Count palatine
[2] In the Visigothic Kingdom, the Officium Palatinum consisted of a number of men with the title of count who managed the various departments of the royal household.
The Ostrogothic Kingdom also maintained palatine counts with titles such as Comes Patrimonium, who was in charge of the patrimonial or private real estate of the king, and others.
The system was maintained by the Carolingian sovereigns (reigned 751–987), who increased the power of counts palatine through successive grants of authority.
In this way came about the later and more general use of the word "palatine", its application as an adjective to persons entrusted with special powers—but also to the districts over which these powers were exercised.
As the great magnates began to centralize their power over their local castle-lords, they felt the need to assert the difference between themselves and these minor "counts".
As successor to the Byzantine emperor after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultan also claimed the right to bestow the office.
[3] The Grand Čelnik was the highest court title of the Serbian Despotate, and the title-holders held great provinces, property, and honours, and Radič (fl.
King Lothar of France (954–986) gave Herbert III of Omois, one of his most loyal supporters in the struggle against the Robertians, the title of Count palatine.
Counts Palatine were the permanent representatives of the Frankish king, later of the Holy Roman Emperor, in a palatial domain of the crown.
In the empire, the word count palatine was also used to designate the officials who assisted the emperor in exercising the rights which were reserved for his personal consideration,[2] like granting arms.
Both the Latin form (Comes) palatinus and the French (comte) palatin have been used as part of the full title of the Dukes of Burgundy (a branch of the French royal dynasty) to render their rare German title Freigraf, which was the style of a (later lost) bordering principality, the allodial County of Burgundy (Freigrafschaft Burgund in German), which came to be known as Franche-Comté.
Apparent thereafter was the existence of a count palatine in Saxony, and of others in Lorraine, in Bavaria and in Swabia, their duties being to administer the royal estates in these duchies.
[2] Next to the Dukes of Lotharingia, Bavaria, Swabia and Saxony, who had become dangerously powerful feudal princes, loyal supporters of the German Emperor were installed as counts palatine.
The count palatine in Bavaria, an office held by the family of Wittelsbach, became duke of this land, the lower comital title being then merged into the higher ducal one.
The Order of the Golden Spur began to be associated with the inheritable patent of nobility in the form of count palatinate during the Renaissance; Emperor Frederick III named Baldo Bartolini, professor of civil law at the University of Perugia, a count palatinate in 1469, entitled in turn to confer university degrees.
[8] Close on the heels of the Emperor's death in 1558, its refounding in Papal hands is attributed to Pope Pius IV in 1559.
[9] Benedict XIV (In Supremo Militantis Ecclesiæ, 1746) granted to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre the right to use the title of Count of the Sacred Palace of Lateran.
