The commandery of the Temple of Barbera (Tarragona) was one of the leading ones of the Crown of Aragon, thanks in part to the collaboration of one of the most notable ‘Templar families’: ...Queralt-Timor of Santa Coloma. From the beginning of this commandery in the last decades of the twelfth century, they had been its main benefactors and, later on, provided the Militia with knights of the first rank (Pere II de Queralt, Jaume de Timor, Arnau de Timor, Dalmau de Timor...). They were all professional warriors and took an active part in the conquests which the monarchy carried out in the thirteenth century. But in addition, the Queralt family developed a continuous matrimonial policy which linked it by marriage to the different main lineages of the country, also connected to the Temple: Castellnou, Anglesola, Rocaberti… This article is particularly interested in the life and activities of these individuals with the intention of re-evaluating their contribution and giving them the place they deserve in the history of the Temple.
Abstract This article aims to elaborate on the relationships between Georges Castriota Scanderbeg and noble families from Drivasto. Drivasto was an Albanian medieval city located in the Northern ...Albania, about 12 km away from Shkodra. Its origin dates to antiquity but it has achieved its cultural, economic, and political peak during the Middle Age. Drivasto had its schools, church, and social life. The city elite consisted of noble families, such as Engjelli, Spani, Suma, Moneta, and Dushmani. The city elite played an important role in the resistance against the establishment of Ottoman rule in Albanian lands, so many figures deriving from that elite closely cooperated with Georges Castriota Scanderbeg. They used their diplomatic and military background to transmit Scanderbeg’s claims abroad or to fight against the Ottomans. Therefore, this article aims also to elaborate on the social aspects of the society of Drivasto and its role in political circumstances, aiming thus to present to the audience some historical and social features and international relations during the Middle Age. The first part of this scientific research provides a brief presentation about the city of Drivasto during the Middle Age, continues with noble families and their role and cooperation with Scanderbeg; lastly summarises circumstances that derived from the return of Scanderbeg until the year 1478 when Drivasto fell under the Ottoman rule. The work “The nobility of Drivasto and Scanderbeg” derived of intensive scientific research. The comparative and synthetic methodologies have been used to draft this article.
This book narrates the rise and fall of Kurdish nobility in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth-century. Focusing on one noble Kurdish family based in the emirate of Palu, ...a fortressed town in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, it provides the first systematic analysis of the hereditary nobility in Kurdistan.
The book centres on the crucial moment in the 1840s during which the Ottoman state set out to abolish the hereditary privileges of the Kurdish beys, confiscating their large landholdings and setting the stage for a conflict over the fertile lands of Palu that would last nearly six decades. This tug-of-war between Armenian financiers, Armenian and Muslim sharecroppers, the Kurdish beys and the Ottoman state ended in 1895 with a series of massacres against the Armenian population of Palu. Through exhaustive archival research in an untapped body of sources, this book sheds light on the impact this conflict-filled process had on the intercommunal relations in the locality. In doing so, the author brings the voices of Armenian and Kurdish commoners to the fore and highlights the important roles that they, too, played in the local struggles and wider changes in governance.
As the first study to present the dissolution of the Kurdish nobility using a social history lens, the book gets to the heart of the historical transformations that changed Palu from a diverse and economically affluent town into an ethnoreligiously homogenised, culturally conservative and economically deprived place.
Sex, Gender, and Illegitimacy in the Castilian Noble Family,
1400-1600 looks at illegitimacy across the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries and analyzes its implications for gender and
family structure ...in the Spanish nobility, a class whose actions,
structure, and power had immense implications for the future of the
country and empire. Grace E. Coolidge demonstrates that women and
men were able to challenge traditional honor codes, repair damaged
reputations, and manipulate ideals of marriage and sexuality to
encompass extramarital sexuality and the nearly constant presence
of illegitimate children. This flexibility and creativity in their
sexual lives enabled members of the nobility to repair, strengthen,
and maintain their otherwise fragile concept of dynasty and
lineage, using illegitimate children and their mothers to
successfully project the noble dynasty into the future-even in an
age of rampant infant mortality that contributed to the frequent
absence of male heirs. While benefiting the nobility as a whole,
the presence of illegitimate children could also be disruptive to
the inheritance process, and the entire system privileged noblemen
and their aims and goals over the lives of women and children. This
book enriches our understanding of the complex households and
families of the Spanish nobility, challenging traditional images of
a strict patriarchal system by uncovering the hidden lives that
made that system function.
