engleski

Maintaining old life-style and self-identity. The case study of the Counts of Zrin in the fourteenth and fifteenth century

Noble residences played an important role in self-identification of noble families or kindreds. In the cases of families which had to change one residence with another, the family identity ought to be altered too, even more so when the two residences were distant. In the case of the counts of Zrin the situation was very clear. As a branch of the Šubić kindred they came to Zrin in Slavonia in the mid-fourteenth century, they changed their residence in the moment while they just started to create a new residence in Ostrovica in Croatia, apart from the kindred’s centre in Bribir. After coming to Zrin, the main emphasis of their activity was placed upon the integration into the new surrounding, the noble society of medieval Slavonia. However, as shall be presented in this paper, they kept and did not dissolved their old property in Bribir, some members of the branch returned and resided there, and, in general, they attempted to maintain their position there (the intention which was confirmed with various mutual inheritance agreements with their relatives there). Furthermore, as it will be shown, the counts of Zrin were present in Bribir all the time, yet had different phases in dealing with kindred’s property, what was conditioned with various social, political and personal factors (until Bribir came under Ottoman power). They also kept symbolic heraldic symbols of the kindred on their personal seals in Zrin. It will be argued that exactly the beginning of the Ottoman pressure was the moment when they again showed greater interest in the Bribir area, supposedly for kindred’s solidarity.

counts of Zrin ; the Middle Ages ; identities

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