The Main Peculiarities of the Town of Lož from Its Foundation to the Mid-nineteenth Century

Abstract

The provincial princely town of Lož, one of the 
youngest historical towns in the Duchy of Carniola, 
had some peculiarities, partly due to its specific 
origin, that distinguished it from most of the towns 
in the duchy as well as in the wider area. It was 
formally founded in 1477 with the privilege of 
Emperor Frederick III over the rubble of a market 
town that had been destroyed by the Turks the 
year before. Throughout the period in question, 
i.e., for almost four centuries, Lož remained the 
only town in Notranjska/Inner Carniola (exclu-
ding the Carniolan part of Istria), one of the three 
constituent parts of Carniola. It was the only town 
in the territory of modern Slovenia to renounce 
the right to a weekly fair in exchange for annual 
monetary compensation. The basic non-agricultural 
activity of the people of Lož was the leather and 
shoemaking trade,  employing more than half of 
all the town’s craftsmen in the mid-eighteenth 
century. However, because the confraternity of 
shoemakers and leatherworkers, which had been 
operating since the sixteenth century, never obtai-
ned guild privileges, Lož remained a town without 
a single formal guild.