Pillar nobles. Pillar noblewoman

To the question what does a noblewoman mean? from Pushkin's fairy tales given by the author Clubfoot the best answer is Pillar nobility - in pre-revolutionary Russia, representatives of noble families who belonged to the ancient hereditary noble families. The name comes from the so-called Columns - medieval lists granting representatives of the service class estates for the duration of their service. Subsequently, the estates became hereditary. In the 17th - early 18th centuries, the main documents for the annual recording of service people according to the Moscow list were boyar lists, which in 1667-1719. were kept in the form of books, repeating the purpose and structure of the boyar lists-columns. Since for truly ancient Russian noble families the main evidence of their antiquity was a mention in these columns, such nobles were called pillars.
In the 18th-19th centuries, the pillar nobles did not have any privileges over representatives of the new noble families (appeared as a result of the award of personal or hereditary nobility for special merits, for length of service, by rank, by order). Therefore, the antiquity of the family served exclusively as a source of pride for its representatives. Official documentation usually used the simple formulation “from the nobles of such and such a province,” the same for both the old nobility and the new. The pillar nobility was quite numerous in the 18th-19th centuries.
The titled nobility (aristocracy) almost entirely consisted of new families (the award of the title for special merits, sometimes to former pillars, but untitled nobles), as well as Finnish, Polish, Georgian, Tatar, Ukrainian, Baltic, Alan (Ossetian), Armenian, Moldavian, Western European. The number of clans that were previously boyars and descended from Rurik, Gedemin, or from immigrants from the Golden Horde was very small and was steadily declining (the clan was suppressed in the absence of male heirs). Among the ancient titled and untitled families that survived in the 18th-19th centuries are the Volkonskys, Vyazemskys, Kozlovskys, Gorchakovs, Dolgorukovs, Trubetskoys, Kropotkins, Lobanov-Rostovskys, Shakhovskys, Khovanskys, Fominskys, Travins, Scriabins and some others. They had no privileges over the new titled nobility.
ru.wikipedia.org › wiki/Stolbovoy_nobleman
“I don’t want to be a black peasant woman, I want to be a pillar noblewoman.” Having put these words into the old woman’s mouth, Pushkin did not indicate in which century she lived. But he very accurately outlined her character. She aimed at no more and no less... However, to understand this, you must first figure out who the black peasants are and who the pillar nobles are.
Black, or black-sown, peasants of the 15th-17th centuries who lived on “black” lands, that is, lands free from the landowner, were called. Of course, taxes had to be paid to the Moscow prince from these lands, but no nearby “master” stood over the peasant world. The black peasant remained personally a free man. He could move to the city and even enroll as a nobleman. This continued until the time of Peter the Great, when black peasants began to be called state peasants. Along with their old name, they also lost their former freedom.
The expression “pillar nobles” appeared about 100 years after the concept of “black peasants” disappeared. This happened at the beginning of the 19th century, during the lifetime of the author of “Golden Fish”.
By that time, a single title of nobility existed both for those who had recently advanced to the royal service and for representatives of ancient families. The last one was offensive. To distinguish themselves from the new nobility, they came up with the expression “pillar nobles.” Those whose ancestors were recorded in genealogical books - “columns” back in the 16th-17th centuries - were considered “pillars”. The aristocrats looked down on those whose noble family began no earlier than Peter the Great's time. So “black peasants” and “pillar nobles” are from different eras. When the first ones disappeared, the second ones had not yet appeared. It was impossible to choose between them. Therefore, the old woman took aim at a time jump. By attributing such a choice to his heroine, Pushkin showed how absurd an uncontrollable whirlwind of desires is.

