Tag: aristocracy

Fighting filled the noble’s need of something to do, a way to exert himself. It was his substitute for work. His leisure time was spent chiefly in hunting, otherwise in games of chess, backgammon, and dice, in songs, dances, pageants, and other entertainments. Long winter evenings were occupied listening to the recital of interminable verse epics. The sword offered the workless noble an activity with a purpose, one that could bring him honor, status, and, if he was lucky, gain. If no real conflict was at hand, he sought tournaments, the most exciting, expensive, ruinous, and delightful activity of the noble class, and paradoxically the most harmful to his true military function. Fighting in tournaments concentrated his skills and absorbed his interest in an increasingly formalized clash, leaving little thought for the tactics and strategy of real battle.

— A Distant Mirror, Chapter 3

The [Spanish] Armada’s new Captain General was Don Alonso Perez de Guzman el Bueno, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia. He was a country aristocrat of 38, short in stature, broad-shouldered, with brown hair and beard, and a melancholy countenance. His name was one of Spain’s oldest, and his fortune was considerable: He owned orange groves in Andalusia and controlled the revenues of the local tuna industry. In his role as a provincial overlord, he was known for diligence and tact. But his talents as a military leader were largely untested; when Francis Drake had raided Cadiz harbor the year before, the Duke had hurried in with troops to defend the town—but the town had never come under attack. And nothing seemed to mark him for naval leadership. He had never captained a fleet of ships. He had never seen a battle at sea.

The last thing Medina Sidonia wanted was to conduct the Armada to England. While [the Marquis of] Santa Cruz still tossed with fever on his deathbed, [King] Philip wrote Medina Sidonia a letter that hinted at the forthcoming command; the Duke’s response was prompt and plaintive. “I wish I possessed the talents and strength necessary for such a great task,” he wrote. “But, Sir, my health is too poor, for I know by my small experience afloat that I soon become seasick, and always catch cold. I am deeply in debt. My family owes 900,000 ducats, and I have not a single real to spend on the expedition.”

Medina Sidonia’s letter did no good, for Philip had made up his mind. “If you fail, you fail,” the King wrote back, “but the cause being the cause of God, you will not fail. Take heart and sail as soon as possible.” Undoubtedly the King placed special importance on Medina Sidonia’s possession of a great name. In an age when ancestry counted for much, the Duke would command automatic respect from the proud and jealous sea captains at Lisbon. No lesser nobleman could quiet the squabbles over honor and precedence that were bound to develop after the death of the Marquis of Santa Cruz. And no doubt the King reasoned further that, despite his cries of poverty, the Duke would contribute handsomely to the Enterprise. In that the King would prove correct….

— The Armada, pp. 63-64

…Amber is a golden-colored gemstone made from fossilized tree resin, and its beauty has attracted the attention of rock collectors and jewelry makers since the Neolithic period (10,000 to 2,000 [BCE]).

It was apparently associated with Sun worship and spirituality in some societies, and Professor Czebreszuk believes the Mycenaeans must have valued amber primarily as a symbol of the Earth’s solar companion. He states:

"Already in the Neolithic in Central Europe, we have disc-shaped artifacts with radial decorations that clearly point to the Sun. Amber probably also comes to the south as a solar material. And the Sun is power, it is the most important celestial body, so it is also a heavenly body, it is also heaven. And all these symbols together gather into one beam, which made it such an important raw material."

Wearing an amber necklace or other type of jewelry would have signified that a person was blessed by the Sun, which would have acted as a justification for their aristocratic status in the class-conscious Mycenaean society.

In Bronze Age societies in general, the elites thought of themselves as a separate and distinct group that had more in common with elites in other societies than they did with average citizens in their own. Consequently, Professor Czebreszuk explains, they remained in contact with each other and traded with each other over long distances. Amber would have been exchanged across this trade network, ensuring that elites would have exclusive access to this coveted gemstone.

— Ancient Mycenaeans Wore Amber Jewelry to Symbolize Their Elite Status – Ancient Origins

Not all recruits were destitute or base-born, however. The Army of Flanders, especially in the sixteenth century [C.E.], needed quality as well as quantity; men who excelled in single combat, in the “actions” of the war, were required as well as cannon-fodder for the great battles. Every captain therefore tried to enlist a number of gentlemen (particulares) to serve as common soldiers in his company, offering a bonus-pay (ventaja) to every gentleman who agreed to do so. Some of these volunteers would be the relatives of the captain, others would no doubt be poor gentry unable to gain a living in other ways (Spanish gentlemen were not supposed to demean themselves by manual labour or commercial transactions), others still would be aspiring noblemen who began their military service in the ranks and hoped before long to rise to a position of command.

