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Margravine
Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the Empire and the title came to be borne by rulers of some Imperial principalities until the abolition of the Empire in 1806 (e.g., Margrave of Brandenburg, Margrave of Baden). Thereafter, those domains (originally known as ''marks'' or ''marches'', later as ''margraviates'' or ''margravates'') were absorbed into larger realms or the titleholders adopted titles indicative of full sovereignty. History Etymologically, the word "margrave" (, ) is the English and French form of the German noble title (;, meaning "march" or "mark", that is, borderland, added to , meaning "Count"); it is related semantically to the English title "Marcher Lord". As a noun and hereditary title, "margrave" was common among the languages of Europe, such as Spanish an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margrave Of Brandenburg
This article lists the Margraves and Electors of Brandenburg during the time when Brandenburg was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire. The Mark, or ''March'', of Brandenburg was one of the primary constituent states of the Holy Roman Empire. It was created in 1157 as the Margraviate of Brandenburg by Albert the Bear, Margrave of the Northern March. In 1356, by the terms of the Golden Bull of Charles IV, the Margrave of Brandenburg was given the permanent right to participate in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor with the title of Elector (). The early rulers came from several different dynasties, but from 1415 Brandenburg and its successor states were ruled by the House of Hohenzollern for over 500 years. From 1618 onward, Brandenburg was ruled in personal union with the Duchy of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns raised Prussia to a kingdom as the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, and from then on Brandenburg was ''de facto'' treated as part of the kingdom even though it was le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralised authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Count
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992. p. 73. . Especially in earlier medieval periods the term often implied not only a certain status, but also that the ''count'' had specific responsibilities or offices. The etymologically related English term " county" denoted the territories associated with some countships, but not all. The title of ''count'' is typically not used in England or English-speaking countries, and the term ''earl'' is used instead. A female holder of the title is still referred to as a ''countess'', however. Origin of the term The word ''count'' came into English from the French ', itself from Latin '—in its accusative form ''comitem''. It meant "companion" or "attendant", and as a title it indicated that someone was delegated to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duchy
A duchy, also called a dukedom, is a country, territory, fiefdom, fief, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess, a ruler hierarchically second to the king or Queen regnant, queen in Western European tradition. There once existed an important difference between "sovereign dukes" and dukes who were ordinary noblemen throughout Europe. Some historic duchies were sovereign in areas that would become part of nation-states only during the modern era, such as happened in Germany (once a federal empire) and Italy (previously a unified kingdom). In contrast, others were subordinate districts of those Kingdom (politics), kingdoms that had unified either partially or completely during the medieval era, such as France, Spain, Sicily, Naples, and the Papal States. Examples In France, several duchies existed in the medieval period, including Duchy of Normandy, Normandy, Duchy of Burgundy, Burgundy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. The medieval German Stem duchy, stem duchies (, literally "tribal duchy," ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fief
A fief (; ) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property like a watermill, held in feudal land tenure: these are typically known as fiefs or fiefdoms. However, not only land but anything of value could be held in fee, including governmental office, rights of exploitation such as hunting, fishing or felling trees, monopolies in trade, money rents and tax farms. There never existed a standard feudal system, nor did there exist only one type of fief. Over the ages, depending on the region, there was a broad variety of customs using the same basic legal principles in many variations. Terminology In ancient Rome, a " benefice" (from the Latin noun , meaning "benefit") was a gift of land () f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Middle Ages
The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the Periodization, period of History of Europe, European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renaissance). Around 1350, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and Plague (disease), plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it had been before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. Kingdom of France, France and Kingdom of England, England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants' Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict, the Hundred Years' War. To add to the many problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was temporarily shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively, those events ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margraviate Of Bodonitsa
