Lord
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others acting like a master, a chief, or a ruler. The appellation can denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are entitled to courtesy titles; the collective "Lords" can refer to a body of peers. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the etymology of the word can be traced back to the Old English word hlāford which originated from hlāfweard meaning "loaf-ward" or "bread keeper", reflecting the Germanic tribal custom of a chieftain providing food for his followers; the appellation "lord" is applied to men, while for women the appellation "lady" is used. However, this is no longer universal: the Lord of Mann, a title held by the Queen of the United Kingdom, female Lord Mayors are examples of women who are styled Lord. Under the feudal system, "lord" had a wide and varied meaning. An overlord was a person from whom a landholding or a manor was held by a mesne lord or vassal under various forms of feudal land tenure.
The modern term "landlord" is a vestigial survival of this function. A liege lord was a person. Neither of these terms were titular dignities, but rather factual appellations, which described the relationship between two or more persons within the stratified feudal social system. For example, a man might be Lord of the Manor to his own tenants but a vassal of his own overlord, who in turn was a vassal of the King. Where a knight was a lord of the manor, he was referred to in contemporary documents as "John, lord of". A feudal baron was a true titular dignity, with the right to attend Parliament, but a feudal baron, Lord of the Manor of many manors, was a vassal of the King; the substantive title of "Lord of the Manor" came into use in the English medieval system of feudalism after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The title "Lord of the Manor" was a titular feudal dignity which derived its force from the existence and operation of a manorial court or court baron at which he or his steward presided, thus he was the lord of the manorial court which determined the rules and laws which were to govern all the inhabitants and property covered by the jurisdiction of the court.
To the tenants of a certain class of manor known in Saxon times as Infangenthef their lord was a man who had the power of exercising capital punishment over them. The term invariably used in contemporary mediaeval documents is "lord of X", X being the name of the manor; the term "Lord of the Manor" is a recent usage of historians to distinguish such lords from feudal barons and other powerful persons referred to in ancient documents variously as "Sire", "Dominus", "Lord" etc. The title of "Lord of the Manor" is recognised by the British Government for any such title registered at Her Majesty's Land Registry before 13 October 2003 but after that date titles can no longer be registered, any such titles voluntarily de-registered by the holder cannot be re-registered; however any transfer of ownership of registered manors will continue to be recorded in the register, on the appropriate notification. Thus in effect the register is closed for new registrations; such titles are classified as "incorporeal hereditaments" as they have no physical existence, have no intrinsic value.
However a lucrative market arose in the 20th century for such titles for purposes of vanity, assisted by the existence of an official register, giving the purchaser the impression of a physical existence. Whether a title of "Lord of the Manor" is registered or unregistered has no effect on its legal validity or existence, a matter of law to be determined by the courts. Modern legal cases have been won by persons claiming rights as lords of the manor over village greens; the heads of many ancient English land-owning families have continued to be lords of the manor of lands they have inherited. The UK Identity and Passport Service will include such titles on a British passport as an "observation", provided the holder can provide documentary evidence of ownership, as will Passport Canada; the United States however, forbids the use of all titles on passports. Australia forbids the use of titles on passports if those titles have not been awarded by the Crown or the Commonwealth; the Scottish title Laird is a shortened form of'laverd', an old Scottish word deriving from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning'Lord' and is derived from the middle English word'Lard' meaning'Lord'.
The word is used to refer to any owner of a landed estate and has no meaning in heraldic terms and its use is not controlled by the Lord Lyon. Lord is used as a generic term to denote members of the peerage. Five ranks of peer exist in the United Kingdom: in descending order these are duke, earl and baron; the appellation "Lord" is used most by barons, who are addressed by their formal and legal title of "Baron". The most formal style is'The Lord': for example, Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, can be called as "The Lord Tennyson", although the most common appellation is "Lord Tennyson". Marquesses and viscounts are also addressed as Lord. Dukes use the style "The Duke of", are not referred to as'Lord'. Dukes are formally addressed as'Your Grace', rather than'My Lord'. In the Peerage of Scotland, the members of the lowest level of the peerage have the substantive title'Lord of Parliament' rather than Baron. "Lord" is used as a cour
King-Emperor
A king-emperor, the female equivalent being queen-empress, is a sovereign ruler, a king of one territory and emperor of another. This title results from a merger of a royal and imperial crown, but recognises that the two territories are different politically or culturally and in status, it denotes a king's imperial status through the acquisition of an empire or vice versa. The dual title signifies a sovereign's dual role, but may be created to improve a ruler's prestige. Both cases, show that the merging of rule was not a case of annexation where one state is swallowed by another, but rather of unification and equal status, though in the case of the British monarchy the suggestion that an emperor is higher in rank than a king was avoided by creating the title "king-emperor" instead of "emperor-king"; the British Crown had taken over the governing of British India from the East India Company in 1858, in the aftermath of what the British called'the Indian Mutiny'. Henceforth, the new British Raj was ruled directly from Whitehall via the India Office.
