District (Austria)
In Austrian politics, a district is a second-level division of the executive arm of the country's government. District offices are the primary point of contact between resident and state for most acts of government that exceed municipal purview: marriage licenses, driver licenses, assembly permits, hunting permits, or dealings with public health officers for example all involve interaction with the district administrative authority. Austrian constitutional law distinguishes two types of district administrative authority: district commissions, district administrative authorities that exist as stand-alone bureaus; as of 2017, there are 94 districts, 79 districts headed by district commissions and 15 statutory cities. Many districts are geographically congruent with one of the country's 114 judicial venues. Statutory cities are not referred to as "districts" outside government publications and the legal literature. For brevity, government agencies will sometimes use the term "rural districts" for districts headed by district commissions, although the expression does not appear in any law and many "rural districts" are not rural.
A district headed by a district commission covers somewhere between ten and thirty municipalities. As a purely administrative unit, a district does not hold elections and therefore does not choose its own officials; the district governor is appointed by the provincial governor. In the provincial laws of Lower Austria and Vorarlberg, districts headed by district commissions are called administrative districts. In Burgenland, Salzburg, Upper Austria, Tyrol, the term used is political district. National law, including national constitutional law, uses all three variants interchangeably. A statutory city is a city vested with district administrative responsibility. Town hall personnel serves as district personnel. City management thus functions both as a regional government and a branch of the national government at the same time. Most of the 15 statutory cities are major regional population centers with residents numbering in the tens of thousands; the smallest statutory city is more than a village, but owes its status to a quirk of history: Rust, current population 1900, has enjoyed special autonomy since it was made a royal free city by the Kingdom of Hungary in 1681.
The constitution stipulates that a community with at least 20,000 residents can demand to be elevated to statutory city status by its respective province, unless the province can demonstrate this would jeopardize regional interests, or unless the national government objects. The last community to have invoked this right is Wels, a statutory city since 1964; as of 2014, ten other communities are eligible but not interested. The statutory city of Vienna, a community with well over 1.8 million residents, is divided into 23 municipal districts. Despite the similar name and the comparable role they fill, municipal districts have a different legal basis than districts; the statutory cities of Graz and Klagenfurt have subdivisions referred to as "municipal districts," but these are neighborhood-size divisions of the city administration. Austria speaking does not name districts but district administrative authorities; the German term for "district commission" and "city," Bezirkshauptmannschaft and Stadt is part of the official proper name of each such entity.
This means. Several such pairs do. There are, for example, two district administrative authorities sharing the toponym Innsbruck: the city of Innsbruck and the Innsbruck district commission. To avoid confusion, the names of the rural districts in these pairs are rendered with the suffix -Land, in this context meaning "region." The customary name for the city of Innsbruck is Innsbruck, the customary name for the district headed by the Innsbruck district commission is Innsbruck-Land. While this usage is nearly universal both in the media and in everyday spoken German and appears in the occasional government publication, the suffix -Land is not part of any official, legal designation. From the middle ages until the mid-eighteenth century, the Austrian Empire was an absolute monarchy with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law. Provinces were ruled by the monarch the emperor himself or a vassal of the emperor, supported by their personal advisors and the estates of the realm.
The precise nature of the relationship between ruler and estates was different from region to region. Regional administrators were answerable to the monarch; the first step towards modern bureaucracy was taken by Empress Maria Theresa, who in 1753 imposed an empire-wide system of district offices. A major break with tradition, the system was unpopular at first; the district offices never became operational in the
Carantania
Carantania known as Carentania, was a Slavic principality that emerged in the second half of the 7th century, in the territory of present-day southern Austria and north-eastern Slovenia. It was the predecessor of the March of Carinthia, created within the Carolingian Empire in 889; the name Carantania is of pre-Slavic origin. Paul the Deacon mentions Slavs in Carnuntum, erroneously called Carantanum. Another possible etymology is that it may have been formed from a toponymic base carant- which derives from pre-Indo-European root *karra meaning'rock', or that it is of Celtic origin and derived from *karantos meaning'friend, ally', its Slovene name *korǫtanъ was adopted from the Latin *carantanum. The toponym Carinthia is claimed to be etymologically related, deriving from pre-Slavic *carantia; the name, like most toponyms beginning with *Kar- in this area of Europe, are in turn most linked to the pre-Roman tribe of the Carni that once populated the eastern Alps. Carantania's capital was most Karnburg in the Zollfeld Field, north of modern-day town of Klagenfurt.
