Article : UsefulNotes/{{Nobility}}
Nobility is an concept describing a social group given some priviledges and obligation and, therefore, enjoying an exalted status relative to the rest of the society, commonly called "commoners."
Description
Nobility is a social group which can be defined by the following features:
- Service to the State and its ruler
- Landownership
- Closedness of the group, which can be really difficult or even impossible to enter in for a commoner
- Heredity of the appartnance to the class
- Personal and collective priviledges
Below are additional details about each of these criterias:
Service to the State
Nobility was a body defined by its service to the state; in most of the cases, the service was military, as with the Western knights or the Japanese Samurais: they were the warriors serving their lord on his battlefields.
With the societal and technological advances, nobility remained in the officer ranks and becoming Officer and a Gentleman; this situation of legal monopoly was frequently resented by the commoners, who were blocked from accessing prestigious or rentable high positions.
Nobility could also serve the state in the administration: the Russian chinovniks were public servants, along with the French noblesse de robe, and earlier the dux and other positions started by being Roman civil servants.
Landownership
As reward to their services to the States described supra, or as part of their service, nobles oftentimes reveided grants of lands, upon which they could exerce sovereign powers such as justive, taxation or coining.
It some case, it was the reverse, with some estates giving nobility to their owners.
These estates were often entailed, meaning they could never leave the family.
Exclusivity
Nobility was frequently, and after its birth in a given cultire, a body relatively hard to enter; in most of the cases, the font of honour
note alone was able to give nobility, and only heroics actions or giving a huge sum of money could make the trick.
The demographical importance of nobility was very small: in the Western Europe, not more than 1-2% of the population was noble.
In some cultures, only the current dynasty, and sometimes the former dynasts, were recognized as nobles.
Heredity
Nobility generally transmitted to the legitimate descendents of a noble male.
Of course, this would be too simple a situation and, so, we will see additional details about it.
Legitimate means here "born from a lawful marriage" in the regard of the local law and, so, illegetimate children were generally barred from receiving nobility from their father, excepted if the font of honour accepted to give them a title, in cases where the father was enough important.
If only the mother was noble, some cultures accepted to recognize nobility for the descendents.
Priviledges
Noble classes held both collective and individual priviledges.
They could be the sole persons to be able to hold some estates, such as "inhabited estates" in Russia (i.e. land to which serfs were bounds), be allowed to hold weapons, to have a particular dress, to hunt, to be tried in special courts or to have coats of arms.
Related to their role as servants of the state, they held powers of local administrations and were often the sole persons to even be able to influe on the national politics.
Exceptions to the general rules
Of course, as any person studying in social sciences can say, there is no exact laws on human and social behaviour, and, in some cultures, nobility can have a different interpretation of some of these criteras or even not have them; if service to the state is nearly universal, the three other features can be very diffetently interpreted.
- The Venetian nobility, along with the pariciat of Medieval communes, was a merchant aristocracy, whose wealth came from trade; as a result, they tended to not invest in agriculture until the fall of their trade empire forced them to develop their estates.
- As for exclusuvity, the Russian nobility was relatively easy to enter; as it maintained its original mission of service to the state, the Table of Ranks enabled any civil servant having gained a certain rank to be an hereditary noble (cf. infra); state of things which remained until the czar raised the stakes to keep nobility from bloating.
Due to the numerous occasions to gain nobility through combat and loot, Eastern and Central Europe countries had a numerous nobility: 10% of the population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was noble, along with one fourth of Hungary. - Finally, some nobilities had "nobles-for-life", that is, nobles whose descendents weren't certain to gain their parent's nobility: Imperial Russia had personnal nobles, civil servents whose rank wasn't enough high to elable them to have hereditary nobility. In the Empire of brazil, all titles were personal. Today, in the United Kingdom, knighthoods are not transmissible to the issue of the holder.
