Word Finder - patrician

definition

(antiquity) A member of any of the families constituting the populus Romanus, or body of Roman citizens, before the development of the plebeian order; later, one who, by right of birth or by special privilege conferred, belonged to the senior class of Romans, who, with certain property, had by right a seat in the Roman Senate.

definition

A person of high birth; a nobleman.

definition

One familiar with the works of the Christian Fathers; one versed in patristic lore or life.

definition

Of or pertaining to the Roman patres ("fathers") or senators, or patricians.

definition

Of, pertaining to, or appropriate to, a person of high birth; noble; not plebeian.

A conspiracy headed by the patrician Arsaber had a similar issue.

That union would answer rather to the union of the three patrician tribes of Rome.

In 467 the emperor Anthemius rewarded him for the panegyric which he had written in honour of him by raising him to the post of prefect of Rome, and afterwards to the dignity of a patrician and senator.

The most interesting secular buildings are the houses of the old patrician families.

But in the matter of liability to the duties of citizenship, military service and taxation, he was entirely on a level with the patrician.

Thus his refusal to sacrifice Polish to Lithuanian or Lithuanian to Polish interests caused both Poles and Lithuanians to accuse the f ar-seeing monarch of partiality and favouritism; while his anti-German policy, on which the future safety of the dual state depended, could only be carried through by the most humiliating concessions to patrician pride and greed.

At Pavia the barbarian conquerors of Italy proclaimed him king, and he received from Zeno the dignity of Roman patrician.

The title of patrician was revived and offered to Conrad, king of Italy, but not crowned emperor.

The practical result of the Licinian reform was that the great plebeian families became, for all practical purposes, patrician.

What is equally noteworthy, as explaining the characteristics of Napoleon, is that his descent was on both sides distinctly patrician.

In the following year, according to Procopius, Justinian perceived the value of the Ghassanids as an outpost of the Roman empire, and as opponents of the Persian dependants of Hira, and recognized Harith as king of the Arabs and patrician of the Roman empire.

He now took the title " king of the Lombards," to which he added the dignity of " Patrician of the Romans," which had been granted to his father.

He did not stay long at Prague, and we find him next at Zurich, whence he accepted an invitation to Venice from a young patrician, Giovanni Mocenigo.

In all other cities of the Netherlands the craft gilds remained in humble subjection to a council co-opted from a limited number of wealthy patrician families.

His worship, introduced from the Greek colonies in Etruria and in the south of Italy, seems to have been established in Rome from the earliest times, as two old Patrician genies were associated with his cult and the Fabii claimed him as their ancestor.

The earliest forerunner of the great sisterhood of nurses of whom we have any record was Fabiola, a patrician Roman lady, who in A.D.

On the marriage in 1735 of another Agostino Chigi (1710-1769) with Giulia Albani, heiress of the Albani, a Venetian patrician family, said to be of Albanian origin, her name was added to that of Chigi.

This brought him into conflict with the aristocratic party, who prevented him from obtaining the aedileship. When about forty years of age he married a lady of patrician rank, Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar.

He renewed the donation of Pippin, and as Patrician he took Rome under his protection.

Claudius, Appius, surnamed Crassus, a Roman patrician, consul in 471 and 451 B.C., and in the same and following year one of the decemvirs.

He holds that Claudius was never the leader of the patrician party,.

Claudius, Appius, surnamed Caecus, Roman patrician and author.

His family was of patrician rank and traced a legendary descent from lulus, the founder of Alba g Y, Longa, son of Aeneas and grandson of Venus and Anchises.

Caesar made the most of his divine ancestry and built a temple in his forum to Venus Genetrix; but his patrician descent was of little importance in politics and disqualified Caesar from holding the tribunate, an office to which, as a leader of the popular party, he would naturally have aspired.

By treaty of December 1145 he recognized the republic under his suzerainty, substituted a papal prefect for the "patrician" and returned to Rome.

Ricimer then obtained from Leo I., emperor at Constantinople, the title patrician, but in 457 set up Majorianus as his own emperor in the West, and induced Leo to give his consent.

The traditions connect them closely with the beginning of Rome, and with a large number of its early institutions, such as the worship of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, and the patrician form of marriage (confarreatio).

In the Via Morone near the Piazza della Scala is a collection of art treasures bequeathed to the town in 1879 by a Milanese patrician, the Cavaliere Poldi-Pezzoli.