The principality was centered in the area of modern Carinthia, included territories of modern Styria, most of today's East Tyrol and of the Puster Valley, the Lungau and Ennspongau regions of Salzburg, parts of southern Upper Austria and Lower Austria. It most also included the territory of the modern Slovenian province of Carinthia; the few existing historical sources distinguish between two separate Slavic principalities in the Eastern Alpine area: Carantania and Carniola. The latter, which appears in historical records dating from the late 8th century, was situated in the central part of modern Slovenia, it was the predecessor of the Duchy of Carniola. The borders of the Carantania state, under the feudal overlordship of the Carolingians, its successor, as well as of the Duchy of Carinthia, extended beyond historical Carantania. In the 4th century Chur became the seat of the first Christian bishopric north to the Alps. Despite a legend assigning its foundation to an alleged Briton king, St. Lucius, the first known bishop is one Asinio in AD 451.
In the 6th century, the Alpine Slavs, who are ancestors of present-day Slovenes, settled the eastern areas of the Friulia region. They settled in the easternmost mountainous areas of Friuli, known as the Friulian Slavia, as well as the Karst Plateau and the area north and south from Gorizia. After the fall of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in 553, the Germanic tribe of the Lombards invaded Italy via Friuli and founded the Lombard Kingdom of Italy, which no longer included all of Tyrol, only its southern part; the northern part of Tyrol came under the influence of the Bavarii, while the west was part of Alamannia. In 568, the Langobards receded into northern Italy. Subsequently, in the last decades of the 6th century, Slavs settled in the depopulated territory with the help of their Avar overlords. In 588 they reached the area of the Upper Sava River and in 591 they arrived in the Upper Drava region, where they soon fought the Bavarians under Duke Tassilo I. In 592 the Bavarians won, but three years in 595 the Slavic-Avar army gained victory and thus consolidated the boundary between the Frankish and the Avar territories.
By that time, today's East Tyrol and Carinthia came to be referred to in historical sources as Provincia Sclaborum. In the 6th century, the Alpine Slavs, who are reckoned to be among the ancestors of present-day Slovenes, settled the eastern areas of the Friuli region, they settled in the easternmost mountainous areas of Friuli, known as the Friulian Slavia, as well as the Kras Plateau and the area north and south from Gorizia. In the 6th century Chur was conquered by the Franks. Slavic settlement in the Eastern Alps region is proven by the collapse of local dioceses in the late 6th century, a change in population and material culture, most in the establishment of a Slavic language group in the area; the territory settled by Slavs, was inhabited by the remains of the indigenous Romanized population, which preserved Christianity. Slavs in both the Eastern Alps and the Pannonian region were subject to Avar rulers. After Avar rule weakened around 610, a independent March of the Slavs, governed by a duke, emerged in southern Carinthia in the early 7th century.
