II.6.1. EVERYTHING STRENGTHENS THE ELITE

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY HAVE SHOWN HOW IN PRIMAL COMMUNITIES AND CULTS ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE REINFORCE EACH OTHER

That view applies to societies in general. Take how in Old Regime France all aspects of society reinforced nobles' dominance by emphasizing rank by birth. 

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French examples:

• Louis XIV's most famous favorite, Madame de Montespan, would insult him as an upstart because his great-grandfather was a Medici banker, whereas her ancestors had been feudal lords since the 9th century. He would feel humble before her. 

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan, workshop of Pierre Mignard, undated, zoom

• Instead of investing their profits, many rising commoners used them to make their way into nobility of a lesser sort, by acquiring land to which a title was attached, by outright purchase or, to at least have noble descendants, marrying their daughters to impoverished lords seeking dowries.  

• Underclass insult: "Your father was a valet!"

-- Voltaire, The Century of Louis XIV

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The certitudes came from nobles' advantages at every turn. They:

• Held the main positions in the State, the Church and especially the army.  

• Were exempted from most taxes.

• Controlled sales taxes and tolls as gifts from the king.  

• Monopolized most hunting, fought duels only between themselves, might alone buy the most luxurious wares (that explains the location of the modern garment center).

• Were ceremoniously decapitated and buried if condemned of crime, while the bodies of ignominiously hanged commoners remained on the gallows until they decomposed.

         An execution after Louis XIII seizes power, 1616 / zoom  /  Fiftheenth-century illustration / zoom

• Owned gibbets. The gibbets themselves showed the nobles' rank by the number of beams from which to hang the condemned (two to eight, the king having nine). The highest-born (commoner) victim hung from the top.

• Had identifying liveries for the servants, a coat of arms, often a name whose prefix "de" indicated nobility, a reserved pew at church.  

• The belief in a God-willed hierarchy exists in modern language: The French word for "bad" — villain — originally meant "peasant," and we still say "noble" and "ignoble."

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The valet Figaro's famous question to his noble master, "What have you done for all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born! Whereas I..." shows that at the end of the 18th century that belief was changing.

-- Figaro's question, The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais, 1778

So was the economy.   

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An American cartoonist notes the tie between gun violence, the healthcare system, billionaire control and media silence:

Daily Kos, a progressive publication, December 24, 2024

But like the favorite, the king,

 the rising commoners and the humble,

most historians accept the assumptions

that reinforce their own ruling class. 

That is the main reason

for the politically conservative narratives 

we are told.  

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Another aspect of that reinforcement: 

How nobles used antiquity in the arts.

Next,

II.6.2. 

Antiquity as weapon