The margraviate or marquisate of Bodonitsa (also Vodonitsa or Boudonitza; ), today Mendenitsa, Phthiotis (180 km northwest of Athens), was a Frankish state in Greece following the conquests of the Fourth Crusade. It was originally granted as a margravial holding of Guy Pallavicini by Boniface, first king of Thessalonica, in 1204. Its original purpose was to guard the pass of Thermopylae. The marquisate survived the fall of Thessalonica after the death of Boniface, but it was made subservient to the Principality of Achaea in 1248. The marquisate further survived the coming of the Catalan Company in 1311, but it fell to two Venetian families in quick succession: Cornaro (till 1335) and the Zorzi. Among the eighteen Catalan vassals of the area in 1380-1 the Margrave of Bodonitsa ranks third below Count Demitre and the Count of Salona. The Zorzi ruled the marquisate until the Ottoman Turks conquered it in 1414. Nicholas II continued to use the margravial title after that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula as well as Septimania under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the ''Reconquista'',"Para los autores árabes medievales, el término Al-Andalus designa la totalidad de las zonas conquistadas – siquiera temporalmente – por tropas arabo-musulmanas en territorios actualmente pertenecientes a Portugal, España y Francia" ("For medieval Arab authors, Al-Andalus designated all the conquered areas – even temporarily – by Arab-Muslim troops in territories now belonging to Spain, Portugal and France"), García de Cortázar, José Ángel. ''V Semana de Estudios Medievales: Nájera, 1 al 5 de agosto de 1994'', Gobie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees are a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. They extend nearly from their union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast, reaching a maximum elevation of at the peak of Aneto. For the most part, the main crest forms a divide between Spain and France, with the microstate of Andorra sandwiched in between. Historically, the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre extended on both sides of the mountain range. Etymology In Greek mythology, Pyrene is a princess who gave her name to the Pyrenees. The Greek historian Herodotus says Pyrene is the name of a town in Celtic Europe. According to Silius Italicus, she was the virgin daughter of Bebryx, a king in Mediterranean Gaul by whom the hero Hercules was given hospitality during his quest to steal the cattle of Geryon during his famous Labours. Hercules, characteristically drunk and lustful, violates the sacred code of hospitality and rapes his host's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconquista
The ''Reconquista'' (Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese for ) or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian Reconquista#Northern Christian realms, kingdoms waged against the al-Andalus, Muslim kingdoms following the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. The beginning of the ''Reconquista'' is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga ( or 722), in which an Kingdom of Asturias, Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion. The ''Reconquista'' ended in 1492 with the Granada War#Last stand at Granada, fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Catholic Monarchs. In the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanzor waged a series of military campaigns for 30 years in order to subjugate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situated on the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, to the south of the Pyrenees mountain range. Catalonia is administratively divided into four Provinces of Spain, provinces or eight Vegueries of Catalonia, ''vegueries'' (regions), which are in turn divided into 43 Comarques of Catalonia, ''comarques''. The capital and largest city, Barcelona, is the second-most populous Municipalities in Spain, municipality in Spain and the fifth-most populous List of metropolitan areas in Europe, urban area in the European Union. > > > ''Catalonia'' theoretically derived. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that ''Catalania'' derives from the local medley of Goths with Alans, initially constituting a ''Goth-Alania''. Othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marca Hispanica
The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a march or military buffer zone established c. 795 by Charlemagne in the eastern Pyrenees and nearby areas, to protect the new territories of the Christian Carolingian Empire—the Duchy of Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine, and Septimania—from the Muslim Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in al-Andalus. In its broader meaning, the ''Spanish March'' sometimes refers to a group of early Iberian and trans-Pyrenean lordships or counts coming under Frankish rule. As time passed, these lordships merged or gained independence from Frankish imperial rule. Geographical context The area of the Spanish March broadly corresponds to the eastern regions between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. The local population of the march was diverse. It included Basques in its northwestern valleys, the Jews of Occitania, and a large Occitano-Romance-speaking population governed by the Visigothic Code, all of them under the influence of al-Andalus since their lords had v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
