Knighthood and Titled Nobility in the Antiquarian Episteme of the 16th — 17th Centuries

Abstract

The entire complex of descriptive methods, peculiar for the 16th — 17th centuries antiquarian texts, forms a kind of episteme which characterize not only a specific world vision of individual antiquarians but also a certain form of reasoning about surrounding world. Such an episteme involves specific scheme for uncovering, classification, and subsequent interpretation of different segments of surrounding reality within a particular text or a textual corpus and broadly — within tradition. These segments were convolved, modified in particular way within a textual space and only after suchlike adaptation were presented as a verbal equivalents of fragmented reality. The antiquarian tradition finds an interest in particular forms of reality qualified for grouping within political and social rubrics and with a particular accent on cognitive mapping of power institutions and social groups. The article explores in what way a knighthood and titled nobility were described within this an episteme as two genetically interrelated social groups.