Most army commanders set the highest value upon these gentleman-rankers. The duke of Alva, for example, was overjoyed to find that a large number of particulares had volunteered to serve in the Spanish infantry which he led to the Netherlands in 1567.

Soldiers of this calibre [wrote Alva] are the men who win victory in the “actions” and with whom the General establishes the requisite discipline among the troops. In our nation nothing is more important than to introduce gentlemen and men of substance into the infantry so that all is not left in the hands of labourers and lackeys.

Throughout the Eighty Years’ War the same sentiment was expressed in remarkably similar terms. As late as 1640, for example, a Netherlander—and a civilian at that—could write:

Gentleman-rankers…are the people who bear the brunt of the battles and sieges, as we have seen on many occasions, and who by their example oblige and enliven the rest of the soldiers (who have less sense of duty) to stand fast and fight with courage.

Service as a volunteer among the infantry was particularly popular among the Spanish gentry, but particulares were also to be found in considerable numbers in the ranks of other “nations”. The English units in the Army of Flanders, for example, regularly included Catesbys, Treshams and other members of the leading recusant gentry families—including Guy Fawkes. Not all these gentleman-rankers were poor. On one celebrated occasion the Emperor Charles V lent additional dignity to the military profession by himself taking up a pike and marching with his men; later, in the 1590s, the dukes of Osuna and Pastrana and the prince of Asculi, scions of the most illustrious houses of Spain, were all to be found serving as simple soldiers in the Army of Flanders. Naturally these volunteers, especially the nobles, aspired to an eventual position of command, but they first received an admirable apprenticeship and, in addition, their presence in the ranks helped to maintain morale and reduce insubordination. In this way the Spanish Habsburgs assembled armies which were supremely capable of victory without resort to any compulsion.

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, pp. 40-41

Emphasis mine.

By the middle of the thirteenth century [C.E.], however, certain features seem to be characteristic of all [European] baronial households. There was a seignorial council made up of both knights and officials which fulfilled the same function of advice and consent for its lord that the curia regis did for the king. There were auditors who normally travelled around the baron’s lands, overseeing and checking the complicated system of accounts. Two officials dealt with financial matters, receiving income and making expenditures. Their titles varied on different estates, and they might be known a treasurer, receiver-general, or wardrober. The keystone of the baronial household was the steward: he held courts, headed the lord’s council, occasionally acted as an attorney at the king’s court, supervised, and often appointed, such local officials as bailiffs and reeves, and acted as his lord’s deputy. These various officials were the important nucleus who carried on the day-to-day affairs of the barony. Their number and their exact function depended on the importance and wealth of the lord whom they served.

A list of officials for the barony of Eresby in the last quarter of the thirteenth century gives a good idea of the actual household of even a minor baron, and also suggests the large number of officials and servants concerned with purely domestic affairs. The lord of Eresby had a steward who was a knight, and a wardrober who was the chief clerical officer and examined the daily expenditures with the steward every night. The wardrober’s deputy was clerk of the offices, and the chaplain and almoner could be required to help write letters and documents or act as controller of expenses. There were also two friars with their boy clerk who could substitute for the chaplain. The purely domestic officials and servants were numerous. They included a chief buyer, a marshal, two pantrymen and butlers, two cooks and larderers, a saucer—the medieval term for the sauce cook—and a poulterer, two ushers and chandlers, a porter, a baker, a brewer, and two farriers. These men were assisted by their own boy helpers. This actual list has the great advantage of illustrating the dual character of the officials who made up the baron’s household, and the number of individuals who travelled with it on its many moves. The most important officials were only incidentally concerned with daily affairs. They dealt primarily with the long-range problems of the administration of the scattered lands and the collection of the various revenues of the barony, serving as the overseers and directors of such rooted local officials as reeves, bailiffs, or constables. But the nucleus of officials also included those whose total concern was with the daily domestic routine, and one man above all—the steward of the household—was primarily responsible for the smooth running of daily life.

— A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 54-55

[King Philip] had carried through a social revolution among the Macedonian military class…. The old nobility were laid under an obligation of regular military service; to it a new nobility of military adventurers was added, recruited and promoted on the basis of professional excellence. The result was an army ‘open to talents’, in which the king’s new and old followers competed for position in demonstrations of loyalty and self-disregard.

— The Mask of Command, Chapter 1

Indeed the medieval magnates had surprisingly little to do with their children. Almost immediately after birth, they were handed over to the care of a nurse whose duties, as described by Bartholomew the Englishman, included not only the physical care of the child, but also the display of affection which is now considered essentially maternal. According to Bartholomew the nurse’s duties were very extensive. She was ordained to nourish and feed the child, to give it suck, to kiss it if it fell, and comfort it if it wept, and to wash it when it was dirty. The nurse was also to teach the child to speak by sounding out the words for him, to dose him with medicines when necessary, and even to chew the toothless child’s meat so that he could swallow it. The mother must have been a rather remote figure. Discipline was always considered the father’s primary duty. Bartholomew specifically insisted that the father must treat his child with harshness and severity. He should teach him with scoldings and beatings, put him under wardens and tutors, and, above all, show “no glad cheer lest the child wax proud”. The old adage of “spare the rod and spoil the child” was firmly entrenched in all medieval treatises on the proper upbringing of children.

