Lords who exercised lawful authority over territories and people within a feudal hierarchy were also sometimes regarded as princes in the general sense, especially if they held the rank of count or higher. Most small territories designated as principalities during feudal eras were allodial, e.g. The lord of an allodium owned his lands and exercised prerogatives over the subjects in his territory absolutely, owing no feudal homage or duty as a vassal to a liege lord, nor being subject to any higher jurisdiction. A lord of even a quite small territory might come to be referred to as a prince before the 13th century, either from translations of a native title into the Latin prīnceps (as for the hereditary ruler of Wales) or when the lord's territory was allodial. It is also used in this sense in the United States Declaration of Independence.Īs a title, by the end of the medieval era, prince was borne by rulers of territories that were either substantially smaller than those of or exercised fewer of the rights of sovereignty than did emperors and kings. This is the Renaissance use of the term found in Niccolò Machiavelli's famous work, Il Principe. In this sense, 'prince' is used of any and all rulers, regardless of actual title or precise rank. In medieval and Early Modern Europe, there were as many as two hundred such territories, especially in Italy, Germany, and Gaelic Ireland. In this sense, a prince is a ruler of a territory that is sovereign or quasi-sovereign, i.e., exercising substantial (though not all) prerogatives associated with monarchs of independent nations, such as the immediate states within the historical boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The original but now less common use of the word was the application of the Latin word prīnceps, from late Roman law and the classical system of government that eventually gave way to the European feudal society. the princes de, respectively, Bidache (Gramont), Marcillac (La Rochefoucauld), Tonnay-Charente (Mortemart), Poix (Noailles), Léon (Rohan-Chabot), etc. These titles were borne by courtesy and preserved by tradition, not law, e.g.

Substantively, it became the fashion from the 17th century for the heirs apparent of the leading ducal families to assume a princely title, associated with a seigneurie in the family's possession.the Princes of Asturias (Spain), Grão Pará (Brazil, formerly), Orange (Netherlands), Viana (Navarre, formerly), Wales (U.K.), etc. Substantively, the heirs apparent in some monarchies use a specific princely title associated with a territory within the monarch's realm, e.g.von Carolath-Beuthen, de Broglie, Demidoff di San Donato, Lieven, de Merode, Pignatelli, Radziwill, von Wrede, Yussopov, etc. Generically, cadets of some non-sovereign families whose head bears the non-dynastic title of prince (or, less commonly, duke) were sometimes also authorized to use the princely title, e.g.Also substantively, the title was granted by popes and secular monarchs to specific individuals and to the heads of some high-ranking European families who, however, never exercised dynastic sovereignty and whose cadets are not entitled to share the princely title, viz the Princes de Beauvau-Craon, von Bismarck, Colonna, von Dohna-Schlobitten, von Eulenburg, de Faucigny-Lucinge, von Lichnowsky, von Pless, Ruffo di Calabria, (de Talleyrand) von Sagan, van Ursel, etc.Princes of Andorra, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Mingrelia, Monaco, Waldeck and Pyrmont, Wallachia, etc. As a substantive title, a prince was a monarch of the lowest rank in post- Napoleonic Europe, e.g.In Europe, it is the title legally borne by dynastic cadets in monarchies, and borne by courtesy by members of formerly reigning dynasties. The term may be broadly used of persons in various cultures, continents or eras. Generically, prince refers to a member of a family that ruled by hereditary right (such as the House of Sverre in Norway) or to non-reigning descendants, the title referring to sovereigns, former sovereigns' descendants as descendants of King Haakon V) or to cadets of a sovereign's family.The title has generic and substantive meanings: He also tasked his grandsons as summer rulers of the city when most of the government were on holiday in the country or attending religious rituals, and, for that task, granted them the title of princeps. The Latin word prīnceps (older Latin *prīsmo-kaps, literally 'the one who takes the first '), became the usual title of the informal leader of the Roman senate some centuries before the transition to empire, the princeps senatus.Įmperor Augustus established the formal position of monarch on the basis of principate, not dominion. Cicero attacks Catiline in the Senate of the Roman Republic.

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