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93-663: The first Lobkowiczs were members of the gentry of north-eastern Bohemia in the late 14th century. On 3 August 1459 they were granted the title of Freiherr . In the 17th century, members of the family were awarded with the title of Prince , which was granted to them on 17 October 1623 by Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor . In 1786, Emperor Joseph II further ennobled the 7th Prince when he created him Duke of Roudnice ( Herzog von Raudnitz in German, vévoda roudnický in Czech). The family's Imperial immediacy over Princely county of Störnstein

186-464: A coat of arms but did not have a peerage . The adjective " patrician " ("of or like a person of high social rank") describes in comparison other analogous traditional social elite strata based in cities, such as the free cities of Italy ( Venice and Genoa ) and the free imperial cities of Germany, Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League . The term "gentry" by itself, so Peter Coss argues,

279-438: A feature in the monarchies of Nordic countries . The gentility is primarily formed on the bases of the medieval societies' two higher estates of the realm, nobility and clergy , both exempted from taxation. Subsequent "gentle" families of long descent who never obtained official rights to bear a coat of arms were also admitted to the rural upper-class society: the gentry. The three estates The widespread three estates order

372-558: A feudal tradition did not have a nobility as such. The nobility of a person might be either inherited or earned. Nobility in its most general and strict sense is an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary: legitimate descendants (or all male descendants, in some societies) of nobles are nobles, unless explicitly stripped of the privilege. The terms aristocrat and aristocracy are a less formal means to refer to persons belonging to this social milieu . Historically in some cultures, members of an upper class often did not have to work for

465-456: A high but indeterminate social status. The most common occurrence of term Esquire today is the conferral as the suffix Esq. in order to pay an informal compliment to a male recipient by way of implying gentle birth . In the post-medieval world, the title of esquire came to apply to all men of the higher landed gentry; an esquire ranked socially above a gentleman but below a knight. In the modern world, where all men are assumed to be gentlemen,

558-508: A living, as they were supported by earned or inherited investments (often real estate), although members of the upper class may have had less actual money than merchants. Upper-class status commonly derived from the social position of one's family and not from one's own achievements or wealth. Much of the population that comprised the upper class consisted of aristocrats, ruling families, titled people , and religious hierarchs. These people were usually born into their status, and historically, there

651-719: A mass scale. Through dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), pre-historians could calibrate radiocarbon dates to a much higher degree of accuracy. And finally, before the 1970s, parts of eastern Europe and central Asia had been off-limits to Western scholars, while non-Western archaeologists did not have access to publication in Western peer-reviewed journals. The pioneering work of Marija Gimbutas , assisted by Colin Renfrew , at least partly addressed this problem by organizing expeditions and arranging for more academic collaboration between Western and non-Western scholars. The Kurgan hypothesis , which

744-569: A number of castles and estates were restored to different branches of the family. These estates included the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle (now a museum with a famous art collection), Nelahozeves Castle (also a museum), Roudnice Castle, Střekov Castle , Mělník Castle, Bílina Castle, Křimice Castle, Dolní Beřkovice Castle (inherited by the Thurn und Taxis family), Jezeří Castle (sold by

837-408: A page and squire (for a contemporary reference, see British honours system ). In formal protocol, Sir is the correct styling for a knight or for a baronet, used with (one of) the knight's given name (s) or full name, but not with the surname alone. The equivalent for a woman who holds the title in her own right is Dame ; for such women, the title Dame is used as Sir for a man, never before

930-511: A rather small group numerically, and the clergy , which were part of the so-called frälse (a classification defined by tax exemptions and representation in the diet ). At the head of the Swedish clergy stood the Archbishop of Uppsala since 1164. The clergy encompassed almost all the educated men of the day and furthermore was strengthened by considerable wealth, and thus it came naturally to play

1023-514: A result of greater specialisation. The "classic" formulation of the caste system as largely described by Georges Dumézil was that of a priestly or religiously occupied caste, a warrior caste, and a worker caste. Dumézil divided the Proto-Indo-Europeans into three categories: sovereignty , military , and productivity (see Trifunctional hypothesis ). He further subdivided sovereignty into two distinct and complementary sub-parts. One part

