45616 The nobility state relationship (12)

206 ■ Antoni Mączak

The ‘inflation ofhonours’ was a complex transacrion: it filled the treasury, but also balanced tbe wealtb and influence of local elites with their social standing. The old aristocrats might have been dissatisfied or even shocked by tbe waste of royal grace bestowed upon individuals of base origin, but in reality a certain amount of new blood and new wealtb could onły strengthen the top stratum, par-ticularły wben it was becoming a caste. And tbe newcomers were all too eager to conform to old standards ofbehaviour and to fbrget about their modest ancestry.

Overall then, differences seem abundant and import ant, while few sweeping statements can be madę about Europę as a whole. The nobility' in western and central Europę was a common denominator for many diverse sodetal groups; if‘virtue\ ‘wealtb’, and 'old blood’ were generally praised by, and in, the nobles, these constituent parts oftbeir identity were not distributed in equal proportion.⁴³Mechanisms for social recognition and materiał compensation were also diverse. In the eariy modem State, nobility was tbe principal but not the only elite group. Princeły absolutism deprived it of control over tbe mechanisms which deter-mined its composition. The nobles could cold-shoulder new men and impostors, but monopoły of ennoblement was a cmdal prerogative of rulers, and the politi-cal mechanisms of court life easily disarmed any resistance. Loyalty to the prince was a part of tbe identity ofthe noble estate but was the sovereign always equally loyal to his nobles?

It was difficult for the nobles to emphasize tradition and to dose their ranks when the State was expanding so fast and required so many servants, so many new skills. Therefore, the nobility-state relationship was not an easy co-habitation but an eierdse in adaptańon and flexibility. Sometimes the gentry was able to seize a pardcular seaor of power, as did the Justices of the Peace in England.⁴⁴ In western Germany, regional corporations of nobles controlled particular bishoprics and chapters generańon after generation. In Poland-Lithuania and some other coun-tries of the east, the nobles acquired control over the entire village and small-town population, not only over the serfś. And ftnally, clientage and nepotism (lay and ecdesiastical), a traditional tool of established elites, remained a strong factor of European statehood, but also a bonę of contention between the high nobility and the monarch.

⁴³ There is an ezception to every rule: Donati (1988), 288-9, quotes the bizarre view of an Italian authority, Domenico Mora (1589), who ezduded virtu as an attribute of the nobility and stressed tiches: Te tichezze sono 1’istesso honore, et pero l anima della nobilita’; Mora assodated altemative opinions with heresies and Islam.

⁴⁴ Gleason (1969).

Cities, Bourgeoisies, States

Ann Katherine Isaacs and Maarten Prak

nj Introduction

The bourgeoisie is one of those historical phenomena that seems to be omnipresent in crucial developments of the European past, and at the same time eludes serious analysis by historians and other social scientists.¹ As one of them summarized the problem three decades ago: "The trouble with the middle class is that it is always rising’. Even though the bourgeoisie’s destiny seems obviousły enough the age of modemity, and its origins were surely to be found in the medieval town, the intermediate stages proved to be extremeły hard to chart: somehow the bourgeoisie failed to appear at almost every rendezvous plannedby its academic pursuers. With the destruction of the Industrial Revolution as a uni-fying concept, and the by now unanimous opinion that, whatever it may have been, the French Revolution was definitely not a bourgeois rerolution, the last landmarks have disappeared.

Current interpretations are important in their historiographical conteit, but tell us relatively little about, or even constitute serious obstacles to, an under-standing of the contribution of the wealthy and eminent strata of Europes uiban population to the political systems and the power structures which evolved, in particular in the Middle Ages. Their end result has usually been to minimize that contribution, considering the urban element, cities themsetoes and their eminent groups, antithetic to centralized States. Hence, in any vision in which such States appear in a positive light as a goal for European development, urban groups are madę to appear marginal, at least at the level of central power. After a brief

The authors wish to thank Elen^Sj^ano Gu^nni, Giorgio Chittolim, Ronald Asch, Richard Bonney, Robert Descimon, Ha^Ols^^fijl lAgo Soły, andW ayne te Brake

for their intellectual support and for discussing eSeraraJtsMk this chap^j °

¹ Karpovich, ąuoted in Schóffer (1978), 100.