Patricianship

Patricianship, the quality of belonging to a patriciate, began in the ancient world, where cities such as Ancient Rome had a class of patrician families whose members were the only people allowed to exercise many political functions. In the rise of European towns in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the patriciate, a limited group of families with a special constitutional position, in Henri Pirenne's view, [Pirenne, "Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade" (1927) offers a late, developed view of the "Pirenne thesis" with origins in articles on the origins of urban constitutions in 1895: see Henri Pirenne#Pirenne Thesis.] was the motive force.

With the establishment of the medieval Italian republics, the patriciate was a formally defined class of governing elite burgher families of many medieval republics, such as Venice, Florence and Genoa, and also in many of the Free imperial cities of Germany and Switzerland.

As in Ancient Rome, the status was inherited (sometimes through the female line as well as the male), and only male patricians could hold, or participate in elections for, most political offices. Often, as in Venice, non-patricians had next to no political rights. Lists were maintained of who had the status, of which the most famous is the Libro d'Oro ("Golden Book") of the Venetian Republic. From the fall of Hohenstaufen (1268)city-republics increasingly became principalities, like Milan and Verona, and the smaller ones were swallowed up by monarchical states or sometimes other republics, like Pisa and Siena by Florence, and any special role for the local patricians was restricted to municipal affairs. The few remaining patrician constitutions, notably that of Venice and Genoa, were swept away by the conquering French armies of the period after the French Revolution, though many patrician families remained socially and politically important, as some do to this day.

The "patricius" in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

There was an intermediate period under the Late Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire when the title was given to governors in the Western parts of the Empire, such as Sicily— Stilicho, Aetius and other fifth-century "magistri militari" usefully exemplify the role and scope of the "patricius" at this point. Later the role, like that of the Giudicati of Sardinia, acquired a judicial overtone, and was used by rulers who were often "de facto" independent of Imperial control, like Alberic II of Spoleto, "Patrician of Rome" from 932 to 954.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Byzantine emperors strategically used the title of "patricius", the highest honour they could award, to gain the support of the native princes of southern Italy in the contest with the Carolingian Empire for control of the region. The allegiance of the Principality of Salerno was bought in 887 by investing Prince Guaimar I, and again in 955 from Gisulf I. In 909 the Prince of Benevento, Landulf I, personally sought and received the title in Constantinople for both himself and his brother, Atenulf II. In forging the alliance that won the Battle of the Garigliano in 915, the Byzantine "strategos" Nicholas Picingli granted the title to John I and Docibilis II of Gaeta and Gregory IV and John II of Naples.

At this time there was usually only one "Patrician" for a particular city or territory at a time; in several cities in Sicily, like Catania and Messina, a one-man office of patrician was part of municipal government for much longer. Amalfi was ruled by a series of Patricians, the last of whom was elected Duke.

Formation of the European patriciates

Though often mistakenly so described, patrician families of Italian cities were not in their origins members of the territorial nobility, but members of the minor landowners, the bailiffs and stewards of the lords and bishops, against whose residual powers they led the struggles in establishing the urban communes. At Genoa the earliest records of trading partnerships are in documents of the early eleventh century; there the typical sleeping partner is a member of the local petty nobility with some capital to invest, and in the expansion of trade leading roles were taken by men who already held profitable positions in the feudal order, who received revenues from rents or customs tolls or market dues. Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to this first patrician class were added the families who had risen through trade, the Doria, Cigala and Lercari [A. B. Hibbert, "The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate" "Past and Present" No. 3 (February 1953:15-27) p.18.] In Milan, the earliest consuls were chosen from among the "valvasores", "capitanei" and "cives". H. Sapori found the first patriaciates of Italian towns to usurp the public and financial functions of the overlord to have been drawn from such petty vassals, holders of heritable tenancies and rentiers who farmed out the agricultural labours of their holdings. [H. Sapori, article in "International Historical Congress" 1950, noted by Hibbert 1953 note 10.]

At a certain point it was necessary to obtain recognition of the independence of the city, and often its constitution, from either the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor - "free" cities in the Empire continued to owe alliegance to the Emperor, but without any intermediate rulers.

In the late Middle Ages and early modern period patricians also acquired noble titles, sometimes simply by acquiring domains in the surrounding "contado" that carried a heritable fief. However in practice the status and wealth of the patrician families of the great republics was higher than that of most nobles, as money economy spread and the profitability and prerogatives of land-holding eroded, and they were accepted as of similar status. The Republic of Genoa had a separate class, much smaller, of nobility, originating with rural magnates who joined their interests with the fledgling city-state. Some cities, such as Naples and Rome, which had never been republics, also had patrician classes, though most holders also had noble titles.

