| Duke | |
|---|---|
 Heraldic depiction of a duke's coronet | |
| Peerage | France |
The title of Duke was the highest hereditary title in the French nobility during the time of the monarchy in France. [1]
| Duke | |
|---|---|
| Heraldic depiction of a duke's coronet | |
| Peerage | France |
The title of Duke was the highest hereditary title in the French nobility during the time of the monarchy in France. [1]
The highest precedence in the realm, attached to a feudal territory, was given to the twelve original pairies, which had originated in the Middle Ages and also had a traditional function in the royal coronation, comparable to the German imperial archoffices.
Half of them were Dukes and half of them Counts. Of these, three were ecclesiastical and three were secular. Of these twelve, the prelates all ranked above the secular peers of the realm and three temporal, and the dukes all ranked above the counts.
The Prince-Bishops with ducal territories included:
Later, the Archbishop of Paris was given the title of duc de Saint-Cloud with the dignity of peerage, but it was debated if he was an ecclesiastical peer or merely a bishop holding a lay peerage.
Under the House of Capet there were five laic duchies:
At the end of the 13th century, the King elevated some counties into duchies, a practice that increased through the early modern period until the French Revolution. Many of these duchies were also peerages, so-called new peerages.
Ducal titles traditionally held by princes of the royal blood:
Other notable ducal titles:
The title of Duke of France refers to the rulers of the Île de France, informally Francia. The dynasts of Robert the Strong's family are usually termed "Dukes of France" and their title evolved into the name for the French nation after one of their members, Hugh Capet, ascended the throne. Since the end of the monarchy, it has been used by pretenders to the French throne such as Jean, Count of Paris
After the French Revolution, further dukedoms were created by successive French rulers. Napoleon I created a substantial number of dukes in the Nobility of the First French Empire, largely for Marshals of the Empire and certain ministers, and many of them carried victory titles. The practice of creating dukedoms was continued by the House of Bourbon after the Restoration, and later by Napoleon III.
The title of "duke and peer" (Fr: duc et pair) is one of the highest honors in the French nobility, ranking just after the princes of the blood, which are themselves the direct descendants of the royal blood and are considered peers by birth.
The word peer comes from the Latin paris, meaning "equal in dignity".
The peers of the Middle Ages and of the modern period were not descended from the peers, or paladins, Carolingian heroes of song. They were descended from the great possessors of fiefs, members of the curia regis, since the duty to advise was vassalic obligation.
The ancient peerages of France were twelve: six were ecclesiastical and six were lay; six were counts and six were dukes. The ecclesiastical peers, joined in 1690 by the Archbishop of Paris, Duke of Saint-Cloud, François Harlay, survived intact until the Revolution of 1789. In contrast the original lay peerages disappeared with the gradual annexation of their territories to the royal domain. The peerage was then at the disposal of royalty who granted the dignity to his faithful servants. The creations (erections) were particularly numerous in the 17th and 18th centuries (19 from 1590–1660 and 15 from 1661–1723). Some families accumulated peerages, and in 1723, 38 families had 52 peerages. From the 17th century the peerage was conferred only to dukes. In 1789, there were 43 peers of which 6 were princes of the blood.
Peerage was normally hereditary in the male line, though the king could extend it to the female line and even to the collateral lines. It was extinguished with aristocratic lineage that had benefited from the creation. Ecclesiastical peerages were transmitted to the next holder of the episcopal see.
Since 1667, the political power of the peers was much reduced; they no longer attended the King's Council. In contrast, they could, when they wished, attend the sessions of the Parlement of Paris, where they could carry a sword to the chagrin of judges. They sat on the right of the First President in the order of their dignity and the date of the creation of their peerage. Except for lit de justice , they were first to give their opinion after the presidents and councilors of parliament.
The dignity was largely ceremonial. Peers occupied a spot directly below the members of the royal family (children and grandchildren of France and princes of the blood). The king addressed them "my cousin", and were called Monseigneur or Votre grandeur. They could dance with members of the royal family, enter the royal castles in their carriages, and duchesses were entitled to tabouret when with the queen. They participated in the king's coronation, if there were no princes of the blood or legitimated princes. The Duke of Saint-Simon is the greatest representative of peer attachment to their dignity; he fiercely defended their rights against encroachment.
The revenues of peers consisted of feudal dues, property income, salaries for functions exercised at Court and pensions granted by the king. In the 18th century the peerage became a caste, with over half of matrimonial alliances taking place between similarly-ranked families.