Historical sources mention Valuk as the duke of Slavs. In 623 Slavs of the Eastern Alps joined Samo's Tribal Union, a Slavic tribal alliance governed by the Frankish merchant Samo; the year 626 brought an end to Avar dominance over Slavs, as the Avars were defeated at Constantinople. In 658 Samo died and his Tribal Union disintegrated. A smaller part of the original March of the Slavs, centred north of modern Klagenfurt, preserved independence and came to be known as Carantania; the name Carantania itself begins to appear in historical sources soon after 660. The first clear indication of a specific ethnic identity and political organisation may be recognised in the geographical term Carantanum which Paul the Deacon used in reference to the year 664, in connection to which he mentioned a specific Slavic people living there; when about 740 Prince Boruth asked the Bavarian duke Odilo for help against the pressing danger posed by Avar tribes from the east, Carantania lost its independence. Boruth's successors had to accept the overlordship of Bavaria and the semi
Glan (Gurk)
The Glan is a river in Carinthia, Austria, a right tributary of the Gurk. It is 64.3 km long. It rises north of the Wörthersee in the Ossiacher Tauern mountains running through Feldkirchen, going northeastwards passing Glanegg Castle until it reaches Sankt Veit where it bends towards south, it flows through the Zollfeld Valley, the historical heart of the Carinthian duchy, through Klagenfurt, the state capital. At Ebenthal southeast of Klagenfurt is the confluence with the Glanfurt River, the Glan bends eastwards and flows into the Gurk River, it was first mentioned as Glana in a deed of donation issued by Emperor Otto II at the 983 Reichstag in Verona. The name derives from Celtic glanos meaning "bright, clear", cf. Glanis, Glanum and English "clean"
Assumption of Mary
The Assumption of Mary into Heaven is, according to the beliefs of the Catholic Church and Oriental Orthodoxy, the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life. The Catholic Church teaches as dogma that the Virgin Mary "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory"; this doctrine was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII on 1 November 1950, in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus by exercising papal infallibility. While the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church believe in the Dormition of the Theotokos, whether Mary had a physical death has not been dogmatically defined. In Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII pointed to the Book of Genesis as scriptural support for the dogma in terms of Mary's victory over sin and death through her intimate association with "the new Adam" as reflected in 1 Corinthians 15:54: "then shall come to pass the saying, written, Death is swallowed up in victory".
The New Testament contains no explicit narrative about the death or Dormition, nor of the Assumption of Mary, but several scriptural passages have been theologically interpreted to describe the ultimate fate in this and the afterworld of the Mother of Jesus. In the churches that observe it, the Assumption is a major feast day celebrated on 15 August. In many countries, the feast is marked as a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic Church; the Assumption was defined as dogma by the Catholic Church in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined it ex cathedra in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus. The Catholic Church itself interprets chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation as referring to it; the earliest known narrative is the so-called Liber Requiei Mariae, which survives intact only in an Ethiopic translation. Composed by the 4th century, this Christian apocryphal narrative may be as early as the 3rd century. Quite early are the different traditions of the "Six Books" Dormition narratives.
The earliest versions of this apocryphon are preserved in several Syriac manuscripts of the 5th and 6th centuries, although the text itself belongs to the 4th century. Apocrypha based on these earlier texts include the De Obitu S. Dominae, attributed to St. John, a work from around the turn of the 6th century, a summary of the "Six Books" narrative; the story appears in De Transitu Virginis, a late 5th-century work ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis that presents a theologically redacted summary of the traditions in the Liber Requiei Mariae; the Transitus Mariae tells the story of the apostles being transported by white clouds to the deathbed of Mary, each from the town where he was preaching at the hour. The Decretum Gelasianum in the 490s declared some transitus Mariae literature apocryphal. An Armenian letter attributed to Dionysus the Areopagite mentioned the supposed event, although this was written sometime after the 6th century. John of Damascus, from this period, is the first church authority to advocate the doctrine under his own name.
His contemporaries, Gregory of Tours and Modestus of Jerusalem, helped promote the concept to the wider church. In some versions of the story, the event is said to have taken place in Ephesus, in the House of the Virgin Mary; this is a localized tradition. The earliest traditions say. By the 7th century, a variation emerged, according to which one of the apostles identified as St Thomas, was not present at the death of Mary but his late arrival precipitates a reopening of Mary's tomb, found to be empty except for her grave clothes. In a tradition, Mary drops her girdle down to the apostle from heaven as testament to the event; this incident is depicted in many paintings of the Assumption. Teaching of the Assumption of Mary became widespread across the Christian world, having been celebrated as early as the 5th century and having been established in the East by Emperor Maurice around AD 600. St. John Damascene records the following: St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon, made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty.