Following the Delhi Durbar in 1877, Queen Victoria was given Imperial status by the British Government, she assumed the title Empress of India. She was thus the Queen-Empress, her successors, until George VI, were known as King-Emperors; this title was the shortened form of the full title, in widespread popular use. The reigning King-Emperors or Queen-Empress used the abbreviation Ind.. Imp. after their name. British coins, those of the British Empire and Commonwealth dominions included some variation of the titles Rex Ind. Imp. although in India itself the coins said "Empress", "King Emperor." When, in August 1947, India became independent, all dies had to be changed to remove the latter two abbreviations, in some cases taking up to a year. In Great Britain, coins of George VI carried the title up to 1948. Another use of this dual title was when, in 1867, the multi-national Austrian Empire, German-ruled and facing growing nationalism, undertook a reform that gave nominal and factual rights to Hungarian nobility.
This reform revived the Austrian-annexed Kingdom of Hungary, therefore created the dual-monarchic union state of Austria-Hungary and the dual title of "emperor-king". The Habsburg dynasty therefore ruled as Emperors of Austria over the western and northern half of the Empire, as Kings of Hungary over the Kingdom of Hungary and much of Transleithania. Hungary enjoyed some degree of representation in joint affairs; the federation bore the full name of "The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen". In 1936, with the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia, thus he became King-Emperor, i.e. King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia, because conquered Ethiopia was an Empire. In the following years foreign countries recognized the Italian rule in Ethiopia; the King-Emperor was represented by the Viceroy, appointed as Governor-General of Italian East Africa. The capital city of the Viceroy and Governor-General was Addis Ababa.
The Serbian emperor Stefan Dušan, earlier king, is attested with the title "Emperor of Greece and King of All Serb Lands and the Maritime" in a document dating to between 1347–56. Dušan has been described as a "king-emperor"; the German Empire was ruled by a King-Emperor, as the German Hohenzollern Emperor was King of Prussia. The Holy Roman Emperors were Kings of Italy and Burgundy for most of the time that title existed. Emperor Napoléon I of the French was King of Italy, his title was shortened in "Emperor-King" rather than "King-Emperor". John VI of Portugal was made titular Emperor of Brazil alongside being King of Portugal and was titled as King-Emperor until his death. After John VI's death, his son Pedro acceded him as King of Portugal while reigning as Emperor of Brazil. Kaiserlich und königlich King-Grand Duke
Dauphin of France
Dauphin of France Dauphin of Viennois, was the title given to the heir apparent to the throne of France from 1350 to 1791 and 1824 to 1830. The word dauphin is French for dolphin. At first the heirs were granted the County of Viennois to rule, but only the title was granted. Guigues IV, Count of Vienne, was nicknamed le Dauphin; the title of Dauphin de Viennois descended in his family until 1349, when Humbert II sold his seigneury, called the Dauphiné, to King Philippe VI on condition that the heir of France assume the title of le Dauphin. The wife of the Dauphin was known as la Dauphine; the first French prince called le Dauphin was Charles the Wise to become Charles V of France. The title was equivalent to the English Prince of Wales, the Scottish Duke of Rothesay, the Portuguese Prince of Brazil, the Brazilian Prince of Grão-Pará and the Spanish Prince of Asturias; the official style of a Dauphin of France, prior to 1461, was par la grâce de Dieu, dauphin de Viennois, comte de Valentinois et de Diois.
