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 12th and 13th century, the patriciate, a limited group of families with a special constitutional position, in Henri Pirenne's view, was the motive force. In 19th century central Europe, the term had become synonymous with the upper Bourgeoisie and can't be compared with the medieval patriciate in Central Europe. In the German speaking parts of Europe as well as in the maritime republics of Italy, the patricians were as a matter of fact the ruling body of the medieval town and particularly in Italy part of the nobility.
With the establishment of the medieval towns, Italian city-states and maritime republics, the patriciate was a formally defined class of governing wealthy families. They were found in the Italian city states and maritime republics such as Venice, Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi and but also in many of the Free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire such as Nuremberg, Ravensburg, Augsburg, Konstanz, Lindau, Bern, Basel, Zurich and many more.
In the modern era the term "patrician" is also used broadly for the higher bourgeoisie (not to be equated with aristocracy) in many countries; in some countries it vaguely refers to the non-noble upper class, especially before the 20th century.
German medieval patricians, Patrician (post-Roman Europe) did not refer to themselves as such. Instead, they organized themselves into closed societies (i.e., Gesellschaften) and would point to their belonging to certain families or "houses" (i.e., Geschlechter), as documented for Imperial Free Cities of Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg. The use of the word Patrizier to refer to the most privileged segment of urban society dates back not to the Middle Ages but to the Renaissance. In 1516 the Nuremberg councillor and jurist Dr. Christoph Scheuerl (1481–1542) was commissioned by Dr. Johann Staupitz, the vicar general of the order of St. Augustine, to draft a précis of the Nuremberg constitution, presented on 15 December 1516 in the form of a letter. Because the letter was composed in Latin, Scheuerl referred to the Nuremberg "houses" as "patricii", making ready use of the obvious analogy to the constitution of ancient Rome. His contemporaries soon turned this into the loan words Patriziat and Patrizier for patricianship and patricians. However, this usage did not become common until the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Netherlands also has a patriciate. These are registered in Nederland's Patriciaat, colloquially called The Blue Book (see List of Dutch patrician families). To be eligible for entry, families must have played an active and important role in Dutch society, fulfilling high positions in the government, in prestigious commissions and in other prominent public posts for over six generations or 150 years.
The longer a family has been listed in the Blue Book, the higher its esteem. The earliest entries are often families seen as co-equal to the lower nobility (barons and counts), because they are the younger branches of the same family or have continuously married members of the Dutch nobility over a long period of time.
In Denmark and Norway, the term "patriciate" came to denote, mainly from the 19th century, the non-noble upper class, including the bourgeoisie, the clergy, the civil servants and generally members of elite professions such as lawyers. The Danish series Danske Patriciske Slægter (later Patriciske Slægter and Danske patricierslægter) was published in six volumes between 1891 and 1979 and extensively described Danish patrician families. The term was used similarly in Norway from the 19th century, based on the Danish model; notably Henrik Ibsen described his own family background as patrician. Jørgen Haave defines the patriciate in the Norwegian context as a broad collective term for the civil servants (embetsmenn) and the burghers in the cities who were often merchants or ship's captains, i.e. the non-noble upper class. The bourgeoisie frequently intermarried with the families of higher civil servants and the nobility; the boundaries between the groups were not sharp.
^ Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (1927) offers a late, developed view of the "Pirenne thesis" with origins in articles on the origins of urban constitutions in 1895: see Henri Pirenne#Pirenne Thesis.
^ Alfred Otto Stolze, Der Sünfzen zu Lindau. Das Patriziat einer schwäbischen Reichsstadt (Bernhard Zeller, Lindau/Konstanz, 1956) discusses this mechanism for accession to the Patriciate; "Wenn die Tochter eines Sünfzen Genossen sich mit Willen ihrer Eltern vermählte, so wurde der Ehemann aufgenommen, „der gleich der Sünfzen sonnst nit fähig wäre” gegen zwei Gulden, bzw. wie ein jüngerer Sohn"
^ Hibbert, A. B. (1953). "The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate". Past & Present. 3: 15–27 [p. 18]. JSTOR 650033.
^ H. Sapori, article in International Historical Congress 1950, noted by Hibbert 1953 note 10.
^ Hall, Peter (1999). Cities in Civilization. London: Phoenix. p. 91. ISBN 0-7538-0815-3.
^ O'Connell, Monique (2004). "The Venetian Patriciate in the Mediterranean: Legal Identity and Lineage in Fifteenth-Century Venetian Crete". Renaissance Quarterly. 57 (2): 466–493. doi:10.2307/1261723. Stanley Chojnacki has also studied the Venetian patriciate in a number of articles.
^ This word is used for both the singular and plural form.
^ Körner, p. XIII. Later, the Huguenot refugees flocking to Frankfurt following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by French king Louis XIV in 1685 proved similarly valuable additions to the city's economy, but they too found membership in the Patrizier societies elusive.
^ Endres, Rudolf. Adel in der frühen Neuzeit. Enzyklopaedie Deutscher Geschichte, Band 18, Oldenbourg, p. 72.
^ Der Titel "von" beruht also nur auf den Adelsbriefen, die man sich mit Geld erwerben konnte. Die eine Familie legte Wert darauf, sich den Titel 'von' beizulegen, und die andere nicht. Stolze, Alfred O., Der Suenfzen zu Lindau, Das Patriziat einer Schwaebischen Reichsstadt, 1956.
^ quoted in August de Bary's biography of Senckenberg, 2004 reprint of 1947 edition, p. 162: "Ein ehrlicher Mann ist mehr als aller Adel und Baron. Wenn mich einer zum Baron machte, ich wollte ihn einen Hundsfott oder auch einen Baron schelten. So lieb sind mir alle Titel."