First, let’s understand who these pillar nobles are and what they are. And in pre-revolutionary Russia these were representatives of noble families who belonged to the ancient hereditary noble families. The name comes from the so-called Columns - medieval lists granting representatives of the service class estates for the duration of their service, which were compiled before 1685

But, if anyone reading this text saw their last name on this list, this does not mean at all that you belong to this noble family. For a number of reasons, from the fact that many serfs were recorded at emancipation under the surname of their former owners to the fact that a noble family (received nobility for length of service or for some merit) could bear the same surname and were completely unrelated with her are simple namesakes. The same is with titles - individual branches of a particular family sometimes received a title from the monarch and began a new, titled branch, while the remaining branches remained “just” nobles. Thus, there were, for example, Putyatin princes, Putyatin counts, Putyatin nobles (and Putyatins who did not have nobility at all), and there are a lot of such examples. Consequently, without careful and serious genealogical searches based on documents, you do not have to “automatically” attribute yourself to one or another famous noble family, even if your last name is Golitsyn or Obolensky.

Yes, the nobles were divided into pillar, personal, hereditary, and untitled. For those who are interested, Google will help, because if I am also distracted by explanations about the rest of the nobility, then there will be even more boobf.

You also need to remember that in Russian tradition, surnames, nobility and titles were passed down exclusively through the male line. Also excluded from inheritance until 1917 were the so-called “illegitimate” (illegitimate or adulterous) children, although many of them, especially the children of representatives of the royal family or the highest nobility, received a different surname and nobility. There are many examples of this, for example the Bobrinsky counts, whose ancestor was the illegitimate son of Catherine II. Adopted children sometimes received nobility at the request of their parents, according to the “Highest permission.” Considering that since the last century, especially after the Second World War, many children were born out of wedlock and received the mother's surname, a large number of today's Russians who bear noble surnames and actually have nobles among their ancestors are not nobles from a pre-revolutionary point of view, let alone that legally the very concept of nobility in Russia has not existed since October 1917. Honestly, diksio , I’m embarrassed to explain this to a lawyer...

By the way, the full name of the modern Russian Assembly of Nobility sounds like “The Union of Descendants of the Russian Nobility - the Russian Assembly of Nobility.” I think you feel the difference.

Now let's move on to the question: why there could not be pillar nobles in Nerchinsk.

What is Nerchinsk like? This is a city, the administrative center of the Nerchinsky district of the Trans-Baikal Territory. Founded in 1653 by the Cossacks of the centurion Pyotr Ivanovich Beketov under the name Nerchinsky fort. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Nerchinsk was a place of political hard labor and exile. Also, according to the Senate decree of May 20, 1763, women with syphilis who were engaged in prostitution were subject to exile to Nerchinsk after treatment.

The Nerchinsk penal servitude was a place where sentences for the most serious criminal offenses were served. The first lead-silver mine and Zerentui convict prison began operating in 1739 in the village of Gorny Zerentui. By the beginning of the 19th century, a system of prisons, mines, factories and other economic facilities had developed that belonged to the Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty and were managed by the Mining Department. Convicts were used for mining, in foundries, distilleries and salt factories, in construction and economic work. For example, during the 19th century, more than a million people visited this penal servitude.

A large number of participants in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 served their sentences in Nerchinsk. and 1863-1864, Decembrist M.S. Lunin, Petrashevites, Nechaevites.... The list can be continued for a long time. And personally, I have never seen nobles sentenced to hard labor retain their rights. And I have to explain this to you too, diksio , as a lawyer, the law is awkward...

By the way, Pushkin has wonderful poems “My Genealogy”. The poet, by the way, a stalwart nobleman himself, lists in it the most common methods of obtaining hereditary nobility in his time:

I'm not an officer, not an assessor,
I am not a nobleman by cross,
Not an academician, not a professor;
I'm just a Russian tradesman.

*****
My grandfather did not sell pancakes (allusion to the Menshikovs),
Didn't wax the royal boots ( This is about Kutaisov, valet of Paul I),
Didn’t sing with the court sextons ( About the Razumovskys, whose ancestor, Alyosha Rozum, became Elizaveta Petrovna’s favorite after she noticed a handsome guy with a wonderful voice in the church choir),
I didn’t jump to princehood from crests ( Bezborodko),
And he was not a runaway soldier
Austrian powder squads (kick towards Kleinmichel and his
descendants);
So should I be an aristocrat?
I, thank God, am a tradesman.

Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

Pillar nobility- in pre-revolutionary Russia, representatives of noble families who belonged to the ancient hereditary noble families. The name comes from the so-called Columns - medieval lists granting representatives of the service class estates for the duration of their service.

