Duchy of Merania

The Duchy of Merania (German: Herzogtum Meranien, Slovene: Vojvodina Meranija) was a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire from 1152 until 1248. The dukes of Merania were recognised as princes of the Empire enjoying imperial immediacy at a time when these concepts were just coming into use to distinguish the highest ranks of imperial nobility.

The name "Merania" ("sea-land") comes from the Slavic word for sea, morje (cognate with German Meer, Latin mare), and refers to its location on the Adriatic.

The exact territorial extent of Merania is unknown. It probably included coast of the Kvarner Gulf, either on the Istrian peninsula or across from it, and probably included the town of Fiume (Rijeka). The author of the Historia de Expeditione Friderici Imperatoris, an account of Barbarossa's crusade of 1190, writing around 1200, refers to "the Duke of Dalmatia, also called Croatia or Merania", specifying (imprecisely) that the duchy neighboured Zahumlje and Raška. The actual duchy contained at most only a small part of the region of Dalmatia, which had historically belonged to Croatia. By the twelfth century, Croatia was in a persona union with Hungary.

This territory came under imperial control during the reign of Henry IV. According to the fourteenth-century Chronicon pictum Vindobonense (Viennese Illustrated Chronicle), the "march of Dalmatia" (marchia Dalmacie) was occupied by the Carinthians between 1064 and 1068 during the reign of Dmitar Zvonimir, who in fact was not king of Croatia until 1075. Despite this inconsistency in the chronicle, several modern historians, led by Ljudmil Hauptmann, have connected this Dalmatian borderland with the later duchy of Merania. It is not clear to what extent the Meranian dukes of the Dachau or Andechs lines ever managed to exert their control over the region.

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