The Assumption of Mary was celebrated in the West under Pope Sergius I in the 8th century and Pope Leo IV confirmed the feast as official. Theological debate about the Assumption continued, following the Reformation, but the people celebrated the Assumption as part of the cult of Mary that flourished from the Middle Ages. In 1950 Pope Pius XII defined it as dogma for the Catholic Church. Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott stated, "The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus-narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries.... The first Church author to speak of the bodily assumption of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitus B. M. V. is St. Gregory of Tours." The Catholic writer Eamon Duffy states that "there is no historical evidence whatever for it." However, the Catholic Church has never asserted nor denied that its teaching is based on the apocryphal accounts. The Church documents are silent on this matter and instead rely upon other sources and arguments as the basis for the doctrine.
Psychologist Carl Jung, interested in archetypes and comparative religion, celebrated that the Catholic Church had elevated the Virgin Mary (whom
Noricum
Noricum is the Latin name for the Celtic kingdom or federation of tribes that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia. In the first century AD, it became a province of the Roman Empire, its borders were the Danube to the north and Vindelicia to the west, Pannonia to the east and southeast, Italia to the south. The kingdom was founded around 400 BC, had its capital at the royal residence at Virunum on the Magdalensberg. Around 800 BC, the region was inhabited by the people of the local Celtic Hallstatt culture. Around 450 BC, they merged with the people of the other core Celtic areas in the south-western regions of Germany and eastern France; the country is rich in iron and salt. It supplied material for the manufacturing of arms in Pannonia and northern Italy; the famous Noric steel was used in the making of Roman weapons. Gold and salt were found in considerable quantities; the plant called saliunca was used as a perfume according to Pliny the Elder. The Celtic inhabitants developed a culture rich in art, cattle breeding, salt mining and agriculture.
When part of the area became a Roman province, the Romans introduced water management and the vivid trade relations between the people north and south of the alps boosted - Noric steel was famous for its quality and hardness. Archaeological research in the cemeteries of Hallstatt, has shown that a vigorous Celtic civilization was in the area centuries before recorded history, but the Celtic Hallstatt civilization was a cultural manifestation prior to the other Celtic invasions, The Hallstatt graves contained weapons and ornaments from the Bronze Age, through the period of transition, up to the "Hallstatt culture", i.e. the developed older period of the Iron Age. The Noric language, a continental Celtic language, is attested in only fragmentary inscriptions, one from Ptuj and two from Grafenstein, neither of which provide enough information for any conclusions about the nature of the language; the kingdom of Noricum was a major provider of weaponry for the Roman armies from the mid-Republic onwards.
Roman swords were made of the best-quality steel available from this region, the chalybs Noricus. The strength of iron is determined by its carbon content; the wrought iron produced in the Greco-Roman world contained traces of carbon and was too soft for tools and weapons. It needed at least 1.5% carbon content. The Roman method of achieving this was to heat the wrought iron to a temperature of over 800 C and hammer it in a charcoal fire, causing the iron to absorb carbon from the charcoal; this technique developed empirically: there is no evidence ancient iron producers understood the chemistry. This rudimentary methods of carburisation made the quality of iron ore critical to the production of good steel; the ore needed to be rich in manganese, contain little or no phosphorus, which weakens steel. The ore mined in Carinthia fulfilled both criteria well; the Celts of Noricum discovered their ore made superior steel around 500 BC and built a major steel industry. At Magdalensberg, a major production and trading centre, specialised blacksmiths crafted metal products and weapons.
