MENU: 2.5. NOBLES GODS AND HEROES
TOWARD 1500, EXPLORERS' DISCOVERIES LEAD TO NEW SOURCES OF INCOME AND SO TO A BOOM THAT UNDERMINES THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
Nascent capitalists gain the means to challenge the ruling class of nobles, hereditary landowners who draw their wealth from peasant labor and define themselves as warriors.
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Discoveries in 1502 / zoom |
The earliest known map of the Age of Discovery
There were ways of buttressing a social order that was challenged though believed to be set by God. One was to absorb dynamic commoners, by their purchase of land to which a title was attached, by considering lawyers, administrators or financiers nobles, or the king's ennoblement. Such newcomers could not compare with those whose ancestors had accompanied Saint Louis on the Crusades, but their legal privileges were the same.
Nobles also developed arts that associated them with antiquity. That gave them a prestige with which vulgar parvenues could not (yet) compete.
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