Academic literature on the topic 'Lesser nobility'

ABSTRACTIn 1808, an Estate of the lesser nobility of the Lower Austrian diet approved a statute barring from membership persons of Jewish descent in the ‘third degree’ regardless of confession. It is the only documented instance in Europe for the revolutionary era of such a paragraph that, in its rejection of Jewish ancestry in both the paternal and maternal lines, resembled the early modern Spanish statutes of ‘blood purity’ and the twentieth-century Nuremberg laws. The Josephian patent of toleration of 1782 had not allowed Jews to become members of the corporate nobility (the first Jew was only ennobled in 1789), but had relieved some of the worst aspects of discrimination. By the early nineteenth century, the archduchy of Lower Austria (including the imperial capital at Vienna) contained the largest, wealthiest, and most self-confident Jewish community in the Hapsburg Monarchy. The statute of 1808 was a reaction to Jewish acculturation to the upper class (including conversion, intermarriage, concessions of property-rights, the existence of salons in which Jews and new Christians mixed with the nobility) that presented a perceived threat to the status of its marginal members (lesser landed nobles, ennobled officialdom, and ennobled professionals). The statute was also a product of the politically and nationally charged atmosphere in Vienna between the Austrian defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz (1805) and the renewed war against France (1809). No simple ideological continuum connects the Lower Austrian paragraph to either the early modern Spanish or the late modern Nazi ordinances. But it was the first such statute to take shape in a political context fraught with recognizably late modern concepts of ‘nation’. The statute of 1808 furthermore evidences the continuing fractured nature of public authority and lack of thorough-going state-formation in Austria.

Judging from repetitious appearances of her marital arms in the painted line-endings, the Psalter-Hours John Rylands Library Latin MS 117 probably belonged to Jeanne of Flanders (c.1272–1333), daughter of Count Robert III of Flanders and in 1288 second wife to Enguerrand IV of Coucy. Yet the line-endings also contain some 1,800 diminutive painted escutcheons, many of which refer to other members of the local nobility active during the 1280s. This study, based on an exhaustive survey of the total heraldic and codicological evidence, suggests that the majority of the extant Psalter predated the Hours and that the two parts were combined after the 1288 marriage. The ‘completed’ manuscript bears witness to major events that unfolded in and around the Coucy barony over the course of the decade. It suggests a complex relationship between Jeanne of Flanders and a lesser member of the local nobility, a certain Marien of Moÿ, who may have served as her attendant.

Appearance in the political arena of the world in the XVI century. of the new state, the Commonwealth, had a significant impact on the development of the Ukrainian civilization process. The Ukrainian nobility, merged with the mass of Polish nobility, still lived under Polish law and was easily colonized. This process was especially rapid in the Kholm region and Podlasie. He was greatly influenced by the small Polish gentry from Mazovia and Lesser Poland, who settled in Ukrainian lands before the signing of the Union of Lublin, Ukraine, united with Poland and Lithuania, gradually losing its ancient customs and rights. The Union destroyed the remnants of Ukrainian state traditions that took the form of autonomy in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Ukrainians were forced to adapt to the new socio-political conditions in which they found themselves. National-political life no longer connects with the state, but begins to create new organizational forms. The national organization, at the time of the threat of total national destruction, is largely becoming defensive.

Zusammenfassung So far, the history of the nobility has mainly focused on the biographies of the lucky few who were rich and left behind large archives. It may, however, gain new insights by searching for fragmentary evidence of the many lesser nobles that did not leave behind a trail of sources, but whose lives can only be traced through various scattered sources. This material directs our attention towards situations in which the meaning of being a noble was constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. This article concentrates on two such situations: first, on banquets involving nobles and non-nobles that spiralled out of control, and second, on acts of self-ennoblement that sometime worked and sometimes failed. As these examples show, the estate-based society, at least in Prussia, was multi-faceted and malleable before 1800 and continued to be so throughout the 19th century. The material further highlights that more such fragments are needed in order to analyse the changes of the Prussian nobility from the inside and downside.

In 1909, at age forty-six,FranzFerdinand made a decision about his deaththat would shape the memory of his life: he would be buried beside his morganatic wife, Sophie Chotek, at his palace in Artstetten (Lower Austria). That may not seem like much from the perspective of our own era. But in the context of the 600-year-old tradition-bound Habsburg dynasty, and in view of the archduke's exalted place in it as nephew of the near octogenarian emperor and next in line for the imperial throne, it was pure rebellion. For what the successor had also determined was where he wouldnotbe interred—with his esteemed ancestors in Vienna'sKaisergruft(Kaiser Crypt), which was strictly off-limits to lesser nobility like the Duchess of Hohenberg.