The finished arms were exported to Aquileia, a Roman colony founded in 180 BC. From 200 BC the Noricum tribes united into Celtic kingdom, known as the regnum Noricum, with its capital at a place called Noreia. Noricum became a key ally of the Roman Republic, providing high-quality weapons and tools in exchange for military protection; this was demonstrated in 113 BC. In response, the Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo led an army over the Alps to attack the Germanic tribes at the Noreia. Noricum was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 16 BC. For a long time the Noricans had enjoyed independence under princes of their own and carried on commerce with the Romans. In 48 BC they took the side of Julius Caesar in the civil war against Pompey. In 16 BC, having joined with the Pannonians in invading Histria, they were defeated by Publius Silius, proconsul of Illyricum. Thereafter, Noricum was called a province, although it was not organized as such and remained a kingdom with the title of regnum Noricum, yet under the control of an imperial procurator.
Under the reign of Emperor Claudius the Noricum Kingdom was incorporated into the Roman Empire without offering resistance. It was not until the reign of Antoninus Pius that the Second Legion, Pia was stationed in Noricum, the commander of the legion became the governor of the province. Under Diocletian, Noricum was divided into Noricum ripense, Noricum mediterraneum; the dividing line ran along the central part of the eastern Alps. Each division was under a praeses, both belonged to the diocese of Illyricum in the Praetorian prefecture of Italy, it was in this time that a Christian serving as a military officer in the province suffered martyrdom for the sake of his faith canonised as Saint Florian. The Roman colonies and chief towns were Virunum, Flavia Solva, Celeia in today's Slovenia, Ovilava, Lauriacum. Knowledge of Roman Noricum has been decisively expanded by the
Zollfeld
Zollfeld is a ascending plain in Carinthia, Austria. It is one of the oldest cultural landscapes in the East Alpine region, it is from 400 m to 2 km wide and about 18 km long, with an elevation between 450 and 455 m above sea level. It is situated in the larger Klagenfurt Basin of the Central Eastern Alps and extends along the Glan River from north of Klagenfurt to Sankt Veit an der Glan; the plain is confined by surrounded by four prominent peaks of the basin: the Ulrichsberg in the south and the Magdalensberg in the east as well as the Gößeberg and the Lorenziberg in the north. Since about 500 years the mountains are stops on the annual Vierbergelauf procession celebrated on second Friday after Easter; the oldest archaeological findings at Magdalensberg originate from the time of Hallstatt culture. The area was the cultural and political centre of the Celtic kingdom and the Roman province of Noricum, when under the rule of Emperor Claudius the city of Virunum was established as the province's capital, replacing - or maybe identical with - ancient Noreia.
Following the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps about 600, the Karnburg fortress became the center of the Principality of Carantania, which about 740 was vassalized by Duke Odilo of Bavaria. With Bavaria a part of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne from 788 onwards, a Kaiserpfalz at Karnburg was erected about 830, it remained the administrative center after the Duchy of Carinthia had been split off Bavaria in 976. Inside the castle was a meeting place, where the Prince's Stone, the base of an ancient Roman Ionic column and the Dukes of Carantania were installed. Near Maria Saal stands the Duke's Chair, where the newly installed dukes distributed their land among the vassals. Modestus Carantanians History of Slovenia
Patriarchate of Aquileia
The Patriarchate of Aquileia was an episcopal see in northeastern Italy, centred on the ancient city of Aquileia situated at the head of the Adriatic, on what is now the Italian seacoast. For many centuries it played an important part in history in that of the Holy See and northern Italy, a number of church councils were held there. No longer a residential bishopric, it is today classified. Ancient tradition asserts that the see was founded by St. Mark, sent there by St. Peter, prior to his mission to Alexandria. St. Hermagoras is said to have died a martyr's death. At the end of the third century another martyr, St. Helarus, was bishop of Aquileia. In the course of the fourth century the city was the chief ecclesiastical centre for the region about the head of the Adriatic, Regio X of the Roman emperor Augustus' eleven regions of Italy, "Venetia et Histria." In 381, St. Valerian appears as Metropolitan bishop of the churches in this territory. Valerian was succeeded by St. Chromatius known for his exegetical works.
