that dominion was held in fief; and (4) the nobleman’s personal military status.
Stratification lines were drawn first between the mass of petty manorial lords with only
low or middle justice on the one hand, and the much smaller group of lords with high
justice on the other. Among those with high justice, called seigneurs haut justiciers, the
line was drawn between the lesser lords without a proper castle and the greater lords with
one or more, and among the latter the line was usually drawn between “castellans” and
“barons.” Barons were in their turn divided on the basis of their tenurial status into barons
of principalities and barons of the realm, and on the basis of whether or not they
possessed a dignity into “simple” barons and greater barons, or “princes” (princes).
Among the princes who were barons of the realm, a distinction was drawn between those
who were not and those who were peers (pairs) of the realm, holding their principalities
as pairies, and enjoying extensive privileges.
All but the last of these statuses were developed and transmitted with little or no royal
control down to 1296, but from 1193 the kings of France occasionally conferred
countships by donative enfeoffment, primarily upon their own sons, and between 1296
and 1314 Philip IV laid the groundwork for the later practice of conferring all of the other
dominical statuses, both by regranting existing dominions in fief and by “erecting” new
castellanies, baron-ies, viscounties, counties, duchies, and pairies by a legal process
usually involving the consolidation of several existing dominions of lower rank. Around
1300, dukes and other peers of France typically had annual incomes in excess of 10,000
livres tournois, and most lesser counts and greater viscounts had incomes in excess of
1,000 livres; the vast majority of nobles below the rank of castellan had incomes between
one and fifty livres a year. Since the latter group made up roughly 99 percent of the
nobility, the average noble income was not high.
D’A.Jonathan D.Boulton
[See also: ARMOR AND WEAPONS; BARON/BARONY;
CASTELLAN/CHÂTELAIN; COUNT/COUNTY; DUKE/DUCHY; KNIGHTHOOD;
PEER/PEERAGE; PRINCE/PRINCIPALITY]
Boulton, D’A.J.D. Grants of Honour: The Origins of the System of Nobiliary Dignities of
Traditional France, ca. 1100–1515. Forthcoming.
Contamine, Philippe. La noblesse au moyen âge, XIe au XVe siècle: essais a la mémoire de Robert
Boutruche. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976.
Guilhiermoz, Paul. Essai sur l’origine de la noblesse en France au moyen âge. Paris: Picard, 1902.
Lucas, Robert H. “Ennoblement in Late Medieval France.” Mediaeval Studies 39 (1977):239–60.
Martindale, Jane. “The French Aristocracy in the Early Middle Ages: A Reappraisal.” Past and
Present 75 (1977):5–45.
Reuter, Timothy. The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Classes of France and Germany
from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978.
NOËL
. The modern French word for a Christmas carol and Christmastide itself, noël was
commonly used in late-medieval France as a joyous acclamation; associations with the
Christmas season date from the 13th century. In the late 15th century, noël also came to
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