Dukat (Administrative District)

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The ducat denotes a territory under the control of a dux and is documented for the Byzantine Empire as well as for the Frankish Empire .

Origins

Byzantine Empire

In the Byzantine Empire, ducats were formed as military areas in the 7th century under the leadership of a dux as military commander in chief. This was then used generally for the designation and delimitation of a territory.

Franconian Empire

After the Merovingians took power in the former Gallic and Germanic provinces of the Roman Empire , but also beyond, the Merovingian kings created ducats for population groups or geographical zones in their empire. The structures of these ducats were not uniform.

Geographical ducats such as the Jura ducat in today's Swiss-French-German border area were constructs for the control of areas with a uniform geographical structure into which immigrant population groups had to be integrated. For this purpose, existing administrative units such as late Roman civitates were integrated, and in some cases new sub-units (such as Pagus ) were created.

Peoples, especially in border areas and without institutionalized administrative structures, were also listed as ducats by the Merovingians; for example the Bavarians , the Visigoths in Aquitaine , or the Thuringians . The ducat came close to a small kingdom and always had a military function to protect the Merovingian empire from neighboring domains. Typically, the Merovingians left the existing ruling structures intact in the ducats they created; therefore today the rulership structures of these areas are partly in the dark due to a lack of sources.

Further development

The ducats passed with the Carolingians and then in the Middle Ages into duchies ; here, too, the military reference is still clear.

literature