He promoted the work of Sts. Jerome and kept contact with Sts. Ambrose of Milan and John Chrysostom. In time, part of western Illyria, to the north and Rhaetia, came under the jurisdiction of Aquileia. Roman cities like Verona, Pola, Feltre, Vicenza and Padua were among its suffragans in the 5th and 6th centuries; as metropolitans of such an extensive territory, representatives of Roman civilization among the Ostrogoths and Lombards, the archbishops of Aquileia sought and obtained from their barbarian masters the honorific title of patriarch, however, as yet to each titular of the see. This title aided in promoting and at the same time justifying the strong tendency towards independence, quite manifest in the relations of Aquileia with Rome, a trait it shared with its rival, which, less fortunate, never obtained the patriarchal dignity. Owing to the acquiescence of Pope Vigilius in the condemnation of the "Three Chapters", in the Fifth General Council at Constantinople, the bishops of northern Italy and among them those of the Venetia and Istria, broke off communion with Rome, under the leadership of Macedonius of Aquileia.
This Schism of the Three Chapters provided the opportunity for the bishop of Aquileia to assume the title "patriarch". Macedonius' successor Paulinus I began using the title around 560. Meanwhile, by the end of the next decade, the Lombards overran all of northern Italy. In 568, the patriarch of Aquileia was obliged to flee, with the treasures of his church, to the little island of Grado, near Trieste, a last remnant of the imperial possessions in northern Italy; this political change did not affect the relations of the patriarchate with Rome. Various efforts of the popes at Rome and the exarchs at Ravenna, both peaceful and otherwise, met with persistent refusal to renew the bonds of unity until the election of Candidian as Metropolitan of Aquileia. Weary of fifty years' schism, those of his suffragans whose sees lay within the empire joined him in submission to Rome, they went further and elected in Aquileia itself, patriarch John so that henceforth there were two little patriarchates in northern Italy, Aquileia in Grado and Old-Aquileia.
The schism lost its vigour. At the Synod of Pavia Old-Aquileia reconciled with Rome and Pope Gregory II granted the pallium to Patriarch Serenus of Aquileia in 723, it was during the seventh century that the popes recognized in the metropolitans of Grado the title of Patriarch of Aquileia, in order to offset its assumption by the metropolitans of Old-Aquileia. In succeeding centuries it had no longer any practical significance. In 628, the patriarchs of Old-Aquileia transferred their residence to Cormons. Patriarch Callistus moved the patriarchal residence to Cividale del Friuli in 737 and it remained there until the thirteenth century when it was moved again, this time to Udine in 1223. In the last decade of the 8th century, the creation of a new metropolitan see at Salzburg added to the humiliation of Old-Aquileia, which long claimed as its own the territory of Carinthia. Still Patriarch Ursus of Aquileia accepted the arbitration of Charlemagne, by which the Carinthian territory north of the Drave was relinquished to Arno of Salzburg.
After the death of Ursus, Maxentius picked up where he left off and solicited funds from Charlemagne’s court to rebuild Aquileia. Maxentius served as the Patriarch of Aquileia from 811 till his death in 837; the Hungarian invasion of the 9th century and the decline of imperial control increased the authority of the patriarchs. German feudal influence was henceforth more and more tangible in the ecclesiastical affairs of Old-Aquileia. In 1011 one of its patriarchs, John IV, surrounded by thirty bishops, consecrated the new cathedral of Bamberg. Poppo, or Wolfgang, a familiar and minister of Emperor Conrad II, consecrated his own cathedral at Aquileia on 13 July 1031, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Under his reign the city received a new line of walls. Poppo managed to free the patriarch definitively from the Duchy of Carinthia and warred against Grado. In 1047, the Patriarch Eberhard, a German, assisted at the Roman synod of that year, in which it was declared that Aquileia was inferior in
Austria
.svg){kind=small}