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 the Russian empire faced a problem of determining the social status of petty Polish nobles (szlachta) in imperial hierarchy. At the turn of the 19th century the Senate was the governmental body that had to resolve this issue. In April of 1800 Paul I approved the proposal of the Senates 3d department to confirm lesser szlachtas fiscal immunity and other privileges enjoyed by her under Rzecz Pospolita. Yet, in the same year the Senates 1st department when deliberating on a separate case of szlachtas tax status in Novorossiysk province, passed two resolutions that contradicted the legal norm adopted in April. This paper focuses on the analysis of circumstances under which the Senates departments came to different decisions on the same problem. Their resolutions reflected two approaches to the policy of petty szlachtas inclusion in the imperial nobility. The resolution of the 3d department, supported by Paul I, envisaged a co-optation of szlachta as a social group through legislative confirmation of its privileged status in the empire. The approach of the 1st department emphasized the necessity of szlachtas integration into imperial nobility on the individual basis (by submitting proofs of noble origin compliant to the Russian laws). As a result the imperial government gave preference to the second model of inclusion.

This thesis examines the political, social and, in particular, military conditions that influenced the allegiance of the men and women of the political community of Lothian, that is to say those people with personal landholding, legal and military obligations whose services were crucial to the efficient administration of the sheriffdom and whose support was courted by kings and magnates alike. The key issue is the high degree of survival among these minor landed families. The upper strata of Scottish political society underwent considerable changes in the early to middle fourteenth century through the fortunes of war, in particular through the disinheritance of the Comyn family and their allies early in the reign of Robert I. Some families lost their Scottish properties, such as the Balliols and the Comyns. Others grew in stature; notably the Douglases and, in Lothian specifically, the Setons and the Lauders. Most landholders would probably have been content to retain their inheritances, and indeed, virtually all of the Lothian landed families of the late thirteenth century would seem to have managed to do just that. A high rate of success is not necessarily evidence that something is easily achieved; the retention of family properties was a complex business in wartime. In the period 1296-1314 the political community had to discharge their financial, legal and military burdens to the party currently in charge, but without permanently compromising themselves with the opposition, who might, after all, be in a position to exert lordship themselves at some point in the future. The military burdens are central to this thesis. Army service was a very obvious indication of allegiance. Given the nature of the normal practice of war in thirteenth and fourteenth century Europe, it is inevitable that this study examines the nature and incidence of armoured cavalry service in Lothian. The overwhelming majority of that service was performed by minor landholders. Records of their service in garrisons or their forfeiture as rebels provide us with a guide to the rate and incidence of defections from one party to another and therefore some guide to the degree to which a particular party was able to impose their lordship. The thesis explores the various challenges that faced the lesser landholders and more prosperous tenants and burgesses who lived through the Wars of Independence from the campaign of 1296 which ended the reign of King John and imposed the rule of Edward I, until 1341 when Edinburgh castle was recovered by the Scots from the forces of Edward III. It also questions the extent to which Edward III was able to impose his lordship in Lothian, considers the nature of the forces ranged against him and challenges the perception that only the outbreak of the Hundred Years War prevented the operational defeat of the Bruce party. The siege of Edinburgh castle in 1341 marked the end of the last attempt by an English medieval king to provide Lothian with a government. Naturally this would not have been abundantly apparent at the time; however subsequent English invasions, though they might attack Edinburgh, were not designed to bring about the conquest of Lothian. The political environment of Lothian landholders therefore differed substantially in 1296-41 compared to the century either side of the Wars of Independence in that the minor nobility faced difficult decisions which had to be made on assessments of the likely eventual success of the Balliol, Plantagenet and Bruce parties.

Cette étude s’attache à comprendre ce qu’est un habitat seigneurial secondaire en Hainaut à la fin du Moyen Age et aux Temps Modernes. La disparition de la plupart des résidences de la haute noblesse en Hainaut, nous a amenée à nous pencher sur l’étude des habitats de la petite noblesse, dont le manque de reconnaissance, entrainant la démolition ou les transformations irréversibles de ces habitats, rend ces édifices sujets à l’oubli. Ajoutons à cela que, victimes d’une tradition castrale héritée du 19e siècle, archéologues et historiens de l’art ont bien souvent eu leur attention d’abord attirée par les grands châteaux et donc la haute noblesse, laissant de côté toute une tranche de la population noble et de leurs possessions. Notre étude a comme objectif majeur de comprendre comment ces habitats ont fonctionné comme structures de vie, mais aussi comme des architectures à travers lesquelles et par lesquelles les habitants pouvaient exprimer leurs identités. Dans cette optique, après avoir considéré les différents types architecturaux (types de plans, types de corps de logis, types de tours), suivant une typo-chronologie, nous considérons les matériaux utilisés et la distribution intérieure de ces édifices.

