report, if ever written at all, has been preserved. More is known about the 86 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2, May 9th, 1626.—Cf. Vrhovec, Zgodovina Novega mesta, p. 82. 87 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, re- gistry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), p. 397; carton 480, fasc. 295 b, p. 1423–1424, June 6th, 1626. 88 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, re- gistry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), p. 419. dispute between the inhabitants of Novo Mesto and their pharmacist Martin Anton Mladkovič, who had already at the end of 1625 presented the provincial estates with the specification of medicines (dispon- sirten medicinalien) used during the plague in the town and its surroundings and mainly distributed among the town dwellers and the most prominent town councilors. The delegates then reported to the town judge and council that the provincial estates had no intention of covering the costs incurred and called on them to recover the debt as soon as pos- sible.89 Against this background, the epidemic in Novo Mesto was by no means an innocent mishap. 322 dead, including fifteen masters of the house, are real- istic and much more credible figures than the over- blown statements about the plague twenty-five years earlier. The only reason that the figures do not create the impression of greater credibility is that they are significantly lower this time, which is largely owed to the nature of the report. Drawn up only a few weeks after the plague closure was lifted, this document was much more up to date than the report on the plague of 1599, which was compiled seven years after the events and almost casually woven into the reasons for the profound structural crisis. Conversely, the new report, albeit also written in the form of a petition for aid, provides a detailed description of the epidemic’s direct aftermath. Six years later, Valvasor, too, stated that the plague of 1625 killed four hundred people.90 The 322 and four hundred victims, respectively, in 1625 are further comparable to the still more reli- able number of 331 dead in the entire 1715, when a febrile disease took hold among the town’s popula- tion.91 Setting both numbers of deaths against 1,485 inhabitants of Novo Mesto in 1754,92 a little more than one-fifth died on both occasions. However, it seems reasonable to assume that in 1625 the town had a smaller population due to the more than fifty years’ period of structural crisis, fires, and epidemics. The 322 dead thus surely accounted for more than one-quarter, if not nearly one-third of Novo Mesto’s population. Because the plague of 1625 also sent to the grave many from the surrounding villages, Ru- dolf Baron von Paradaiser ensured a lasting memory of it by erecting the Church of St. Roch in 1627, just a stone’s throw away from his Pogance mansion.93 Little credibility is afforded to plague reports that were mainly written in passing. It is interest- ing to observe how the White Carniolan towns of 89 Ibid., carton 480, fasc. 295 b, pp. 1115–1116, December 20th, 1625. 90 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488. 91 KANM, carton 66, M/1 1704–1728. 92 According to a summary report in: KANM, carton 66, P/4 1754–1771, s. p. 93 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 103. Cf. Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 449. 157 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 Metlika and Črnomelj benefitted themselves from Novo Mesto’s misfortunes. When the inhabitants of Novo Mesto appealed to the emperor to grant them the right to collect bridge fee and write off a part of their outstanding tax debt, in 1632 the authori- ties collected opinions from the neighboring towns. The seigniorial steward of Žužemberk as well as the leaderships of Ljubljana, Višnja Gora, Krško, Ko- stanjevica, Metlika, and Črnomelj agreed to such a form of aid and confirmed that Novo Mesto had in- deed been severely debilitated by various calamities, stripped of its population, and abandoned, especially because of the prolonged plague closure a few years earlier.94 However, the inhabitants of Metlika added that the plague had been more pertinacious in their town than in Novo Mesto and that by killing many young and old it kept Metlika in shutdown for long- er. Poor harvests drove the few survivors to the brink of existence, forcing most from both Novo Mesto and Metlika to move elsewhere.95 Two weeks later, the inhabitants of Črnomelj sent an almost verbatim response, likewise stressing that the plague closure of their town lasted longer than in Novo Mesto and that, like Novo Mesto, half of Črnomelj stood empty (ödt stehen).96 Whereas the inhabitants of Metlika and Črnomelj surely did not invent the long-term closure of their towns, the levels of mortality and abandonment are open to debate for the lack of other sources that historians could draw on for either town, particularly any kind of structural-numerical sourc- es or data regarding their population—for Metlika until the beginning of the eighteenth century and for Črnomelj up to the mid-eighteenth century.97 No mention of the plague of 1625–1626 is likewise contained in more recent complaints and Valvasor’s writings, and the only contemporary report available is a notice from August 1625 concerning the ban on weekly fairs in Metlika.98 The epidemic only reached the town of Krško in the second wave. According to the annals in the Krško town book, it spread to this urban settlement on the Sava around All Saints’ Day in 1626 and lasted until the New Year. The notice on the plague is very meager, especially compared to records on natural disasters and troubles in the ensuing years, making it reasonable to assume that the number of 94 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–2, February 7th, 1632, August 31st, 1632, September 9th, 1632, September 20th, 1632, August 1st, 1632, August 15th, 1632, October 30th, 1635. 95 Ibid., August 1st, 1632. 96 Ibid., August 15th, 1632. 97 Metlika’s civil registers were started after the fire of 1705 and Črnomelj’s no earlier than 1753. The first census of houses in Metlika, contained in the Theresian Cadaster (1752), was produced soon after the oldest preserved census for Črnomelj (1744). 98 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, re- gistry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), p. 428. victims was rather limited.99 Equally meager are reports on the plague in Višnja Gora, otherwise the Lower Carniolan town best documented through local sources. The town judge’s annual account for 1623/24 only mentions the epidemic indirectly, in a record dated July 1623 concerning the reimbursement of a messenger who had arrived from Ljubljana on a plague-related mat- ter (wegen der infection).100 Although the judicial ac- counts have not been preserved for the next two years, Višnja Gora must have been safe from the plague based on a report on the ongoing reparations of the provincial road that the town submitted to the pro- vincial estates in August 1625.101 The town judge’s annual account for the period between the mid-1626 and the mid-1627 then describes a perfectly normal life and a vibrant flow of people and goods. It was only in mid-December 1626 that the inhabitants of Višnja Gora sent a messenger with a plague epistle to the provisional plague administrators in Ljublja- na. Beyond the reference to the epistle, nothing is known about its content and the past developments in the town. On the other hand, an evident threat loomed over Višnja Gora’s wider surroundings, given that the plague (der infection halber) had decimated the town judge’s income that year from the tollhouse at Šmartno pri Litiji, which the town held in lease.102 However, as can be gathered from the town tax reg- isters, the plague certainly had not emptied Višnja Gora’s households. After the town registered seven- ty-nine populated homes and two abandoned houses in 1620, there are barely any detectable differences in 1629, with seventy-eight houses and one abandoned parcel of land, and a steady continuity of property holders’ surnames.103 Turning to other Lower Carniolan urban settle- ments, the plague also appears to not have spared 99 The following year, in 1628, the wider Krško area was devas- tated by an earthquake, followed by a flood in August, which exerted a heavy toll among peasants and cattle. Horrific af- tershocks continued for another five yearly quarters until the mid-1629. As a result, that and the ensuing year were a pe- riod of severe scarcity; “several thousand” people went bank- rupt or died of hunger, and “several thousand” moved with their wives and children to Hungary and Turkey and became their subjects.—SI AS 1080, Zbirka Muzejskega društva za Kranjsko, Muzejskega društva za Slovenijo in Historičnega društva za Kranjsko, carton 8, fasc. 11, Civitatensia, Mesto Krško, town book 1539–1679.—Cf. [Dimitz], Annalen der landesfürstlichen Stadt Gurkfeld, p. 84. Cf. Koblar, Iz kro- nike krškega mesta, p. 22.—Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 103. 100 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account books 1626/1627. 101 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 480, fasc. 295 b, pp. 729–730, August 4th, 1625. 102 On February 5th, 1627, the judge Janez Markovič received no more than 6 gulden, 22 kreuzer, and 1 pfennig from the tollhouse official Janez Plevnik (SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, town account books: 1626/1627). 103 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, tax registers 1620 and 1629. 158 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 the market towns of Žužemberk and Ribnica, both mentioned in the registry regest on “plague reports” from 1624–1625.104 What kind of reports the pro- vincial estates received from there remains unknown, just as hardly any contemporary source exists on this plague. Only Dietrich Baron von Auersperg com- plained at the end of August 1625 that the epidemic had left the Žužemberk seigniory in such a shambles that he could hardly draw any benefit and collect- able tax from it.105 According to V. Travner citing an unidentified source, Žužemberk’s death toll in 1625 was so high that the town cemetery was too small to cope. Burials were moved to the parish field, thence- forth dubbed “Kužni dol” (Plague Hollow), and a tract of land on the right bank of the Krka, where the Church of St. Roch was erected in the village of Stranska Vas the next year in collaboration with the inhabitants of the upper Krka valley.106 As regards the victims of Žužemberk, the actual demographic losses suffered by the market town itself are still up for debate. Owing to the lack of relevant sources, a tentative answer can be obtained by comparing property ownership in seigniorial rent-rolls from 1619 and 1644, which reveals no major turmoil but, to the contrary, even shows that the settlement of smallholdings (Ger.: Keusche) on the right bank of the Krka as much as doubled in the course of twenty- five years.107 It is also possible to ascertain a steady continuity of property ownership with 57.3 % units of property remaining in the hands of the same fami- lies as in 1619.108 The only reference to the plague in connection with Ribnica is contained in a “plague report” sent to the provincial estates in 1624–1625.109 Apart from the fact that this period coincided with the construction of the Church of St. Roch in the vil- lage of Dolenja Vas,110 more tangible traces of the 104 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, re- gistry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), p. 395. 105 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 480, fasc. 295 b, p. 793, August 30th, 1625. 106 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 103. 107 In 1619, Žužemberk registered eighty-nine property (house-) holders, sixty-eight in the center of the market town on the left bank of the Krka and twenty-one on the other side of the river. Twenty-five years later, the total number of all masters rose to 103—dropping to sixty-two in the center of the mar- ket town and climbing to forty-one on the right bank of the Krka. 108 There is a noticeable difference in the continuity of property holding families between the twenty-seven years’ period of 1592–1619 (34.04 %) and the twenty-five years’ period of 1644–1669 (30.10 %).—ÖStA, HHStA, FAA, A–15–68, Rent-roll Seisenberg 1592–1597, fols. 1–28v; A–15–70, Rent-roll Seisenberg 1619–1624, fol. 1–35v; A–15–72, Rent-roll Seisenberg 1644–1651, fols. 1–28; A–15–80, Rent- roll Seisenberg 1669–1676, s. p. 109 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 860, re- gistry protocols no. 14 (1619–1629), p. 395. 110 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 103.—Valvasor only refers to the Church of St. Roch as the eighteenth Ribnica succursal “nechst bey der Pfarrkirchen” (Valvasor, Die Ehre VIII, p. 796). epidemic have also yet to be found in more recent sources. Indirect witnesses to the plague are perhaps the rent-rolls of the seigniory of Ribnica. Between 1621 and 1659, marking the beginning and the end of the period, during which Lower Carniola was struck by two severe plague epidemics, the market town suffered a heavy population loss. The rent-roll from 1659 sets forth a downright dramatic decline in the number of both hide owners and smallhold- ers (Ger.: Keuschler), with only fifty-one masters of the house or 44 % less than nearly four decades earlier, in 1621, when there were still ninety-one.111 No major upturn was seen for the next fifty years,112 despite Valvasor’s assurances that Ribnica experi- enced a new “boom” after the devastating fires in the fifteenth century. What seems surprising is that Val- vasor knew about the fateful events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but remained mute on the possible plague epidemics or fires in the not as dis- tant seventeenth century.113 The 1630s ushered in a period of relative relief to the Slovenian provinces between the major epi- demics in the 1620s and 1640s, while the plague ravaged Istria in 1631, hitting the towns of Koper and Pula the hardest.114 The news about the disease startled Carniolans in the summer and autumn of 1631, when it appeared in Rihemberk in Gorizia and around Ilirska Bistrica and the small town of Lož in Carniola.115 Conversely, there is no evidence to suggest that it spread to Lower Carniola. For Au- gust 19th, 1631, for example, the Višnja Gora town judge’s annual account merely mentions the arrival of a provincial messenger bringing reports on sects, outstanding tax debt, and the plague.116 The Black Death struck again in 1634, when it reaped a par- ticularly heavy death toll in the Vipava Valley and reached the doorstep of Idrija. It had a similarly limited scope in Lower Carniola, where its sole in- cidence was recorded in Krško.117 According to the town annals, the disease reached Krško around the Feast of St. Luke (October 18th) in 1634 and did not recede until the Epiphany ( January 6th) the fol- 111 SI AS, AS 774, Gospostvo Ribnica, vol. 2, rent-roll 1621, s. p.; vol. 3, rent-roll 1659, s. p. 112 The seigniorial rent-roll from 1707–1710 states altogether fifty-six hide owners and smallholders in the market town (SI AS, AS 774, Gospostvo Ribnica, vol. 4, rent-roll 1707– 1710, fols. 1–46). 113 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 468. 114 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 103–104. 115 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 861, registry protocols no. 15 (1630–1645), pp. 59, 63, and 66.— Describing the plague, the inhabitants of Lož write about the economic losses rather than the victims, and the plague helped them negotiate the Cerknica fair to be transferred to their town (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 184, fasc. 104, lit. L I–8, November 28th, 1635; carton 197, fasc. 107, lit. L XX–8, November 16th, 1634). 116 SI AS, Mestni arhiv Višnja Gora, fasc. IV, town account books 1631/2. 117 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 104. 