French First Empire had an interesting interpretation of the concept: nobles could transmit their titles to their sons, but there was a catch: they had to create a majorat, or entailed landed estates or capital bound to the title, so as to avoid to create a poor nobility.
Imperial China had decrementing nobility: a man was given a nobility rank and each generation had a lower rank, meaning a generation could found itself ending as commoners.
History
We will tell the history of this isntitution in Western Europe since it will be the most known place by most of the readers.
Genesis
In Ancient Rome, the free men were divided in two categories, the patricians and the plebians, the second being subordinate and at the pay of the first, who held most of the land.
Eventually, plebians gained more and more rights and a new elite, the equites, whose wealth came from trade, was born.
When the Germanic barbarians invaded the Roman Empire, they often integrated themselves in this group of elite civil servants and landowners.
Thus, nobility was born. What will happen to this order after these events?
Zenith
The weakening of the public authority made the ruler more and more dependents on their counts; they had to give them more and more powers and more and more security in their tenancy, until finally heredity became the norm.
Decline
In the Renaissance, in a process which started centuries earlier, the government became more and more centralized.
The main sources of wealth switched from land to trade, empoering the merchants and craftsmen and further weakening the nobility, whose landed estates were less and less productive.
Both processes reduced the powers and the influence of the nobility since the new classes of merchants and magistrates wanted to be more than what the current social mores allowed, thereby endangering the positon of the nobility.
The Enlightenment made several persons question why the social stratifications existed, and the coup de grace came with the French Revolution, when the nobility was totally dispossessed, exiled and for some, executed.
Thereafter, the numerous privilegies of the nobility were progressibvely curtailed and abolished acoss Europe, although this process was slower the more East we went.
In order to maintain their ranks, the noble families had to marry the nouveaux riches who gained theyr money from trade or industry.
Nobility today
While the haydays of the concept of nobility are long past, part of their former influence still remains.
Of course, in monarchies, their influence is still important, with, in some countries such as Spain, Britain and Belgium, new persons being awarded titles.
Nobility in some countries and societies
We will describe, here, the specifics related to nobility in select countries, societies and cultures.
United Kingdom
See Knight FeverFrance
Germanic countries (Austria and Germany)
Central and Eastern Europe
Russia
Although semblable to the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, the situation in Russia deserved additional investigation.
Pre Peter the Great
The nobility of the polities of the current Russia were mainly dynasts and those free men to the service of the various princes and rulers; some of these men came from Scandinavia, Britain or Germany.
As reward for their service, they were given landed estates.
After Westernization
In order to have a class of men attached to him and his work, along with creating a civil service, Peter the Great created the Table of Ranks, a supplementary mean to enter the nobility; this table ranked public servants between them and, depending of the rank, gave nobility, whether for life or extending to descendents.
| Rank | Civil | Military/Naval |
| I | Chancellor | General field marshal/General-admiral |
| II | Active privy councillor | General/Admiral |
| III | Privy councillor | Lieutenant general/Vice admiral |
| IV | Active state councillor | Major general/Rear admiral |
| V | State councillor | Brigadier/Captain-commodore |
| VI | Collegiate Councillor | Colonel/Captain 1st rank |
| VII | Court councillor | Lieutenant colonel/Captain 2st rank |
| VIII | Collegiate assessor | Major/Captain 3st rank |
| IX | Titular councillor | Captain/Lieutnant |
| X | Collegiate secretary | Poruchik/Leytenant |
| XI | Naval secretary | (-) |
| XII | District secretary | Podporuchik/Michman |
| XIII | Provincial registrar | Podporuchik/(-) |
| XIV | Collegiate registrar | Cornet/Michman |
At the eve of the 1917 Revolutions, there existed the differents sorts of nobilities:
- Ancient nobility, descending from Rurik, the Rus' and their boyars
- Titled nobility, created after Peter the Great by awarding titles to deserving candidates
- Foreign nobility, principally Polish szlatcha and Baltic German barons
