Margrave

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Margrave is the English and French form (recorded since 1551) of the German title Markgraf (from Mark "march" and Graf "count") and certain equivalent nobiliary ("princely") titles in other languages. The wife of a margrave is called a margravine or in German Markgräfin.

[edit] History

A Markgraf, or margrave, originally functioned as the military governor of a Carolingian mark, a medieval border province. A margrave had jurisdiction over a march (German Mark), which also become known, after his title, as a margraviate or margravate, strictly speaking the correct word for his office. As outlying areas tended to have great importance to the central realms of kings and princes, and they often became larger than those nearer the interior, margraves assumed quite inordinate powers over those of other counts of a realm.

Most Marks and, consequently, their margraves had their base on the Eastern border of the Carolingian and later Holy Roman Empire; the Breton Mark on the Atlantic and the border of peninsular Britanny, and the Spanish Mark on the Muslim frontier, including what is now Catalonia, are notable exceptions.

In the modern Holy Roman Empire, two original marches developed into the two most powerful states in Central Europe: the Mark Brandenburg (the nucleus of the later Kingdom of Prussia) and Austria (which became heir to various, mainly 'Hungarian' and 'Burgundian' principalities). Austria was originally called Marchia Orientalis in Latin, the "eastern borderland", as (originally roughly the present Lower -) Austria formed the eastern outpost of the Holy Roman Empire, on the border with the Magyars and the Slavs. During the 19th and 20th centuries the term was sometimes translated as Ostmark by some Germanophones, but medieval documents attest only the vernacular name Ostarrîchi. Another Mark in the south-east, Styria, still appears as Steiermark in German today.

In the late Middle Ages, as marches lost their military importance, margraviates developed into hereditary monarchies, comparable in all but name to duchies. A unique case was the Golden Bull of 1356, recognizing the Margrave of Brandenburg as an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, membership of the highest college within the Imperial diet carrying the politically significant privilege of being the sole electors of the non-hereditary Emperor, which was previously de facto restricted to dukes and three prince-archbishops (Cologne, Mainz and Trier); other non-ducal lay members would be the King of Bohemia and the Palatine of the Rhenish Kurpfalz.

As the title of margrave lost its military connotation, it became more and more used as a mere 'peerage' rank (higher than any Graf (count and peculiar comital compound titles such as Landgraf, Gefursteter Graf and Reichsgraf) but lower than a Herzog i.e. duke). At the end of the monarchies in Germany, Italy and Austria, not a single margraviate remained, since they all had been raised to higher titles.

The etymological heir of the margrave, also introduced in countries that never had any margraviates, the marquess (see that article; their languages may use one or two words, e.g. French margrave and marquis), still ranks in the British peerage between duke and earl (equivalent to a continental count).

[edit] Margravial titles in various European languages

Languages with a specific title for the margrave (distinct from the later marquess, for which all have a word, if different given in parentheses) include (but often no actual marches existed there, so it only refers to foreign cases) :

[edit] Furthermore

  • The late-medieval commanders, fiefholders, of Viipuri castle in Finland, the bulwark of the then Swedish realm, at the border against Novgorod/Russia, did in practice function as a margrave and having feudal privileges, keeping all the crown's incomes from the fief to use for the defense of the realm's eastern border. Its fiefholders were (almost always) descended from, or married to, the noble family of Baat from Smalandia in Sweden.
  • The German word "Mark" also has other meanings than the margrave's territorial border area, often with a territorial component, which occur far more numerously then margraviates; so its occurrence in composite placenames does not imply whether it was part of a 'margraviate' as such, although 'margrave', or Markgraf, translates as the "count of the marches", originally ruling an area on the border or outlying area of a larger feudal state. Uses of "Mark" in German names are commonly more local, as in the context of a Markgenossenschaft, which means a partially self-governing association of agricultural users of an area; the German name-component Mark can also be a truncated form of Markt 'market', as in the small town of Marksuhl in the Eisenach area of Thuringia, meaning 'market town on the river Suhl'. The non-margravial origin even applies to the County of Mark and the country of Denmark (meaning 'march of the Danes', in the sense of border area, yet never under a Margrave but the Danish national kingdom, outside the Holy Roman Empire).
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