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1116-833: A significant political role. Until the Reformation, the clergy was the first estate but was relegated to the secular estate in the Protestant North Europe. In the Middle Ages, celibacy in the Catholic Church had been a natural barrier to the formation of an hereditary priestly class. After compulsory celibacy was abolished in Sweden during the Reformation , the formation of a hereditary priestly class became possible, whereby wealth and clerical positions were frequently inheritable. Hence

1209-419: A thousand years Europe was ruled by an order of guardians considerably like that which was visioned by our philosopher. During the Middle Ages it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores (workers), bellatores (soldiers), and oratores (clergy). The last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited sway half of

1302-566: A tight-knit hereditary caste. In the absence of a significant native nobility and enjoying a virtual monopoly on education and wealth within western Ukrainian society, the clergy came to form that group's native aristocracy. The clergy adopted Austria's role for them as bringers of culture and education to the Ukrainian countryside. Most Ukrainian social and political movements in Austrian-controlled territory emerged or were highly influenced by

1395-482: A tree), thus avoiding his end of the bargain. According to the authors, the reconstruction of this folktale to PIE implies that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had metallurgy, which in turn "suggests a plausible context for the cultural evolution of a tale about a cunning smith who attains a superhuman level of mastery over his craft". Researchers have made many attempts to identify particular prehistoric cultures with

1488-474: Is a construct applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. Titles, while often considered central to the upper class, are not strictly so. Both Captain Mark Phillips and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence , the respective first and second husbands of HRH Princess Anne , lacked any rank of peerage at

1581-494: Is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, but some scholars prefer a single, unified term. The Indo-Europeans who settled Europe , Central and Western Asia and the Indian subcontinent conceived their societies to be ordered (not divided) in a tripartite fashion, the three parts being castes. Castes came to be further divided, perhaps as

1674-465: Is a traditional British social class consisting of gentlemen in the original sense; that is, those who owned land in the form of country estates to such an extent that they were not required to actively work, except in an administrative capacity on their own lands. The estates were often (but not always) made up of tenanted farms , in which case the gentleman could live entirely off rent income. Gentlemen, ranking below esquires and above yeomen, form

1767-991: Is derived from the Russian kurgan (курга́н), meaning tumulus or burial mound. According to three autosomal DNA studies, haplogroups R1b and R1a, now the most common in Europe (R1a is also very common in South Asia ) would have expanded from the Pontic steppes, along with the Indo-European languages; they also detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European languages. Studies which analysed ancient human remains in Ireland and Portugal suggest that R1b

1860-569: Is not shared by most linguists, because proto-languages, like all languages before modern transport and communication, occupied small geographical areas over a limited time span, and were spoken by a set of close-knit communities– a tribe in the broad sense. Researchers have put forward a great variety of proposed locations for the first speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Few of these hypotheses have survived scrutiny by academic specialists in Indo-European studies sufficiently well to be included in modern academic debate. The Kurgan (or Steppe) hypothesis

1953-695: Is often used in English to describe the Polish landed gentry ( Polish : ziemiaństwo, ziemianie , from ziemia , "land"). They were the lesser members of the nobility (the szlachta ), contrasting with the much smaller but more powerful group of "magnate" families (sing. magnat , plural magnaci in Polish), the Magnates of Poland and Lithuania . Compared to the situation in England and some other parts of Europe, these two parts of

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2046-528: Is still used to refer to the branch that settled in Southern Asia). According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable people or tribe, but were a group of loosely-related populations that were ancestral to the later, still partially prehistoric, Bronze Age Indo-Europeans. This is believed especially by those archaeologists who posit an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this belief

2139-426: Is the basis for Greek and Germanic word forms which seem only to denote the ruling elite of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) society. In fact, the most accessible evidence available confirms only the existence of a common, but vague, socio-cultural designation of "nobility" associated with PIE society, such that Greek socio-cultural lexicon and Germanic proper names derived from this root remain insufficient to determine whether

2232-743: Is the most widely held theory as of 2017, depends upon linguistic and archaeological evidence, but is not universally accepted. It posits that the PIEs originated in the Pontic–Caspian steppe during the chalcolithic age. A minority of scholars prefer the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits an origin in Anatolia during the neolithic age. Other theories ( Armenian hypothesis , Out of India theory , paleolithic continuity theory , and Balkan hypothesis ) have only marginal scholarly support. In regard to terminology, in

2325-667: The Aegean (the linguistic ancestors of Mycenaean Greece ), the north of Europe ( Corded Ware culture ), the edges of Central Asia ( Yamnaya culture ), and southern Siberia ( Afanasievo culture ). Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European In

