SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE APPEARANCE AND USE OF THE TERM SCLAVINIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE APPEARANCE AND USE OF THE TERM SCLAVINIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Summary/Abstract: This article attempts to shed light on the emergence of Sclavinia as a term in the medieval sources. In the old Slavic written tradition Sclavinia never appeared, which shows that it was an external name. In majority of cases, Sclavinia was a term used by imperial elites and on courts in Byzantium and in the West. Is seems to have appeared simultaneously in the East and in the West in 780th when many Slavic tribes were included in the Frankish and Byzantine sphere of influence and dominance. Despite some differences, in general the term was used in the same way in Byzantium and in the West: for Slavic entities put in the process of subjugation to the empires. The reason for this similarity could be found in intentionally followed imperial examples and terminology in the West. Sclavinia was the official “imperial” border-zone term, for the area between the Slavic word and Christian empires, and was bound with the existence of these contact zones. It was not usually used for the territory deeply behind these borders, for non-imperial Slavic neighbours or for independent powerful Slavic states. As a term, Sclavinia lost its relevance with the disappearance of the small Slavic formations in imperial border zones, when they were assimilated into empires or evolved into larger independent state formations established under their own well-known names. Created from the demonym in a way very common in the Middle Ages, Sclavinia was still relatively rarely used. Although a suitable collective term, its weakness was its too general and uncertain meaning. In the West it was used far more and longer than in Byzantium, and there it could be find outside of the imperial court, which was not the case in the Eastern empire. It was used with some differences – only in singular in the West, and usually in plural in Constantinople.

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