Patricianship
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Patricianships are titles acknowledged by senators of major towns in Italy, that provided to those landed gentry and the nobility the hereditary status of Patricians of such cities.
[edit] Patricianship in The Netherlands
The Netherlands also knows a patriciate. It consists of extremely old and or well known Dutch families. These are registered in 'Het Nederlands' Patriciaat' colloquially called 'The Blue Book'. To be eligible for entry families must have played an active and important role in Dutch society, fulfilling high positions in the government, in prestigious commissions and in other prominent public posts for over six generations or 150 years.
The longer a family has been listed in the Blue Book the higher its esteem. The earliest entries are often families seen as coequal to the high nobility(barons and counts), because they are the jonger branches of the same family or have continuously married members of the Dutch nobility over a long period of time.
These are 'regentenfamilies' whose forefathers where active in the administration of town councils, counties or the country itself during the Dutch Republic. Some of these families declined enoblement because they did not keep a title in such high regard. At the end of the 19th century they still proudly called themselves "patriciers". Other families belong to the patriciate because they are held in the same regard and respect as the nobility but for certain reasons never where ennobled. Even within the same important families there can be branches with and without noble titles.
The social position of the lowest rank of the Dutch nobility; jonkheer, untitled nobility, could be seen as coequal to the average non noble patrician family, due to the fact that the lower nobility in the Netherlands is becoming more common and less noble and is taking the form of the bourgeois, upper middleclass instead of the upper-class.
[edit] References
- J.Dronkers and H.Schijf (2004): "Huwelijken tussen adel en patriciaat: een middeel om hun eliteposities in een moderne samenleving in stand te houden?."
- CBG. "Het Nederlands Patriciaat"