Styles represent the fashion by which monarchs and noblemen are properly addressed. Throughout history, many different styles were used, with little standardization. This page will detail the various styles used by royalty and nobility in Europe, in the final form arrived at in the nineteenth century.
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked below princess nobility and grand dukes. The title comes from French duc, itself from the Latin dux, 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank, and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province. In most countries, the word duchess is the female equivalent.
A duchy, also called a dukedom, is a medieval country, territory, fief, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess, a ruler hierarchically second to the king or queen in Western European tradition.
The House of Zähringen was a dynasty of Swabian nobility. The family's name derived from Zähringen Castle near Freiburg im Breisgau. The Zähringer in the 12th century used the title of Duke of Zähringen, in compensation for having conceded the title of Duke of Swabia to the Staufer in 1098. The Zähringer were granted the special title of Rector of Burgundy in 1127, and they continued to use both titles until the extinction of the ducal line in 1218.
Count is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. The etymologically related English term "county" denoted the territories associated with the countship.
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, GE, was a French soldier, diplomat, and memoirist. He was born in Paris at the Hôtel Selvois, 6 rue Taranne. The family's ducal peerage (duché-pairie), granted in 1635 to his father Claude de Rouvroy (1608–1693), served as both perspective and theme in Saint-Simon's life and writings. He was the second and last Duke of Saint-Simon.
The Peerage of France was a hereditary distinction within the French nobility which appeared in 1180 in the Middle Ages.
The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia (843–987); the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet (987–1328), including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities that had developed following the Viking invasions and through the piecemeal dismantling of the Carolingian Empire and the creation and extension of administrative/state control in the 13th century; and the rise of the House of Valois (1328–1589), including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, dominated by the Kingdom of England, cumulating in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), compounded by the catastrophic Black Death epidemic (1348), which laid the seeds for a more centralized and expanded state in the early modern period and the creation of a sense of French identity.
The Duchy of Normandy grew out of the 911 Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III of West Francia and the Viking leader Rollo. The duchy was named for its inhabitants, the Normans.
The Duchy of Burgundy emerged in the 9th century as one of the successors of the ancient Kingdom of the Burgundians, which after its conquest in 532 had formed a constituent part of the Frankish Empire. Upon the 9th-century partitions, the French remnants of the Burgundian kingdom were reduced to a ducal rank by King Robert II of France in 1004. Robert II's son and heir, King Henry I of France, inherited the duchy but ceded it to his younger brother Robert in 1032. Other portions had passed to the Imperial Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles, including the County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté).
In the Middle Ages, the duke of Normandy was the ruler of the Duchy of Normandy in north-western France. The duchy arose out of a grant of land to the Viking leader Rollo by the French king Charles III in 911. In 924 and again in 933, Normandy was expanded by royal grant. Rollo's male-line descendants continued to rule it until 1135. In 1202 the French king Philip II declared Normandy a forfeited fief and by 1204 his army had conquered it. It remained a French royal province thereafter, still called the Duchy of Normandy, but only occasionally granted to a duke of the royal house as an apanage.
Count of Guise and Duke of Guise were titles in the French nobility.
The family of d'Aumont is a French noble house which takes its name from Aumont, a small commune in the department of the Somme. The dukedom of Aumont in the peerage of France was created in 1665 for Antoine d'Aumont de Rochebaron (1601–1669), Marquis of Isles. For over two centuries, the Dukes of Aumont held the position of First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the king.
Prince étranger was a high, though somewhat ambiguous, rank at the French royal court of the Ancien Régime.
As Emperor of the French, Napoleon I created titles of nobility to institute a stable elite in the First French Empire, after the instability resulting from the French Revolution.
A courtesy title is a title that does not have legal significance but rather is used through custom or courtesy, particularly, in the context of nobility, the titles used by children of members of the nobility.
In the British peerage, a royal duke is a member of the British royal family, entitled to the titular dignity of prince and the style of His Royal Highness, who holds a dukedom. Dukedoms are the highest titles in the British roll of peerage, and the holders of these particular dukedoms are princes of the blood royal. The holders of the dukedoms are royal, not the titles themselves. They are titles created and bestowed on legitimate sons and male-line grandsons of the British monarch, usually upon reaching their majority or marriage. The titles can be inherited but cease to be called "royal" once they pass beyond the grandsons of a monarch. As with any peerage, once the title becomes extinct, it may subsequently be recreated by the reigning monarch at any time.
Duke, in the United Kingdom, is the highest-ranking hereditary title in all five peerages of the British Isles. A duke thus outranks all other holders of titles of nobility.
The former belonged to the highest rank of non-royal French nobility, and its head, the Duke, possessed the highest ...