159 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 lowing year. Thanks to swift precautionary and pre- ventive measures, it killed no more than twenty-two persons, mostly children.118 Given the heaviest death toll among the children’s population, it would be in- teresting to determine what type of disease it was. Obviously, the fear of catastrophe was bigger than the actual threat and considering twenty-two as a minor death toll suggests that the plague of 1626– 1627 had a deadlier course. The plague between 1645 and 1650 Spread widely across Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria, this plague epidemic most likely claimed fewer lives than its predecessors, but it etched itself into the popular memory as the longest and the last major plague on Carniolan soil. Four decades later, Valvasor, who in his writings mentions no plague in relation to so many places as this most recent one, seems more objective in estimating its scope than the leaderships of the affected towns. In his words, the plague of 1646 ravaged and took an enormous human toll in Krško and its surroundings. He is similarly unexplicit about Metlika, maintaining that that same year God unleashed a plague which of- ten ran rampant among the inhabitants of the town and its surroundings. In the chapter on Novo Mesto, he also describes Metlika’s death toll and, compared to the four hundred death cases in 1625, refers to the victims of 1648 as “no more than eighteen per- sons.” In relation to other towns and market towns, he clearly does not consider the epidemic from forty years earlier as noteworthy, making a sole reference to a plague ravaging the small town of Svibno and its castle in 1646.119 Nothing is likewise known about the epidemic in other parts of Lower Carniola from contemporary reports, which remain silent on the epidemic in Kočevje and a significant part of western Lower Carniola. Novo Mesto, which had been drained of much of its population during the plague epidemics of 1599 and 1625, seems to have weathered the plague wave in 1645–1650 much better than some other parts of Lower Carniola. Whereas the historiographical and other literature, except Valvasor, says nothing about a possible incidence of the plague in the Lower Carni- olan capital, it mentions its ravages in Krško, Met- lika, Svibno, and Radeče.120 Contemporary reports differ in terms of their scope, content, and purpose, 118 SI AS 1080, Zbirka Muzejskega društva za Kranjsko, Mu- zejskega društva za Slovenijo in Historičnega društva za Kranjsko, carton 8, fasc. 11, Civitatensia, Mesto Krško, town book 1539–1679, s. p.—Cf. [Dimitz], Annalen der lan- desfürstlichen Stadt Gurkfeld, p. 84.—Koblar, Iz kronike krškega mesta, pp. 22–23. 119 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, pp. 242, 389, 488, and 502. 120 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 110–111.—Koblar, O človeški kugi, p. 51. and they have been variably preserved for individu- al affected towns and market towns. All, including the most important source—the Carniolan provin- cial estates’ registry protocols—are characteristically scarce in content. This was also the first plague to be recorded in church registers that have only been preserved from that period for two Lower Carniolan town parishes: the chapter parish in Novo Mesto and the parish of Višnja Gora. A relatively coher- ent chronology of the epidemic is provided by the provincial estate registry protocols from June 1646, when it moved from Krško across the Sava to Low- er Carniola and settled there until 1650, when the province was safe again. Mutually independent synchronous reports have been preserved on the epidemic’s devastating after- math in Krško. The plague occurred in June 1646 in the nearby villages of Dole and Vrhovlje, which were immediately placed under guard at the behest of the provincial estates’ delegation office.121 By Septem- ber 1647, the epidemic had caused such destruction, that the authorities also shut down both ferryboats crossing the Sava at Krško and Rajhenrburg, posted guards in the infected areas, and appointed Baron Jošt Moscon as plague commissioner. The plague re- portedly raged in Krško in October 1647, after which the registry protocols do not mention it again.122 According to V. Travner, the entire town street was closed, and the disease reportedly killed many in the nearby areas, especially Leskovec and Turn.123 Un- fortunately, there are no other contemporary reports known on the epidemic, and the keeping of the town annals ceased just before it struck. Valvasor places it in 1646 and adds that the Krško town council com- memorated it by erecting the Church of St. Rosalie with broad assistance on the hill near the town the next year.124 Produced a little less than a decade later, the long report on the impact of the plague on Krško rep- resents the most comprehensive document on this epidemic from Lower Carniola. The provincial es- tates’ visitation commission, which visited Krško in 1655, reported that the plague had wreaked havoc for two consecutive years, killing many townsmen, women, and children, and preventing others from leaving the town. Unable to sustain a livelihood, the inhabitants became destitute and eventually left.125 During its visit, the commission compiled a list of 121 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 862, registry protocols no. 16 (1646–1652), pp. 43, 46, and 48.— Just like Krško’s town judge and council, Baron Moscon, the owner of the Krško seigniory, and the benefice of Krško, both with serfs in the above-mentioned villages, were ordered to provide the villagers with the basic life necessities. 122 Ibid., pp. 141 and 185. 123 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 110. 124 Valvasor, Die Ehre VIII, p. 744. 125 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 171, fasc. 97a, lit. G VIII–8, August 25th, 1655. 160 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 abandoned houses. The list has only been preserved in a transcript from 1677, which was added newly abandoned homes and titled: “A Survey of Houses Completely Devastated by the Plague, Constant Burdens Imposed by Stationed Troops, Floods, and Severe Divine Punishment.” Sixteen abandoned houses were recorded in the town itself and another twenty-three “below the hill”, altogether thirty-nine. However, various levels of abandonment reveal that some houses were, after all, not completely depopu- lated, and that many had been emptied out before the plague.126 A total of twenty dwellings had been abandoned in the town and below the hill, five were consigned to ruin, and fourteen inhabited by their impoverished owners or other occupants.127 How many households were abandoned because of the epidemic and how many due to other factors at work? Let us recall that the title of the survey of abandoned houses states the plague first, in a way confirming its role in producing the unenviable number of twenty completely abandoned homes, many widows, and houses occupied by day laborers. At a rough estimate, the plague may have killed sev- eral dozens or even several hundreds. The share of Krško’s confirmedly and possibly abandoned houses may be determined only indirectly, as the exact num- ber of houses remained unknown at least until the mid-eighteenth century. According to the list of those who paid annual dues (Ger.: Hofzins) in the seigniorial rent-rolls from 1570 and 1575,128 Krško counted 141 or 145 dwellings at that time.129 After a strong depopulation trend, the number of inhabited houses in Krško settled during the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1752, it amounted to 110,130 which can translate into about six hundred inhabit- ants. The example of Krško contributed in no small part to the relativizations in subsequent shocking 126 Ibid., Specification B, s. a.—In the town center, one house classified as abandoned was occupied by an impoverished owner and two by poor widows. Two abandoned houses had already been converted into gardens, whereas all trace of an- other abandoned house had been lost, two had been reduced to wall fragments, three to an empty parcel of land, and five to ruin. Twenty-three houses below the hill were abandoned, nine ruined, and the rest dilapidated but still inhabited by poor widows and the town’s day laborers. 127 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 171, fasc. 97, lit. G VIII–8, s. d. (1677, Specification B). 128 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 81, fasc. 46, lit. G VIII–7, rent-roll of the seigniory Krško 1570, s. p.—SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 141, no. 29, rent- roll of the seigniory Krško 1575, pp. 481–529. 129 This number rests on the assumption that granaries did not have permanent residents and that other house-lots (Ger.: Hofstatt) in fact indicated buildings. In his reference to 146 families, J. Koropec simply ascribed one family to any of the 146 individuals who paid annual dues (Ger.: Hofzins) in money (Koropec, Krško v obdobju, p. 53). 130 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 239, no. 7, June 13th, 1752. reports on the economic implications of the plague. In their petition from 1747, requesting the provin- cial authorities to confirm the town privileges, the inhabitants of Krško complained that their trade had been driven out of existence by the fairs held in the Styrian village of Videm on the other side of the Sava ever since the deadly plague (leydige Con- tagion) had swept across Styria and Carniola. With all river crossings closed, Krško-bound traders and cattle reportedly remained stranded on the Styrian side of the river, in the territory under the jurisdic- tion of the provincial court of Brežice.131 In its re- port to the court office, the Carniolan representation and chamber supported the inhabitants of Krško in their wish to reopen fairs—but with one reserva- tion: if it were found that the fairs in Videm had in- deed been established without authorization.132 The owner of the seigniory of Brežice demonstrated the age of the Videm kermesses with the rent-roll from 1609, stressing that it did not say a word about the fair being transferred or any plague.133 However, a confirmation that the fairs, more specifically those in 1646,134 had indeed been moved to Videm due to the plague can be found in the Krško Capuchin chroni- cle, which was only started in late 1757. According to the chronicle, the town had endeavored to re-es- tablish its fairs until 1757, when the district governor publicly confirmed the town privileges, including the right to hold fairs.135 Although the plague may have caused the decline in the town’s trade, both interpre- tations regarding the collapse of Krško’s fairs and the booming fairs in Videm were produced more than a hundred years after the period in question and the reasons for their transfer across the Sava. In the sec- ond half of the seventeenth century, the otherwise revealing town’s complaints and petitions contain no such explanation. It is especially noteworthy that the provincial estates’ visitation commission in 1655 made absolutely no mention of the fairs in its minute descriptions of both direct and indirect implications of the plague.136 The fairs in Videm only became a pressing issue for the inhabitants of Krško many years later. In 1674, they negotiated the arrival of the provincial estates’ commission to inspect the fairs concurrently held in Videm and Krško. The com- 131 SI AS 6, Reprezentanca in komora za Kranjsko v Ljubljani, carton 49, fasc. XIX, lit. G, no. 1, presented on May 16th, 1747. 132 Ibid., June 8th, 1747. 133 Ibid., September 19th, 1756, Annex B. 134 References to the plague of 1646 were most likely influenced by the widespread knowledge about the plague in that year, which Valvasor mentioned in his description of the town of Krško (Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 242). 135 Kapucinski samostan Krško, Archivum loci Ppff. capucino- rum Gurgfeldi erectum anno Domini MDCCLVII, p. 9.— Cf. Benedik, Kralj, Kapucini na Slovenskem, p. 435. 136 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 171, fasc. 97a, lit. G VIII–8, August 25th, 1655. 161 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 mission confirmed that the fair in Krško had all but disappeared, while the one in Videm flourished.137 And yet its report says nothing about the plague or the time when the fairs in Videm were established, nor does it explain the situation described in Krško’s complaints from 1686, which, for example, have much to say about the economic implications of the Styrian plague of 1679–1683.138 Valvasor provides a similar description of the rampant Black Death in Metlika, which in 1646 re- portedly wreaked havoc not only in the town itself but also in the nearby villages.139 Whereas the plague seems to have started its danse macabre in White Car- niola a little later than in the Krško area, it swept into Metlika before it reached the town of Krško itself. Its outbreak in July 1646 alarmed the nearby seigniories, which set up guards no later than August, when the disease had already claimed several lives in Metlika. The threat was declared to have passed in March the following year, when Metlika’s town judge and coun- cil submitted to the provincial estates the no longer preserved list of deceased town dwellers and request- ed that the town closure (Infections Bando) be lifted, which also happened. However, they had less success with their petition for the reimbursement of 245 gul- den of expenses, which the town had incurred be- cause of the plague (Infectios Uncosten): in November 1648, the provincial estates’ delegation office rejected their request, arguing that the plague was brought to Metlika by one of its inhabitants.140 However, one can imagine that the provincial estates would have shown more understanding to the poor border town, had the number of deaths actually risen to hundreds, as the inhabitants of Metlika later maintained, leav- ing the town largely emptied out. It is equally noteworthy that, unlike in the case of Krško, no complaints or reports have been preserved for Metlika from the time of the epidemic. Judging from reports produced four decades later, the plague also claimed a substantial death toll here. Accord- ing to Valvasor, the frequent Turkish incursions, the plague, and the fires plunged Metlika into extreme poverty, from which it would not recover until his time.141 Shortly before that, in 1686, the inhabit- ants of Metlika tried to portray the plague of 1646 as one of the causes for their demise, reporting an unrealistic number of 1,200 victims it had claimed in two years “about forty years ago,” seven hundred in the first year and another five hundred in the sec- ond year. Many houses and the town walls were al- 137 Ibid., lit. G VIII–15, May 4th, 1674. 138 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 171, fasc. 97, lit. G VIII–8, April 13th, 1686. 139 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 389. 140 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 862, reg- istry protocols no. 16 (1646–1652), pp. 56, 63, 122, 123, and 298. 141 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 389. legedly consigned to ruin at that time, after which all construction came to a halt for the lack of means and a significant population decline. They also main- tained that no foreigner wanted to settle in Metlika and that even the locals were leaving the pummeled town, which could no longer pay annual levies.142 Evidently, even L. Podlogar, who published this data, found the total of 1,200 victims in Metlika exagger- ated and simply expanded it to the countryside: “In 1646, a terrible plague killed over 1,200 people in the town and the parish (!).”143 On the other hand, a source from 1686 makes no mention of the parish but only of the deceased in the town itself. Knowing very well that the number of Metlika’s inhabitants was far lower than the number of the deceased alone, Podlogar deemed it more probable that such losses were suffered across the parish. Besides, Valvasor, too, wrote about the plague in the town and its environs (nicht nur in der Stadt sondern auch in dem umligenden Lande).144 For the sake of illustration, let us take the data from 1721, when 3,026 persons were counted on Easter confession in the entire parish of Metlika.145 Provided that the demographic situation remained relatively constant seventy-five years earlier, it may be concluded that about two-fifths of parishioners were killed by the plague—but it is completely un- reasonable to claim that the plague took 1,200 lives in a town that assuredly did not have such a numer- ous population in the mid-seventeenth century. The oldest preserved census of town houses from 1752 counts 166 homes, including the castle, forty-nine within the town walls and 117 in the suburbs,146 which can translate into approximately nine hundred inhabitants. The third Lower Carniolan town that Valvasor and contemporary sources refer to in association with the plague in the mid-seventeenth century is Novo Mesto. Here, the epidemic first erupted in August 1646, but by December that same year the town must have been safe enough to receive a “visit” from distressed troops stationed at the fortified town of Karlovac, requesting the town fathers to provide them with urgently needed food supplies. The news about the plague startled the inhabitants of Novo Mesto again in May 1648. After three villages near Šentjernej became infected, the provincial estates’ delegates were proposed and immediately appoint- ed two plague commissioners. By June, the plague commissioners already had their hands full in Novo 142 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 233, fasc. 124, lit. M XXXIII–9, May 6th, 1686. 143 Podlogar, Požari v Metliki, p. 46. 144 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 389. 