Text | Zhuge Chronicle
Editor|Zhuge Chronicle
introduction
In most countries of Europe, society and politics were dominated by the power enjoyed by the aristocracy in the early modern period, both as individuals and as a social group. However, aristocratic hegemony remained controversial, but after adapting to political and cultural changes, the aristocracy maintained its dominance for the most part by integrating competing social elites until the late 18th century.
Although the noble elites throughout Europe were defined according to different local and national customs and legal standards, nevertheless, noble men and women from different countries tended to recognize each other as members of the same social class, united by a special sense of honor and adhering to common values.
Definition of nobility
Nobility and aristocratic women were most easily defined as members of a social group, enjoying certain hereditary privileges and social status, claiming to be the continuation of a particular way of life and social practice, designed to ensure that non-aristocrats were excluded from elite circles. However, in the early modern period, there was no clear legal provision for the distinction between the lower aristocracy (i.e., simple gentlemen) and merely ordinary nobility. The ability to maintain one's life according to a particular social code of conduct is the main reason why a person or family becomes an aristocrat.
In most European countries, the aristocracy wished to own land, preferably fiefdoms, with kings or secular people serving as tenants or church tycoons. They also expect to lead a more casual life, or at least avoid business activities that are considered degrading, such as retail transactions, food service, etc. In many countries, military strength and the virtues of warriors were important ideals that governed the behavior of the nobility.
However, many monarchs and princes tried to gradually control the acquisition of nobility more strictly. To some extent this was necessary because increasing taxes made nobility more dangerously attractive, and a royal decree of 1579 in France stipulated that people of non-noble origin should still be members of the third estate after buying fiefs of the nobility, so that nobility was outlawed, however it took decades to enforce this legislation.
In fact, it was not until the reign of Louis XIV in the 60s of the 17th century that a systematic investigation was carried out to purge the falsions from the real nobility, and it was more difficult to control the social status of the nobility on a national scale. However, people tend to move away from criteria based on aristocratic society, based on custom and informal social standards, while prestige is a noble idea, and written testimonials and letters based on royalty are also widely available.
Outside France, however, it was often not ordinary churches, but noble groups, such as cathedral chapters or parliaments of various classes, taking the lead in erecting barriers for newcomers to society and defining aristocracy more narrowly.
When aristocratic corporations tried to exclude the families of the new aristocracy, titles conferred by kings and monarchs, especially in times of political or financial crisis, undermined the idea of natural nobility, which did not require royal or or princely approval to be valid natural nobility.
In most European countries, the aristocracy and the lower aristocracy were increasingly defined by legal standards, and the English aristocracy was an exception to this rule. This was partly because gentlemen had to pay the same taxes as other royal subjects, and the king had little interest in restricting access to nobility.
In essence, if a person feels rich and powerful enough not to be ridiculed, he can receive the title of "gentleman". In the 18th century, the title "gentleman" became increasingly common, widely used by the respected urban middle class, and sometimes even by wealthy shopkeepers.
A sight of aristocratic society
The contrast between the English gentlemen and the continental aristocracy is an example of the heterogeneity of aristocratic society in early modern Europe. First of all, the number of aristocratic families and the per capita population vary greatly. In the peripheral countries of the eurozone, in Poland, Hungary and Castile, nobles and their families made up 5 to 10 percent of the population in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
In areas such as Asturias in northern Spain or Mazovia in Poland, the proportion sometimes rises to 25 or more, marked by long periods of war, and in the middle or late Middle Ages, where ordinary peasants were freed, often part of the nobility or with special military privileges.
In Germany and France in Central Europe, as well as in England (if gentlemen are included), up to 1 to 2%, or 3,3% of men and women can obtain nobility. This is more or less the norm in Europe; Areas such as southern Italy, Scandinavia and Bohemia had a low density of nobility, accounting for about 0.5% of the population in the 18th century.
The region with many nobles also had the most poor aristocratic families in the early modern period. This applies not only to the regions just mentioned, but also to parts of France, such as Brittany or the southwest, or countries such as Scotland. The original inheritance also did not help much, as it created a large number of noble heirs who stubbornly insisted on their status and inherited privileges, although the ancient family fortune had long been reduced.
On the other hand, primogeniture applied to aristocrats and aristocratic families in England, and it tended to create an elite with limited size but relatively solid wealth. Those younger sons no longer own enough real estate to quit the elite and become members of the urban or rural middle class, unless they manage to pursue successful careers as officials, lawyers, or soldiers (and sometimes even as businessmen), which may give them enough wealth and prestige to maintain their elite.
In the early modern period, many aristocratic families tried to defend their economic status by introducing forms of inheritance to ensure that immovable property could not be sold at will or distributed to multiple heirs. In strict settlement in England, the mayors of Spain, the mayors of Germany and the Habsburgs stipulated that younger sons receive only allowances and cash, not including smaller estates. Most of the family's fortune passed to the eldest son, but the eldest son could not sell the property.