2418-662: The American upper class in the colonial South. The Colonial American use of gentry was not common. Historians use it to refer to rich landowners in the South before 1776. Typically large scale landowners rented out farms to white tenant farmers. North of Maryland, there were few large comparable rural estates, except in the Dutch domains in the Hudson Valley of New York. The British upper classes consist of two sometimes overlapping entities,

2511-533: The Anatolian hypothesis , in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective Urheimaten suggested, diverging from the time-frame suggested there by a full three millennia. The Anatolian hypothesis , notably advocated by Colin Renfrew from the 1980s onwards, proposes that the Indo-European languages spread peacefully into Europe from Anatolia from around 7000 BC with the Neolithic Revolution 's advance of farming ( wave of advance ). The culture of

2604-517: The Anatolian languages in its scenario. The phonological peculiarities of PIE proposed in the glottalic theory would be best preserved in the Armenian language and the Germanic languages , the former assuming the role of the dialect which remained in situ , implied to be particularly archaic in spite of its late attestation. Proto-Greek would be practically equivalent to Mycenean Greek and would date to

2697-464: The English Civil War of the 17th century. R. H. Tawney had suggested in 1941 that there was a major economic crisis for the nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that the rapidly rising gentry class was demanding a share of power. When the aristocracy resisted, Tawney argued, the gentry launched the civil war. After heated debate, historians generally concluded that the role of the gentry

2790-679: The Iberian Peninsula and against the Ottomans in the Balkans —helped to develop a sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe's deep political divisions. The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and Latin West . In Plato 's ideal state there are three major classes (producers, auxiliaries and guardians), which was representative of

2883-623: The Late Neolithic period (6,400–3,500 BC). Mainstream scholars place them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe across Eurasia (this steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania , through Moldova , and southern and eastern Ukraine , through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia , and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan , adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to

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2976-540: The Union of Lublin in 1569, they became less distinguishable from Polish szlachta , although preserved Lithuanian national awareness. In Hungary during the late 19th and early 20th century gentry (sometimes spelled as dzsentri ) were nobility without land who often sought employment as civil servants, army officers, or went into politics. In the history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , "gentry"

3069-476: 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

3162-503: The northern Caucasus of southern Russia , and into the lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan ), expanded into the area through several waves of migration during the 3rd millennium BCE, coinciding with the taming of the horse . Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see Corded Ware culture ), they subjugated the supposedly peaceful, egalitarian, and matrilinear European neolithic farmers of Gimbutas' Old Europe . A modified form of this theory, by J. P. Mallory , which dates

3255-468: The peerage and landed gentry . In the British peerage, only the senior family member (typically the eldest son) inherits a substantive title (duke, marquess, earl, viscount, baron); these are referred to as peers or lords. The rest of the nobility form part of the "landed gentry" (abbreviated "gentry"). The members of the gentry usually bear no titles but can be described as esquire or gentleman. Exceptions are

3348-806: The state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380 that allowed it to happen. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, there emerged no single powerful secular government in the West, but there was a central ecclesiastical power in Rome, the Catholic Church. In this power vacuum, the Church rose to become the dominant power in the West for the start of this time period. In essence,

3441-459: The szlachta , and a few patrician bughers from some cities, were allowed to own rural estates of any size, as part of the very extensive szlachta privileges . These restrictions were reduced or removed after the Partitions of Poland, and commoner landowners began to emerge. By the 19th century, there were at least 60,000 szlachta families, most rather poor, and many no longer owning land. By then

3534-410: The "gentry" included many non-noble landowners. In Spanish nobility and former Portuguese nobility, see hidalgos and infanzones . In Sweden, there was no outright serfdom . Hence, the gentry was a class of well-off citizens that had grown from the wealthier or more powerful members of the peasantry. The two historically legally privileged classes in Sweden were the Swedish nobility ( Adeln ) ,

3627-576: The 17th century BC, closely associating Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (viz., Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age , including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites ). The Armenian hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European ( sans Anatolian), a full millennium later than the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis . In this, it figures as an opposite to

3720-550: The 19th and early 20th centuries, the term Aryan was used to refer to the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants. However, Aryan more properly applies to the Indo-Iranians , the Indo-European branch that settled parts of the Middle East and South Asia, as only Indic and Iranian languages explicitly affirm the term as a self-designation referring to the entirety of their people, whereas the same Proto-Indo-European root (*aryo-)