145 DOZA, Abt. Österreich, BÖ, K 304, Specificatio eorum qui per elapsum anni quadrante usque ad 5. 6. anni curentis 1721 etc. 146 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 242, no. 1, August 1st, 1752. 162 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 Mesto alone when, like the town judge and council, they received instructions on further measures and isolating the infected. The guards prevented people from moving between the town and its surroundings for over two months. Although the threat had appar- ently passed by August 1648, the provincial estates’ delegation office specifically advised Novo Mesto’s inhabitants not to leave the town and not to harass the guards before the closure was lifted. The threat fi- nally ceased in September, when the town leadership extended its gratitude to the provincial estates for sending the diligent physician Gašper Vizjak.147 As Sigmund von Gusič wrote to the provincial estates in mid-November, the town had already overstretched its resources supporting the garrison and the plague, following on its heels, kept Novo Mesto in isolation for more than fourteen weeks.148 The presence of the plague during the period of isolation is also documented in the register of bap- tisms kept by the chapter parish of Novo Mesto. The entries of three godchildren on June 1st, 1648, are followed by a separate undated entry of “tem- pore pestis,” and the next baptism took place on June 7th under the suspicion of infection (in suspec- tione infectionis seu pestis). On June 18th and 21st, two newborns were brought to the chapter church from infected homes (ex infecta domo), after which no baptism is recorded between June 24th and July 23rd. Furthermore, in June, July, and August, baptism was only performed on the town’s newborns because those from the surrounding villages could not even receive the first sacrament.149 Regrettably, the parish of Novo Mesto still did not keep records of deaths, which could unrefutably confirm Valvasor’s claim that the plague of 1648 consigned eighteen persons to the register of deaths. The difference between this number and the four hundred victims, which Valv- asor provides for 1625, is obvious.150 Moreover, these are the only two comparable figures of the same ori- gin. The minor implications of this plague for Novo Mesto are best illustrated in the town’s complaints soon after 1651, which describe the impacts of the 147 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 862, re- gistry protocols no. 16 (1646–1652), pp. 65, 248, 255, 256, 272, 273, and 280. 148 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 503, fasc. 300 b, p. 1027, November 10th, 1648. 149 KANM, carton 63, R/3 1645–1652.—Seven newborns were baptized in June 1648, only two in July, and then five in August. A low number of godchildren in the two summer months is nothing extraordinary and is also characteristic of other years. The epidemic could have led to a decline in the total number of baptisms to the town newborns two years af- ter the plague, in 1649 and 1650. Whereas at least forty-nine newborns from the town alone received baptism in 1646, the same number in 1647, and no less than fifty-seven in 1648, the register of baptisms indicates forty-six for 1649 and no more than thirty-four for 1650, after which their number rose sharply in 1651 to sixty-five, suggesting that the town population had meanwhile completely recovered. 150 Valvasor, Die Ehre XI, p. 488. plagues in 1599 and 1625 but do not say a word about the epidemic from a few years back.151 The developments in Višnja Gora during the plague waves in 1645–1650 are not documented as thoroughly as other epidemic outbreaks. It should also be stressed that this time the sources available keep silent about any kind of threat to the town or its surroundings. What may attest to the presence of the plague is that Višnja Gora suffered a drastic popula- tion decline precisely in the period of twenty-three years delimited by the town tax registers from 1629 and 1655. Meanwhile, during the Thirty Years’ War, the town experienced the second and last surge in depopulation, with the number of inhabited houses dropping from seventy-eight to merely fifty-eight or by one-quarter.152 Yet describing the causes for the town’s economic and demographic decline,153 the inhabitants of Višnja Gora never mentioned any plague or fire, which featured as popular culprits and harbingers of evil in the reports from other towns. Clearly, they would not have forgotten to mention a plague that killed at least a few of their fellow towns- men in the second half of the 1640s or temporarily sealed the town off from the outside world. No such information can either be traced in the relevant con- temporary source, Višnja Gora’s register of baptisms, in which the number of entries during the years of danger in no way deviates from the number of en- tries made in other years.154 There are likewise no reports of the plague wreak- ing havoc in Kostanjevica, the smallest Lower Car- niolan town, even though in September 1646, when the disease had already reached Krško and sowed death in Metlika, the provincial estates reproved Kostanjevica’s town judge and council for their neg- ligent security and defiance of the plague commis- sioner’s orders to post more guards. In January 1647, the inhabitants of Kostanjevica were called upon once again to rid themselves of the plague-ridden Uskoks. But the town was evidently not faced with a serious enough threat and its inhabitants continued to ignore the orders in pursuit of their economic in- terests.155 The account book kept by the abbot of the 151 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 256, fasc. 133, lit. R II–3, Bericht A, s. d. 152 SI AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora fasc. IV, tax registers 1629 and 1655. 153 On this: SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 284, fasc. 145. 154 NŠAL, ŽA Višnja Gora, Matične knjige, R 1638–1656 and R 1656–1672.—In the parish of Višnja Gora, the total num- ber of baptisms in the 1640s (547) amounted to one-third less than in the 1650s (811) and nearly half less in the town itself (60:110). On the other hand, the period, during which the plague raged elsewhere in Lower Carniola, in no way deviates from other annual averages. Unlike the register of baptisms of Novo Mesto, Višnja Gora’s contains no mention of the plague. 155 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 862, reg- istry protocols no. 16 (1646–1652), pp. 74 and 110. 163 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 Cistercian monastery of Kostanjevica likewise of- fers no clue to any extraordinary events unfolding in those years, barring the somewhat increased expens- es for medicines that a Novo Mesto pharmacist sup- plied to the monastery between 1645 and 1648.156 The only market town mentioned in relation to the plague during the period concerned is Mokro- nog. In August 1646, the provincial estates sent their rapporteur Baron Konrad Rues to the infected Novo Mesto and the areas around Klevevž and Mokronog, where the disease had also erupted. In September, a plague closure was imposed on provincial roads leading through Mokronog to Radeče.157 Due to a suspicion of contagion (contagions suspect), the plague commissioners for this area placed Mokronog Cas- tle and the entire market town in isolation (in bando gesezt), ordered the main bridges over the Mirna to be demolished, and prohibited the serfs of Mokro- nog from performing forced labor. The owner of the castle and the seigniory Ernest Schere von Schern- burg rejected their actions as completely baseless and inadmissible, and on the last day of 1646 negotiated from the provincial authorities a decree to abolish all restrictions if his claims were found to be true.158 For places where the plague is documented in the literature, the consequences of the epidemic were the least determinable around the then already extinct market town of Svibno near the much more impor- tant Radeče.159 Valvasor provides the only known source in which the local epidemic appears at all, whereas contemporary sources neither confirm nor deny its existence. With no rent-rolls preserved, it is also impossible to trace the (dis)continuity of prop- erty ownership in the Svibno seigniory, and nothing is known about the plague raging in Radeče, as men- tioned by V. Travner.160 The plague epidemic in the second half of the 1640s probably wreaked less havoc among the in- habitants of Lower Carniolan towns and market towns than its predecessors, especially the two in Novo Mesto. Nonetheless, its persistent presence and repetitive waves left a deep mark on society 156 SI AS 746, Cistercijanski samostan Kostanjevica, vol. 8, ac- count book of the abbot Jurij Zagožen 1638–1659, s. p.—The abbot paid the pharmacist 45 gulden in 1645, 33 gulden and 7 kreuzer in 1646, 55 gulden in 1647, 20 gulden in 1648, and again a larger sum of 42 gulden and 12 kreuzer at the end of 1650. 157 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 862, re- gistry protocols no. 16 (1646–1652), pp. 65 and 345. 158 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 500, fasc. 300a, pp. 1223–1224, December 31st, 1646. 159 In 1602, this small market town only had fourteen masters of non-peasant properties (Ger.: Hofstatt) (SI AS 1074, Zbir- ka urbarjev, II/22u, rent-roll of the Svibno seigniory 1602, s. p.), after its rent-roll from about 1439 still listed thirty (Mil- kowicz, Beiträge zur Rechts- und Verwaltungsgeschichte Krains, pp. 7–8; cf. Koropec, Žebnik, Radeče in Svibno, p. 56). 160 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 110. and a lasting memory embodied in monuments of material culture. Just as elsewhere across Slovenian territory, the erection of several churches here dates to the time immediately after this plague epidemic. Already in 1647, a pilgrimage Church of St. Rosa- lie was built on the hill above Krško to preserve the memory of the plague in the town and its surround- ings. The first of the most important White Carni- olan plague monuments, churches dedicated to St. Roch, is the succursal Church of St. Roch in Met- lika. In 1646, the inhabitants of Črnomelj, who were evidently spared by the Black Death more than their counterparts in Metlika, are also believed to have en- larged the small Church of St. Sebastian, originally constructed after 1510.161 Isolated incidences of epidemics in the second half of the seventeenth century During the three decades following the long plague wave of 1645–1650, the Slovenian provinces experienced no major epidemics, and there are only sporadic reports of isolated and locally limited in- cidences of the “plague.” In Lower Carniola, it oc- curred at least twice, with its presence eternalized both times in the minutes of the Kostanjevica abbey. The pest that visited Kostanjevica and the nearby village of Slinovce in October 1663 was identified as typhus caused by the Krka’s flooding. It reappeared in the nearby areas in 1676,162 claiming no lives ei- ther time in the town itself. This much can be in- ferred from Kostanjevica’s complaints that have been preserved from that period in the form of annals (1618–1684), listing pestilences and woes for nearly every year between 1662 and 1684, without making a single mention of an epidemic.163 Kostanjevica’s town fathers would have undoubtedly reported any however insignificant plague-related mortality or closure, at least in view of the diligence with which they presented fires and floods, and a series of other less consequential events and frustrations, such as the objectionable nearby Uskok community or poor harvests. Despite the complete absence of reports to con- firm it, soon afterward an epidemic of some kind must have broken out on the other end of Lower 161 Ibid., 110 and 111.—Leopold Podlogar writes the following on the construction of the church in Črnomelj: “The Church of St. Sebastian was erected in the town’s grove in 1646, the time of deadly cholera (sic!). The presbytery grew from the former chapel, built sometime after 1510” (Podlogar, Kronika mesta Črnomlja, p. 64). 162 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 112, cites the no longer ex- isting “minutes of the Kostanjevica abbey.” Only the account book 1638–1659 of the abbot Jurij Zagožen has been pre- served (SI AS 746, Cistercijanski samostan Kostanjevica, vol. 8). 163 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 184, fasc. 104, lit. L II–2, March 31st, 1686.—Cf. Dimitz, Zur Geschichte der Städte, pp. 79–80; Dimitz, Geschichte Krains, pp. 59–60. 164 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 Carniola, given a conspicuous rise in deaths in Kočevje, where no news of a suspected plague had been issued since 1599. In the first register of deaths kept by the parish of Kočevje, the oldest such regis- ter in Lower Carniola, attention is drawn to the first four years from the beginning of 1669 to the end of 1672, when 317 persons were buried, forty-four from the town of Kočevje. Over the next six years between 1673 and including 1678, the number of deaths and burials amounted to no more than 287, only twenty- seven in the town itself. Although not particularly striking, the contrast between the number of deaths in the first four and the ensuing six years of keep- ing the death register shows notable differences in the number of deaths by individual years and signifi- cant fluctuations among the town dwellers. In 1669, the town of Kočevje registered no less than twenty of altogether seventy-three deaths across the entire parish. Only four deaths were registered in 1670 and two in 1671, after which the number of burials rose again, reaching eighteen in 1672. It is interesting to note that the town itself never counted more than twelve deaths in the seventeenth century, and even this figure was recorded in 1680 and 1681, when the Styrian plague reached its peak.164 The parish of Kočevje was also the only one among the towns and market towns discussed to keep records of deaths during the plague of 1679– 1683. Whereas Carniola largely averted the plague by taking swift and effective protective measures while the disease ravaged Slovenian Styria,165 Kočevje may be the part of Carniola that had found itself within the grasp of the Black Death. The assumption that the Kočevje peddlers brought the disease from their journeys to northern provinces is open to debate due 164 NŠAL, ŽA Kočevje, Matične knjige, M 1666–1724.—The numbers of deaths in the town are highly reliable, especially for the 1670s and 1680s, when the register of deaths near- ly always states the decedent’s place of residence. The ten- year annual average for the town population in 1671–1680 amounted to 10.9 deceased, primarily due to the high mor- tality in the early 1670s, in 1681–1690 to no more than 4.2 persons, and in 1691–1700 to 5.3 deaths annually. 165 On the Styrian plague, see Umek, Kuga na Štajerskem, pp. 80 f. The marking of infected houses in Gorizia 165 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 to the complete absence of any contemporary report on this subject and the plague in Kočevje in general. Strongly indicative of an epidemic is the high num- ber of the deceased, namely, eighty-nine in the entire parish of Kočevje in 1680 and as many as 138 a year later. The town of Kočevje itself registered twelve deaths each respective year. However, despite the high figures recorded at the turn of the 1670s and in the early 1680s, the death register lacks any side note confirming that it was indeed the plague or an infectious disease of some kind.166 Even a surgeon’s death during the biggest spike in mortality cannot be considered otherwise than a hypothetical con- sequence of infection contracted while treating his patients.167 What caused an increased death count therefore remains subject to speculation. However, it could not have been the same plague as in Styria and Gorizia, if one is to believe Valvasor’s reference to the procession of Saint Roch held in Ljubljana in 1683, thanking God for having “miraculously safeguarded the entire province of Carniola against the despic- able plague ravaging all the neighboring lands.”168 Finally, the plague could have easily spread to the Kočevje area as the typical transit and peddler hub, just as it had reached the province of Gorizia in 1682 from Croatia and claimed a particularly high toll in the town of Gorizia.169 Carniola largely escaped a prolonged plague thanks to the swift, strict, and therefore effective measures that stopped its spread. The provincial bor- der closures were at first understandably much to the chagrin of those whose trade suffered the greatest loss from suspended traffic. However, because the closure also variably affected broader population segments, it met with an overall resistance and infringements in various forms of smuggling people and goods away from the eyes of the plague guards. An informative light on the protective measures and their infringements at the peak of the Styrian epidemic in the mid-1681 is shed by a fragment from the life of the border town of Krško, which depended on the hinterland beyond the Sava more than any other Lower Carniolan town. Soon after the Carniolan-Styrian border was reopened in April 1681,170 the highest ordinance arrived at the end of June on the heels of a plague outbreak near Radgona and in a Celje quarter, prohibiting entrance to Carni- ola from Styria even with a “fede” and strictly forbid- ding serfs from navigating the border river Sava.171 166 NŠAL, ŽA Kočevje, Matične knjige, M 1666–1724. 