In ancient Rome, the term of nobilitas designates the most eminent members of the civic aristocracy. The word comes from Latin nobilis who means “known”, “famous”; that applies in first to families known by their seniority, it is at the origin of the French term " noblesse". The Roman nobilitas gathered in the beginning the Patricien S and the descendants of consul. Its very strong political role during the Republic was weakened considerably under the Empire, before the concept does not know considerable changes as from the 4th century.

The nobility of the Roman republic

At the origin of the ancient Rome, the Romans knew a Aristocratie formed by the Patricien S. This aristocracy, after the advent République, ends little by little up losing its privileges with the profit of a nobilitas gathering the descendants of these patricians and best of the plebs (Lex Hortensia, -287). They form the nobiles , class based on, either of the remote family origins, but on the Cens , i.e. fortune, and the exercise of the highest magistrature - the consulate. They represented to the more 1% of the population. The noble families asserted their origins distinguishing by several social markers who aimed to the maintenance of a genealogical memory intended to solidarize the family group and to preserve his prestige in the political life of the city. The public funeral were a major occasion for the noble families to express their seniority and their glory through the exhibition of the imagine , the portraits of the ancestors, and the laudatio funebris , the funeral praise which replaçait the late one in the continuity of the family virtues, that one held for almost hereditary.

The optimates formed also a political lobby which was opposed to the Populares from. The big family of the Caecilii Metelli organized and represented the most strongly this lobby, contributing to the closing of the Roman political life to the individuals nonresulting from the Nobilitas. Marius is presented by Salluste as the principal craftsman of the questioning of this monopoly in fact. Vis-a-vis the genealogical prestige of the nobilitas the new men must propose their capacities, their virtues, soldiers for Marius, arts persons, legal and policies for Cicéron. According to Ronald Syme, the opening of the nobilitas at the end of the second century and the success of these new men should not however so much be included/understood like the result of the opposition between plebeian senators and, optimates and populares , nobiles and new men but rather like the result of the fight for the capacity and glory within the nobilitas: There was no breach in the walls - a party among the nobiles had opened the doors . On the contrary, Ronald Syme interpreted in term of social revolution the crisis of the end of the Republic, which led to the reign of Auguste and the introduction of the Empire. This crisis however strongly touched the former noble families, and the respect to which Auguste testified to them, as well as the signs of their primacy would have been only one “trompe-l'oeil” and an anachronism. It is the emperor from now on who could decide on the nobility of a family.

Extension of the concept to the notable buildings and the other people

By extension the concept of nobilitas was applied by the Romans to other contexts: the Domi nobiles are the notable buildings. They can be famous descendants of family of the area, magistrates, rich person provided out of ground ( locupletes ) having obtained the Roman Citoyenneté, of the soldiers having obtained grounds and reached a honourable position locally… In the Greek part of the empire, the concept of nobilitas was applied to translate the term are equivalent of eugeneia . Finally the idea was also applied to the cruel people met by the Romans, their aristocracy, their chiefs, their royal families being compared to their nobilitas .

Under the High-Empire

At the beginning of the empire, the noble ones still did not form a specific body in the Roman company but to be noble it was necessary to go down from a people patrician or from a Consul. The nobilitas must thus be always there distinguished from the unit from the Roman aristocrats who was trained by the senators, for richest from between-them, and the knights, and which, for much of them, were intended for the policy and followed the Cursus honorum . The principal difference of this nobilitas Roman compared to the equestrian and senatorial aristocracy, it is that it can only be inherited and not to be acquired: a family can become noble at least only in two generations. There were thus members of the nobilitas who were not senators, descendant of a glorious family but déchue. They could however always oppose their prestigious family past at the obscure origins of the new men.

Under the Early empire, this diagram was preserved: the nobilitas remained always restricted with the descendants patricians and consular. Nevertheless the appearance of the consulate suffect multiplies manpower of consular and allows the integration of a greater number of families the nobilitas . Other loads were regarded besides as the possibility of reaching the nobilitas , like the prefecture of the court, reserved for a knight, therefore with somebody who did not follow the course honorum , but which confers a standing similar to that of the consulate, expressed by the consular ornaments given to several prefects. The integration of one family to the nobilitas thus depends on the emperor, which names with the magistratures and thus makes it possible to reach the consulate. For as much, the consulate cannot claim any more with supreme prestige, this last be allocated to the emperor: the supreme nobility is thus the membership of the imperial family and the heir designated to the capacity can be called, starting from Commode nobilissimus Caesar , very noble César.

Transformations of the Lower Empire

The crisis which touched the imperial capacity at the third century after 235, succession of short reigns assassinated emperors, leads to the recombining of the structures of the empire and the respective place of the higher orders of the Roman company - senators and knights. That affected deeply the concept of nobilitas . So in 238, the senators opposed to Maximin Thrace can hold up the topic of the nobility vis-a-vis an emperor " ignobilis ", the posterior civil wars did little place to the nobility. The withdrawal of the military capacity to the senators, by Gallien completed finally a tendency which had seen the nobilitas giving up the celebration of the warlike virtues to the profit of the exaltation of the eloquence and the cultural distinction. To that were added many other changes of which the abandonment of the practice of the exhibition of the imagine , including at the time of the imperial funeral and the appearance of the Christian design of a nobility according to the sky, resulting from the faith.

The Bas-Empire was thus a period which saw the reconfiguration of the idea of Noblesse, of its origin and its marks. Between 320 and 350 the term knows a widening of direction, related to the reforms led by Constantin and his sons: consequently the word of nobilitas did not return any more at one origin but to a statute, even if more the big families did not give up the genealogical design of their nobility. The widening of the concept, and its bursting opened it with the important changes which led finally to the medieval design of the nobility. Does the latter have to be thought in the continuity of the Roman model? Interpretation makes debate. So for K.F. Werner the answer would be positive, C. Badel recently insisted on the contrary on the differences between the two designs to challenge the idea of a direct filiation: according to him the model of the Roman senatorial nobility belongs to a completed past at the beginning of the 7th century.

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