3813-455: The Confucian scholar gentry that would – for the most part – make up most of the bureaucracy. This caste would comprise both the more-or-less hereditary aristocracy as well as the meritocratic scholars that rise through the rank by public service and, later, by imperial exams. Some sources, such as Xunzi , list farmers before the gentry, based on the Confucian view that they directly contributed to

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3906-536: The Devil , can be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European period. This story, found in contemporary Indo-European folktales from Scandinavia to India, describes a blacksmith who offers his soul to a malevolent being (commonly a devil in modern versions of the tale) in exchange for the ability to weld any kind of materials together. The blacksmith then uses his new ability to stick the devil to an immovable object (often

3999-497: The French Revolution), despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other social classes. Power began to shift from upper-class landed families to the general population in the early modern age , leading to marital alliances between the two groups, providing the foundation for the modern upper classes in the West. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often also members of the titled nobility, though not necessarily:

4092-505: The Gentry (Frälse), i.e., priests and nobles. The names of these were usually in Swedish, Latin, German or Greek. The adoption of Latin names was first used by the Catholic clergy in the 15th century. The given name was preceded by Herr (Sir), such as Herr Lars, Herr Olof, Herr Hans, followed by a Latinized form of patronymic names, e.g., Lars Petersson Latinized as Laurentius Petri. Starting from

4185-460: The Indo-Europeans as inferred by linguistic reconstruction raises difficulties for this theory, since early neolithic cultures lacked the horse, the wheel, and metal – terms for all of which are securely reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Renfrew dismisses this argument, comparing such reconstructions to a theory that the presence of the word " café " in all modern Romance languages implies that

4278-482: The Proto-Indo-European-speaking peoples, but all of such theories remain speculative. The scholars of the 1800s who first tackled the question of the Indo-Europeans' original homeland (also called Urheimat , from German ), had essentially only linguistic evidence. They attempted a rough localization by reconstructing the names of plants and animals (importantly the beech and the salmon ) as well as

4371-588: The ancient Romans are the ancestors of the French, the Romanians, and the Brazilians. The Indo-Europeans were a people in the sense of a linguistic community. We should probably think of them as a loose network of clans and tribes, inhabiting a coherent territory of limited size." While 'Proto-Indo-Europeans' is used in scholarship to designate the group of speakers associated with the reconstructed proto-language and culture,

4464-571: The ancient Romans had cafés too. Another argument, made by proponents of the steppe Urheimat (such as David Anthony) against Renfrew, points to the fact that ancient Anatolia is known to have been inhabited in the 2nd millennium BC by non-Indo-European-speaking peoples, namely the Hattians (perhaps North Caucasian -speaking), the Chalybes (language unknown), and the Hurrians ( Hurro-Urartian ). Following

4557-433: The bishops and the vicars, who formed the clerical upper class, would frequently have manors similar to those of other country gentry. Hence continued the medieval Church legacy of the intermingling between noble class and clerical upper class and the intermarriage as the distinctive element in several Nordic countries after the Reformation. Surnames in Sweden can be traced to the 15th century, when they were first used by

4650-636: The castes which flourished on the Indian subcontinent and amongst the Italic peoples . Examples of the Indo-European castes: Kings were born out of the warrior or noble class, and sometimes the priesthood class, like in India. Emperor Constantine convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed included belief in "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". Emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity

4743-437: The clergy themselves or by their children. This influence was so great that western Ukrainians were accused of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine by their Polish rivals. The central role played by the Ukrainian clergy or their children in western Ukrainian society would weaken somewhat at the end of the 19th century but would continue until the mid-20th century. The American gentry were rich landowning members of

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4836-402: The concept was limited to the designation of an exclusive, socio-political elite, or whether it could possibly have been applied in the most inclusive sense to an inherent and ancestral "noble" quality which allegedly characterized all ethnic members of PIE society. Only the latter could have served as a true and universal self-designation for the Proto-Indo-European people. By the early 1900s,

4929-459: The contrary supplied by the warlike Middle Ages, the ecclesiastical calling has by its very nature never been strictly compatible with the bearing of arms. The precept that exhorts the Church to abhor bloodshed has never dropped completely out of sight, and in relatively tranquil and orderly times it has always been very much to the fore. The fundamental social structure in Europe in the Middle Ages