167 On June 14th, 1681, died a seventy-three-year-old towns- man and town surgeon Bernard Jager. 168 Valvasor, Die Ehre VIII, p. 822. 169 Cf. Jelinčič, Črna smrt v Gorici, pp. 116 f.; Waltritsch, Prvi goriški kronist, p. 196. 170 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 538, fasc. 308b, p. 417, April 18th, 1681. 171 Ibid., pp. 655–661, June 28th, 1681. Soon afterward, in early July, plague commissioners (contagions comissarien), mostly from the ranks of no- ble landowners, were appointed at eight Carniolan- Styrian border crossings and provided with between one and four guards at each crossing. Lower Carniola was protected by guards posted at Litija, Radeče, Im- polca, Sevnica on the Styrian bank of the Sava, and Krško.172 Taking his task very seriously, the Krško plague commissioner, Count Orfeo Strassoldo, re- ported to the provincial governor and estates at the end of July on his measure serving “as punishment and an example to others who might be tempted to communicate with suspicious characters.” Namely, when an assistant harness maker from Ptuj came to Krško, Strassoldo immediately sent him back to Styria after he heard about the plague raging around Ptuj. Strassoldo also notified the guards at Videm and Rajhenburg that the newcomer did not carry a “fede.” A few inhabitants of Krško had conversed and drank with the boy and, although the commissioner saw no potential threat in that, he ordered to confine the men to their homes and the town judge provided him with guards to prevent them from leaving. The commissioner then asked the provincial estates’ del- egates whether to release the men or how they were to be treated.173 The inhabitants of Novo Mesto were more cau- tious, probably having learned something from the example of Krško. At the end of November 1681, the plague commissioner in Brežice sent an inter- esting report to his counterpart in Krško, Count Strassoldo. The Novo Mesto town judge informed the commissioner of Brežice about the cancellation of Novo Mesto’s annual fair on Advent Sunday and requested him to notify the Croats and ensure that no one would cross the Sava to attend the fair. The commissioner sent the notification to Samobor, but to little avail, because many Croats set out in secret to Novo Mesto crossing the Gorjanci (Žumberak) Mountains. The Brežice commissioner then wrote to the town judge of Novo Mesto that every suspicious person be placed in a lazaretto (in ein Lasareth schaf- fen) and punished, and that the goods be burned as contraband.174 The most severe implications that the Styrian plague between 1679 and 1683 had on Carniola were of indirect nature by hurting its economy. The pro- longed closure of the provincial borders, combined with bans on fairs and all kinds of mass gatherings, delivered a serious blow to trade and trade fair hubs, especially towns and market towns. The bans on holding fairs, for example, drained the Novo Mesto treasury—hence the petitions addressed at the vid- 172 Ibid., pp. 687–688, July 4th, 1681. 173 Ibid., pp. 959–960, July 30th, 1681. 174 Ibid., carton 539, fasc. 308 b, pp. 1373–1376, November 27th, 1681. 166 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 ame to write off the town judge’s outstanding tax debt for 1681 and 1682.175 A few years later, in 1686, the town leadership of Krško described the plague in Lower Styria as the main cause for the abandonment of the town. The plague prevented the inhabitants of Krško from accessing their fields beyond the Sava and even more from attending weekly and annual fairs in Styria.176 The plague in Črnomelj and its surroundings between 1691 and 1692 Until the end of the seventeenth century, Slove- nian territory only experienced sporadic occurrences of contagious diseases, which caused much greater devastation in the neighboring Hungary and Croa- tia, leading to several provincial border closures. In 1690, a major plague epidemic in Hungary and Croatia threatened the eastern parts of the Austrian frontier provinces, wreaked havoc in Vienna and the Styrian town of Radgona, and in the following year (1691) burst out around Črnomelj in the southeast- ernmost part of Carniola.177 This is the first plague on which there exists a sufficient selection of cred- ible sources, mostly produced immediately after it was suppressed. These sources also include the only preserved lists of infected and deceased persons for all plague epidemics. Carniola once again successfully contained the spread of infection with the practical wisdom gained from tackling the recent Styrian plague. The Črnomelj area was immediately isolated from the rest of Carniola and plague guards were posted on border crossings toward Croatia and in certain parts in the hinterland. The movement of passengers and goods to the entire territory of Carniola was also sus- pended by Gorizia and the Venetian Republic,178 de- spite the relative distance from Črnomelj and Croa- tia and notwithstanding Carniola serving as their cordon sanitaire. Gorizia still had a vivid memory of its disastrous lack of alertness in 1682. The plague undoubtedly reached Črnomelj and its surroundings from the nearby Croatian places, where it caused havoc in Karlovac. Local Croatian reports described the disease in quite contradictory terms; once it was purportedly the real plague and at other times an ordinary typhus.179 In a similar vein, there are no sources clarifying what kind of disease affected Črnomelj and its surroundings. The list of recoveries divides the patients in two categories: those with carbuncles (carbuneli) and those with 175 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 255, fasc. 133, lit. R I–9, August 18th, 1681, s. d. 1682. 176 Ibid., carton 171, fasc. 97a, lit. G VIII–8, April 13th, 1686. 177 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 128. 178 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 548, fasc. 311, pp. 305–306, January 21st, 1692. 179 Ibid., p. 361, January 31st, 1692. more dangerous buboes (bubones), and some ex- hibited both symptoms.180 The plague epidemic in Črnomelj was also the first and the last one on which there are known various details, sanitary measures, reactions in the wider area, as well as minute specifi- cations of infected and deceased persons, all worthy of a thorough discussion that will be provided below. The developments that took place in the town and its surroundings from when the plague broke out and reached its peak are poorly documented. Reports, mainly referring to sanitary measures, only began to proliferate once the disease started to abate, especially during the ensuing weeks. Therefore, noth- ing is even known about when precisely the disease erupted and when it reached its climax; it must have been no later than December 1691 and probably even a month or so before that. In November, for example, the plague began to recede in the Croatian town of Plaški, where the last patient died on De- cember 12th. Soon afterward, a physician from Novo Mesto, Dr. Janez Krstnik Novak, who had fulfilled his task there, reported to the Carniolan provincial estates from the mansion Pobrežje ob Kolpi. He af- firmed that there was no plague (alda khein Pest ge- wesen) in Gradac, the Metlika area, and the provin- cial court of Podbrežje, even though some of his rare patients indeed had died, including the wife and son of Baron Gusič, a chaplain, and a Turkish girl (a spoil of war) as the first victim of the plague. At the time of reporting, Novak had three patients in his care, whereas everyone inside and outside Gradac and in Podbrežje had completely recovered. Therefore, he requested to be released without further quarantine requirements.181 The provincial estates’ delegation, of course, re- jected his request, as it coincided with the outbreak of the real plague in Črnomelj and its surround- ing area. The provincial authorities appointed as the plague commissioner Baron Janez Sigmund Geyman, the commander of the commandery of Metlika-Črnomelj, who resided in Metlika and paid occasional inspection visits to the infected Črnomelj. The town and the infected villages were placed under military guard, deployed specifically for this purpose, and the affected area was in the care of a physician and a healer-surgeon stationed in the commissioner’s house in the commandery of Metlika.182 Strict meas- ures aimed at preventing the spread of the disease soon proved to be impractical, albeit certainly neces- 180 Ibid., pp. 593–595, ad February 25th, 1692.—The combined summary list of names states twenty-seven individuals with carbuncles and eighty with buboes, altogether 107 recov- ered patients. At the end, the list only provides the sum of eighty-seven persons, which suggests that twenty patients exhibited both symptoms. 181 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 549, fasc. 311, pp. 1721–1722, s. d. (after December 12th, 1691). 182 Ibid., carton 548, fasc. 311, p. 317, January 21st, 1692. 167 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 sary to ensure the safety of the province. The plague commissioner and the physician Andrej Koppeniag- er had their hands full with Črnomelj’a inhabitants, who refused to comply with the ban on passing to and from the town. Once frozen in the winter, the Lahinja and Dobličica streams encircling the town from three sides made for an easy exit, forcing the guards to patrol the waterways at night. The plague commissioner, commander Geyman, described the guards as “malicious people” who were in cahoots with the “rebels from Črnomelj,” and he even beat their corporal.183 At Geyman’s behest, the physician Koppeniager and the healer Janez Jakob Ubec im- prisoned the agitators of “crimes committed by the opposition.” After a few were released, they snuck past the guards at night and visited their vineyards in the infected villages. On their return to the town, they shot at and dispersed the guards at Rožanc, who had spotted them and tried to stop them.184 183 Ibid., pp. 47–49, January 6th, 1692. 184 Ibid., p. 235, January 3rd, 1692. All this transpired in the last days of 1691 or the first days of the next year, when the plague lost its vigor and the inhabitants of Črnomelj could breathe a sigh of relief. Between the New Year’s Day and the Epiphany, another five persons died in the town’s suburbs and lazaretto, respectively, and one in the village of Tušev Dol.185 The last plague victim in Črnomelj, an old woman, died on Janu- ary 11th, 1692, after which no deaths or new infec- tions were recorded. Ten days later, all affected areas only registered nine infections, four in the suburbs of Črnomelj. The main task that now lay before the commissioner Geyman was to provide clothes for about a hundred recovered patients, whose personal items had been burned for safety reasons, along with the possessions of the deceased. The provincial es- tates promised the commissioner to offer their as- sistance by ensuring means necessary to buy cloth for new clothes. The administrator of the seigniory Poljane ob Kolpi tried to benefit from the misfor- 185 Ibid., pp. 239–240, January 6th, 1692. Črnomelj according to Valvasor, ten years before the plague of 1691; in the center of the town stands the parish Church of St. Peter and Paul with the adjacent cemetery where the plague victims were buried. 168 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 tune by offering the commander cloth and linen at an exorbitant price.186 The provincial estates gave Geyman 300 gulden in German currency to dress the poor, instructed him to buy cloth at a most fa- vorable price, and advised the better-off townsmen and serfs to purchase clothes at their own expense.187 On another visit to Črnomelj on February 1st, the plague commissioner ordered that the graves be cov- ered with high mounds of earth, despite the cold, to prevent the foul smell coming out and the evil pesti- lence from spreading further. As all the infected had by then recovered, he notified the provincial estates that he needed new clothes for ninety-one convales- cent and destitute patients, whose names were stated on the physician’s list. However, closed passages to other parts of the province and an increasing scarcity resulted in a serious shortage of supply. According to the pro-forma invoice—6 gulden and 15 kreuzer for all clothes items per person—the 300 gulden would merely suffice for forty-eight persons, leaving the re- maining forty-three with nothing. From this group the commissioner excluded those who could afford to buy their own clothes and included in it the pa- tients’ family members, even though they remained healthy in infected households. Finally, he requested the provincial estates for an immediate imposition of quarantine and, on its termination, enable the earliest possible reopening of passages to remedy the damage that the closure had caused to the entire province.188 Three days later, on February 7th, the provin- cial authorities announced that they had no qualms about imposing quarantine for forty days, after which they would decide whether the passages could be reopened or another, shorter quarantine should be imposed. In the meantime, the plague commis- sioner was instructed to buy the cloth and linen to dress ninety-one persons and submit a specification based on which he would receive reimbursement from the office of the provincial main recipient.189 The plague commissioner had plenty of work in those days. He rode to Črnomelj twice or three times weekly and made sure that the production of clothes ran smoothly; he ordered that all infected houses be emptied out and smoked a few times daily, and that the infected graves be heaped over with high mounds.190 A month later, on March 3rd, 1692, the provincial vidame reported to the government in Graz that the infected persons had completed the first of three mandatory quarantines. The second one would commence on March 10th, followed by the third and the shortest one. After the first quarantine, the old clothes were burned under the supervision 186 Ibid., pp. 315–316, January 21st, 1692. 187 Ibid., p. 330, January 23rd, 1692. 188 Ibid., pp. 381–384, February 4th, 1692; pp. 387–390, Specifi- cation etc. 189 Ibid., pp. 407–410, February 7th, 1692. 190 Ibid., pp. 523–527, February 11th, 1692. of the plague commissioner, and the new ones were distributed among the patients with the help of the provincial estates. Meanwhile, the common burial ground had been raised above its surroundings and protected with high wooden planks to prevent peo- ple and animals from entering. With the approach- ing spring, when the soil begins to open, the burial site was to be further covered with a thick layer of lime.191 At the end of March, a special lime kiln was set up to extract the critically needed lime and use it freshly burned to cover the graves.192 However, there were two kinds of graves and two different burial locations, with the cemetery adjacent to the parish church in the town’s center also caus- ing controversies later. Still a year after the mandate of plague commissioner was suspended, Baron Gey- man, the commander of the Metlika-Črnomelj com- mandery of the Teutonic Knights, embroiled himself in a dispute with the inhabitants of Črnomelj by de- priving them of their right to use the town cemetery at the parish Church of St. Peter and Paul, where they had buried their dead during the plague. In their undated complaint to the provincial command- er in Ljubljana, the inhabitants of Črnomelj referred to the plague as “a purported contagious disease” (in der vermeindten contagion khrankheit) and stated that they had only buried twelve children in the ceme- tery and the rest in a separate location outside the town, even though burials in Karlovac and elsewhere continued to take place in cemeteries. They believed that the commander Geyman only wanted to harm them out of spite, as he had done before, and bur- den them with high legal expenses. In his response, the commander Geyman reported to the provincial commander that Črnomelj had been struck by the real plague (würkliche pest) and that more than thirty people had in fact been buried at the parish church. He had instructed its inhabitants to move the burials to the succursal Church of St. Mary in the village of Vojna Vas, but they would not hear of it and insisted on burying their dead in the town. All three provin- cial authorities—the provincial governor, the vidame, and the provincial estates’ delegation office—replied to his report two days later by ordering the town judge and council of Črnomelj to use the cemetery in Vojna Vas situated on the outer boundary of the town. By digging new graves at the parish church, they might uncover the bodies of plague victims and jeopardize the safety of the entire province.193 The inhabitants of Črnomelj undoubtedly bowed down to the order, which remained in force for as long as the possibility of another outbreak of the epidemic was likely. Burials eventually resumed at the parish 191 Ibid., carton 687, fasc. 393, March 3rd, 1692. 