Page 114 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

noble Trieste family Černe, which is mentioned among the members of the
city council since the fourteenth century (Kandler 1858, 62, 108, 135, 215),
while a Černe became canon in the Trieste cathedral in 1493 (Di Brazzano
2006, 19, 21).
Although their originating from the urban elite still needs confirmation
through research, it would help explain their having available the capital
needed to purchase at least one half-farm and additional agricultural land.
The fact that the Černe family entered rural society as well-off people and
sons of a parish priest might also be factors that explain their rapid inte-
gration among the ‘big ones’ in the village community. Not even the sen-
tence for infanticide, which followed an accusation by the village commu-
nity, prevented, at least in the medium term of half a century, Just Černe’s
integration into the elite in the village community itself.
From around 1620, sources from the Devin manorial archive become
very scarce and sparse until the last decade of the seventeenth century,
leaving a huge gap in the documentation, particularly insofar as the eco-
nomic administration is concerned. For this reason, there is no reliable in-
formation about the management of immobile family assets by the Černe,
preventing us from a possible evaluation of their strategies in this field. It
is only possible to rely upon the parish baptism registers, which are pre-
served without severe chronological gaps from 1625 onwards and allow
some insights into the development of the family. At closer inspection,
it nevertheless becomes clear that several family members who appear in
records at a later time are not listed among the baptized new-born chil-
dren; while some of them may have been born at an earlier date than the
start of the preserved registers, others are clearly missing, meaning that
the baptism registers are incomplete.
Just Černe appears in the baptism registers only twice, acting as god-
father in 1629 and 1630. His brother Andrej, who lived in the village of
Dobravlje, appears as a godfather also, only three times between 1635 and
1643.
Meanwhile, it was already the members of the next generation, the third
beginning from the parish priest Baptista, who were fathers and lived in
different villages in the surroundings of Tomaj: between 1626 and 1654
there are Ivan in Dutovlje, Anže in Tomaj, Matija (unspecified village) and
Nikolaj in Utovlje, who later seems to have moved (back) to Dobravlje,
where Andrej used to live, and could therefore have been his son. As for
Ivan (Joannes)and Anže (Anshe = Janez = Joannes; named also Ioannes
Baptista), both could correspond to the above-mentioned Just Černe’s son

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