5022-408: The culture and technology (a bronze-age culture that was centered upon animal husbandry and having domesticated the horse ). The scholarly opinions became basically divided between a European hypothesis, which positted a migration from Europe to Asia, and an Asian hypothesis, which positted that the migration took place in the opposite direction. In the early 1900s, the question became associated with

5115-550: The earliest vision of Christendom was a vision of a Christian theocracy , a government founded upon and upholding Christian values , whose institutions are spread through and over with Christian doctrine . The Catholic Church 's peak of authority over all European Christians and their common endeavours of the Christian community—for example, the Crusades , the fight against the Moors in

5208-534: The east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian Steppe ). Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the Middle Neolithic period (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the Early Neolithic period (7500 to 5500 BC) and suggest alternative origin hypotheses . By the early second millennium BC, descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia ( Hittites ),

5301-467: The eldest sons of peers, who bear their fathers' inferior titles as "courtesy titles" (but for Parliamentary purposes count as commoners), Scottish barons (who bear the designation Baron of X after their name) and baronets (a title corresponding to a hereditary knighthood). Scottish lairds do not have a title of nobility but may have a description of their lands in the form of a territorial designation that forms part of their name. The landed gentry

5394-581: The emancipation, both social and national, of the Estonians and Latvians were not taken seriously by the Baltic German gentry. The provisional government of Russia after 1917 revolution gave the Estonians and Latvians self-governance which meant the end of the Baltic German era in Baltics. The Lithuanian gentry consisted mainly of Lithuanians , but due to strong ties to Poland, had been culturally Polonized. After

5487-482: The expansion of a supposed " aryan race ", a now-discredited theory that was promoted during the expansion of European empires and the rise of " scientific racism ". The question remains contentious within some flavours of ethnic nationalism (see also Indigenous Aryans ). A series of major advances occurred in the 1970s due to the convergence of several factors. First, the radiocarbon dating method (invented in 1949) had become sufficiently inexpensive to be applied on

5580-533: The fact that Clerical celibacy functioned as a spiritual discipline it also was guarantor of the independence of the Church. the Catholic Church has always aspired to a preponderant share in political power, it has never been able to monopolize it entirely, because of two traits, chiefly, that are basic in its structure. Celibacy has generally been required of the clergy and of monks. Therefore no real dynasties of abbots and bishops have ever been able to establish themselves. ... Secondly, in spite of numerous examples to

5673-535: The family), Vysoký Chlumec Castle (sold by the family), Hasištejn Castle , Chomutov Castle, Líčkov Castle, Felixburk, Neustadt an der Waldnaab , Horšovský Týn Castle, and Zbiroh . Gentry Gentry (from Old French genterie , from gentil ' high-born, noble ' ) 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 (see manorialism ), upper levels of

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5766-411: The idea of the " tripartite soul ", which is expressive of three functions or capacities of the human soul: "appetites" (or "passions"), "the spirited element" and "reason" the part that must guide the soul to truth. Will Durant made the case that certain prominent features of Plato's ideal community were discernible in the organization, dogma and effectiveness of "the" Medieval Church in Europe: For

5859-443: The late eighteenth until the mid-20th centuries, following the reforms instituted by Joseph II, Emperor of Austria . Because, like their Eastern Orthodox brethren, Ukrainian Catholic priests could marry, they were able to establish "priestly dynasties", often associated with specific regions, for many generations. Numbering approximately 2,000–2,500 by the 19th century, priestly families tended to marry within their group, constituting

5952-520: The lowest rank of British nobility. It is the lowest rank to which the descendants of a Knight, Baronet or Peer can sink. Strictly speaking, anybody with officially matriculated English or Scottish arms is a gentleman and thus noble. The term landed gentry , although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used for the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, these terms eventually became complementary. The term gentry by itself, as commonly used by historians, according to Peter Coss ,

6045-515: The middle of the 1860s the privileged position of Baltic Germans in the Russian Empire began to waver. Already during the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55), who was under pressure from Russian nationalists, some sporadic steps had been taken towards the russification of the provinces. Later, the Baltic Germans faced fierce attacks from the Russian nationalist press, which accused the Baltic aristocracy of separatism, and advocated closer linguistic and administrative integration with Russia. Social division

