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21 septembre 2022
- doi: 10.4000/books.efr.41235
- isbn: 9782728315611
- eisbn: 9782728315628
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Mots-clés
genealogy law image 17th century 18th century Holy Roman Empire genealogical tree proof of nobility Wolfgang Kilian Christiane Lucie von der Schulenburg Johann Georg Cramer nobility elector Saxony tree model droit à l’image droit et art communication visuelle Art Law (General) SOC000000 GTGSujets proches
Noble families Noble class Peerage Nobles (Social class)Citer ce document
Volker Bauer, « Attesting to dynasty », Publications de l’École française de Rome, ID : 10.4000/books.efr.41235
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Résumé
In the early modern society of princes who generally ruled over hereditary monarchies, genealogy could become legally, as well as politically, important. Since genealogical literature relied heavily on the use of images, particularly of those drawing on the tree model, it also contained printed graphics that referred to legal matters. The paper discusses three main examples of it taken from the Holy Roman Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries. Firstly, a genealogical tree from 1621 emphasizes the link between the dynastic history and the rank of the House of Saxony as electors of the Empire. Thus it makes a statement on the constitutional role of this princely house. The second example, from 1748, is a strictly legal document in that it consists of a proof of nobility in the form of an image which depicts an « ancestral tree ». The last image is a frontispiece of a legal treatise on hereditary nobility (1739). The engraving convincingly reproduces in pictorial form the core of the author’s legal reasoning according to which nobility itself decides on whom to allow into its ranks.