Page 120 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

trees, for a total value of 510 lire were seized from Ivan Černe due to the
debts he owed to the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary from Tomaj. Be-
tween 1753 and 1755, two claims by his creditors Giuseppe Fattor and Mat-
tia Ritterman were combined into a single enforcement. The total amount
of their claims and of the costs of the procedure were a little over 49 ducats,
repaid by the seizure of one of Ivan’s meadows.
This is not all that happened to Ivan Černe in his darkest year, 1753. In
fact, at the manorial court he lost in a dispute with his sister Urša, married
name Rože, regarding the payment of an outrageous dowry in her favour in
the amount of 1,000 lira with the addition of ‘one sequin.’ Wealthy peas-
ant dowries in the Karst at that time usually hovered between 450 and
600 lira. In July the next year, Ivan and his brother Jakob lost another
lawsuit in this case. This time, the judgment ordered the confiscation of
land of appropriate value. In addition to the dowry itself, debt interest
and court costs of lost litigations continued to accumulate. In January 1755
the court approved the confiscation of Ivan Černe’s property in favour of
his sister Urša. Due to the unpaid dowry, default interest and court costs,
the amounts went to the heights. His sister and her husband agreed to a
compromise solution at 1,500 lire, which requested that each of the two
brothers had to pay half of the amount in three annual instalments. Since
they later failed to pay, in 1757 the court proceeded with the seizure, in
favour of his sister Urša, of a very good field of 0.3 hectares with 224 trees
and vines, in the net worth of 913 lira. Between 1756 and early 1759, anoth-
er seizure was ruled ‘in favour of Magdalena, the widow of the deceased
Martin Zlobec, against Ivan Černe,’ consisting in six ‘pieces’ of field (0.45
ha) and four of meadow (0.82 ha) with a total net value of 1,035 lira. Af-
ter January 1759, the set of documentation on real estate transactions is
interrupted.
The first conclusion can undoubtedly be that Ivan’s case dispels any pos-
sible notion about the simplicity of farm management. If you were Ivan
Černe, you had to know how to navigate rather complex accounts and how
to be active in several areas at the same time, regardless of the fact that
most of his mentioned financial ventures ended in failure. Unfortunately,
there is no information as to what Ivan Černe used the borrowed money
for. Surely, he did not take loans for survival, since significantly smaller
amounts would be sufficient for this purpose. Had he been in dire straits,
he would have not lent money and bought credits. On the contrary, it is
clear that Ivan Černe dabbled at least partially in credit and real estate
deals. Moreover, his case discloses that, for a wealthy peasant, it was im-

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