Subsequently, the estates became hereditary. In the 17th - early 18th centuries, the main documents for the annual recording of service people according to the Moscow list were noble lists, which in - years were kept in the form of books, repeating the purpose and structure of the boyar lists-columns. Since for truly ancient Russian noble families the main evidence of their antiquity was a mention in these columns, such nobles were called pillars.

Since this concept has never been formalized legally, there is no consensus in historiography on the question of what historical period can be used to mark the end of the formation of this layer of nobility, i.e. Until what conditional or real date must a noble family or its founder be known in order to be considered a pillar? Various options for such conditional chronological restrictions include: 1) it is assumed that only those families whose ancestors are known in the largest pre-Petrine all-Russian genealogical codes, such as the Sovereign Genealogy and (or) the Velvet Book; 2) in another version, the pillar nobility includes noble families known before 1613, i.e. before the election of the Romanov dynasty to the kingdom; 3) finally, all noble families of the pre-Petrine era can be classified as pillar nobles (however, in this case it often remains unclear exactly what moment of Peter’s reign can be considered a milestone date).

In the 18th-19th centuries, the pillar nobles did not have any privileges over representatives of the new noble families (appeared as a result of the award of personal or hereditary nobility for special merits, for length of service, by rank, by order). Therefore, the antiquity of the family served exclusively as a source of pride for its representatives. Official documentation usually used the simple formulation “from the nobles of such and such a province,” the same for both the old nobility and the new. The pillar nobility was quite numerous in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The titled nobility (aristocracy) largely consisted of new families (the award of the title for special merits, sometimes to former pillars, but untitled nobles), as well as Finnish, Belarusian, Polish, Georgian, Tatar, Ukrainian, Balkan, Armenian, Balkan, Western European. The number of clans that were previously boyars, and descended from Rurik, Gediminas, or from people from the Golden Horde, was limited and gradually decreased (the clan was suppressed in the absence of male heirs), as in relative numbers (the percentage of pillars relative to the growing total number of noble families in Russia), and in absolute terms (by the total number of such genera). They had no privileges over the new titled nobility.

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An excerpt characterizing the Stolbovoe nobility

Many words from old fairy tales cause modern children only bewilderment, and adults do not quite understand how to explain this or that concept. For example, what does “pillar noblewoman” mean from Pushkin’s fairy tales? Where did this word come from? Let's try to figure it out.

Nobility in Rus'

In Kievan Rus, the concept of “nobility” had not yet developed. Naturally, princely families already existed, but, in principle, any free person could join the ranks of the warriors or boyars. As a class, the nobility took shape already in the XIII-XV centuries in Moscow Rus'. The emergence of this class is inextricably linked with a reconsideration of the principles of land ownership.

Estate and fiefdom

In Muscovy there were two types of private land - patrimony and estate. A votchina was private land that was passed on from generation to generation. An estate is land for temporary use, which was given for service in the In connection with the expansion of the territory of Muscovite Rus', due to the increase in land from the south and Eastern Siberia, there was more agricultural land, but it could only be obtained in the service of the tsar.

Columns

The lands that were provided to service people were formalized according to the laws of that time in special decrees - columns. In them, each employee could find out whether he had land and whether he had the right to cultivate it. The lists were compiled quite often, and were reviewed and certified by the king himself. So the sovereign of all Rus' had an idea about the number of people loyal to him who owned estates. To be included in such a list is the dream of every serviceman, because it meant not only ownership of earthly lands, but also the probable attention and mercy of the king himself.

In the lists, the names of the owners of the estates were written from top to bottom - “in a column”. Thus, a person whose last name was in the “columns” was called “pillar nobleman” and “pillar noblewoman.” This honorary title indicated both the presence of land holdings and a special status. Getting into the coveted “columns” was not easy.

Noblewomen

At first, only men were included in the “columns”. But over time, women's names also appeared on the treasured lists. This is how the concept of “pillar noblewoman” appeared. The meaning of the word "noblewoman" implies good birth or an advantageous marriage. The term “pillar” indicates the presence of significant lands and a privileged position.