A Dauphin of France united the coat of arms of the Dauphiné, which featured Dolphins, with the French fleurs-de-lis, might, where appropriate, further unite that with other arms. The Dauphin was responsible for the rule of the Dauphiné, part of the Holy Roman Empire, which the Emperors, in giving the rule of the province to the French heirs, had stipulated must never be united with France; because of this, the Dauphiné suffered from anarchy in the 14th and 15th centuries, since the Dauphins were minors or concerned with other matters. During his period as Dauphin, son of Charles VII, defied his father by remaining in the province longer than the King permitted and by engaging in personal politics more beneficial to the Dauphiné than to France. For example, he married Charlotte of Savoy against his father's wishes. Savoy was a traditional ally of the Dauphiné, Louis wished to reaffirm that alliance to stamp out rebels and robbers in the province. Louis was driven out of the Dauphiné by Charles VII's soldiers in 1456, leaving the region to fall back into disorder.
After his succession as Louis XI of France in 1461, Louis united the Dauphiné with France, bringing it under royal control. The title was automatically conferred upon the next heir apparent to the throne in the direct line upon birth, accession of the parent to the throne or death of the previous Dauphin, unlike the British title Prince of Wales, which has always been in the gift of the monarch; the sons of the King of France hold the style and rank of fils de France, while male-line grandsons hold the style and rank of petits-enfants de France. The sons and grandsons of the Dauphin ranked higher than their cousins, being treated as the king's children and grandchildren respectively; the sons of the Dauphin, though grandsons of the king, are ranked as Sons of France, the grandsons of the Dauphin ranked as Grandsons of France. The title was abolished by the Constitution of 1791. Under the constitution the heir-apparent to the throne was restyled Prince Royal, taking effect from the inception of the Legislative Assembly on 1 October 1791.
The title was restored in potentia under the Bourbon Restoration of Louis XVIII, but there would not be another Dauphin until after his death. With the accession of his brother Charles X, Charles' son and heir Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême automatically became Dauphin. With the removal of the Bourbons the title fell into disuse, the heirs of Louis-Philippe being titled Prince Royal. After the death of Henri, comte de Chambord, Duke of Madrid, the heir of the legitimist claimant, Count of Montizón, made use of the title in pretense, as have the Spanish legitimist claimants since. In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck encounters two odd characters who turn out to be professional con men. One of them claims that he should be treated with deference, since he is "really" an impoverished English duke, the other, not to be outdone, reveals that he is "really" the Dauphin. Is a character in Shakespeare's Henry V. In Baronness Emma Orczy's Eldorado, the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues the Dauphin from prison and helps spirit him from France.
Alphonse Daudet wrote a short story called "The Death of the Dauphin", about a young Dauphin who wants to stop Death from approaching him. It is mentioned in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. "The Dauphin" is a 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As the titular character is female, the episode title gets the gender incorrect. Dauphine of France List of heirs to the French throne Prince of Wales Prince of Asturias Prince of Beira Duke of Braganza Crown Prince Tsarevich Dauphins of Viennois Dauphins of Auvergne King of Rome Madame Royale Monsieur Madame Fils de France Petit-Fils de France Prince du Sang Prince of Tarnovo
Prince
A prince is a male ruler ranked below a king and above a duke or member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. Prince is a title of nobility hereditary, in some European states; the feminine equivalent is a princess. The English word derives, via the French word prince, from the Latin noun princeps, from primus and capio, meaning "the chief, most distinguished, prince"; the Latin word prīnceps, became the usual title of the informal leader of the Roman senate some centuries before the transition to empire, the princeps senatus. Emperor Augustus established the formal position of monarch on the basis of principate, not dominion, he tasked his grandsons as summer rulers of the city when most of the government were on holiday in the country or attending religious rituals, for that task, granted them the title of princeps. The title has generic and substantive meanings: generically, prince refers to a member of a family that ruled by hereditary right, the title referring either to sovereigns or to cadets of a sovereign's family.
