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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1416655" data-attributes="member: 6533">Many of the titles discussed have very specific meanings in terms of what sort of duties could be expected or the source of their power.  Most of these terms were derived from various understandings of the Latin terms and legal duties they originated from.Emperor, for instance, is a title that bears with it certain very specific and superior standards of legal and soveriegn power.  In an international law sense, and I've seen it argued that debates over imperial power were the origins of international law, an Emperor was entitled to a sort of super-soveriegnty and could make claims on other soveriegn powers.Thus though there were commonly only two individuals who could claim the title of Emperor, there were many sovereigns who would claim imperial power with regard to certain other states.  The biggest debates over this use of the term involved the dark age Anglo-Saxon nations, who claimed imperial power under some rather odd and limited circumstances, and the Spanish soveriegns who claimed imperial power under the claim that they were both conquerors who needed and acquired such power as a result of their conquests and demanded that they thus owed less to the Emperor than the kings of other nations.The Pope sort of claimed Imperial power by claiming both authority over it, in moral circumstances, and the ability to confer, under all circumstances.  It is one of the three crowns.Similarly, Duke is a title that implies the power to lead and raise armies.  Both kings and emperors were elected, in some sense, by armies and/or by divine power.  Dukes had the capacity to command them to come together.  King Arthur's official title, by some accounts, was Ducis Bellorum, literally a war leader.  Mussolini claimed the title of Duke because he was simply a leader.Dukes are very often created as titles by royal power.Comte has already come up.Sir, of some sort or another, implies a right to arms and property and, solely in later times, respect.Prince would come, I would guess, from Augustus's official title of 'First Man' that is first among equals.  It is thus a title of prestige and later, and even at that time, served very readily to designate individuals who might in some sense be considered an heir to some sort of soveriegn power.  The requirements of such office would, even at the time, be wield power but do not rock the bad too severely.Religious titles were, often, far more regularized by keep in mind that there is a lot of specific fluidity.  And that both does and does not prove the point.A minor title in the Order of Cluny might mean vast amounts of power.  But the reason people in that order had such minor titles and vast power was so that they might be better controlled.So it is that Abbots, and Abbesses, often have vast amounts of power, but that's often because the local situation requires a tremendously powerful religious figure and the situation preferred such a figure to be an Abbot rather than a correspondingly more powerful Bishop.In the reverse position, a small territory like Navarre might need a something as powerful as a king to protect its relatively small assets.  Would that king ever have as much power as a King of France, no, but that King would have an advantage to protecting his power compared to a baron or bishop of similarly means.</blockquote>

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