Subsequently "patrician" became a vaguer term used for aristocrats and elite bourgeoisie in many countries.

Transformations within patriciates

In some Italian cities an early patriciate drawn from the minor nobles and feudal officials took a direct interest in trade, notably the textile trade and the long-distance trade in spices and luxuries as it expanded, and were transformed in the process. In others, the inflexibility of the patriciate would build up powerful forces excluded from its ranks, and in an urban coup the great mercantile interests would overthrow the "grandi", without overthrowing the urban order, but simply filling its formal bodies with members drawn from the new ranks, or rewriting the constitution to allow more power to the "populo". Florence, in 1244, came rather late in the peak period of these transformations, which was between 1197, when Lucca followed this route, and 1257, when Genoa adopted similar changes. [Hall, Peter. "Cities in Civilization", p. 91, 1999, Phoenix, London, ISBN0753808153] However Florence was to have other upheavals, reducing the power of the patrician class, in the movement leading to the Ordinances of Justice in 1293, and the Revolt of the Ciompi in 1378.

Of the major republics, only Venice managed to retain an exclusively patrician government, which survived until Napoleon. In Venice, where the exclusive patritiate reserved to itself all power of directing the "Serenissima Repubblica" and erected legal barriers to protect the state increased its scrutiny over the composition of its patriciate in the generation after the Battle of Chioggia. Venetians with a disputed claim to the patriciate were required to present to the "avogadori di commun" established to adjudicate such claims a genealogy called a "prova di nobiltà", a "test of nobility". This was patricularly required of Venetian colonial elite in outlying regions of the Venetian thalassocracy, as in Crete, a key Venetian colony 1211-1669, and a frontier between Venetian and Byzantine, then Ottoman, zones of power. For Venetians in Venice, the "prova di nobiltà" was simply a "pro forma" rite of passage to adulthood, attested by family and neighbors; for the colonial Venetian elite in Crete the politicial and economic privileges weighed with the social ones, and for the Republic, a local patriciate in Crete with loyalty ties to Venice expressed through connective lineages was of paramount importance. [Monique O'Connell, "The Venetian Patriciate in the Mediterranean: Legal Identity and Lineage in Fifteenth-Century Venetian Crete", "Renaissance Quarterly" 57.2 (Summer 2004:466-493); Stanley Chojnacki has also studied the Venetian patriciate in a number of articles.]

Recruitment to patriciates

Active recruitment of rich new blood was also a character of some more flexible patriciates., which drew in members of the mercantile elite, through "ad hoc" partnerships in ventures, which became more permanently cemented by marriage alliances. "In such cases an upper group, part feudal-aristocratic, part mercantile would arise, a group of mixed nature like the 'magnates' of Bologna,formed of nobles made "bourgeois" by business, and "bourgeois" ennobled by city decree, both fused together in law." [Hibbert 1953:19.] Others, like Venice, tightly restricted membership, which was closed in 1297, though some families, the "case nuove" or "new houses" were allowed to join in the 14th century, after which membership was frozen.

German cities of the Holy Roman Empire

Beginning in the 11th century, a privileged class which much later came to be called "Patrizier" [This word is used for both the singular and plural form.] formed in the German-speaking imperial cities. Besides wealthy merchant burghers, they were recruited from the ranks of imperial knights, administrators and ministeriales; the latter two groups were accepted even when they were not freemen. German medieval patricians did not refer to themselves as such. Instead, they would point to their belonging to certain families or "houses", as documented for Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Nuremberg, among other cities. The use of the word "Patrizier" to refer to the most privileged segment of urban society dates back not to the Middle Ages but to the Renaissance. In 1516 the Nuremberg councillor and jurist Dr. Christoph Scheuerl (1481–1542) was commissioned by Dr. Johann Staupitz, the vicar general of the order of St. Augustine, to draft a précis of the Nuremberg constitution, presented on 15 December 1516 in the form of a letter. Because the letter was composed in Latin, Scheuerl referred to the Nuremberg "houses" as "patricii", making ready use of the obvious analogy to the constitution of ancient Rome. His contemporaries soon turned this into the loan words "Patriziat" and "Patrizier" for patricianship and patricians. However, this usage did not become common until the 17th and 18th centuries.

The "Patrizier" filled the seats of town councils and appropriated other important civic offices to themselves. They tried to establish their exclusive right to these offices, making the "Patrizier" the only families eligible for election to the town council. For this purpose they assembled in guilds and asserted a hereditary claim to the coveted offices. In Frankfurt the Patrizier societies began to bar admittance of new families in the second half of the 16th century. The industrious Calvinist refugees from the southern Netherlands made substantial contributions to the city's commerce. But their advancement was largely limited to the material sphere. At the time this was summed up as, cquote|The Roman Catholics have the churches, the Lutherans have the power, and the Calvinists have the money. [Körner, p. XIII. Later, the Huguenot refugees flocking to Frankfurt following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by French king Louis XIV in 1685 proved similarly valuable additions to the city's economy, but they too found membership in the "Patrizier" societies elusive.] Jews were in any case never even considered for membership in "Patrizier" societies. Unlike non-Lutheran Christians and until their partial emancipation brought on by Napoleonic occupation, however, other avenues to advancement in society were also closed to them.