Ce sont ensuite les entourages de l’habitat en tant qu’espace construit, leur situation dans le paysage, et par rapport au relief, à l’hydrographie, aux villages, aux terres de cultures, et aux réseaux de communication, qui occupent une grande partie de l’étude. Les liens avec leurs habitants, ces membres de la « petite noblesse » sont ensuite considérés. Leurs fonctions, leurs origines et leurs zones de déplacements sont abordés, afin de mieux percevoir le rôle et la détermination de ce groupe social, qui s’avère être en rupture avec la haute noblesse. L’opposition traditionnelle entre villes et campagnes est dépassée, de même que la question des maisons principales et secondaires, au profit d’une approche plus fluide, favorisant une interaction entre villes et campagnes, et considérant les mouvements de population émergeant de l’un ou l’autre milieu.

La partie interprétative suit ensuite, permettant d’aboutir à une caractérisation de ce type d’habitat. Le but est notamment de mettre en lumière la relation entre les aspects défensifs et résidentiels des édifices. Pour ce faire, les éléments de défense active et passive sont examinés, ainsi que le degré d’efficacité de ces structures.

La suite de cette partie a pour but de replacer les habitats de la petite noblesse dans le contexte des types architecturaux des campagnes, de la haute noblesse et des villes du Hainaut et des anciens Pays-Bas, afin de mieux dégager les liens ou les ruptures entre les différents groupes sociaux et architecturaux. Les rapports avec les habitats ruraux sont établis en ce qui concerne les diverses composantes que sont les douves, les pont-levis, les orifices de tir, les espaces verts et les aménagements hydrographiques d’agrément, la basse-cour, les tours, les typologies des plans et de maisons, les matériaux et leur qualité de mise en œuvre, les intérieurs, les ouvertures et les styles, les armoiries et les millésimes. La catégorie intermédiaire que sont les habitats des élites rurales, est également abordée, puisqu’elle développe des types architecturaux ambigus et se rapprochant davantage des habitats de la petite noblesse que des autres ruraux. Cette catégorie est examinée d’un point de vue architectural et social./This research is aiming at understanding what is a gentry’s settlement in the County of Hainault at the end of the Middle Ages and during the Modern Times. The disappearance of most of the castles of the high nobility in Hainault, led us to study the gentry’s settlement. The lack of recognition of this kind of building is often leading to their destruction and irreversible transformations. There is also the fact that the archaeologists and art historians often inherited from the 19th century tradition, whose attention was mostly attracted by the main castles and the high nobility, forgetting by the same occasion a side of the nobility –the gentry- and his settlement.

The main objective of this research is to understand how these settlements were linked with their inhabitants, expressing their identities, ways of living and behaviours. In this framework, we first analyse the architectural typologies (plans, residential buildings, towers) in connection with the chronology, the materials, and the inner organisation of these buildings.

Afterwards, we consider the surroundings of the buildings, the location in the landscape, the relief, hydrography, the village, the lands, the communication net. The lesser nobility is also studied, through its functions, origins, movement areas, in order to have a better understanding of the role and definition of this social group which is distinctly separated from the high nobility. The traditional opposition between cities and countryside, and between the main and secondary housing, is overstepped, in order to reach a more flexible approach. We therefore consider the topic through an interaction between cities and countryside, and their inhabitants.

The rest of the research is dedicated to the interpretations, in order to draw the characterists of the gentry’s settlement. First, the relationships between the defensive and residential aspects are considered. The active and passive defensive elements are studied, as well as the efficiency of these structures.

Secondly, we replace the gentry’s settlement in the context of the other architectural types of the countryside, high nobility and cities of the county of Hainaut and the Southern Low Countries, in order to have a better understanding of the links and breaks between the different social and architectural groups. The link with the rural settlement is established concerning the following elements :drawbridges, moats, arrow slits, green spaces and water structures, farms, towers, plans and houses typologies, materials and their quality, interiors, openings and styles, coats of arms. The intermediate category of the settlement of the rural elites is also considered, as the architectural types are close to the gentry’s settlement. This category is examined on an architectural and social point of view.