192 Ibid., carton 548, fasc. 311, March 24th, 1692. 193 Ibid., carton 550, fasc. 311a, pp. 691–704, May 17th, 1693, May 19th, 1693, s. d. 169 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 church in the town center and continued to take place there until 1802.194 Equally stringent preventive measures were ap- plied to the living. On March 10th, 1692, after no news about the plague arrived even from Croatia, the commander Geyman requested the provincial estates to withdraw the physician Koppeniager, the witch doctor, and the thirteen plague guards.195 Two days later, immediately on receiving his letter, the provin- cial estates’ delegates ordered him to find a suitable accommodation for the guards at Semič and place them under additional quarantine for fourteen days. The plague commissioner himself was to pass the quarantine at his residence, Commandery in Met- lika, where he stayed for the next two weeks in the company of the physician and the witch doctor. At the same time, the authorities informed him that the plague in Karlovac had ended, that the guards had been removed from the border with Croatia, and that border crossings had been reopened.196 Meanwhile, quarantine was still in place in Črnomelj itself, which understandably put an additional strain on the town. On March 16th, 1692, the commander sent a request to allow the town dwellers to perform their spring work in the fields and vineyards. The provincial es- tates consented and even granted them permission to trade with their neighbors but prohibited them from leaving the town. On Geyman’s reiterated request to allow for unhindered movement of the town dwell- ers, who were mostly potters and waggonwrights and would run out of food in less than fourteen days, the estates replied on March 27th that the passages to- ward Črnomelj and Karlovac would open in eight days.197 This eventually happened on April 9th. The commander also managed to persuade the provincial estates’ delegates to lift the quarantine for Dr. Kop- 194 Podlogar, Kronika mesta Črnomlja, p. 68. 195 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 548, fasc. 311, pp. 647–648 and 675–678, March 10th, 1692. 196 Ibid., p. 679, March 12th, 1692. 197 Ibid., pp. 683–686; March 20th, 1692; pp. 691–692, March 24th, 1692; pp. 739–740, March 27th, 1692. peniager, the witch doctor, and Dr. Novak from Novo Mesto,198 who had joined the former two after pass- ing the initial stage of quarantine at the Podbrežje mansion.199 Let us now turn to the central issue of this discus- sion, that is, the demographic impact of the plague in Črnomelj. Had the list of the deceased not been preserved, leaving historians with the above-stated numbers of twelve and more than thirty inhabitants of Črnomelj buried at the parish church, the total number of all plague victims in this White Carniolan town would have been estimated at a little over thir- ty. Yet the actual death count was at least a few times higher, and it reached a three-digit figure. Accord- ing to the list of plague victims (in der Laidigen Con- tagion abgestorbenen) that the plague commissioner Geyman sent to the provincial estates on February 25th, 1692, the area of Črnomelj—the town, includ- ing its suburbs and seven villages mostly located west of Črnomelj—counted as many as 252 deaths, more than half in the town of Črnomelj and its suburbs, i.e., 139 or 55.2 %.200 The list of deaths in Črnomelj is summarized in the table below, dividing the deceased into men, women, and children. The high percentage of adults among all victims particularly stands out, but less so among the deceased men, who represented 23.7 % in the town and its suburbs and 20.4 % in the seven villages. Significantly larger disparities are shown in women and children. Whereas the share of village women amounted to slightly over one-fifth (22.1 %), it was higher than one-third among townswomen (33.8 %). The difference between the dying adult and children population becomes especially obvious in the following ratio: children represented as much as 198 Ibid., pp. 769–770, March 31st, 1692, April 7th, 1692, April 9th, 1692. 199 Ibid., p. 331, January 23rd, 1692, pp. 371–372, January 31st, 1692. 200 Ibid., pp. 585–588, February 25th, 1692; pp. 589–592, ad Fe- bruary 25th, 1692, Verzaichnuß der in der Laidigen Conta- gion abgestorbenen. A list of all the deceased in the wider area of Črnomelj Place Total death toll Deceased men Deceased women Deceased children Families with deceased members Completely extinct households Town of Črnomelj 47 10 16 21 21 0 Suburbs of Črnomlja 92 23 31 38 36 3 Total Črnomelj 139 33 47 59 57 3 Tušev Dol 37 6 7 24 11 2 Talčji Vrh 32 9 7 16 9 0 Otovec 24 5 7 12 7 1 Naklo pri Sv. Jakobu 5 1 1 3 1 0 Sela 6 1 1 4 1 0 Svibnik 4 0 1 3 1 0 Butoraj 5 1 1 3 1 0 Total 252 56 72 124 88 6 170 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 A list of plague victims in Črnomelj, dated February 25th, 1692. 171 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 57.5 % of all victims in the villages and no more than 42.4 % in the town and its suburbs. Interestingly, the difference between the town and its suburbs ex- pressed in percentage is insignificant. For example, adults represented 55.3 % of all the deceased in the town center and 58.7 % in the suburbs outside the town walls. The following conclusion, which is also impor- tant for assessing the demographic impact elsewhere, concerns the number of completely extinct house- holds. The list specifically states six such houses (das haus ganz ausgestorben or völlig abgestorben), three in the suburbs and three in the nearby villages—a figure fairly consistent with the proportional divi- sion of the deceased between the town of Črnomelj and the surrounding countryside. Considering the total number of houses from which plague-infected corpses were taken (fifty-seven), the number of those that had become completely depopulated is surpris- ingly low. The share of extinct households among all households that witnessed death in Črnomelj represents merely 5.2 % and the percentage of their deceased members (ten) is slightly higher (7.2 %). In addition, the three extinct households in the suburbs were numerically small, composed of four at members at most. The Rupe family had become extinct with the deaths of a husband, a wife, and the mother of one spouse; the Babner family had lost a husband, a wife, and a child; and the four-mem- ber Jakša family had seen the departure of a mar- ried couple with two children. The share of extinct households among all households with deceased members was also strikingly low in the countryside, where it amounted to 9.7 %, with their fifteen de- ceased members representing 13.3 % of all plague victims in the rural area. Given the above, the plague was by no means a se- lective agent of death that killed certain families with The deceased in Črnomelj Number of deceased persons / Number of families 1 Person 2 Persons 3 Persons 4 Persons 5 Persons 6 Persons 10 Persons Town of Črnomelj 8 8 1 1 2 1 Suburbs of Črnomlja 13 8 6 6 1 1 1 Total Črnomelj 21 (36,8 %) 16 (28,1 %) 7 (12,3 %) 7 (12,3 %) 3 (5,3 %) 2 (3,5 %) 1 (1,8 %) The recovered according to the list, dated February 4th, 1692 Place Total recoveries Recovered men Recovered women Recovered children Number of households with recovered members Town of Črnomelj 3 0 3 0 2 Suburbs of Črnomlja 43 15 18 10 21 Total Črnomelj 46 15 21 10 23 Pri Sv. Nikolaju 2 2 0 0 2 Tušev Dol 16 3 7 6 8 Talčji Vrh 15 3 7 5 8 Otovec 8 1 2 5 8 Sela 1 0 0 1 1 Svibnik 3 1 1 1 1 Butoraj 1 0 0 1 1 Total 92 25 38 29 52 Number of recovered persons according to the list of February 25th, 1692 Sum of recovered persons from both lists Place Recovered with carbuncles Recovered with buboes Total recovered persons Number of families with recovered members Town of Črnomelj – – 3 2 Outlaying part of Črnomelj 13 38 74 38 Total Črnomelj 13 38 77 40 Tušev Dol 6 18 33 12 Talčji Vrh 6 15 19 11 Otovec 2 4 9 10 Sela 0 1 2 2 Svibnik 0 2 2 1 Butoraj 0 2 4 2 Total 27 80 146 78 172 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 a surgical precision and left others entirely intact. To the contrary, the number of infected homes was higher than those that had been left abandoned at the end of the epidemic. As is evident from the table below, nearly two-thirds of households (64.9 %) with registered deaths had been bereft of no more than one or two members. Slightly more than one-third of households (36.8 %) had lost only one member and just over one-third (10.5 %) five or more, without any becoming extinct. One of the households with six deceased members had lost both parents and four children and the other a married couple with three children and a farmhand. The house with the highest number of plague-infected corpses (ten), home to an extended family of Jurij Črnugel, consigned to the death register the master of the house, his three sons, two women, and four children. Two lists shed further light on the dimensions of the plague in Črnomelj. The first, compiled on Feb- ruary 4th, 1692, presents the recovered inhabitants by sex and the other, final list, produced on February 25th, provides an overview by symptoms—carbun- cles and buboes.201 Neither appears to be complete, with the second list featuring only a minor part of names contained in the first one and vice versa. This required a detailed analysis of personal names and surnames, where another problem presented itself: in each family, only one person was usually indicated by the full name. On the first list, other family members are simply marked as children, women, sons, farm- hands, and so on, and the more recent list merely states their total number. The final list that the plague commissioner Baron Geyman sent to the provincial estates on Febru- ary 25th, 1692, classifies the recovered individuals by symptoms. Rather than distinguish between the town and its suburbs, it combines them under the common name “Bey der Statt Tschernembl.” The ta- ble below therefore presents the numerical data from the more recent list on its left and an aggregate of the recovered from both lists on its right after subtracting individuals or families that appear on both lists. The thus obtained number of the deceased inhabitants of Črnomelj is appreciably higher (seventy-seven) than that set forth by the first list (forty-six). However, the final sum cannot be divided between the town and the suburbs because no such distinction is made on the final list. The figures above cover all the dimensions of the epidemic. Given the total of 252 deaths, the 146 re- covered persons in the town, the suburbs, and the seven villages represent a strikingly low share at slightly over one-third (36.7 %) of altogether 398 infected persons, suggesting that two out of three 201 Ibid., pp. 387–390, ad February 4th, 1692; pp. 593–596, ad February 25th, 1692. infected persons were condemned to certain death. Whereas the question of what symptoms proved fatal remains unanswered, it is known, at least for most recovered individuals, who was diagnosed with buboes, the symptoms of the bubonic plague (thir- teen), and who with carbuncles (thirty-eight). For the town of Črnomelj and its suburbs, the number of all deceased and recovered amounts to 216, with seventy-seven surviving patients representing a share almost equal to that of the infected (35.6 %) for the entire area. Finally, it also seems reasonable to establish how many families in Črnomelj were affected by the plague or, rather, how many families experienced in- fections or deaths during the plague and what share of the total population was made up by the infected. The results of comparing all three lists are under- standably somewhat relative, given that families can- not be determined as complete units based on the same surname alone. There are altogether twenty ex- amples where the surname and location (the town, the suburbs) provide satisfactory evidence to confirm that we are dealing with one and the same family. No more than that many families saw a part of their members die and the other part recover. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that the plague visited at least seventy-seven families or homes but certainly not more than ninety-seven. Fifty-seven families experienced death and forty saw their members re- cover, with twenty cases at most involving one and the same family. As already noted, no censuses of houses or house- holders exist for Črnomelj until the mid-eighteenth century that would also allow for a tentative estimate of the entire population. The Theresian Cadaster of 1752 specifies 104 houses, including the castle, that is, seventy-four in the town itself and thirty in the suburbs,202 which amounts to about 572, using the coefficient of 5.5 persons per household. Before that, Črnomelj—like any other Lower Carniolan town— boasted a higher number of populated houses and inhabitants. In 1744, the town leadership specified the existence of 117 homes in the period prior to the recent fire (1740) and stressed that many houses in the suburbs had been lost forever to the fires between 1660 and 1730.203 This can only be verified with the sweeping evaluation by the vidame’s commission in 1573 that the town counted about a hundred houses, excluding those owned by noblemen and members 202 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 243, no. 6, August 10th, 1752. 203 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 279, fasc. 142, lit. T II–4, s. d. (Berichts copia); lit. T II–5, May 22nd, 1744, s. d. (1744, Specification).—There were twenty-one populat- ed houses in the suburbs; the fire of 1740 left fifteen houses abandoned within the town walls, and seven house-lots had already been abandoned for about fifty years. The suburbs also counted sixteen burnt and abandoned houses. 173 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 of the provincial estates.204 180 years later, in 1752, only eighty houses fell under the town’s jurisdiction, fifty in the town itself and thirty in its suburbs.205 Compared to the mid-eighteenth century, the years leading up to the plague of 1691–1692 must have seen a greater number of houses and a denser population, especially outside the town walls. Much can be gathered from the fact that in 1752 the sub- urbs counted no more than thirty houses, whereas the list of plague-related deaths there refers to de- ceased members of thirty-six families and recovered individuals from thirty-eight households, yielding about forty-six affected homes according to the name analysis. Considering, for example, that there were at least 117 populated homes before the plague as well as presumably before 1740, the population of Črnomelj in 1691 must have been about 650. The 216 infected persons would thus account for about one-third of the total population, the 139 deceased over one-fifth, and the at least seventy-seven affected houses nearly two-thirds of the existing homes. The fifty-seven households with corpses also lead to a chilling conclusion that the death knocked on every other door in Črnomelj. In the town itself, it visited twenty-one families, decimating about one-quarter of households, and in the suburbs, it practically left no house intact. By comparison, Gorizia registered 487 corpses during the plague of 1682 or about one- eighth of the total population of between 3,500 and four thousand people.206 As demonstrated by contemporary specifications, the plague in Črnomelj was by no means an innocent event. In this light, it is also necessary to understand a lapidary description of the epidemic penned by the town leadership fifty years later. Explaining the rea- sons for the town’s abandonment and destitution in their report to the vidame in 1744, Črnomelj’s town fathers also stated that he must remember how the town had been left completely extinct (ganz abgestor- ben) and abandoned (verwiestet) during the plague in 1691.207 On the margins of the plague in Črnomelj, this last wave of the death-dealing pestilence in the sev- enteenth-century Carniola, let us finally dedicate a few words to the developments in the nearby area, which suffered serious indirect impacts of the anti- plague measures. The province lived in fear, the move- ment of people and goods was constrained, and the Carniolan borders were sealed and guarded. Much 204 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 279, fasc. 142, lit. T II–4, Berichts copia.—Archduke Karl issued the decree concerning the commission on October 13th, 1573 (StLA, I.