As in the Italian republics, this was opposed by the craftsmen who were organized in guilds of their own ("Zünfte"). In the 13th century they began to challenge the prerogatives of the Patrizier and their guilds. Most of the time the "Zünfte" succeeded in achieving representation on a town's council. In Cologne, the city's entire administration was adapted to the constitution of the "Zünfte". In contrast, the "Patriziat" managed to preserve its dominance in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and in most Hanseatic cities.

"Patrizier" were considered the equal of feudal nobility (the "landed gentry"). Hence the "Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels" (= "Genealogical Handbook of Nobility") has always included families even without a title of nobility if there is proof that their progenitors belonged to hereditary "council houses" in German imperial cities by the 14th century. As in the Netherlands (see below), many "Patrizier" scoffed at the notion of ennoblement.

Johann Christian Senckenberg, the famous naturalist, commented, "An honest man is worth more than all the nobility and all the Barons. If anyone were to make me a Baron, I would call him a [female canine organ] or equally well a Baron. This is how much I care for any title." [quoted in August de Bary's biography of Senckenberg, 2004 reprint of 1947 edition, p. 162: "Ein ehrlicher Mann ist mehr als aller Adel und Baron. Wenn mich einer zum Baron machte, ich wollte ihn einen Hundsfott oder auch einen Baron schelten. So lieb sind mir alle Titel."]

In 1816, Frankfurt's new constitution abolished the privilege of heritable office for the "Patrizier". [ [http://www.frankfurt.frblog.de/frankfurt-lexikon/die-macht-der-patrizier Die Macht der Patrizier] , "Frankfurter Rundschau Online"] In Nuremberg, successive reforms first curtailed the "Patrizier" privileges (1794) and then effectively abolished them (1808), although they retained some vestiges of power until 1848.

Patricianship in The Netherlands

The Netherlands also knows a patriciate. It consists of extremely old and or well known Dutch families. These are registered in 'Het Nederlands' Patriciaat' colloquially called 'The Blue Book'. To be eligible for entry families must have played an active and important role in Dutch society, fulfilling high positions in the government, in prestigious commissions and in other prominent public posts for over six generations or 150 years.

The longer a family has been listed in the Blue Book the higher its esteem. The earliest entries are often families seen as coequal to the high nobility (barons and counts), because they are the younger branches of the same family or have continuously married members of the Dutch nobility over a long period of time.

These are 'regentenfamilies' whose forefathers were active in the administration of town councils, counties or the country itself during the Dutch Republic. Some of these families declined enoblement because they did not keep a title in such high regard. At the end of the 19th century they still proudly called themselves "patriciers". Other families belong to the patriciate because they are held in the same regard and respect as the nobility but for certain reasons never where ennobled. Even within the same important families there can be branches with and without noble titles.

The noble position of the lowest rank of the Dutch nobility; jonkheer, untitled nobility, could be seen as coequal to the average non-noble patrician family because the lower nobility in the Netherlands is becoming more common and less noble and is taking the form of the bourgeois, upper middleclass instead of the upper-class.

Patrician families in the Netherlands include
* Quarles van Ufford (one branch, of which is related to the actress Audrey Hepburn), and
* d'Abo (family producing two actresses and one musician
** Maryam D'Abo, actress
** Olivia D'Abo, actress, (daughter of Mike D'Abo below), and
** Mike D'Abo, musician

Notes

References

* Hans Körner: "Frankfurter Patrizier. Historisch-Genealogisches Handbuch der Adeligen Ganerbschaft des Hauses Alten-Limpurg zu Frankfurt am Main". Ernst Vögel (publishers), Munich, 1971. This book was published without an ISBN De icon
* J.Dronkers and H.Schijf (2004): "Huwelijken tussen adel en patriciaat: een middeel om hun eliteposities in een moderne samenleving in stand te houden?." Nl icon
* CBG. "Het Nederlands Patriciaat" Nl icon

External links

* The section German cities of the Holy Roman Empire above is based in part on Patrizier on the German Wikipedia
* [http://www.frankfurt.frblog.de/frankfurt-lexikon/die-macht-der-patrizier Die Macht der Patrizier] , "Frankfurter Rundschau Online" De icon

ee also

*Nobile
*Upper class