Burgrave / Viscount
A Burggraf, or Burgrave, was a 12th and 13th century military and civil judicial governor of a castle (compare castellan, custos, keeper) of the town it dominated and of its immediate surrounding countryside. His jurisdiction was a Burggrafschaft, burgraviate.
Later the title became ennobled and hereditary with its own domain.
Example: Burgrave of Nuremberg.
It occupies the same relative rank as titles rendered in purist German by Vizegraf, in Dutch as Burggraaf or in English as Viscount (Latin: Vicecomes), in origin also a deputy of a Count, as the burgrave dwelt usually in a castle or fortified town. Soon many became hereditary and almost-a-Count, ranking just below the 'full' Counts, but above a Freiherr (Baron).
It was also often used as a courtesy title by the heir to a Graf.
Read more about this topic: Graf
Famous quotes containing the word viscount:
“I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.”
—Edward F. Wood, Viscount Halifax (1881–1959)