The term may be broadly used of persons in various continents or eras. In Europe, it is the title borne by dynastic cadets in monarchies, borne by courtesy by members of reigning dynasties. as a substantive title, a prince was a monarch of the lowest rank in post-Napoleonic Europe, e.g. Princes of Andorra, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Monaco and Pyrmont, etc. substantively, the title was granted by popes and secular monarchs to specific individuals and to the heads of some high-ranking European families who, never exercised dynastic sovereignty and whose cadets are not entitled to share the princely title, viz the Princes de Beauvau-Craon, von Bismarck, von Dohna-Schlobitten, von Eulenburg, de Faucigny-Lucinge, von Lichnowsky, von Pless, Ruffo di Calabria, von Sagan, van Ursel, etc. generically, cadets of some non-sovereign families whose head bears the non-dynastic title of prince were sometimes authorized to use the princely title, e.g. von Carolath-Beuthen, de Broglie, Demidoff di San Donato, Lieven, de Merode, Radziwill, von Wrede, etc. substantively, the heirs apparent in some monarchies use a specific princely title associated with a territory within the monarch's realm, e.g. the Princes of Asturias, Grão Pará, Viana, etc. substantively, it became the fashion from the 17th century for the heirs apparent of the leading ducal families to assume a princely title, associated with a seigneurie in the family's possession.
These titles were borne by courtesy and preserved by tradition, not law, e.g. the princes de Bidache, Tonnay-Charente, Poix, Léon, The original, but now less common use of the word, originated in the application of the Latin word princeps, from late Roman law, the classical system of government that gave way to the European feudal society. In this sense, a prince is a ruler of a territory, sovereign, or quasi-sovereign, i.e. exercising substantial prerogatives associated with monarchs of independent nations, such as the immediate states within the historical boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. In medieval and Early Modern Europe, there were as many as two hundred such territories in Italy and Gaelic Ireland. In this sense, "prince" is used of all rulers, regardless of actual title or precise rank; this is the Renaissance use of the term found in Il Principe. As a title, by the end of the medieval era, prince was borne by rulers of territories that were either smaller than or exercised fewer of the rights of sovereignty than did emperors and kings.
A lord of a quite small territory might come to be referred to as a prince before the 13th century, either from translations of a native title into the Latin princeps, or when the lord's territory was allodial. The lord of an allodium owned his lands and exercised prerogatives over the subjects in his territory owing no feudal homage or duty as a vassal to a liege lord, nor being subject to any higher jurisdiction. Most small territories designated as principalities during feudal eras were allodial, e.g. the Princedom of Dombes. Lords who exercised lawful authority over territories and people within a feudal hierarchy were sometimes regarded as princes in the general sense if they held the rank of count or higher; this is attested in some surviving styles for e.g. British earls and dukes are still addressed by the Crown on ceremonial occasions as high and noble princes. In parts of the Holy Roman Empire in which primogeniture did not prevail, all legitimate agnates had an equal right to the family's hereditary titles.
While this meant that offices, such as emperor and elector could only be occupied by one dynast at a time, holders of such other titles as duke, landgrave, count palatine, prince could only differentiate themselves by adding the name of their appanage to the family's original title. Not only did this tend to proliferate unwieldy titles, but as agnatic primogeniture became the norm in the Holy Roman Empire by the end of the 18th century, another me
Crown prince
A crown prince is the male heir apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. Its female form is crown princess, which may refer either to an heir apparent or in earlier times, the wife of the person styled crown prince. Crown prince as a descriptive term has been used throughout history for the prince being first in line to a throne and is expected to succeed barring any unforeseen future event preventing this. In certain monarchies, a more specific substantive title may be accorded and become associated with the position of heir apparent. In these monarchies, the term crown prince may be used less than the substantive title; until the late twentieth century, no modern monarchy adopted a system whereby females would be guaranteed to succeed to the throne. A crown princess would therefore more refer to the spouse of a crown prince and would be styled crown princess not in her own right but by courtesy; the term crown prince is not used in monarchies wherein the hereditary sovereign holds a title below that of king/queen, although it is sometimes used as a synonym for heir apparent.
In Europe, where primogeniture governed succession to all monarchies except those of the Papacy and Andorra, the eldest son or eldest child of the current monarch fills the role of crown prince or princess, depending upon whether females of the dynasty enjoy personal succession rights. Primogeniture has been abolished in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; the eldest living child of a monarch is sometimes not the heir apparent or crown prince, because that position can be held by a descendant of a deceased older child who, by "right of representation", inherits the same place in the line of succession that would be held by the ancestor if he or she were still living. In some monarchies, those of the Middle East for example, in which primogeniture is not the decisive factor in dynastic succession, a person may not possess the title or status of crown prince by right of birth, but may obtain it as a result of an official designation made on some other legal or traditional basis, such as former crown prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.