In 697 we hear of a revolt against Rome led by Sergius the Patrician, who allied himself with the Arabs.

Such was the position to which John de Witt, a young man of twenty-eight years of age, belonging to one of the most influential patrician families of Dordrecht (his father, Jacob de Witt, was one of the prisoners of Loevenstein) was appointed in 1653.

Under the close oligarchical rule of the patrician families, who filled all offices in the town councils, the States of Holland, in which the influence of Amsterdam was dominant, and which in their turn exercised predominance in the States-General, became more and more an assembly of " shopkeepers " whose policy was to maintain peace for the sake of the commerce on which they thrived.

Lucius (or Gaius) Minucius, the patrician praefectus annonae (president of the market), thereupon accused him of courting popularity with a view to making himself king.

But though in Bremen the efforts of the craftsmen's "arts" to secure a share of power had been held in check and the gilds never gained any importance, the city government did not, as at Cologne and elsewhere, develop into a close patrician oligarchy.

Among the more prominent secular buildings are the Giirzenich, a former meeting-place of the diets of the Holy Roman Empire, built between 1441 and 1447, of which the ground floor was in 1875 converted into a stock exchange, and the upper hall, capable of accommodating 3000 persons, is largely utilized for public festivities, particularly during the time of the Carnival; the Rathaus, dating from the 13th century, with beautiful Gobelin tapestries; the Tempelhaus, the ancestral seat of the patrician family of the Overstolzens, a beautiful building dating from the 13th century, and now the chamber of commerce; the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, in which is a collection of paintings by old Italian and Dutch masters, together with some works by modern artists; the Zeughaus, or arsenal, built on Roman foundations; the Supreme Court for the Rhine provinces; the post-office (1893); the Imperial Bank (Reichsbank); and the municipal library and archives.

The Wolkenburg, a fine Gothic house of the 15th century, originally a patrician residence, was restored in 1874, and is now the headquarters of the famous men's choral society of Cologne (Kolner Mannergesangverein).

As yet, however, none of the trade or craft gilds, as such, had a share in the government, which continued in the hands of the patrician families, membership of which was necessary even for election to the council and to the parochial offices.

In the 14th century a narrow patrician council selected from the Richerzeche, with two burgomasters, was supreme.

In many of them there had been for more than a century a struggle between the old patrician families and the democratic gilds.

That was the official title; we often hear of a patrician of Sicily, but patrician (q.v.) was in strictness a personal rank.

In 813 a peace for ten years was made between the Saracens and the patrician Gregory.

They were first appointed in 367 B.C. instead of the patrician duumviri who had hitherto performed these duties.

It may therefore be assumed that long before the clients obtained the right to hold land in their own names and appear in the courts in their own persons there was a free plebs existing alongside of the patricians enjoying limited rights of citizenship. But it is equally certain that before the time of Servius Tullius the rights and duties of citizenship were practically exercised only by the members of the patrician clans.

At the close of the monarchy, the plebeian possessed the private rights of citizenship in entirety, except for his inability to contract a legal marriage with a patrician, and one of the public rights, that of giving his vote in the assembly.'

This position was probably tolerable during the monarchy, when the king served to hold the power of the patrician families in check.

But while the patrician disabilities were of a kind that had gained in importance with the lapse of centuries, these privileges, even if still retained, had become merely formal in the second half of the republican period.

Since the plebeian element in the state had an immense numerical preponderance over the patrician these disabilities were not widely spread, and seem generally to have been cheerfully borne as the price of belonging to the families still recognized as the oldest and noblest in Rome.

But the adoption of P. Clodius Pulcher into a plebeian family in J9 B.C. with a view to election to the tribunate shows that a rejection of patrician rights (transitio ad plebem) was not difficult to effect by any patrician who preferred actual power to the dignity of ancient descent.

Patrician rank seems to have been regarded as a necessary attribute of the princeps; and in two cases we are told that it was conferred upon a plebeian princeps by the senate (Vita Juliani, 3; Macrini, 7) .

Instead of the old hereditary nobility, consisting of the members of the patrician clans, there arose a nobility of office, consisting of all those families, whether patrician or plebeian, which had held curule office.

In the early days of Rome, office was only open to the member of a patrician gens.