6138-426: The migrations to an earlier time (to around 3500 BCE), and puts less insistence upon their violent or quasi-military nature, remains the most widely accepted theory of the Proto-Indo-European expansion. The Armenian hypothesis , based on the glottalic theory , suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 4th millennium BC in the Armenian Highland . This Indo-Hittite model does not include

6231-422: The monarch, rise of state, rise of professional standing armies, professional bureaucracies, the codification of state laws, and the rise of ideologies that justify the absolutist monarchy. Hence, Absolutism was made possible by innovations and characterized as a phenomenon of Early Modern Europe , rather than that of the Middle Ages, where the clergy and nobility counterbalanced as a result of mutual rivalry. From

6324-504: The most powerful continent on the globe. The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority ... by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and ... by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [800 BC onwards], the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire [for such guardians] ... [Clerical] Celibacy

6417-419: The nobility (very favored prefixes were Adler, "eagle"; Ehren – "ära", "honor"; Silfver, "silver"; and Gyllen, "golden"). The regular difference with Britain was that it became the new surname of the whole house, and the old surname was dropped altogether. The Western Ukrainian Clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church were a hereditary tight-knit social caste that dominated western Ukrainian society from

6510-403: The overall "nobility" to a large extent operated as different classes, and were often in conflict. After the Partitions of Poland , at least in the stereotypes of 19th-century nationalist lore, the magnates often made themselves at home in the capitals and courts of the partitioning powers, while the gentry remained on their estates, keeping the national culture alive. From the 15th century, only

6603-418: The prevalence of titles of nobility varied widely from country to country. Some upper classes were almost entirely untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Before the Age of Absolutism , institutions, such as the church, legislatures, or social elites, restrained monarchical power. Absolutism was characterized by the ending of feudal partitioning, consolidation of power with

6696-458: The publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew subsequently acknowledged the important role of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe towards Northwestern Europe , noting that the DNA evidence from ancient skeletons "had completely rejuvenated Maria Gimbutas' kurgan hypothesis." Archaeogenetics has allowed

6789-402: The second estate or as in the case of Cardinal Wolsey , from more humble backgrounds. The second estate was the nobility. Being wealthy or influential did not automatically make one a noble, and not all nobles were wealthy and influential (aristocratic families have lost their fortunes in various ways, and the concept of the "poor nobleman" is almost as old as nobility itself). Countries without

6882-415: The surname on its own. This usage was devised in 1917, derived from the practice, up to the 17th century (and still also in legal proceedings), for the wife of a knight. The wife of a knight or baronet is now styled " Lady [husband's surname]". The " Storm over the gentry " was a major historiographical debate among scholars that took place in the 1940s and 1950s regarding the role of the gentry in causing

6975-414: The term "aryan" had come to be widely used in a racial sense, in which it referred to a hypothesized white, blond, and blue-eyed superior race. The dictator Adolf Hitler called this race the " master race " ( Herrenrasse ), and, in its name, led massive pogroms in Europe. Subsequently, the term Aryan as a general term for Indo-Europeans has been largely abandoned by scholars (though the term Indo-Aryan

7068-543: The term 'Indo-Europeans' may refer to any historical people that speak an Indo-European language. Using linguistic reconstruction from old Indo-European languages such as Latin and Sanskrit , hypothetical features of the Proto-Indo-European language are deduced. Assuming that these linguistic features reflect culture and environment of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the following cultural and environmental traits are widely proposed: A 2016 phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European folktales posits that one folktale, The Smith and

7161-448: The term has often been extended (albeit only in very formal writing) to all men without any higher title. It is used post-nominally, usually in abbreviated form (for example, "Thomas Smith, Esq."). A knight could refer to either a medieval tenant who gave military service as a mounted man-at-arms to a feudal landholder, or a medieval gentleman-soldier, usually high-born, raised by a sovereign to privileged military status after training as

7254-452: The time of the Reformation, the Latinized form of their birthplace ( Laurentius Petri Gothus , from Östergötland) became a common naming practice for the clergy. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the surname was only rarely the original family name of the ennobled; usually, a more imposing new name was chosen. This was a period which produced a myriad of two-word Swedish-language family names for

7347-527: The time of their marriage to Princess Anne. However, the backgrounds of both men were considered to be essentially patrician, and they were thus deemed suitable husbands for a princess. Esquire (abbreviated Esq.) is a term derived from the Old French word "escuier" (which also gave equerry) and is in the United Kingdom the second-lowest designation for a nobleman, referring only to males, and used to denote

