Nature, sang et noblesse : les débats relatifs à la transmission de la vertu et du statut social dans les traités nobiliaires parus en Europe de l’Ouest au xviie siècle
Abstract
In the hope of solving it, perhaps, this article starts from the observation of the persistence of the following historiographical problem: were nobility and its transmission considered as strictly legal and social facts, or did their representations involve any physiological dimension? This contribution offers an overview of the theoretical writings about this question among the nobiliary treatises published in seventeenth-century Western Europe. This results in permanent debates. After presenting some treatises that explicitly refute any physiological or natural dimension to the definition of nobility and its transmission, the article presents writings that on the contrary assure the decisive role of blood and nature. However, it shows that these assertions are each time qualified by recalling the importance of education or the juridical role of the prince, who assigned the honours. It also appears that the words “blood” and “nature” (and their equivalents in foreign languages) entailed a religious dimension, which distanced their meaning from any biological conception.
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