Thus, a pillar noblewoman is a woman from a good family, a wife or widow who owns an estate. After the death of a civil servant, his widow had the right to retain the estate lands “for living”; after her death, the estate returned to the treasury and could be transferred to other noblemen. Cases where wives or daughters owned the estate personally were quite rare. As a rule, only high-ranking noblewomen had this right. This property was usually under the special guardianship of the royal authorities, and a woman could not sell, mortgage or inherit the land.

Land reforms

Confusion among the owners of patrimonial and estate lands was so typical that it created a lot of inconvenience and incorrect court decisions. It is worth clarifying that court decisions in those days were mainly based on and the chain of illegal transfers of estates by inheritance, lease or sale spread throughout the country. To legalize the existing state of affairs, land reform was undertaken.

Land reforms of the early 16th century equalized the position of owners of patrimonial and estate lands. Lands owned by families from generation to generation, and lands owned by one or another nobleman or noblewoman, are lands subject to the same laws. This decision was made in order to legalize huge estates that, relatively speaking, did not belong to their owners. Thus, the pillar nobles became hereditary nobles - only they themselves could dispose of their right to land. Naturally, in those years the autocracy grew and strengthened, and the tsarist government reserved the right to take away lands and demote the nobleman.

Results

This is how we figured out the term “pillar noblewoman.” The meaning of the word lies on the surface - this is a representative of the noble class, whose surname is on the “column lists” of the sovereign himself. Perhaps this is the daughter of the royal servant or his widow, for whom the local lands were left “for maintenance.” But after the adoption of land reform, this word begins to fall out of use and practically loses its meaning. A.S. Pushkin in his fairy tale used this word to denote not only the old woman’s greed, but also her desire to be known as special to the tsar himself. But everyone knows how it ended for the greedy woman.

Pillar nobility- in the Russian Empire, representatives of noble families who belonged to the ancient hereditary noble families. The name comes from two meanings:

In the 17th - early 18th centuries, the main documents for the annual registration of service people were noble lists, which in -1719 were kept in a form that repeated the boyar lists-columns in purpose and structure. Since for truly ancient Russian noble families the main evidence of their antiquity was a mention in these columns, such nobles were called pillars.

Since this concept has not been formalized legally anywhere, in historiography there is no consensus on the question of what historical period can be designated as the end of the formation of this layer of nobility, that is, until what conventional or real date should a noble family or its founder be known in order to be considered a pillar. Variations of such conditional chronological restrictions include:

• it is assumed that only those families whose ancestors are known in the largest pre-Petrine all-Russian genealogical codes, such as the Sovereign's Genealogy and (or) the Velvet Book, can be classified as pillar families; [ ]
• in another version, the pillar nobility includes noble families known before 1613, that is, before the election of the Romanov dynasty to the kingdom; [ ]
• The legislation of the Russian Empire clearly states the date of inclusion in the Stolbovoy nobility in the Code of Laws, Vol. IX, Article 1112: " The period for calculating the century, conferring the right to include noble families in the sixth part of the genealogical book, is the time of publication of the charter of nobility, April 21, 1785"Thus, the period for the formation of the clan, for inclusion in Part VI "Ancient noble noble families", must be before April 21, 1685. However, even in this legislative act there is no concept of "pillar nobility", therefore the correspondence between this term and inclusion in Part VI of the Noble Genealogy Book remains controversial. In addition, this method of definition excludes the ancient titled nobility (included in Part V, not VI, of the genealogy book) from the number of pillar nobles without sufficient grounds.
• finally, all noble families of the pre-Petrine era can be classified as pillar nobles (however, in this case it often remains unclear exactly what moment of Peter’s reign can be considered a milestone date) [ ] .

In the 18th-19th centuries, the pillar nobles did not have any privileges over representatives of the new noble families (appeared as a result of the award of personal or hereditary nobility for special merits, for length of service, by rank, by order). Therefore, the antiquity of the family served exclusively as a source of pride for its representatives. Official documentation usually used the simple formulation “from the nobles of such and such a province,” the same for both the old nobility and the new. The pillar nobility was quite numerous in the 18th and 19th centuries.