Patricianship, the quality of belonging to a
patriciate, began in the ancient world, where cities such as
Ancient Rome had a class of
patrician families whose members were the only people allowed to exercise many political functions. In the rise of European towns in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the patriciate, a limited group of families with a special constitutional position, in
Henri Pirenne's view,
[1] was the motive force.
With the establishment of the medieval Italian republics, the patriciate was a formally defined class of governing elite burgher families of many medieval republics, such as Venice, Florence, Genoa and Amsterdam and also in many of the Free imperial cities of Germany and Switzerland.
As in Ancient Rome, the status was inherited (sometimes through the female line as well as the male), and only male patricians could hold, or participate in elections for, most political offices. Often, as in Venice, non-patricians had next to no political rights. Lists were maintained of who had the status, of which the most famous is the Libro d'Oro (Golden Book) of the Venetian Republic. From the fall of Hohenstaufen (1268) city-republics increasingly became principalities, like Milan and Verona, and the smaller ones were swallowed up by monarchical states or sometimes other republics, like Pisa and Siena by Florence, and any special role for the local patricians was restricted to municipal affairs. The few remaining patrician constitutions, notably that of Venice and Genoa, were swept away by the conquering French armies of the period after the French Revolution, though many patrician families remained socially and politically important, as some do to this day.
There was an intermediate period under the Late Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire when the title was given to governors in the Western parts of the Empire, such as Sicily— Stilicho, Aetius and other fifth-century magistri militari usefully exemplify the role and scope of the patricius at this point. Later the role, like that of the Giudicati of Sardinia, acquired a judicial overtone, and was used by rulers who were often de facto independent of Imperial control, like Alberic II of Spoleto, "Patrician of Rome" from 932 to 954.