The link with the settlement of the cities and the high nobility is also studied, allowing to see a lack of link between the different categories at least until the end of the 17th century.

In the last chapters, the gentry’s settlement of Hainault is replaced in the context of the Southern Low Countries, through a comparative approach. We also consider the link with this kind of settlement and the tradition and the modernity, as well as the link with the social status of their inhabitants and builders.

The conclusion is the occasion to remind all the characteristics of the gentry’s settlement in Hainault, and the evolution of the architectural types through the centuries. Some comparisons with the same kind of settlement in surroundings countries are also established, opening new research perspectives. In the epilogue, we consider the buildings on a conservation, restoration and preservation point of view. The state of the art of the legislative situation is given, and prescriptions for a better future conservation are drawn, in order to avoid a disappearance of the architectural information, together with an important part of the history.

Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Simon’s independence required alternative bases for his own power that could not be found in the largely rhetorical refuge offered by a distant overlord. In the absence of support from above, Simon worked to cultivate relationships with his social peers and the lesser French nobility. Notably, however, outside of his immediate family, adherence to his cause more often came from his socially inferior neighbours and those with common spiritual devotions than from his wider kinship network. His extended family, of roughly equivalent social standing to himself, were more interested in following the French king in his campaigns to consolidate royal power than investing deeply in Simon’s crusade. However, those with similar ideological concerns or dependent on his success saw in Simon a charismatic and effective leader worthy of their allegiance.

Thanks to his part in the rediscovery of Lucretius in the Renaissance Poggio Bracciolini has been much in academic news recently. But he was always there as a part of the histories of that moment, in all its twists and turns, as an example of what it was to be a Renaissance humanist in the earlier part of the XVth century. He was born in 1380 and educated first in Arezzo. But he soon moved to Florence to become a notary and from his intellectual contacts there a little after 1403 he became a member of the entourage of Pope Benedict IX to remain all his life a member of the Papal court. But, in true humanist fashion, he was busy always with his writings, taking on a range of general subjects, nobility, the vicissitudes of Fortune and many others. Also, again in true humanist fashion, he was often involved in dispute with other scholars, most notably Lorenzo Valla. Yet, amidst all this activity, he had time to travel throughout Europe, scouring libraries to uncover, as with Lucretius, long neglected texts. But perhaps his most notable achievement was the design of a new script, moving away from the less legible texts of medieval copyists to provide one, far easier to read, that was to become the model in Italy for the first printed books – as it is a model still for publishers. Few scholars of that moment can claim to have had so profound and persistent an influence on the spread of culture in Europe and beyond.

Even if for the gentry and nobility the double-standard was less restrictive of male conduct than, for example, Capp has argued, there is no question that contemporary expectations constrained the behaviour of females among the elite more severely than men. Still, this chapter explores the evidence for the extent and implications of illegitimate relationships conducted by elite females, and shows that they were far from uncommon and did not in every case lead to the most severe sanctions. It considers how the participants in such illegitimate relationships were described, and the gendered concepts implicit within those descriptions. As with that relating to the male gentry, the evidence here suggests that gentlewomen tended to become involved with men who, while some may have been servants, were themselves of relatively high status. Some of the more prominent women in this situation are considered, such as Elizabeth Parr, marchioness of Northampton, or Lady Florence Clifford, husband of Henry, 10th Lord Clifford, as are lesser known gentlewomen. The chapter considers how attitudes to these relationships, whether condemnatory, regulatory or less critical, changed over time.

For all the research that has been done into French politics and society in the fifty years before the Revolution, only a handful of serious studies have looked at the great noble families and the royal court. Moreover, the history of the army, where leading noble families dominated the upper ranks, has been integrated neither with that of the court, nor with that of intra-noble relations. This chapter therefore examines the most prestigious units of the French army — the privileged forces associated directly with the royal households — to bring together the history of the military and the court and suggest why, by the time the old regime collapsed in 1787–89, the great nobility was at loggerheads with the monarchy, and why relations between higher and lesser nobles had deteriorated a great deal since the reign of Louis XIV. The collapse of elite cohesion was ultimately disastrous for all concerned.

