The Counts of Gorizia and Their Ministerials and Milites in Istria and Carniola

The Counts of Gorizia. This family of highborn feudals began to assert itself more obviously when the Investiture Conflict went to an end and when it was given the title the Counts of Gorizia and stewards of the Church of Aquileia. In the middle of the 13th Century they inherited from the Counts of Tyrol, thus getting another count title and stewardship over the dioceses in Brixen and Trident, besides they were also Carinthian Counts Palatine from the 14th Century at the latest. In 1271 the family split into two branches: of Gorizia-Tyrol and of Tyrol-Gorizia. Meinhard IV of Tyrol-Gorizia became also the Duke of Carinthia in 1286, thus achieving the rank of the Imperial Duke, however, the man line of this branch of the Counts of Gorizia became extinct as early as in 1335. The Gorizia- Tyrolian branch, which reached its climax with Albert II ( t 1304) and especially his son Henry II ( t 1323), whose dominion extended, at the height of his power, practically from the river Brenta in the river Po lowland to the Croat border on the river Kolpa and from the Pustertal in Tyrol to Istria, again split into two branches in 1342. The Gorizia estates in Istria and in Carniola (Slovene March with White Carniola), which the Count Albert IV had been given, passed into the hands of the Habsburgs as early as in 1374, whereas the rest of the estates of the Counts of Gorizia in the Carst, in Friuli, in the Isonzo region and in Carinthia the Habsburgs inherited in 1500 after the death of the last Count of Gorizia Leonhard.