Ö. HK-Rep. 1573, fol. 411). 205 SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 243, no. 6, August 10th, 1752. 206 Jelinčič, Črna smrt v Gorici, p. 119. Cf. Waltritsch, Prvi goriški kronist, pp. 194 f. 207 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 279, fasc. 142, lit. T II–5, May 22nd, 1744. like during previous epidemics, areas not directly af- fected by the ravages of the plague defied the im- practical and economically harmful restrictions with even greater tenacity. Thus, the inhabitants of Novo Mesto put up an open resistance by holding their annual fair and permitting entrance to suspicious Croats without a health certificate. When this came to its knowledge on September 3rd, 1691, the Inner Austrian government in Graz called on the Carni- olan vidame to immediately depose the town judge and organize an early election, which was eventually not held. The regular judicial election was just around the corner, in which the current town judge failed to win retention precisely due to his disobedience, and the inhabitants of Novo Mesto elected another fel- low townsman as their leader.208 The restrictions on the movement of people and goods also sparked several riots around Novo Mesto and across wider Lower Carniola. In January 1692, the guards at Čatež confiscated a wagon of honey, the property of a merchant Eder from Ljubljana, be- cause the drivers, supposedly coming from Croatia, failed to present their “fedes.” The guards also seized an ox-wagon carrying hides, leather soles, bacon, and pork, transported from Croatia by two men from Ribnica, who escaped to the hills while their confis- cated goods were burned in the village of Mraševo.209 The provincial estates’ delegates issued a warrant for their arrest and ordered the seigniory of Ribnica to publicly threaten with punishment any individual attempting to travel to Croatia and other infected areas.210 At about the same time, the guards at Čatež prohibited passage to a few people who had been in contact with the Uskoks (mit dennen Balachen) and sent them back “to Wallachia” (in die Balachey). The authorities confiscated the house of some Uskok (Besiakh) in the hills above Kostanjevica and posted two guards in front of it at his expense for having been in constant contact with the Uskoks and offered them lodging. The permanent guard garrison on the Gorjanci Mountains struggled in the dead of win- ter; the seigniories of Kostanjevica, Šrajbarski turn, Prežek, and Pleterje had refused to provide them with guardhouses and wood supply,211 which earned them a good scolding from the provincial estates.212 These were even more alarmed by the news about two men having made their way deep into Carniola from Croatia. A baker from Sisak first tried to enter the province legally on the Styrian-Carniolan border at Brežice and, failing, then crossed the Sava at Mok- ronog and arrived in Kranj, where he had a house 208 Ibid., carton 257, fasc. 133, lit. R III–1, September 3rd, 1691, November 19th, 1691. 209 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 548, fasc. 311, pp. 309–310, January 21st, 1692. 210 Ibid., pp. 343–344, January 23rd, 1692. 211 Ibid., p. 310, January 21st, 1692. 212 Ibid., pp. 345–346, January 23rd, 1692. 174 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 and a family. A man going by the name of Bach, who was supposedly from around Ribnica, bought horses in the Croatian town of Klanjac and then reached Carniola using byways.213 The provincial estates or- dered the town of Kranj and the Ribnica seigniory to investigate and apprehend both men as a warning to other lawbreakers.214 These and similar measures seem to have borne fruit. The inhabitants of Novo Mesto, who could still bypass the prohibition on fairs in the previous sum- mer, now became more cautious than ever. On Feb- ruary 26th, 1692, long after the plague in Črnomelj had passed, they denied entrance to an assistant of the town’s merchant Jakše,215 even though the boy showed them his “fede,” issued two days earlier in Metlika and demonstrating that he had spent three months there (by force of circumstances) and that the senior plague commissioner gave him the per- mission to leave.216 As the leadership of Novo Mesto remained unyielding, the boy ultimately negoti- ated a signature from the commissioner Mordax and entered the town without the knowledge of the town fathers. The issuer of his health certificate from Metlika did the same for another townsman of Novo Mesto by sending him on his way without a proper “fede.”217 The inhabitants of Novo Mesto complained to the provincial estates’ delegates, who reassured them that the danger had passed and that the provincial borders with Croatia would reopen soon. Nevertheless, they called on the town judge and council to instruct their townsmen to avoid any contact with Croats until a proper authorization was issued.218 The final blows of plague epidemics in the early eighteenth century The eighteenth century was the last one in which the plague visited the Slovenian provinces. It ran particularly rampant between 1711 and 1716, and then appeared in sporadic incidences here and there, but continued to sow fear over the following dec- ades by repeatedly sweeping across the neighboring provinces in the east and southeast, reaching all the way to the Slovenian ethnic borders. When in the early 1701, for example, the disease was brought to the Croatian town of Gradiška from the European part of Turkey, the Carniolan authorities closed all borders and prohibited all fairs to prevent the disease from spreading into the province. Facing the greatest threat was again the border province of White Car- niola, where the memory was still vivid of the devas- 213 Ibid., p. 311, January 21st, 1692. 214 Ibid., pp. 341–342, January 23rd, 1692. 215 Ibid., p. 611, February 26th, 1692. 216 Ibid., p. 579, February 24th, 1692. 217 Ibid., p. 611, February 26th, 1692. 218 Ibid., pp. 641–644, February 28th, 1692. tating plague from ten years before. For “the territory of Metlika and Črnomelj,” the Carniolan provincial estates appointed the plague commissioner Franc Karl von Gusič, who reinforced the guards on the Kolpa to stop the disease from crossing the border with Croatia.219 The fear of contagion was considerable and, like in the face of similar threats, further exacerbated by false reports drawn up for one reason or another. On April 2nd, 1701, for example, all three provin- cial authorities—the governor, the vidame, and the estates’ delegation office—ordered Novo Mesto’s town judge and council to throw a town dweller by the name Strupi in the tower for fourteen days for illegally crossing the border on his way to Croatia. The town authorities were reprimanded for allow- ing him to return to Novo Mesto after he traveled through Karlovac to attend a fair in Zagreb and re- turned by the same route. The imprisoned Strupi ap- pealed to the provincial estates to release him and permit him to return to Karlovac. He emphatically denied being a native of Novo Mesto and insisted that he was a merchant from Karlovac. He admit- ted having traveled to the fair in Zagreb with other merchants from Karlovac but maintained that they had not once been stopped to show their permits. Strupi claimed to have had absolutely no knowledge about the prohibition on border crossing and that he had only come to Novo Mesto to visit his parents. Immediately afterward, on April 12th, the plague in Gradiška had passed, and the provincial governor withdrew all guards from the border.220 There are no reports on epidemics in Slovenian territory for the ensuing years, even though the plague, smallpox, and other contagious diseases raged across many European lands, especially the Balkans, Hungary, and Poland. The Black Death inched its way unrelentingly toward the heart of Europe. Be- tween 1708 and 1716, it frequently visited Slovenian territory on the heels or in the company of many other natural disasters. Livestock diseases were par- ticularly rampant in Carniola, and all Austrian prov- inces suffered for years from smallpox epidemics.221 In 1710, the Black Death reached the doorstep of the Slovenian provinces from three sides—the east, the north, and the south. With many areas in Hun- gary, Croatia, and Venetia infected, the government sealed and guarded all provincial borders. The magis- trates of all major towns were tasked with setting up contumacy facilities and lazarettos. However, even in 1710, after the government in Graz appointed two “central contagion deputations” in Graz and Klagen- furt, people defied rigorous measures and continued 219 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 129. 220 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 687, fasc. 393, March 3rd, 1701, April 2nd, 1701. 221 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 129. 175 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 to frequent the infected areas, believing it to be not the real (Asian) plague but an ordinary febrile dis- ease. Indeed, unlike in the past when plague epidem- ics usually broke out suddenly and violently, death now came in an entirely different form. Patients ex- hibited no conspicuous and characteristic signs of the plague. The symptoms only manifested postmor- tem, and the course of the disease took longer, with patients dying a week or two after infection.222 Sources of local provenance shed little light on the safety measures in Lower Carniolan towns dur- ing that period. The chronicle of the Capuchin Or- der in Krško from 1757 mentions the plague twice: in 1709, when the disease ravaged Hungary and guards were set up at the town gates, and in 1712, when entrance into Krško was prohibited without a health certificate at the behest of the provincial es- tates. That year, death reaped its harvest in Hungary and in the neighboring Styria, separated from Krško only by the Sava.223 Three years later, Carniola was hit for the last time by what sources designate as the plague of 1715. The disease spread from Hungary to Slovenian Hills as early as 1710–1712 and settled in Ptuj for two years until 1714. In 1714 and 1715, it was brought from Lower Austria to Upper Styria, whence it reached the area of Maribor and Celje. In the summer of 1715, it spread from Styria to Carinthia, where it remained until mid-1716 and ultimately reached Carniola in mid-1715. By then, Carniola had already had preventive measures and a range of prohibitions in place for two years or, rather, since the first deaths had been recorded in the neighboring lands. How- ever, despite all safety precautions, no later than the spring of 1715, the “plague” reached Lower Carniola, particularly the areas around Stična, Novo Mesto, and Šentrupert, while Ljubljana had since the New Year’s Day been afflicted by febrile diseases.224 Although contemporary reports again shed little light on the increased mortality in Lower Carniola, they can be directly confirmed with the data from a few preserved death registers, which had by then been undertaken by many parishes across the prov- ince. The cause of death was still rarely stated in that period and—as shown on Ljubljana’s example—the notion of the plague was a conflation of several dif- ferent diseases. With respect to towns, the data on the deceased are solely available for Višnja Gora, Kočevje, and partly Novo Mesto. The only market towns for which such registers have been preserved are Žužemberk and Litija. 222 Ibid., p. 130. 223 Kapucinski samostan Krško, Archivum loci Ppff. capucino- rum Gurkfeldi erectum anno Domini MDCCLVII, pp. 45 and 47.—Cf. Benedik, Kralj, Kapucini na Slovenskem, pp. 460, 462. 224 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 130–132. Before turning to records kept by Lower Car- niolan parishes, let us look at the developments that took place in Ljubljana and the data contained in its civil registers. As always, there was never a lack of ex- aggerations, which only grew bigger with geographi- cal distance. In May 1715, for instance, the impe- rial court asked the Carniolan provincial estates to confirm whether between twenty and thirty people indeed died every day in Ljubljana and whether their sudden deaths were indeed due to buboes leaving many unburied corpses lying on the streets.225 Lju- bljana’s physicians submitted a report debunking this disinformation. Whereas most infected patients had recovered after receiving treatment, it was impossible to help so many coming to the city to escape hunger in the countryside. Two or three individuals at most had admittedly collapsed in the street—however, not from the disease but starvation. Besides, the city had set up a lazaretto where patients were treated by phy- sicians and witch doctors.226 Seven physicians con- firmed the presence of febrile diseases since January and assured that most patients had recovered after receiving proper medicines. Fortunately, no patient had exhibited buboes and only a few had developed real plague bumps. Nor did death come suddenly, but it most often lingered for one or up to two weeks.227 Altogether four hundred patients were admitted to the lazaretto, thirty-nine of whom had died by mid- May. The physician Janez Leopold Raditsch also confirmed that, barring carbuncles and buboes, the symptoms were identical to those he had seen on pa- tients in Vienna and Prague in 1713–1714 and pro- posed that the graves at the Šentpeter cemetery be dug deeper and covered with lime to prevent hazard- ous decomposition of corpses in summer.228 Eloquent witnesses to mortality in Ljubljana are the registers of death kept by the cathedral parish of St. Nicholas and the suburban parish of St. Pe- ter. In 1714, the cathedral parish buried 124 persons, and this number rose to 231 or by 71.7 % in 1715. 125 people died between March and June, with the highest mortality recorded in April (thirty-six) and May (forty-one).229 In the suburban-rural parish of Šentpeter, which covered a much vaster territory, the mass dying started as early as the autumn of 1714, in no small part also due to poor harvests and hunger. After 339 burials were entered in the parish death register in 1713, this number climbed to 634 the following year and reached no less than 951 in the plague year of 1715 or 2.8 times more than two years 225 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 688, fasc. 393, May 13th, 1715. 226 Ibid., May 20th, 1715. 227 Ibid., May 18th, 1715. 228 Ibid., s. d., presented on May 22nd, 1715. 229 NŠAL, ŽA Ljubljana—Sv. Nikolaj, Matične knjige, M 1658–1735. 176 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 earlier. As the city itself, the parish witnessed a surge in deaths in April (134) and May (201). Already in March 1714, there were reports of four soldiers dy- ing in the lazaretto (in lazareth), where the death count started to mount on April 28th, 1715. The number of deaths in the lazaretto peaked in May and June, with only a few deceased being listed by the full name among a host of anonymous deaths. The lazaretto frequently reported five deaths per day, six unidentified victims on May 20th, and a record-high number of seven beggars on June 16th. The last death in the lazaretto was recorded on September 5th. The total number of the deceased in 1715 amounted to a hundred, with fifty-seven marked as beggars. A massive death toll, especially among beggars, was also observed outside the lazaretto, resulting in up to eight funerals held several times per day.230 Due to the lack of such sources for Lower Car- niola, the figures and reports from Ljubljana serve as a useful starting point for drawing comparisons with the numbers of deaths stated in death registers of the five Lower Carniolan parishes. All civil reg- isters kept by the parishes of Novo Mesto–chapter, Višnja Gora, Kočevje, Žužemberk, and Šmartno pri Litiji reveal an evident increase in deaths. Novo Mesto probably suffered the most with the densest population and the highest mortality in both the ab- solute number and the percentage of deceased per total parish population. As stated on the first page of the oldest death register, the small Novo Mesto town parish, covering the area inside the town walls, counted 331 deaths and burials in 1715 alone.231 Unfortunately, only this summary data is available rather than records of all buried victims, and it was not until July 5th, when the mass dying started, that the provost Jurij Franc Ksaver de Marotti instructed his priest to keep a register of deaths and enter the names of everyone who died in the town and its sur- roundings in a specified form. The record-keeping started the next day; however, with at least one sheet missing, consecutive entries are only available for the period from February 1716 onward.232 Although the number of 331 buried is not verifiable, it is highly probable. According to the death registers from oth- er parishes, a major wave of deaths passed through Lower Carniola in spring and (merely) thirty-four deaths were recorded in the two months of summer. What should also be borne in mind is that not all victims buried here were natives of Novo Mesto. The deaths of foreigners should be subtracted from the 230 NŠAL, ŽA Ljubljana—Sv. Peter, Matične knjige, M 1690– 1736, M 1715–1743. 