Chapter 5 explores how, following the restoration of relative peace and stability after the Norman conquest, several newly founded and important Italo-Greek monasteries developed their own independent legal jurisdictions on their own property. The chapter argues that the Normans’ opposition to papal and episcopal interference created a laissez-faire atmosphere in which Italo-Greek monks could continue to follow Byzantine canon law. Many such monasteries enjoyed the patronage of the Norman nobility throughout the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. These monasteries were responsible for producing the majority of surviving nomocanons from medieval southern Italy. It divides them into two broad categories: the royal archimandritates (monastic federations) of Rossano and Messina; and lesser archimandritates and autodespotic (independent) monasteries such as SS Elias and Anastasios of Carbone and St Nicholas of Casole. It observes that the production of a monastic nomocanon was closely linked to a monastery’s acquisition of legal privileges from the kings of Sicily, indicating that they were produced to meet a practical legal need and not simply out of academic curiosity. Lastly, the chapter asks how Italo-Greek monks under Norman rule perceived their relationship to papal jurisdiction, using the examples of Bartholomew of Grottaferrata’s comments on papal legislation and Neilos Doxapatres’ work on the Order of the Patriarchal Thrones to show that they still felt themselves to be a part of the legal sphere of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Focusing on the violent actions of the Jacques, this chapter shows that the revolt was directed against the nobility as a social group, rather than against the rebels’ lords. Although some chroniclers depicted the Jacques’ violence as inhumanely cruel, accusing them of indiscriminate killing of women and children and gruesome rapes, the judicial sources suggest a much less violent picture. While over two dozen nobles perished at the Jacques’ hands, they were almost exclusively adult men. There is almost no judicial evidence of rape, though given the near certainty of under-reporting, it cannot be ruled out. Property damages, especially the destruction of nobles’ houses and fortresses, was the primary objective of the Jacques’ violence. Some of this was directed against the Dauphin’s partisans, destroying their infrastructural advantage and diverting forces away from an assault on Paris. Some of it, perhaps especially later in the revolt, was directed against supporters of Navarre. But not all Jacques were united behind—or perhaps even aware of—these objectives, and there is evidence of disagreement amongst the rebels over targets and tactics. Much of the violence also had a dimension of social criticism linked to the nobility’s military failures and its members’ conspicuous consumption, and some of it had a festive element, involving dancing and dressing up.

This chapter examines the consequences of Augustan experiments for the discourse of pride as a whole. Where one might have expected a coherent strand of positive pride to have emerged, this turns out not to be the case: the presence of positive pride in later Latin literature is minor, intermittent, and fragmented. The chapter analyzes the identifiable examples of positive pride in four groups, which differ in their organization: the continued expression of poetic pride; its eventual, if qualified extension into public contexts; and two related, but distinct strands that show weaker, less emphatic positive or neutral meanings, as a trope of a place proud of its product (or parent proud of a child) and as a generic epithet in Flavian epic, signifying nobility, luxury, and vague generalized greatness.

This chapter examines Sir Francis Bacon's notion of the public and the private by offering a reading of his Essays and Aphorismi de Jure Gentium Maiore Sive de Fontibus Justiciae et Juris. Bacon was skeptical that a vision of state and commonwealth that placed its hopes in social distance and an exemplary class could really deliver the public-minded service and broader contentment needed. What he saw was envy, competitive behavior of the wrong sort, emulation, and idleness. His theory of the commonwealth was a reflection on how social and political organization could transform and channel these competitive behaviors. The chapter also considers Bacon's argument that the ideal type of behavior required true talent and the capacity to actually accomplish things; those who sought office to serve others, even if not from the nobility, were no less public-minded and their motivations no more private.

Alexander’s conquests were both aided and hampered by internal divisions in both West and East. The rivalry of the Greek city-states, Athens, Thebes, and Sparta, limited their willingness and ability to cooperate with one another and made them easy prey for the Macedonian conqueror. And here the principle of divide and conquer came into play. In the East the checkerboard of allies and enemies worked equally well, but the fact that beyond the Indus there were very few who had had a strong allegiance to the Achaemenids, and thus equally few to transfer this allegiance to Alexander. Not surprisingly these areas were the first to test the new master, now ensconced in his new capital virtually equidistant from the fringes. In the Achaemenid heartland, the Iranian nobility, whom Alexander had indulged in the hope of creating stability, reverted to their old ways—testing the power of the central authority for their own advantage. Persia had given them a long leash, but Alexander and his Successors were less forgiving. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of the empire under the new regime resulted as much from the aspirations of those who sought to replace Alexander as from agitations for “freedom” on the part of the conquered. They had, in fact, simply changed masters, and the rest—if Alexander had not died prematurely—would have been “business as usual.”