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Margrave (man) and Margravine (woman) were the medieval titles for the hereditary nobleman and noblewoman with military responsibility for one of the border provinces of a kingdom. The greater exposure of a border province to military invasion provided the Margrave with military forces greater than the forces of the other lords of the realm, thereby indicating superior noble rank. As a military governor, the margrave often was responsible for a territory greater than the province proper, because of the border expansion subsequent to royal war. In the Middle Ages, the margrave usually exercised greater autonomy of action (tactical, strategic, political) than that granted by the king to the other lords of the realm. Nonetheless, the stable territory borders realised with the political progress achieved by the late middle ages (AD 1300–1500) and the early modern era (AD 1500) gradually diminished the politico-military distinctions of superior rank among margraves and the other hereditary lords of the kingdom.

History[link]

Etymologically, the word margrave (Latin: marchio ca. 1551) is the English and French form of the German noble title Markgraf (Mark “march” + Graf “Count”), which also is semantically related to the English title Marcher Lord. Moreover, as a noun and as the aristocratic title, margrave was common to the languages of Europe, such as Spanish and Polish.^[1]

A Markgraf (Margrave) originally functioned as the military governor of a Carolingian mark, a medieval border province. The jurisdiction of a margrave upon a march (German: Mark) was denoted as the margraviate and as the margravate, which also described the political and the military offices of a military governor. Because the territorial integrity of the borders of the realm of a king or of a prince was most important, the border provinces usually were geographically larger than the interior provinces, the Count appointed margrave usually exercised greater politico-military power than did the other nobles (counts) of the monarchy. Being on the border, the Margrave maintained the great armed forces and fortifications required for repelling invasion, which gave him or her great political strength and independence relative to the sovereign. Moreover, if successful in war, a Margrave usually conquered more territory that he or she might retain as personal domain; the consequent wealth and power might allow the establishment of an independent kingdom or princedom.

Most marks, and their margraves, were based upon the Eastern border of the Carolingian Empire, and later upon the Holy Roman Empire. The Breton Mark on the Atlantic Ocean and the border of peninsular Brittany, and the Spanish Mark on the Muslim frontier (including Catalonia) are notable exceptions. The Spanish Mark was most important during the early stages of the peninsular Reconquista of Iberia; ambitious margraves based in the Pyrenees took advantage of the Muslim Al-Andalus disarray to extend their territories southwards, which lead to the establishment of the Christian Kingdoms that would become Spain in the 11th century.

In the modern Holy Roman Empire, two original marches developed into the two most powerful states in Central Europe: the Mark Brandenburg (the nucleus of the later Kingdom of Prussia) and Austria (which became heir to various, mainly 'Hungarian' and 'Burgundian' principalities). Austria was originally called Marchia Orientalis in Latin, the "eastern borderland", as (originally roughly the present Lower -) Austria formed the eastern outpost of the Holy Roman Empire, on the border with the Magyars and the Slavs. During the 19th and 20th centuries the term was sometimes translated as Ostmark by some Germanophones, but medieval documents attest only the vernacular name Ostarrîchi. Another Mark in the south-east, Styria, still appears as Steiermark in German today.

In the late Middle Ages, as marches lost their military importance, margraviates developed into hereditary monarchies, comparable in all but name to duchies. A unique case was the Golden Bull of 1356 (issued by Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia), recognizing the Margrave of Brandenburg as an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, membership of the highest college within the Imperial diet carrying the politically significant privilege of being the sole electors of the non-hereditary Emperor, which was previously de facto restricted to dukes and three prince-archbishops (Cologne, Mainz and Trier); other non-ducal lay members would be the King of Bohemia and the Palatine of the Rhenish Electoral Palatinate. The King of Bohemia himself ruled over the Margravate of Moravia or appointed a Margrave to that post.

As the title of margrave lost its military connotation, it became more and more used as a mere 'peerage' rank, higher than Graf (count) and its associated compound titles such as Landgraf, Gefürsteter Graf and Reichsgraf, but lower than Herzog (duke). At the end of the monarchies in Germany, Italy and Austria, not a single margraviate remained, since they all had been raised to higher titles.

The etymological heir of the margrave, also introduced in countries that never had any margraviates, the marquess (see that article; their languages may use one or two words, e.g. French margrave and marquis), still ranks in the British peerage between duke and earl (equivalent to a continental count).

The wife of a margrave is called a margravine (German Markgräfin).

Margravial titles in various Western languages[link]

Languages with a specific title for the margrave (distinct from the later marquess, for which all have a word, if different given in parentheses) include (but often no actual marches existed there, so it only refers to foreign cases):

Furthermore[link]

• Several states have had quite analogous institutions, sometimes also rendered in English as margrave. For example, on England's Celtic (Welsh and Scottish) borders, Marcher Lords were vassals of the King of England in order to help him defend and expand his realm. Such a lord's demesne was called a march. Compare the English county palatine. The Marcher Lords were a conspicuous exception to the general structure of English feudalism as set up by William the Conqueror, who made a considerable effort to avoid having too-powerful vassals with a big contiguous territory and a strong local power base; the needs of fighting the Welsh and Scots made it necessary to have exactly this kind of vassal in the Marches, who did develop their own territorial ambitions (for example those of Chester).

• The late-medieval commanders, fiefholders, of Viipuri/Viborg Castle in Finland (see Fief of Viborg), the bulwark of the then-Swedish realm, at the border against Novgorod/Russia, did in practice function as margraves having feudal privileges and keeping all the crown's incomes from the fief to use for the defence of the realm's eastern border. Its fiefholders were (almost always) descended from, or married to, the noble family of Bååt from Småland in Sweden.

• Marggrabowa is an example of a town whose name comes from a margrave. Located in the Masurian region of East Prussia, Marggrabowa was founded in 1560 by Duke Albert of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg. It has since been renamed to the Polish Olecko.

• The German word "Mark" also has other meanings than the margrave's territorial border area, often with a territorial component, which occur far more numerously then margraviates; so its occurrence in composite place names does not imply whether it was part of a 'margraviate' as such, although 'margrave', or Markgraf, translates as the "count of the marches", originally ruling an area on the border or outlying area of a larger feudal state. Uses of "Mark" in German names are commonly more local, as in the context of a Markgenossenschaft, which means a partially self-governing association of agricultural users of an area; the German name-component Mark can also be a truncated form of Markt 'market', as in the small town of Marksuhl in the Eisenach area of Thuringia, meaning 'market town on the river Suhl'. The non-margravial origin even applies to the County of Mark and the country of Denmark (meaning 'march of the Danes', in the sense of border area, yet never under a Margrave but the Danish national kingdom, outside the Holy Roman Empire).

• The Persian position of Marzban (Marz means border, and Ban means lord) was a position given to officials or generals who were trusted by the king and that had land, villages and towns in far reaches of the empire. In return for their position and privilege to collect taxes, they were responsible to defend the empire from foreign intrusions.

See also[link]

• Markgräflerland
• Marcher Lord

References[link]