Compare heir apparent and heir presumptive. In Scandinavian kingdoms, the heir presumptive to the crown may hold a different title than the heir apparent: hereditary prince, it is the title borne by the heir apparent of Liechtenstein, as well as the heir apparent or presumptive of Monaco. In Luxembourg, the heir apparent bears the title of hereditary grand duke. Many monarchies use or did use substantive titles for their heirs apparent of historical origin: Dauphin Duke of Brabant Duke of Braganza Duke of Cornwall Duke of Rothesay used by the Prince of Wales in place of his Welsh title when in Scotland Grand Prince Margrave of Moravia Prince of Asturias Prince of Girona Prince Imperial Prince of Orange, whether or not the equivalent title is held by the spouse of the titleholder is decided by the Dutch parliament Prince of Piedmont a title conferred by King Joseph Bonaparte to be hereditary on his children and grandchildren in the male and female line. Prince Royal Prince of Turnovo Prince of Viana Rex iunior, lit.
Junior king as he was crowned during the life of the incumbent king Tsesarevich Some monarchies have used a territorial title for heirs apparent which, though perceived as a crown princely title, is not automatically hereditary. It requires a specific conferral by the sovereign, which may be withheld. Current and past titles in this category include: Caesar or Kaisar in honor of Gaius Julius Caesar, distinguished from the senior Augustus Symbasileus, lit. co-emperor but still distinguished from the senior, addressed as Autocrator Aetheling and edling, lit. of the royal family Duke of Estonia and Lolland Prince of Norway.
Imperial Knight
The Free Imperial knights were free nobles of the Holy Roman Empire, whose direct overlord was the Emperor. They were the remnants of the ministeriales. What distinguished them from other knights, who were vassals of a higher lord, was the fact that they had been granted Imperial immediacy, as such were the equals in most respects to the other individuals or entities, such as the secular and ecclesiastical territorial rulers of the Empire and the Free Imperial cities, that enjoyed Imperial immediacy. However, unlike all of those, the Imperial knights did not possess the status of Estates of the Empire, therefore were not represented, individually or collectively, in the Imperial Diet, they tended to define their responsibilities to the Empire in terms of feudalized obligations to the Emperor, including personal service and voluntary financial offerings paid to the Emperor himself. To protect their rights and avoid vassalage to more powerful nobles, they organized themselves into three unions in the late 15th century and into a single body in 1577, fought to win recognition.
This status, beholden only to the Emperor himself rather than through a more powerful noble, meant the Imperial Knights were "immediate subjects". As such, the Imperial Knights exercised a limited form of sovereignty within their territories; the Imperial Knighthood was a regional phenomenon limited to southwestern and south-central Germany—Swabia and the Middle Rhine area—zones which were fragmented politically and where no powerful states were able to develop. In northern and northeastern Germany, as well as in Bavaria and Austria, the local nobles, facing larger states and stronger rulers, were incapable of developing and maintaining their independence, they formed the territorial nobility. The immediate status of the Imperial Knights was recognized at the Peace of Westphalia, they never gained access to the Imperial Diet, the parliament of lords, were not considered Hochadel, the high nobility, belonging to the Lower Nobility. The Free Imperial Knights arose in the 14th century, the fusion of the remnants of the old free lords and the stronger elements of the unfree ministeriales that had won noble status.
Around 1300, the manoral economy suffered contraction due to the fluctuation in the price of agricultural foodstuffs. Ministeriales who were in a stronger economic position were better able to survive the weakening of their basis as landowners; the vast majority languished in poverty, resorting to selling lands to brigandage. The minority of ministeriales rich enough to weather the crises soon came to be identified with the remnants of the free nobility, were thus seen as constituting one noble order. By 1422, some of these nobles had achieved jurisdictional autonomy under the Emperor, the corporation of free imperial knights was born; the other ministeriales that did not manage to receive the status of immediate vassals of the Emperor were transformed into a titled nobility of free status: the Freiherren. By 1577, the Imperial Knights achieved the status of a noble corporate body within the empire: the corpus equestre. In the Peace of Westphalia, the privileges of the Imperial Knights were confirmed.