231 KANM, carton 58, M/1 1704–1728: “Anno 1715—In D(o- mi)no obierunt provisi sacramentis, ac tumulati illor(um) 331.” 232 Only two sheets have been preserved for 1715, recording the deaths of thirty-four individuals: eighteen in July, twelve in August, and four in September. high total number and, by analogy with Ljubljana, consideration should also be given to the increased number of beggars and troops, who had already rep- resented an above-average share among the thirty- four deceased between July and September 1715.233 Compared to the summary indication in the same death register on 110 deceased in 1705 (hic sepulti), the number of deaths almost tripled in 1715. How- ever, if one takes an annual average of 47.8 deceased for the ensuing ten-year period (1716–1725), the number of buried victims in the epidemic year was nearly six times higher. What share, then, of Novo Mesto’s population can be attributed to the 331 deceased, only a fraction of whom was made up by those who had not been affected by the epidemic and hunger? Given that in 1754, the town counted 1,485 inhabitants and only one house under the town’s jurisdiction less than in 1726 (249), it seems safe to assume that the demo- graphic situation in the early eighteenth century was not much different. In the town with less than 1,500 inhabitants, the 331 deaths of town dwellers and for- eigners who had come to the town to find relief from their afflictions could translate into a good fifth of deceased, which comes very close to the estimated percentage in Črnomelj during the plague of 1691– 1692. That same year, the death was equally remorse- less in Kočevje. The parish of Kočevje recorded the deaths of 246 persons, stating only 145 individu- ally. In addition, the priests buried eighty-two im- poverished adults and children without payment of surplice fees but neglected to register the burials of nineteen children. The entries in the death register point to an extraordinary situation seen in no other year than 1715. No summary data on unlisted burials can be found in other death registers kept from 1699 onward, even though the Kočevje area confronted various epidemics before and after. No other year in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries probably witnessed as many deaths as 1715. Given the annual average of 93.8 deaths in the ten-year period 1705– 1714, the number of deaths in 1715 increased by 262 %. However, among the 145 deceased individu- als listed by their names, only twenty-three can be attributed to the town of Kočevje itself, which does not signify a substantial increase from previous years, with the ten-year average for 1705–1714 amounting to 13.1. On the other hand, the town may have also contributed its share toward the 101 unidentified decedents, suggesting that the number of deceased town dwellers could be much higher.234 233 Among the thirty-four buried persons were five beggars, three foreigners, and two soldiers, altogether nine non-locals, among them six unidentified and marked as N or N. N. 234 NŠAL, ŽA Kočevje, Matične knjige, M 1669–1724. 177 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 Precise data on the deceased are also provided in the death register of the parish of Višnja Gora.235 In 1715, the parish registered the deaths of altogether 115 individuals, including fifty-two or nearly a half classified as children and adolescents. As many as fif- ty-eight or a good half (51 %) were buried in spring: twenty-four in March and thirty-four in April. Af- ter subsiding in May, death claimed thirty more lives in summer—eleven in June, nine in July, and again eleven in August. Despite an increased mortality, the town of Višnja Gora was less affected than the surrounding countryside. Except for April and July, each registering five deaths, it remained largely un- scathed by the plague. The deaths of seventeen locals in the entire year, albeit representing twice the an- nual average from previous years (8.5 %), fall short of reflecting a surge in mortality across the parish, which registered seventy-eight deaths in 1713 and sixty-three in 1714. There is, furthermore, no notice- able increase in the number of deceased foreigners and beggars, to whom this small town could not offer a hoped-for relief.236 In 1715, high mortality was also observed in the parish and market town of Žužemberk. Death was rampant from February to August, reaching its peak at the end of May, and claiming sixty-four lives or almost one-quarter of altogether 279 victims that year. The spike in mortality compared to previous years was much like that in Kočevje. Equally dev- astated were the surrounding areas registering 209 deaths and the market town sixty-eight.237 Given its population of 521 in 1754,238 the biggest Lower Carniolan market town had lost about one-eighth of its inhabitants. Nonetheless, this share seems exces- sively high because Žužemberk was much more pop- ulated in the early eighteenth century than fifty years later. Specifically, about 1703, the local seigniory comprised 130 subordinate units and only ninety-six under the Theresian Cadaster.239 A surge in mortality in 1715 was also recorded in the parish of Šmartno pri Litiji. In the second half of 1714 and the first half of 1715, around 294 persons died, accounting for 2.8 times more than 235 NŠAL, ŽA Višnja Gora, Matične knjige, M 1713–1748. 236 The deaths of two foreigners in the town in no way coincided with the time of increased mortality. A beggar died in early March and a woman from the neighboring parish of Šmarje died an unexpected death at the end of September. 237 NŠAL, ŽA Žužemberk, Matične knjige, M 1710–1724. 238 The census of souls by individual places, including the mar- ket town of Žužemberk, focuses strictly on the serfs of the Žužemberk seigniory (ÖStA, HHStA, FAA, A–IX–22, Conv. 1, Seelen Conscription June 20th, 1754), who repre- sented almost the entire market town population, barring the inhabitants of the castle, the parish house, and the only foreign enclave—a hide subordinate to the local parish priest (SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 32, N 183). 239 ÖStA, HHStA, FAA, A–15–84, Rent-roll Seisenberg ca. 1703, s. p.—SI AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko, N 183, no. 20, s. d. (ca. 1755). the ten-year average in 1711–1720 (about 821) and, excluding the epidemic year, as much as 5.4 times more than the average (54.1 per year). Interestingly, the market town of Litija was left largely unaffected, registering three deaths at the end of 1714 and not one in the ensuing year.240 As elsewhere, an unusually high number of beggars were buried in 1714–1715. The death register also contains a note describing the nature of death. After Andrej Bratun’s farmhand from Kresniški Vrh passed away on August 24th, 1714, another of his farmhands died a sudden death (repentina quasi morte) the day after. The number of lives claimed by the epidemic and hunger in the parishes of other towns and mar- ket towns remains undeterminable due to the lack of preserved death registers. With plenty of patient work, mortality levels could also be traced for several other rural parishes of Lower Carniola and Carniola. However, whereas such research could draw a more complex portrait of dying in different corners of the province, little if anything can be expected from it in terms of concrete reports on the nature of the dis- ease. The so-called plague of 1715 was a conglom- erate of two close allies: the epidemic incorporating several different diseases and hunger resulting from poor harvests and disturbances in economic and communication flows. In connection with the epidemic of 1715, con- sideration should also be given to Kostanjevica, the only Lower Carniolan town where sources make not a single mention of an outbreak of any contagious disease. With more than a little luck, especially con- sidering its exposed border position and the vicinity of the more than unpopular Uskoks, this small town on the Krka seems to have successfully weathered all major epidemics—otherwise, any Black Death har- vest, however small, could have been inferred from the structure of preserved sources alone. The period that is poorly documented in sources but proved fateful for Kostanjevica started in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, which includes not only the epidemic year of 1715 but also two other peri- ods marked by higher mortality, which will be dis- cussed below. At that time, the number of abandoned homesteads dramatically increased. According to the census of or shortly before 1727, it only had forty- six populated houses and as many as thirty-one abandoned houses, that is, more than two-fifths of emptied or ruined homes (40.3 %).241 Because these 240 There were perhaps a few victims from Litija among the eight children of unidentified name and place, designated merely as “prolis” or “infans.” 241 The vidame archive erroneously classified the census as a doc- ument on Novo Mesto: SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranj- sko, carton 255, I/133, lit. R I–9, Specification der hernach benanthen bürgerlihen häyßer weliche bewohnt sein.—Dat- ing the census to the time shortly prior to 1727 was made possible by statements of widows, for whom the register of marriage clearly states when they remarried (NŠAL, ŽA 178 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 developments coincided with the epidemic of 1715, which killed one-fifth of inhabitants of the neigh- boring Novo Mesto, the observations above lead to the assumption that the sudden abandonment of Kostanjevica was largely due to the death of a con- siderable part of its population. Yet everything points to the contrary, even though the epidemic of 1715 most likely also swept through this town. Namely, in their reports describing the causes for the nota- ble decline of the town during the first half of the eighteenth century, the inhabitants of Kostanjevica mention no plague but three fires, the last of which is unknown from other sources and may be set in the time between 1703 and 1714. Whereas the tax register of 1702 still listed eighty-one unnamed tax- payers and the concurrent visitation stated no more than three abandoned houses,242 in 1704 the town leadership already reported on twenty-six completely abandoned houses and poverty after the town had been razed to the ground by three fires over the last sixty years.243 The structural crisis, typical of Lower Carniolan towns in general, obviously discouraged many fire victims from building new homes and compelled them to leave. The last major plague epidemic in Slovenian ter- ritory came to an end in the early 1717, after having raged for about six years. Although the real (Asian) plague also occurred only in sporadic outbreaks else- where in the ensuing years, it remained a major and costly concern until the mid-eighteenth century, with its frequent eruptions in the neighboring lands in the east and south severely affecting traffic and trade. For the first time after the great epidemic, the news of a plague in the Ottoman Empire and Hungary al- ready spread in mid-1718, after which it also sowed death in the Balkans and Hungary in 1720–1724. At the same time, a disease called “pleuriditis maligna” broke out in Slovenian territory, especially in Lower Carniola, striking fear into the Carniolan provincial estates that it might reach Carniola as well.244 This largely unknown infection could be the reason behind the higher mortality featured in the Kostanjevica, Matične knjige, R 1723–1770, therein: P 1726–1770, M 1745–1770). 242 SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 185, fasc. 104, lit. L II–7, Stüfft register der Statt Landtstraß v(on) 1702, April 30th, 1703. 243 Ibid., lit. L II–1, August 5th, 1714.—Information is available for the fires in 1663 and 1674, which razed to the ground nearly half and one-fifth of homes, respectively (SI AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko, carton 184, I/104, lit. L II–2, March 31st, 1686, August 9th, 1686), but nothing is known from sources about the third and the last fire. Valvasor knew nothing about it, even though he kept abreast of fires that had erupted in other towns during the years leading up to the publication of his Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. No refer- ences to the consequences of the fire are likewise made in the comprehensive instructions to the town leadership in 1691 (ibid., July 28th, 1691) and the files of the above-mentioned vidame visitation in 1703. 244 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 132. civil registers of some parishes under discussion during the early 1720s. On the other hand, in that period, death registers still stated nothing about the causes of deaths. The situation was especially dire in Kočevje, where the number of deaths in 1721 again spiked to several times the average from previous years. 166 decedents were recorded in the entire par- ish and twenty-four, among them mostly children, in the town of Kočevje.245 Still a year before that, in 1720, an increase in mortality was observed in Novo Mesto, which buried seventy-three persons and seventy-five in 1724.246 Mortality in the parish of Višnja Gora showed a slight increase in 1721 and 1722, without affecting the town inhabitants as badly as it did in previous and subsequent years.247 The par- ish priest of Žužemberk observed a high death toll for no less than five consecutive years, particularly in 1721 and 1724, recording ninety-five and ninety-six deaths, respectively. The market town of Žužemberk faced a similar situation in 1721, but with a slightly smaller death toll than in the plague year of 1715. It lost forty-one inhabitants (sixty-eight in 1715) and twenty-three in 1724.248 Whether any family had become extinct remains unknown; compared to about 1703, the number of households was reduced by (no more than) five until 1731.249 A significant number of deaths were recorded in 1721 and 1724 in the parish of Metlika, where the oldest preserved death register was started no earlier than 1720. 101 persons died the following year and 136 were buried three years later, in 1724.250 Unlike in 1715, the causes of increased mortal- ity in Metlika are much more profusely documented in 1724. The Carniolan provincial estates sent there the physician Franc Ksaver Zalokar, who on return- ing to Novo Mesto stated poor hygienic conditions as the main reason for the epidemic in a report of February 26th, 1725.251 For the past ten days, he had visited patients in the parishes of Metlika, Semič, and Vinica and provided a detailed description of their symptoms, which varied significantly from one place to another. In fact, this was a cohort of several dif- ferent diseases; apart from the major culprit, “pleu- riditis maligna,” adults were also dying of pneumonia and contagious catarrh, and children suffered from sore bottoms. Doctor Zalokar proceeded to describe how easily “pleuriditis maligna” could be transmitted through breathing in small houses that he had seen on his visitation route, adding to which was the rapid 245 NŠAL, ŽA Kočevje, Matične knjige, M 1669–1724. 246 KANM, carton 58, M/11704–1728. 247 NŠAL, ŽA Višnja Gora, Matične knjige, M 1713–1748. 248 NŠAL, ŽA Žužemberk, Matične knjige, M 1710–1724. 249 ÖStA, HHStA, FAA, A–15–84, Rent-roll Seisenberg ca. 1703, s. p.; A–15–97, Rent-roll Seisenberg 1731–1733, fols. 1–32. 250 ŽA Metlika, Matične knjige, M 1720–1739. 251 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, p. 132. 