This particular form of inheritance became increasingly popular in the 17th century, especially among the high aristocracy. The Spanish aristocracy, the Austrian and Bohemian magnates, and the great wealth of many English nobles were protected by this arrangement, and mismanagement caused by a succession of profligate heirs could still spell doom for the aristocratic dynasty.
The differences between these tycoons and the lower aristocracy, both in power and in culture, are striking. Although the size of aristocratic families, especially the number of male servants, declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, some magnates still employed a few hundred servants, while many simple country gentlemen could only afford one or two.
In the 16th century, the magnates and gentlemen of most European countries preferred to live in simple castles or manors. However, northern and central Italy, as well as large areas of Spain, especially the south, and southern France, are an exception to this rule. In fact, in northern Italy, the social group most easily classified as aristocratic is the urban aristocracy.
The economic power base of this group was initially trade and financial transactions, but later generations tended to prefer an invisible business activity. In France and elsewhere, the legal profession offers exceptional opportunities for aristocracy. Because most royal offices, including those of the Supreme Court, could be purchased and inherited, a hereditary class of officials formed in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that could claim nobility, noble robes.
In general, the distinction between the long-established urban elite and the rural elite gradually became less pronounced in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The urban aristocracy, such as the large families of Milan and Florence, and the regents of Amsterdam in the 18th century, adopted the style of the old feudal aristocracy. They bought fiefdoms, estates and jurisdictions, spoke and acted more and more like courtiers, and made their sons officers in the army.
At the same time, the rural aristocracy, their wealthier members, moved to the city, where they built palatial houses in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Large cities such as London, Paris, and Vienna, as well as smaller provincial cities, became centers of aristocratic life, especially in winter, when country life was too dull and uncomfortable. Those who had no way to leave their country homes, while the high culture of the court and the city, as well as the required manners and style, were abandoned and socially isolated in their villages, cutting off the patronage ties that the aristocratic magnates had in the past.
Privileges and powers
In most European countries, the nobility had more or less jurisdiction at the local level, from the right to adjudicate minor disputes over property or to punish minor misdemeanors, to the full power to impose the death penalty for capital crimes. Over time, kings and princes tended to limit the jurisdiction of the nobility or place it under the control of their own appellate courts. However, especially in eastern Central Europe (such as in Poland or Bohemia and Moravia, but in Germany east of the Elbe), the nobility ruled their villages – and sometimes small towns – until the mid-18th century and beyond.
Peasants were often serfs and severely restricted by individual freedom. They had to provide labor for the lord of the manor and could not marry or leave their farm without his consent. This strict unitarian system, which was designed to support the aristocracy in maintaining extensive family farms, did not have exactly the same farms in much of Western and Southern Europe.
However, in the Spanish Habsburgs, the country's financial crisis in the late 16th and 17th centuries led to a massive transfer of the royal family's judicial and taxation powers to aristocratic magnates and financiers, who were then often granted titles of nobility, integrated into ancient aristocratic life, described as a process of refeudalization. In kingdoms such as Sicily, Naples and Castile, the authority of the state was once eroded and weakened and replaced by great nobility.
Elsewhere, such as France, where agents of a central state, taxation, justice, and religious consistency, were more successful in challenging the preeminence of the local aristocracy, a process that historians often consider absolutism a triumph of absolutism over aristocratic power and freedom, however the relationship between royal power and aristocratic power was not a zero-sum game, i.e. the interests of one were necessarily the losses of the other.
Monarchs and their officials may have weakened the status of aristocratic warlords, such as Auvergne in France or Catalonia in Spain, but by the 18th century, monarchies also gave the nobles new status, privileges, and honor new legitimacy. In fact, a significant part of the aristocracy actively participated in the process of state-building and benefited from it in the form of government offices, pension monopolies, or because they were able to absorb official or unofficial taxes and a large part of the profits from taxes and taxes, as well as other public revenues.
It is undeniable that in many countries of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, such as the Habsburgs in France and Austria, there were serious tensions and conflicts between monarchs and nobles. Religious divisions, tensions between court aristocratic factions, royal minorities, dynastic succession crises, and the failure of traditional political institutions such as estate councils to integrate potential opposition forces and defuse conflicts have led to a series of violent confrontations, rebellions, and civil wars.
After about 1650, England achieved accommodation with traditional diets and provincial or national heritage, and as was customary, priests were right next to churches, under aristocratic rule, all coming to an end, and in many countries gradually declined. However, a new reconciliation was reached between the noble quest for prestige and status and the demands of the state.
Royal patronage succeeded in defusing the tension between the traditional notions of aristocratic honor and the honor bestowed on its servants by the monarchy. It was not until the late 18th century that this new social formation was challenged by the new non-aristocratic elite and the enlightened aristocracy themselves.
Author's point of view
The aristocracy and gentry class in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century echoed the feudal thinking of the Middle Ages, leaving a splendid page in European history.
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