The knights paid their own tax to the Emperor, possessed limited sovereignty, the ius reformandi. The knightly families had the right of house legislation, subject to the Emperor's approval, so could control such things as the marriage of members and set the terms of the inheritance of family property. Imperial knights did not, have access to the Imperial Diet. Concerning the rights of Free Imperial Knights, Joseph Friederich von Ledersheim wrote in 1715: Section XII: “…they possess forestry rights …the right of hunting. Section XV: “they enjoy the freedom of religion and therefore of establishing the Protestant Religion in churches and schools not only in their own hereditary territories but in those fiefs held from another state…they are able whenever they wish to abolish and introduce either religion if they hold the position of vogt over the possessions.” All matters relating to the Imperial Knights' legal status as immediate vassals of the Emperor were managed by the Imperial Aulic Council.
Lacking access to the Imperial Diet, in 1650 the immediate knights organized themselves into three circles: the Fr
Baron
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour hereditary. The female equivalent is baroness; the word baron comes from a Late Latin barō "man. The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βᾰρῠ́ς "heavy", but the word is of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning "warrior, nobleman". Cornutus in the first century reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin, he glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning "stupid", by reference to classical Latin bārō "simpleton, dunce". During the Ancien Régime, French baronies were much like Scottish ones. Feudal landholders who possessed a barony were entitled to style themselves baron if they were nobles; these baronies could be sold until 1789 when feudal law was abolished. The title of baron was assumed as a titre de courtoisie by many nobles, whether members of the Nobles of the Robe or cadets of Nobles of the Sword who held no title in their own right. Emperor Napoléon created a new imperial nobility.
The titles could not be purchased. In 1815, King Louis XVIII created a new peerage system and a Chamber of Peers, based on the British model. Baron-peer was the lowest title, but the heirs to pre-1789 barons could remain barons, as could the elder sons of viscount-peers and younger sons of count-peers; this peerage system was abolished in 1848. In pre-republican Germany all the knightly families of the Holy Roman Empire were recognised as of baronial rank, although Ritter is the literal translation for "knight", persons who held that title enjoyed a distinct, but lower, rank in Germany's nobility than barons; the wife of a Freiherr is called a Freifrau or sometimes Baronin, his daughter Freiin or sometimes Baroness. Families which had always held this status were called Uradel, were heraldically entitled to a three pointed coronet. Families, ennobled at a definite point in time had seven points on their coronet; these families held their fief in vassalage from a suzerain. The holder of an allodial barony was thus called Freiherr.
Subsequently, sovereigns in Germany conferred the title of Freiherr as a rank in the nobility, without implication of allodial or feudal status. Since 1919, hereditary titles have had no legal status in Germany. In modern, republican Germany and Baron remain heritable only as part of the legal surname. In Austria, hereditary titles have been banned. Thus, a member of the reigning House of Habsburg or members of the former nobility would in most cases be addressed as Herr/Frau in an official/public surrounding, for instance in the media. Still, in both countries, honorary styles like "His/her Highness", "Serenity", etc. persists in social use as a form of courtesy. In Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, barons remain members of the recognized nobility, the sovereigns retain authority to confer the title Generally, all legitimate males of a German baronial family inherit the title Freiherr or Baron from birth, as all legitimate daughters inherit the title of Freiin or Baroness; as a result, German barons have been more numerous than those of such countries where primogeniture with respect to title inheritance prevails as France and the United Kingdom.
In Italy, barone was the lowest rank of feudal nobility except for that of vassallo. The title of baron was most introduced into southern Italy by the Normans during the 11th century. Whereas a barony might consist of two or more manors, by 1700 we see what were single manors erected into baronies, counties or marquisates. Since the early 1800s, when feudalism was abolished in the various Italian states, it has been granted as a simple hereditary title without any territorial designation or predicato; the untitled younger son of a baron is a nobile dei baroni and in informal usage might be called a baron, while certain baronies devolve to heirs male general. Since 1948 titles of nobility have not been recognised by the Italian state. In the absence of a nobiliary or heraldic authority in Italy there are, in fact, numerous persons who claim to be barons or counts without any basis for such claims. Baron and noble are hereditary titles and, as such, could only be created or recognised by the kings of Italy or the pre-unitary Italian states such as the Two Sicilies, Parma or Modena, or by the Holy See or the Republic of San Marino.
Beginning around 1800, a number of signori began to style themselves barone but in many cases this was not sanctioned by decree, while there was less justification in the holder of any large landed estate calling himself a baron. Both were common p
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