The minor or petty nobility is the lower nobility classes.
Petty nobility in Finland is dated at least back to the 13th century and was formed by nobles around their strategic interests. The idea was more capable peasants with leader roles in the local community that were given tax exemption for taking care of services like guard duties of local strongholds. Cavalry service was not required from these petty noble families. Later on, many of these petty noble families gained full nobility ranking.
Finnish Vehkalahti is particularly noted in literature for having been an example of such petty nobility (Finnish: knaappiaateli).
The Niederer Adel that held legal privileges until 1918 greater than those enjoyed by commoners, but less than those enjoyed by the Hochadel, were considered part of the lower nobility or Niederer Adel. Most were untitled, only making use of the particle von in their surnames.
Common nobility (Hungarian: Köznemesség, Latin: Nobiles) is defined as any noble, with a lower title than a baron, while those of higher rank are called Arch-nobles (főúr or főnemes). Along with High priests, these were the three estates of the medieval estate societies. They evolved from Royal servants, Castle serfs, and Armal nobles (Hungarian: Armális nemes, means a noble posessing an armális). [1] [2] Ten-lanced nobles were technically also part of this group. Later, in the 14th–15th centuries many have become Affleunt Landed nobles (Latin: nobiles benepossessionati) who usually had 4–10 villages. Thanks to the large number of people obtaining land and/or noble title if they have achieved military success, in the 18th century, the country was also known as the Country of the Many Nobles, since the proportion of nobility among Hungarians could reach 8% (compare to 0.5% in France).
Although the privileges of the nobles and agilis (a serf married to a noblewoman) were taken away in the Revolution of 1848, they played an important role in the country's history afterwards. The fact that politics and the intelligentsia were largely made up of common and arch- nobility until the first half of the 20th century, allowed the country to undergo a stable Industrial Revolution. The Latin names are available because Latin was the language of legislation from the reign of Stephen I until the Era of Civil Reforms of Hungary. The gentry (Hungarian: Kisnemes) were part of this group but had small feudal manors (Jobbágytelek) later developed into the gentries of capitalist society. They usually only had 3 feudal manors. Their subcategories are:
They name hétszilvafás "having only seven plum trees" referred to impoverished nobles or armal nobles, signifying the size of their land and were considered to be below the gentry. They were also called bocskoros nemes, since the symbolic difference is that wealthy people wore boots, while poorer people wore a footwear called bocskor.
While the word közbírtok (Latin: compossessoratus) means the territory shared by the serfs, közbirtokos nemes refers to nobles who cultivate a territory together, without hierarchy. This type usually developed in the frontiers.
Due to the civic changes of the 19th century, they were either absorbed into the peasantry or the intellectual class. In the Habsburg era, their number was 125 000.
Someone above Petty nobility is called a Középnemes (Middle-noble). In Hungary, the civic transformation was led mainly by the liberal middle-nobility. The middle-nobles are defined as someone with 100–1000 holds (1 Hungarian hold equals 3586,25 m²) of land.
The nobility ( szlachta ) of Poland included petty nobility known as drobna szlachta. These were owners of a part of a village or owning no land at all, often referred to by a variety of colourful Polish terms such as:
The nobility (vlastela) of Serbia in the Middle Ages is roughly divided into magnates ( velikaši ), nobility (vlastela) and petty noblemen (vlasteličići). Sometimes, the division is made between vlastela (including "great" and "small" ones) and vlasteličići.
The vlasteličići (властеличићи) were the lower nobility class of Serbia. [4] It was a relatively numerous class of the small, warrior nobility, originating from the vojnici (warriors) from sources from the end of the 12th- and beginning of the 13th century. [5] They held villages, with full rights, [4] and in socioeconomic and legal terms stood below the vlastela. [6] They had military obligations, such as joining the army individually or with a group of men (soldiers), dependent on their wealth. [7]
Manorialism, also known as seigneurialism, the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes fortified manor house in which the lord of the manor and his dependants lived and administered a rural estate, and a population of labourers or serfs who worked the surrounding land to support themselves and the lord. These labourers fulfilled their obligations with labour time or in-kind produce at first, and later by cash payment as commercial activity increased. Manorialism was part of the feudal system.
The szlachta were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and, as a social class, dominated those states by exercising political rights and power. Szlachta as a class differed significantly from the feudal nobility of Western Europe. The estate was officially abolished in 1921 by the March Constitution.
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.
The term magnate, from the late Latin magnas, a great man, itself from Latin magnus, "great", means a man from the higher nobility, a man who belongs to the high office-holders or a man in a high social position, by birth, wealth or other qualities in Western Christian countries since the medieval period. It also includes the members of the higher clergy, such as bishops, archbishops and cardinals. In reference to the medieval, the term is often used to distinguish higher territorial landowners and warlords, such as counts, earls, dukes, and territorial-princes from the baronage, and in Poland for the richest szlachta.
The Nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or Greater Lithuanian szlachta was historically a legally privileged hereditary elite class in the Kingdom of Lithuania, Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth consisting of Lithuanians from Lithuania Proper; Samogitians from Duchy of Samogitia; following Lithuania's eastward expansion into what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, many ethnically Ruthenian noble families (boyars); and, later on, predominantly Baltic German families from the Duchy of Livonia and Inflanty Voivodeship. It traced its origins via Palemonids to Polemon II of Pontus.
Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The titles date to the English feudal system. The lord enjoyed manorial rights as well as seignory, the right to grant or draw benefit from the estate. The title continues in modern England and Wales as a legally recognised form of property that can be held independently of its historical rights. It may belong entirely to one person or be a moiety shared with other people. The title is known as Breyr in Welsh.
False titles of nobility or royal title scams are claimed titles of social rank that have been fabricated or assumed by an individual or family without recognition by the authorities of a country in which titles of nobility exist or once existed. They have received an increasing amount of press attention, as more schemes that purport to confer or sell such honorifics are promoted on the internet. Concern about the use of titles which lack legal standing or a basis in tradition has prompted increased vigilance and denunciation, although under English common law a person may choose to be known by any name they see fit as long as it is not done to "commit fraud or evade an obligation".
The emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.
Unio Trium Nationum was a pact of mutual aid codified in 1438 by three Estates of Transylvania: the nobility, the Saxon (German) patrician class, and the free military Székelys. The union was directed against the whole of the peasantry, regardless of ethnicity, in response to the Transylvanian peasant revolt.
The Russian nobility or dvoryanstvo arose in the Middle Ages. In 1914, it consisted of approximately 1,900,000 members, out of a total population of 138,200,000. Up until the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian noble estates staffed most of the Russian government and possessed a self-governing body, the Assembly of the Nobility.
In the Kingdom of England from the 12th to 15th centuries, a franklin was a member of a certain social class or rank. In the Middle English period, a franklin was simply a freeman; that is, a man who was not a serf. In the feudal system under which people were tied to land which they did not own, serfs were in bondage to a member of the nobility who owned that land. The surname "Fry", derived from the Old English "frig", indicates a similar social origin.
Polish landed gentry was a social group or class of hereditary landowners who held manorial estates. Historically, ziemianie consisted of hereditary nobles (szlachta) and landed commoners. The Statutes of Piotrków (1496) restricted the right to hold manorial lordships to hereditary nobility. The non-nobles thus had to either sell their estates to the lords or seek a formal ennoblement for themselves, or had their property taken away. A rare exception was the burgesses of certain specially privileged "ennobled" royal cities who were titled "nobilis" and were allowed to buy and inherit manorial estates and exercise their privileges and monopolies. Therefore, in the szlachta-dominated Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth there was almost no landed gentry in the English meaning of the term, i.e. commoners who owned landed estates. With the Partitions these restrictions were loosened and finally any commoner could buy or inherit land. This made the 20th-century Polish landed gentry consist mostly of hereditary nobles, but also of others.
The Ruthenian nobility originated in the territories of Kievan Rus' and Galicia–Volhynia, which were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Russian and Austrian Empires. The Ruthenian nobility became increasingly polonized and later russified, while retaining a separate cultural identity.
Gentry are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Gentry, in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates, upper levels of the clergy, or "gentle" families of long descent who in some cases never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income or at least had a country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term gentry refers to the landed gentry: the majority of the land-owning social class who typically had a coat of arms but did not have a peerage. The adjective "patrician" describes in comparison other analogous traditional social elite strata based in cities, such as the free cities of Italy and the free imperial cities of Germany, Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League.
Georgian feudalism, or patronkmoba, as the system of personal dependence or vassalage in ancient and medieval Georgia is referred to, arose from a tribal-dynastic organization of society upon which was imposed, by royal authority, an official hierarchy of regional governors, local officials and subordinates. It is thought to have its roots into the ancient Georgian, or Iberian, society of Hellenistic period.
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteristics associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles or simply formal functions, and vary by country and by era. Membership in the nobility, including rights and responsibilities, is typically hereditary and patrilineal.
The shlyakhta were a noble class of Ruthenians in what is now Western Ukraine that enjoyed certain legal and social privileges. Estimates of their numbers vary. According to one estimate, by the mid-19th century, there were approximately 32,000 Ukrainian nobles in the western Ukrainian territory of Galicia, over 25% of whom lived in 21 villages near the town of Sambir. They comprised less than 2% of the ethnic Ukrainian population. Other estimates place the number of nobles at 67,000 people at the end of the 18th century and 260,000 by the end of the 19th century, or approximately 6% of the ethnic Ukrainian population. The nobles tended to live in compact settlements either in villages populated mostly by nobles or in particular areas of larger villages.
Serfdom has a long history that dates to ancient times.
Serbian nobility refers to the historical privileged order or class (aristocracy) of Serbia, that is, the medieval Serbian states, and after the Ottoman conquests of Serbian lands in the 15th and 16th centuries, Serbian noble families of the Kingdom of Hungary, Republic of Venice, and the Habsburg monarchy. Some Serbian families were also ennobled in Russian Empire. With the independence of Serbia in the 19th century, a new aristocracy arose.
Odnodvortsy was a social group of the Russian gentry in the late 17th — mid-19th centuries. Those of this group who failed to prove nobility or regain it through the Table of Ranks were ranked with the state peasantry.