Principality
The term "principality" is often used to describe small monarchies, particularly those in Europe, where the ruler holds the title of prince or an equivalent.
Historically, principalities emerged during the Middle Ages as part of the feudal system, where local princes gained significant power within a king's domain.
Principalities have played a significant role in European history, particularly within the Holy Roman Empire, and have fallen out of favour with the development of nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
[1] The Principality of Catalonia was a state located in the north-eastern area of the Iberian Peninsula and southern France between the late 12th and early 18th centuries, as the term for the political entity ruled by the Catalan Courts (the parliament) as a member of the composite monarchy of the Crown of Aragon, until the defeat of the Habsburgs in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), when these institutions were abolished by the Bourbons due to their support for the Habsburg pretender.
This led to political fragmentation as the king's lands were broken into mini-states ruled by princes and dukes who wielded absolute power over their small territories.
However, in the 17th to 19th centuries, especially within the Holy Roman Empire, the reverse was also occurring: many new small sovereign states arose as a result of transfers of land for various reasons.
As a compromise, many principalities united with neighbouring regions and adopted constitutional forms of government, with the monarch acting as a mere figurehead while administration was left in the hands of elected parliaments.
The trend in the 19th and 20th centuries was the abolition of various forms of monarchy and the creation of republican governments led by popularly elected presidents.
Several principalities where genealogical inheritance is replaced by succession in a religious office have existed in the Roman Catholic Church, in each case consisting of a feudal polity (often a former secular principality in the broad sense) held ex officio — the closest possible equivalent to hereditary succession — by a prince of the church, styled more precisely according to his ecclesiastical rank, such as prince-bishop, prince-abbot or, especially as a form of crusader state, grand master.
Some of these instances were merely religious offices without sovereign power over any territory, while others, such as Salzburg and Durham, shared some of the characteristics of secular princes.
George Coedes defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations of royalty, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Sanskrit dialect.