7440-545: The use of genetic analysis to trace migration patterns. The Kurgan hypothesis or steppe theory is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term

7533-606: The welfare of the state. In China, the farmer lifestyle is also closely linked with the ideals of Confucian gentlemen. Proto-Indo-Europeans The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics . The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during

7626-447: The words of philologist Martin L. West , "If there was an Indo-European language, it follows that there was a people who spoke it: not a people in the sense of a nation, for they may never have formed a political unity, and not a people in any racial sense, for they may have been as genetically mixed as any modern population defined by language. If our language is a descendant of theirs, that does not make them ‘our ancestors’, any more than

7719-627: Was mediatized to Bavaria in 1807. As such, the House of Lobkowicz belong to the small group of families that constitute the Hochadel ( German for 'high nobility') and is one of the mediatised houses . Today, there are four main branches of the Lobkowicz family: of Roudnice , Křimice, Dolní Beřkovice and Mělník . Notable Lobkowiczs of today include: After the Velvet Revolution of 1989,

7812-624: Was based on the dominance of the Baltic Germans which formed the upper classes while the majority of indigenous population, called "Undeutsch", composed the peasantry. In the Imperial census of 1897, 98,573 Germans (7.58% of total population) lived in the Governorate of Livonia , 51,017 (7.57%) in the Governorate of Curonia, and 16,037 (3.89%) in the Governorate of Estonia . The social changes faced by

7905-497: Was between the ecclesiastical hierarchy , nobles i.e. the tenants in chivalry (counts, barons, knights, esquires, franklins ) and the ignobles, the villeins , citizens, and burgesses . The division of society into classes of nobles and ignobles, in the smaller regions of medieval Europe was inexact. After the Protestant Reformation , social intermingling between the noble class and the hereditary clerical upper class became

7998-547: Was first formulated by Otto Schrader (1883) and V. Gordon Childe (1926), and was later systematized by Marija Gimbutas from 1956 onwards. The name originates from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes. The hypothesis suggests that the Indo-Europeans, a patriarchal , patrilinear , and nomadic culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe (which is now part northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania , through Moldova , and southern and eastern Ukraine , through

8091-435: Was formal, juridical, and priestly, but rooted in this world. The other was powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly, but rooted in the "other", the supernatural and spiritual world. The second main division was connected with the use of force, the military , and war. Finally, there was a third group, ruled by the other two, whose role was productivity: herding, farming, and crafts . This system of caste roles can be seen in

8184-587: Was introduced in these places along with autosomal DNA from the Pontic steppes. The subclade R1a1a (R-M17 or R-M198) is most commonly associated with Indo-European speakers. Data so far collected indicate that there are two widely separated areas of high frequency, one in Eastern Europe , around Poland , Ukraine , and Russia , and the other in Southern Asia , around the Indo-Gangetic Plain , which

8277-492: Was not especially important. The 'four divisions of society' refers to the model of society in ancient China and was a meritocratic social class system in China and other subsequently influenced Confucian societies. The four castes—gentry, farmers, artisans and merchants—are combined to form the term Shìnónggōngshāng (士農工商). Gentry (士) means different things in different countries. In China, Korea, and Vietnam, this meant that

8370-402: Was not much movement across class boundaries. This is to say that it was much harder for an individual to move up in class simply because of the structure of society. In many countries, the term upper class was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership and titles. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies (which was one of the causes of

8463-469: Was part of the psychological structure of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them. ... Gaetano Mosca wrote on the same subject matter in his book The Ruling Class concerning the Medieval Church and its structure that Beyond

8556-460: Was particularly characteristic of France: At the top of the pyramid were the princes and estates of the king or emperor, or with the clergy, the bishops and the pope. The feudal system was, for the people of the Middle Ages and early modern period, fitted into a God-given order. The nobility and the third estate were born into their class, and change in social position was slow. Wealth had little influence on what estate one belonged to. The exception

8649-409: Was the Medieval Church, which was the only institution where competent men (and women) of merit could reach, in one lifetime, the highest positions in society. The first estate comprised the entire clergy, traditionally divided into "higher" and "lower" clergy. Although there was no formal demarcation between the two categories, the upper clergy were, effectively, clerical nobility, from the families of

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