179 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 cooling and heating of air. The second reason for infec- tion was the bad habit among the local inhabitants to literally roast themselves near the hot embers in their humble and overheated rooms in the presence of the corpse. Not seldomly, houses would also be crammed with lambs and other livestock, and following a huge post-burial feast, called “carmina” by the Croats,252 where they inhaled the infected air, mourners headed out from the warm house into the cold. On behalf of the provincial authorities, Zalokar prohibited organ- izing such feasts in the presence of corpses and light- ing fire indoors, after a child had burnt itself to death in a room in Črnomelj. He also ordered to separate the dead from the living, as it occurred that during a patient’s confession a dead corpse was found under his bed. Patients most often recovered if they were bled immediately after contracting the disease. In sev- eral villages, between two and three persons died daily and no more than six in the same parish. The rap- porteur compiled a detailed name list of the deceased based on death registers. From the New Year’s Day to February 17th, fifty-nine persons died in the parish of Metlika, fifty-two in the parish of Črnomelj, nineteen in the parish of Semič, twenty-five in the parish of Podzemelj, and one of five infected died as early as the Christmas Eve the preceding year in the parish of Vinica. The towns of Metlika and Črnomelj were variably affected, but the latter not nearly as badly as during the plague of 1691–1692. The Metlika sub- urbs registered eight deaths and the town itself six, including two newborns conceived by the garrisoned troops. The small town of Črnomelj lost fifteen in- habitants, including five children, and the suburbs six adults and one child.253 The period up to the mid-eighteenth century witnessed other concurrent increases in mortality across the Lower Carniolan parishes under discus- sion, which may be attributed to this or that conta- gious disease or hunger, but the death registers pro- vide no specifications as to the type of the disease. The most conspicuous case of mass deaths that trig- gered a wave of unsubstantiated rumors of the plague can be traced to Novo Mesto between the autumn of 1736 and the spring of 1737. From November 22nd, 1736, to March 20th, 1737, forty-seven sol- diers, their wives, and members from Francis of Lor- raine’s regiment died of an unidentified disease, a few times up to two or three soldiers per day. Although the army was not the only social segment affected by the plague, it was an agent of its spread and its greatest victim. In January and partly in February, the number of deceased local inhabitants also more than doubled compared to the average from previ- 252 Who were in fact White Carniolans (Golec, Nedokončana kroatizacija, p. 24). 253 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 688, fasc. 393, Sanitetno poročilo iz Bele krajine 1725. ous years, suggesting that the infection had spread among the civilian population.254 Measures to re- verse the spread of the disease must have been rather stringent and the fearmongering rumors vastly exag- gerated. In March, the Carniolan provincial estates’ delegation office received two separate letters from the Gorizia provincial estates’ delegation office and the health committee of the town of Koper in Vene- tian Istria regarding the epidemic in Novo Mesto. The inhabitants of Koper inquired whether Carniola and especially Novo Mesto were indeed closed. The Gorizia provincial estates’ delegates even received a note from the health committee in Venetian Pal- manova, stating that Carniola had imposed a closure after thirty individuals died in Novo Mesto. The fear of the plague was significant and well-justified, based on the carnage it caused that year in Turkish Bos- nia. Responding to their counterparts in Koper and Gorizia, the Carniolan provincial estates’ delegates explained that these were fabrications invented by malicious tongues that spread rumors of a contagious disease and the closure. What really transpired in the previous year was that seven companies under the Duke of Lorraine’s regiment came to Carniola from Hungary with a few infected men among them, who were accommodated in Novo Mesto. The men died of the “Hungarian fever,” but no one suddenly and due to carelessness. Moreover, after the troops had had a good rest from their draining march, there had been no news of the disease since autumn. The re- port, written on March 25th, 1737, was not entirely truthful because the wave of mass dying ended only five days before that. At the end of that same year, the Venetian Republic closed the border with Carni- ola for the last time because of cattle plague and an epidemic that sowed death across the Generalate of Karlovac.255 In addition to sporadic occurrences in Gorizia in 1732, Carniola faced the last direct threat of the plague from Hungarian and Croatian provinces be- tween 1738 and 1741. The plague entailed high ex- penses for security measures and complete cessation of trade. The last closure of the border with Croatia and plague closures in general were set up in 1744, when the epidemic was swiftly contained. On the other hand, the plague continued to visit Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Turkish Bosnia almost until the end of the eighteenth century, but apart from harming traffic and trade in the neighboring Aus- trian hereditary territories, it left no major devasta- tion in its wake.256 From the mid-eighteenth century onward, the plague as such and as a designation for an epidemic 254 KANM, carton 66, M/3 1736–1752. 255 SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 688, fasc. 393, Zapora v Beneški Istri 1732, 1737. 256 Travner, Kuga na Slovenskem, pp. 132–133.—SI AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, Reg. I, carton 688, fasc. 393. 180 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 gave way to new and old epidemic diseases that had occasionally already wreaked havoc under its name. In the period, during which Lower Carniola tran- sitioned to a more beneficial period unburdened by real plagues, special mention ought to be made of the dysentery epidemic in the second half of the 1750s.257 Although dysentery killed several dozen adults and children in several Lower Carniolan towns and mar- ket towns in 1757–1758,258 the aftermath of this and subsequent epidemics can in no way be compared to the earlier plague epidemics, when the fear of infec- tion and the actual threat of a rapid spread struck terror into provinces far from epidemic foci. As a rule, the economic consequences of shutting down main routes and paralyzing the established life flows and functions were disproportionately more severe than the demographic impacts, which—compared to the afflictions suffered in Lower Carniola and sur- rounding provinces—often yet unfairly seem almost negligible. REFERENCES ARCHIVAL SOURCES SI AS – Arhiv Republike Slovenije AS 1, Vicedomski urad za Kranjsko AS 2, Deželni stanovi za Kranjsko, I. reg. AS 6, Reprezentanca in komora za Kranjsko v Ljubljani AS 166, Mesto Višnja Gora AS 174, Terezijanski kataster za Kranjsko: AS 746, Cistercijanski samostan Kostanjevica AS 774, Gospostvo Ribnica AS 1074, Zbirka urbarjev AS 1080, Zbirka Muzejskega društva za Kranj- sko, Muzejskega društva za Slovenijo in Histo- ričnega društva za Kranjsko DOZA – Deutschordens-Zentralarchiv, Wien Abt. Österreich, BÖ = Abteilung Österreich, Ballei Österreich KANM – Kapiteljski arhiv Novo mesto Kapucinski samostan Krško NŠAL – Nadškofijski arhiv Ljubljana ŽA – Župnijski arhivi: ŽA Črnomelj, ŽA Kočevje, ŽA Kostanjevica, ŽA Ljubljana–sv. Nikolaj, ŽA Ljubljana–sv. Peter, ŽA Mokronog, ŽA Šmartno pri Litiji, ŽA Višnja Gora, ŽA Žužemberk. 257 SI AS 6, Reprezentanca in komora za Kranjsko v Ljublja- ni, carton 120, fasc. XXXIX, Sanitetne zadeve, August 30th, 1756, September 6th, 1756. 258 Cf. Golec, Prebivalstvo in družba, pp. 99 f. ÖStA, HHStA – Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Wien FAA – Fürstlich Auerspergsches Archiv StLA – Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv Graz I.Ö. HK – Archiv der innerösterreichischen Hof- kammer I.Ö. HK-Rep. – Repertorien der innerösterrei- chischen Hofkammer I.Ö. HK-Akten – Innerösterreichischen Hof- kammer-Akten ŽA Metlika – Župnijski arhiv Metlika LITERATURE AND PUBLISHED SOURCES Benedik, Metod in Kralj, Angel: Kapucini na Slo- venskem v zgodovinskih virih. Nekdanja Štajerska kapucinska province. Ljubljana: Inštitut za zgo- dovino Cerkve pri Teološki fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani, 1994 (Acta ecclesiastica Sloveniae, 16). [Dimitz, August]: Annalen der landesfürstlichen Stadt Gurkfeld. Mittheilungen des historischen Ve- reins für Krain 15, 1860, str. 84–85. [Dimitz, August]: Beiträge zur fünfhundertjährigen Gründungsfeier von Neustadtl (Rudolfswerth) in Unterkrain. Mittheilungen des historischen Vereins für Krain 20, 1865, str. 25–44. Dimitz, August: Geschichte Krains von der ältesten Zeit bis auf das Jahr 1813. Vierter Theil. Laibach: Kleinmyr & Bamberg, 1876 Dimitz, August: Zur Geschichte der Städte und Märkte in Krain, II. Landstraß. Mittheilungen des historischen Vereins für Krain 19, 1864, str. 79–80. Dular, Jože: Metlika skozi stoletja. Metlika: Belo- kranjsko muzejsko društvo, 1978. Dular, Jože: Metlika skozi stoletja. Metlika: Belo- kranjsko muzejsko društvo, 1986. Golec, Boris: Nedokončana kroatizacija delov vzhodne Slovenije med 16. in 19. stoletjem: po sledeh hrvaške- ga lingvonima in etnonima v Beli krajini, Kostelu, Prekmurju in Prlekiji. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2012. Golec, Boris: Prebivalstvo in družba dolenjskih me- ščanskih naselij od 15. do srede 18. stoletja. Ljublja- na, 1997 (magistrska naloga). Jarc, Janko: Iz preteklih stoletij Novega mesta. Novo mesto. Kulturnozgodovinski vodnik (ed. Tone Knez). Novo mesto: Dolenjski muzej, 1976, str. 17–96. Jelinčič, Zdravko: Črna smrt v Gorici leta 1682. Kro- nika 2, 1954, št. 2, str. 115–121. Koblar, A.[nton]: Iz kronike krškega mesta. Izve- stja Muzejskega društva za Kranjsko 9, 1899, str. 19–24. Koblar, Anton: O človeški kugi na Kranjskem. Izve- stja Muzejskega društva za Kranjsko 1, 1891, str. 39–55. 181 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–1822022 Koropec, Jože: Krško v obdobju velikih slovenskih kmečkih vstaj. Krško skozi čas 1477–1977. Zbornik ob 500-letnici mesta (ed. Lado Smrekar). Krško: Skupščina občine, Odbor za pripravo praznova- nja 500-letnice Krškega, 1977, str. 45–59. Koropec, Jože: Žebnik, Radeče in Svibno do 17. sto- letja. Časopis za zgodovino in narodopisje 50, NV 15, 1979, št. 1–2, str. 51–77. Luschin v. Ebengreuth, A.[lfons]: Ein Protokoll der Stadt Stein. Mitteilungen des Musealvereines für Krain 18, 1905, str. 38–67. Milkowicz, Wlad.[imir]: Beiträge zur Rechts- und Verwaltungsgeschichte Krains. Mitteilungen des Musealvereines für Krain 2, 1889, str. 3–40; 3, 1890, str. 41–52. Podlogar, Leopold: Kronika mesta Črnomlja in nje- ga župe. Ljubljana: Samozaložba Tomo Zupan, 1906. Podlogar, Leopold: Požari v Metliki. Izvestja Muzej- skega društva za Kranjsko 7, 1907, str. 46. Smole, Majda: Kuga na Kranjskem v 16. stoletju. Kronika 5, 1957, št. 2, str. 97–98. Travner, Vladimir: Kuga na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: Življenje in svet, 1934. Umek, Ema: Kuga na Štajerskem v letih 1679–1683. Kronika 6, 1958, št. 2, str. 80–84. Valenčič, Vlado: Prebivalstvo in hiše stare Ljubljane. Kronika 5, 1957, št. 3, str. 111–123. Valvasor, Johann Weichard: Die Ehre deß Hertzog- thums Crain, I–XV. Laybach, Nürnberg: Wolf- gang Moritz Endter, 1689. Vrhovec, Ivan: Zgodovina Novega mesta. Ljubljana: Matica slovenska, 1891. Vrhovec, Joh.[ann]: Die Pest in Laibach. Mitteilun- gen des Musealvereines für Krain 12, 1899, str. 25– 40, 83–99, 129–141; 13, 1900, str. 17–24. Waltritsch, Marko: Prvi goriški kronist Giovanni Maria Marusig in njegovi opisi nasilnih smrti v Gorici v 17. stoletju. Množične smrti na Sloven- skem. Zbornik referatov. 29. zborovanje slovenskih zgodovinarjev. Izola, 22. – 24. 10. 1998 (eds. Stane Granda in Barbara Šatej). Ljubljana: Zveza zgo- dovinskih društev, 1999, str. 189–200. Zupanič Slavec, Zvonka: Epidemije na Slovenskem. Lakote, kuge in vojne reši nas, o Gospod! Mno- žične smrti na Slovenskem. Zbornik referatov. 29. zborovanje slovenskih zgodovinarjev. Izola, 22. – 24. 10. 1998 (eds. Stane Granda in Barbara Ša- tej). Ljubljana: Zveza zgodovinskih društev, 1999, str. 201–210. P O V Z E T E K Kužne epidemije na Dolenjskem med izroči- lom in stvarnostjo Dolenjska je tista slovenska pokrajina, ki so jo različne kužne epidemije v zgodnjem novem veku obiskale najpogosteje in jo poleg Istre tudi najbolj prizadele. Zlasti njena mesta, povečini miniaturna in malo pomembna, so med slovenskimi kontinentalni- mi mesti zagotovo utrpela najhujše posledice. Tudi nasploh so mesta in trgi v primerjavi s podeželjem teže občutili breme epidemij zaradi svoje večje pre- hodnosti in koncentracije prebivalstva. Na Dolenj- skem je nosilo najtežje breme Novo mesto, drugo najpomembnejše mesto na Kranjskem in med sed- mimi dolenjskimi mesti edino z več kot tisoč pre- bivalci. V luči majhnosti mestnih naselij so v virih toliko bolj presenetljive izredno visoke številke umr- lih, kakršnih drugod na Kranjskem ni zaslediti. Prav verodostojnost in teža števila umrlih je eno temeljnih vprašanj, na katerega skuša pričujoči prispevek poi- skati kolikor toliko zadovoljiv odgovor ob precej ne- ugodni strukturi in naravi virov. Še manj oprijemlji- ve so razsežnosti gospodarskih in socialnih posledic epidemij, ki so praktično nemerljive z zanesljivimi kazalci, zato pri njihovem ugotavljanju le s težavo presegamo deskriptivno raven in besednjak sodob- nih poročil. Prav tako skoraj ničesar ne vemo o bole- zenskih znakih posameznih kug, na podlagi katerih bi bilo edino moč ugotavljati, za kakšno bolezen je sploh šlo. Pod imenom kuga se v obravnavanem ob- dobju poleg prave kuge skriva sicer še kakšnih deset epidemičnih bolezni. Zelo malo je znano o samem dogajanju v času divjanja epidemij, ki ga dokumentirajo le sodni- ški letni obračuni Višnje Gore v času treh manjših epidemij druge polovice 16. stoletja ter poročila t. i. kužnega komisarja iz Črnomlja v letih 1691–1692, med katera spadajo tudi edini ohranjeni seznami umrlih in ozdravelih okužencev. Ravno za mesta, od koder imamo mlajša poročila o visokem številu umr- lih, tovrstnih poročil prve roke ni. Sumarne navedbe umrlih, ki so jih z večjo ali manjšo časovno distanco večinoma posredovala mesta sama, je bilo zato pri preverjanju potrebno soočiti z najrazličnejšimi dru- gimi sodobnimi viri. Posebna pozornost in hkrati previdnost veljata natančnim, nezaokroženim številkam, pri katerih dobimo vtis, da so morale temeljiti na sodobnih spe- cifikacijah. Najočitnejši pretiravanji predstavljata su- marna podatka o več kot 800 umrlih Novomeščanih leta 1599, od tega 149 hišnih gospodarjih, in o kar 1200 žrtvah kuge v Metliki v letih 1646–1647. V no- vomeškem primeru bi šlo za več kot polovico umrlega 182 BORIS GOLEC: PLAGUE EPIDEMICS IN LOWER CARNIOLA BETWEEN TRADITION AND REALITY, 141–182 2022 prebivalstva, a je analiza imen gospodarjev opustelih hiš pokazala, da je mogoče računati z največ nekaj sto umrlimi. Metlika bi morala izgubiti več prebivalcev, kot jih je mesto sredi 17. stoletja sploh lahko imelo (okoli 900). Veliko realnejši sta navedbi o 322 umrlih Novomeščanih za kugo leta 1625, o »samo 18 umr- lih« leta 1648 in o 331 pokopih v celem letu 1715, ki ga je zaznamovala zadnja epidemija. Nenumerične navedbe v virih o smrti velikega števila ljudi in celo o »izumrtju« mesta Črnomelj je treba razumeti kot način izražanja in ne dobesedno. Med njimi so tudi evidentne neresnice, namenje- ne višjim oblastvom zunaj Kranjske, kot na primer podatek o polovici umrlih meščanov in prebivalcev mesteca Višnja Gora leta 1599 ali o veliko umrlih najuglednejših meščanih Kočevja v istem času. Prite- gnitev davčnih registrov in drugih sodobnih poročil med epidemijo ali neposredno po njej odkriva pov- sem drugačna dejstva: kuga se je obeh mest le dotak- nila, če se ni Kočevju sploh izognila. Poleg Novega mesta so kuge opazno prizadele še tri dolenjska mesta: epidemija 1646–1647 Krško in Metliko, za kateri število in delež umrlih prebivalcev nista ugotovljiva, lokalno omejena kuga v letih 1691– 1692 pa Črnomelj. Tu je obolelo 216 in umrlo 139 ljudi (64,4 %), kar je predstavljalo približno petino vsega mestnega prebivalstva. Vsaj eno petino umrlih prebivalcev je mogoče izračunati tudi za Novo me- sto v letih 1625 in 1715, kolikor ni 322 oziroma 331 oseb predstavljalo četrtino ali celo višji delež, bližji eni tretjini. Šele zadnjo epidemijo leta 1715 je mogoče spre- mljati po mrliških matičnih knjigah več dolenjskih župnij. Kot vse kaže, tokrat razen v Novem mestu ni šlo za visoke, a nikakor ne za zanemarljive človeške žrtve. To je bila hkrati zadnja velika epidemija, ki jo viri imenujejo kuga, nakar je ta vznemirjala Kranjsko do srede 18. stoletja le še z izbruhi v vzhodni sosešči- ni. Čeprav ni več razsajala po deželi, je tako kot prej že zaradi delne ali popolne ustavitve tovornega in potniškega prometa tudi na Dolenjskem povzročila nemalo gospodarske škode. Povsem razumljivo je, zakaj se demografske po- sledice v virih vselej navezujejo na gospodarske. Po- javu epidemije na določenem kraju je namreč sledila izolacija okuženega območja, kar je pomenilo pretr- ganje komunikacij in ustavitev trgovsko-prometnih tokov. Kužne straže, ki so jih v drugih potencialno ogroženih krajih postavile deželne ter posamezne lokalne oblasti, ljudem in blagu niso dovoljevale prehoda brez zdravstvenih spričeval. Izbruh še tako lokalno omejene epidemije je praviloma povzročil zaprtje deželnih meja in posledično močno omejitev oziroma popolno ustavitev prometa, zaradi česar je tako ali drugače trpelo celotno deželno gospodarstvo. Zlasti dolgotrajne zapore so lahko za seboj potegnile hude izgube raznih gospodarskih dejavnosti, obubo- žanje določenih slojev, davčno nesolventnost, ki jo je v končni posledici občutila deželna blagajna, po- manjkanje življenjskih potrebščin in drugih artiklov ter končno prave lakote.