Carantania

Carantania was an early medieval Slavic principality in the eastern Alps, in what is now southern Austria and north-eastern Slovenia. It emerged in the second half of the seventh century, when Slavs settled the region after the collapse of Avar power, and its name, of proto-Slavic origin, survives in the later German and Slovene names for Carinthia. From the middle of the eighth century Carantania was allied with Bavaria against the Avars and consequently became a vassal of the Frankish Empire; Frankish overlordship opened the country to Christian missions organised from the Archdiocese of Salzburg. The capital was most probably Karnburg in the Zollfeld plain north of Klagenfurt, where the princes were installed in a ceremony that later became the duchy's investiture ritual. The principality kept a degree of internal autonomy under its own princes, but in 828 this was abolished and the territory was reorganised into Frankish counties and marches. Carantania thus became the direct predecessor of the March of Carinthia, created within the Carolingian Empire by 889, and its memory remained central to Slovene identity in later centuries.