— A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 45-46

The supreme, god-like position of the Assyrian monarch was promoted and enhanced in a variety of practical ways. Access to the king by individuals was, at best, extremely difficult, and the long walk through the gates and corridors flanked by bull and lion colossi and stone reliefs depicting the king slaying and mutilating his enemies would overwhelm the visitor, as it was intended to do, with ‘awesome splendour’…. The only mortal who could be regarded as an equal of the Assyrian king was a foreign king, whom the Assyrian monarch addressed as ‘my brother’, but even he was a potential subject of the ‘king of kings’….

The Assyrian king enjoyed absolute power over the state, there being only three checks to his autocratic rule, religion, legal precedent, and the temper of his nobles and officials. The monarch was subject to religious belief and practice, and examples of royal attempts to depart therefrom are extremely rare. As to legal precedent, the king had to respect the traditional rights of individuals, such as property ownership, and of groups or institutions, such as tax exemptions granted to privileged cities. Finally he had to respect the mood of the upper classes or run the risk, as a few kings did, of revolution and regicide. Apart from these considerations, however; the king’s will was supreme in all affairs of state. Indeed, in the legislative sphere he was not only the supreme but the sole legislator, his ‘law-making’ consisting of royal decrees. There was not even an assembly, as in Sumer, with which he might discuss a proposal, although he did seek advice from his various officials and sanction from the gods by means of omens. The king was presumably supreme judge, and he was definitely commander-in-chief of the army. In religion, although he was subject to commonly accepted beliefs and practices, as already mentioned, he was the high priest…of the god Ashur. This is in contrast to Babylonia where the high priest was not the same person as the king. Finally, even the economy was subject to his will, for in theory he owned all the land, and trade, both domestic and foreign, depended upon his sanction.

— The Cambridge Ancient History, volume III, part 2, p. 196

All [medieval Japanese] warriors, regardless of rank, were trained in swordsmanship. Those of the upper ranks, of course, had more time to devote to the pursuit of excellence in this art, and to the pursuit of superior instructors—which explains why a retainer of lower rank, notwithstanding his longer exposure to the hardships of military life, was usually no match for a higher-ranking bushi in a duel. This type of situation…resembles that of Europe during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries [C.E.], when hardened veterans of countless battles were still no match for a well-trained aristocrat with a sword—the noble’s weapon which, with the rise of the bourgeoisie to power at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, became known as the gentleman’s weapon.

— Secrets of the Samurai, pp. 254-55

The people who initially got control of economic resources immediately monopolized them. They could do anything they wanted thereafter provided that they remained a relatively homogenous and peaceful group. By and large they did remain homogenous and peaceful among themselves. They decided how to divide up the power, how to divide up the wealth, who should be king, and which family should become the royal dynasty. The instability in these societies usually came from external invasions by new peoples, who at various times pushed into these wealthy lands and gained control. Their control usually collapsed or was overthrown a few generations later by the old native aristocracy or by later invaders. But all invaders perpetuated the existing social structure, taking over the prerogatives of the old aristocracy.

— The Civilization of the Middle Ages, p. 3

The monasteries of 10th and 11th century Europe [C.E.] were not simply communities of devout men and women living a life given over to corporate prayer and worship. Envisaged by monastic teachers as arks of salvation in a flood of worldly perils, they remained an integral part of the society which brought them into being. The Castilian monasteries were repositories of dynastic tradition, mausoleums, powerhouses of loyalty to the comital family. Links between the landed aristocracy and the monasteries were thus extremely close. Noblemen looked to the monastic houses of which they were the often very generous patrons for diverse reciprocal services and expressions of gratitude. The provision of hospitality was one of these. A patron would expect to be put up (with all his human and animal retinue), and probably in some style, in “his” monastery as in some sort of private hotel. The hospitality sought might be permanent. The active career of an aristocratic warrior might be as short as that of a 20th century footballer, and he had to have somewhere to spend what might be a long retirement. It is probably correct to envisage the monasteries of this period as containing more than a few incapacitated or elderly knights among the community. Assured of comfort and security, surrounded by fellows of their social rank to some of whom they might be related, ideally placed to receive news and gossip, they must have spent their declining years in an agreeable way.

— The Quest for El Cid, pp. 66-67

Emphasis mine.