Župa
Template:Short description Template:Other uses A župa, or zhupa, is a historical type of administrative division in Southeast Europe and Central Europe, that originated in medieval South Slavic culture, commonly translated as "county" or "parish".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It was mentioned for the first time in the eighth century and was initially used by the South and West Slavs, denoting various territorial units of which the leader was the župan.
In modern Serbo-Croatian, the term Template:Lang also refers to an ecclesiastical parish, in Slovene likewise for župnija, while the related županija is used in Croatia for lower administrative subdivisions, and likewise by Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina (as a synonym for kanton).Template:Sfn
Etymology
The word župa or Template:Lang (Slovak and Czech: Template:Lang; Polish: Template:Lang; Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian: Template:Lang; adopted into Template:Langx and rendered in Greek as Template:Lang (Template:Lang, "land ruled by a župan")), is derived from Slavic. Its medieval Latin equivalent was Template:Lang. It is mostly translated into "county" or "district".Template:Sfn According to Kmietowicz, it seems that the territorial organization had been created in Polish territories before the Slav Migrations.Template:Sfn Some Slavic nations changed its name into "opole", "okolina", "kraj" and "vierw", but it has survived in župan.Template:Sfn Some scholars consider the word's older meaning was "open area in the valley".Template:Sfn This interpretation is confirmed by the Bulgarian Template:Lang ("tomb"), Polish Template:Lang and Ukrainian Template:Lang ("salt mine"), and Old Slavonic Template:Lang ("tomb").Template:Sfn As such, the Proto-Slavic Template:Lang wouldn't derive from Template:Lang (with Template:Lang meaning "bend, distort"),Template:Sfn yet from Indo-European Template:Lang/Template:Lang meaning "cavity, pit",Template:Sfn which derives from Nostratic *gopa meaning "hollow, empty".Template:Sfn However, Aleksander Brückner suggested the opposite evolution; župa as a back formation from title župan (for the etymology see corresponding article),Template:Sfn which is a borrowing from Iranian languages (*fsu-pāna, "shepherd").Template:Sfn
Usage
The division had a widespread distribution and did not always had a concrete institutional definition.Template:Sfn The term župa was at first the territorial and administrative unit of a tribe but was later only an administrative unit without tribal features.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn The South Slavs that settled in Roman lands to a certain degree adopted Roman state organization, but retained their own tribal organization.Template:Sfn Slavic tribes were divided into fraternities, each including a certain number of families.Template:Sfn The territory inhabited by a tribe was a župa, and its leader was the župan.Template:Sfn
The zhupa (plural zhupi) was an administrative unit in the First Bulgarian Empire, a subdivision of a larger unit called comitatus. In these countries, the equivalent of "county" is "judet" (from Latin judicium).Template:Citation needed The Croats and the Slovaks used the terms županija and župa for the counties in the Kingdom of Croatia and Kingdom of Hungary. German language translation of the word for those counties was komitat (from Latin comitatus, "countship") during the Middle Ages, but later it was gespanschaft (picking up the span root that previously came from župan).Template:Citation needed
Bosnia
Template:Main Territorial-political organization in medieval Bosnia was intricate, and composed on several levels. In this scheme in the territorial-political organizational order of the medieval Bosnian state, župa was basic unit of the state organization, with feudal estate at the bottom, followed by village municipality, both below župa, and zemlja above it, with the state monarch at the top. During the 15th century, disappearance of the old organization based on župas is observed. It is obvious that at some point the Bosnian largest landowning barons no longer needed them in its old organizational capacity.Template:Sfn
Croatia
The Croatian word župa signifies both a secular unit (county) and a religious unit (parish), ruled over by a "župan" (count) and "župnik" (parish priest).Template:Sfn
Croatian medieval state was divided into eleven ζουπανίας (zoupanias; župas), and the ban ruled over additional three župas Krbava, Lika, and Gacka).Template:Sfn
Today the term županija is the name for the Croatian regional government, the counties of Croatia. Mayors of counties hold the title of župan (pl. župani), which is usually translated as "county prefect". In the 19th century, the counties of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia were called županija. The Croats preserved the term župa until the modern times as the name for local clerical units, parishes of the Catholic Church and of the Protestant churches. The parish priest is called župnik.
Hungary
In c. 1074, the župa is mentioned in Hungary as -spán, also as határispánságok (march, frontier county). The derivative titles were ispán, nominated by the king for not defined time, and gradually replaced by főispán in the 18-19th century; megyésispán, also nominated by the king but could be expelled anytime; alispán was the leader of the jurisdiction in the county if the 'megyésispán' was not available; várispán was more linked to the "vár" (fortress) in Hungary in the times of Árpád.
Serbia
The Serbs in the Early Middle Ages were organized into župe, a collection of neighboring village communities within a geographically distinctive region (roughly the equivalent of a county),Template:Sfn headed by a local župan (a magistrate or governor).Template:Sfn Thus the title of grand župan (veliki župan), meant "supreme župan" of župans who ruled over župas, particularly in the Grand Principality of Serbia, from the end of the 11th up to the beginning of the 13th century.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Dušan's Code (1349) named the administrative hierarchy as following: "land(s), city(ies), župa(s) and krajište(s)", the župa(s) and krajište(s) were one and the same, with the župa on the border were called krajište (frontier).<ref>Radovanović 2002, p. 5</ref> The župa consisted of villages, and their status, rights and obligations were regulated in the constitution. The ruling nobility possessed hereditary allodial estates, which were worked by dependent sebri, the equivalent of Greek paroikoi; peasants owing labour services, formally bound by decree.<ref name=Anderson290>p. 290</ref>
Though the territorial unit today is unused, there are a number of traditional župe in Kosovo, around Prizren: Sredačka Župa, Sirinićka Župa, Gora, Opolje and Prizrenski Podgor. The Serbian language maintains the word in toponyms, the best known being that of the Župa Aleksandrovačka.
Slovakia
The term župa was popularized in Slovak professional literature in the 19th century as a synonym to contemporary Slovak term stolica (county).Template:Sfn After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it was used as the official name of administrative units of Slovakia within Czechoslovakia in 1919 – 1928 and then again in the Slovak Republic during WWII in 1940–1945.Template:Sfn Nowadays, the term is used semi-officially as a short alternative name for the self-governing regions of Slovakia.Template:Sfn The president of the self-governing region is semi-officially called župan.
Slovenia
In Slovenia, the mayor of a municipality has the title župan. The name also survived in the clerical context, as parishes are called župnija (dual: župniji, plural: župnije). Colloquial parishes are also called "fara" (dual: fari, plural: fare). A parish priest is called župnik (dual: župnika, plural: župniki).
See also
References
Sources
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