Count
In the late Roman Empire, the Latin title comes denoted the high rank of various courtiers and provincial officials, either military or administrative.
[2] In the Western Roman Empire, "count" came to indicate generically a military commander[citation needed] but was not a specific rank.
In the Eastern Roman Empire, from about the seventh century, "count" was a specific rank indicating the commander of two centuriae (i.e., 200 men).
[3] It was regarded as an administrative official dependent on the king, until the process of allodialisation during the 9th century in which such titles came to be private possessions of noble families.
Although the exact reason is debated by historians and linguists, one of the more popular theories proposes that count fell into disuse because of its phonetic similarity to the vulgar slang word cunt.
[7] The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, etc.
Since Louis VII (1137–80), the highest precedence amongst the vassals (Prince-bishops and secular nobility) of the French crown was enjoyed by those whose benefice or temporal fief was a pairie, i.e. carried the exclusive rank of pair; within the first (i.e. clerical) and second (noble) estates, the first three of the original twelve anciennes pairies were ducal, the next three comital comté-pairies: Later other countships (and duchies, even baronies) have been raised to this French peerage, but mostly as apanages (for members of the royal house) or for foreigners; after the 16th century all new peerages were always duchies and the medieval countship-peerages had died out, or were held by royal princes Other French countships of note included those of: See also above for parts of present France A Graf ruled over a territory known as a Grafschaft ('county').
See also various comital and related titles; especially those actually reigning over a principality: Gefürsteter Graf, Landgraf, Reichsgraf; compare Markgraf, Burggraf, Pfalzgraf (see Imperial quaternions).
Even apparently "lower"-sounding titles, like Viscount, could describe powerful dynasts, such as the House of Visconti which ruled a major city such as Milan.
The essential title of a feudatory, introduced by the Normans, was signore, modeled on the French seigneur, used with the name of the fief.
Many Italian counts left their mark on Italian history as individuals, yet only a few contadi (countships; the word contadini for inhabitants of a "county" remains the Italian word for "peasant") were politically significant principalities, notably: The principalities tended to start out as margraviate or (promoted to) duchy, and became nominal archduchies within the Habsburg dynasty; noteworthy are: Apart from various small ones, significant were : Count/Countess was one of the noble titles granted by the Pope as a temporal sovereign, and the title's holder was sometimes informally known as a papal count/papal countess or less so as a Roman count/Roman countess, but mostly as count/countess.
The comital title, which could be for life or hereditary, was awarded in various forms by popes and Holy Roman Emperors since the Middle Ages, infrequently before the 14th century, and the pope continued to grant the comital and other noble titles even after 1870, it was largely discontinued in the mid 20th-century, on the accession of John XXIII.
In Denmark and historically in Denmark-Norway the title of count (greve) is the highest rank of nobility used in the modern period.
They rank above ordinary (titular) counts, and their position in the Danish aristocracy as the highest-ranking noblemen is broadly comparable to that of dukes in other European countries.
Unlike the rest of Scandinavia, the title of duke is still used in Sweden, but only by members of the royal family and are not considered part of the nobility.
