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Baron

Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch. Barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. In many kingdoms, they were entitled to wear a smaller form of a crown called a coronet.

Not to be confused with Baronet or Boron. For other uses, see Baron (disambiguation).

The term originates from the Latin term barō, via Old French. The use of the title baron came to England via the Norman Conquest of 1066, then the Normans brought the title to Scotland and Southern Italy. It later spread to Scandinavian and Slavic lands.

Etymology[edit]

The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin barō "man; servant, soldier, mercenary" (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has barus in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βᾰρῠ́ς "heavy" (because of the "heavy work" done by mercenaries), but the word is presumably of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning "warrior, nobleman". Cornutus in the first century already reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin. He glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning "stupid", by reference to classical Latin bārō "simpleton, dunce";[2] because of this early reference, the word has also been suggested to derive from an otherwise unknown Celtic *bar, but the Oxford English Dictionary takes this to be "a figment".[3]

Continental Europe[edit]

France[edit]

During the Ancien Régime, French baronies were very much like Scottish ones. Feudal landholders who possessed a barony were entitled to style themselves as a baron (French: baron) if they were nobles; a roturier (commoner) could only be a seigneur de la baronnie (lord of the barony). French baronies could be sold freely until 1789, when the Constituent Assembly abolished feudal law. The title of baron was assumed as a titre de courtoisie by many nobles, whether members of the Nobles of the Robe or cadets of Nobles of the Sword who held no title in their own right.


Emperor Napoléon (r. 1804–1815) created a new imperial nobility in which baron appeared from 1808 as the second-lowest title. The titles were inherited through a male-only line of descent and could not be purchased.


In 1815, King Louis XVIII created a new peerage system and a Chamber of Peers, based on the British model. Baron-peer was the lowest title, but the heirs to pre-1789 barons could remain barons, as could the elder sons of viscount-peers and the younger sons of count-peers. This peerage system was abolished in 1848.

In fiction[edit]

Barons and baronesses have appeared in various works of fiction. For examples of fictional barons and baronesses, see List of fictional nobility#Barons and baronesses.

Irish feudal barony

List of baronies in the peerages of the British Isles

Marcher Lord

Honour (feudal land tenure)

List of barons in the peerages of Britain and Ireland

Robber baron (feudalism)

- Slavic feudal title

Boyar

Sanders, I. J. English Baronies: A Study of their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327. Clarendon Press, 1960.

"The House of Lords", published in: Peerage and Pedigree, Studies in Peerage Law and Family History, Vol.1, London, 1910, pp. 324–362

Round, J. Horace

Heraldica

, ed. (1911). "Baron" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 421–423.

Chisholm, Hugh