When the First Crusade ended with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, jubilant crusaders returned home to Europe bringing with them stories, sacred relics, and other memorabilia, including banners, ...jewelry, and weapons. In the ensuing decades, the memory of the crusaders' bravery and pious sacrifice was invoked widely among the noble families of western Christendom. Popes preaching future crusades would count on these very same families for financing, leadership, and for the willing warriors who would lay down their lives on the battlefield. Despite the great risks and financial hardships associated with crusading, descendants of those who suffered and died on crusade would continue to take the cross, in some cases over several generations. Indeed, as Nicholas L. Paul reveals inTo Follow in Their Footsteps, crusading was very much a family affair.
Scholars of the crusades have long pointed to the importance of dynastic tradition and ties of kinship in the crusading movement but have failed to address more fundamental questions about the operation of these social processes. What is a "family tradition"? How are such traditions constructed and maintained, and by whom? How did crusading families confront the loss of their kin in distant lands? Making creative use of Latin dynastic narratives as well as vernacular literature, personal possessions and art objects, and architecture from across western Europe, Paul shows how traditions of crusading were established and reinforced in the collective memories of noble families throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Even rulers who never fulfilled crusading vows found their political lives dominated and, in some ways, directed by the memory of their crusading ancestors. Filled with unique insights and careful analysis,To Follow in Their Footstepsreveals the lasting impact of the crusades, beyond the expeditions themselves, on the formation of dynastic identity and the culture of the medieval European nobility.
Originally published in 1987. David Higgs's Nobles in Nineteenth-Century France: The Practice of Inegalitarianism provides a history of the nobility against the backdrop of changing French political ...conditions following the French Revolution. Since Jean Juarès, the influential historian of the French Revolution, many writers have argued that the French Revolution marked the political triumph of a capitalist bourgeoisie over a landed aristocracy. However, beginning with Alfred Cobban, some historians began to question this account by focusing on the continued presence of the nobility in France. This book contributes to this body of work by giving a panorama of the French nobility and three detailed case studies of noble families; the author then concludes with an examination of the nobility in political life, the church, and the private sphere. Professor Higgs finds that French nobles changed with their century, but given their small numbers in the national population, they maintained a grossly disproportionate presence in politics, in culture, among the wealthiest landowners, and in economic life.
In The Fight for Status and Privilege in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile, 1465-1598, Michael Crawford investigates conflicts about and resistance to the status of hidalgo, conventionally ...understood as the lowest, most heavily populated rank in the Castilian nobility. It is generally accepted that legal privileges were based on status and class in this pre-modern society. Crawford presents and explains the contentious realities and limitations of such legal privileges, particularly the conventional claim of hidalgo exemption from taxation. He focuses on efforts to claim these privileges as well as opposing efforts to limit and manage them. Although historians of Spain acknowledge such conflicts, especially lawsuits associated with this status, none have focused a study at this extraordinarily widespread phenomenon. This book analyzes the inevitable contradictions inherent in negotiation for and the implementation of privilege, scrutinizing the many jurisdictions that intervened in these struggles and debates, including the crown, judiciary, city council, and financial authorities. Ultimately, this analysis imparts important insights about the nature of sixteenth-century Castilian society with wide-ranging implications about the relationship between social status and legal privileges in the early modern period as a whole.
Individuals buried in two 17th–18th Century private chapels, each attached to a Franciscan Friary—one in Italy the other in Denmark—have been studied and sampled for trace element analysis. This ...selection of individuals allows a comparison of the trace element inventory of members of noble families against friars and townspeople, as well as a comparison between two very similar situations in Denmark and Italy. The relevance of this study is to see if and how differences in social status, and therefore likely differences in dietary habits, are reflected in the trace element chemistry of the bones. Samples of cortical and trabecular tissues have been procured from a long bone, preferentially the femur. The samples have been thoroughly decontaminated. 87 samples from 69 individuals have been analysed for Ca, Mn, Fe, Cu, Sr, Ba, and Pb by ICP-MS and Hg by CV-AAS. Sex and age at death have been established by anthropological analysis for all members of the two noble families. We find systematic differences between the noble family members and the friars (or townspeople) in both Italy and Denmark. The noble families are in both cases low in Sr and Ba compared to the friars and townspeople, which is interpreted as a dietary signal resulting from higher meat consumption than in the comparative groups. Lead concentrations are found to be higher in the noble family members than in the comparative groups, and the Pb concentration seems to increase with age in the Italian noble family, where both young and middle-aged individuals were investigated. Mercury concentrations are higher in some of the Italian noble family members compared to friars and townspeople; whereas in Denmark it seems that Hg was equally available to the noble family members and the friars alike. This is the first comprehensive and comparative study of post-medieval noble families in Denmark and Italy. The results show that there are distinct similarities in the trace element distribution patterns in the noble family members irrespective of country, which is tentatively suggested to be due to their higher social status.
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