 Lombard families for some years.
Roger I was known as the "Count of Sicily." His son, Roger II, became a king, and with him Sicily became a kingdom. By the fourteenth century, the titles of baron and count were in wide use, whereas formerly the vassals were either seigneurs (lords) or cavalieri (knights). Under the Normans, the title seigneur was used to refer to most landed nobles. By the nineteenth century, these signori were designated baroni (barons), their holdings baronies, but from the fourteenth century onward frequent reference is made, collectively, to "barons" and "the baronage."
Contrary to popular belief, the title cavaliere ereditario (hereditary knight) was a late medieval development, though its name is based on the much older title of enfeoffed knight. Not being heirs, the younger sons (as opposed to the eldest sons) of feudatories (vassals) often went off to serve in the military orders, of which the best-known was the Order of the Hospital. This established the Sicilian practice, which existed into the nineteenth century, of referring to a titled nobleman's younger sons as "cavalieri" even though they were not actually knights.
Over the centuries, many prominent noble families were gradually promoted through the aristocratic ranks. By the eighteenth century, the titles of Noble Prince, Duke and Marquis were held by many men whose ancestors, just two centuries earlier, had been barons or signori.
The titles used in Sicily were: Prince, Duke, Marquis, Count, Baron, Lord, Noble (untitled nobleman), Hereditary Knight. Viscount, a rare title anywhere in Italy, was not a Sicilian title, and Patrician (Patrizio) was used primarily in the city-states and eventually Naples and Rome.
Certain families emerged as nobili (untitled nobles), something akin to England's landed gentry. They had coats of arms, aristocratic homes, and in some cases feudal rights. A number of these families descended from Sicily's Norman or Angevin nobility, perhaps from nobles who had lost their lands. Others resided in demesnial towns where several families emerged as local aristocrats as a result of their wealth and education. These families often remained in the countryside in spite of the exodus of the greater families from the country to the cities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rural mayors, town aldermen and other officials were often chosen from among such families.
In abandoning its affairs to surrogate managers, the greater aristocracy implicitly renounced much of the social power it had previously exercised in the countryside. In the Middle Ages, local lords (vassals) administered justice. By 1700, the stage was set for Sicily's rustic bandits to establish their own local power structure, though it took them decades to do so effectively.
At first, the absentee landlords entrusted management of their estates (latifondi) to trusted administrators, often members of the untitled noble families described above, but by 1800 many of the estates were managed by gabelloti, lesser-educated local men who hired farm workers and dealt with other day-to-day operation of the farms. Seen as little more than unrefined opportunists, the gabelloti were resented and disparaged by every social class but their own. In fact, their infiltration into rural society fostered development of the Mafia.
Until the abolition of feudalism, a man who purchased feudal property became the titular lord of that fief, usually a small barony. In this way, many gabelloti were ennobled in the late 1700s. It is for this reason that a degree of snobbery existed on the part of the greater nobility toward lesser nobles such as barons. This nouveau class exercised little real control in the Sicilian economy; usually, their fiefs were little more than large farms. Larger towns and villages usually appertained to princes, dukes, and the occasional marquis.
With the abolition of feudalism, the nobility lost its last important privileges, particularly the right, with royal consent, to tax the residents of feudal townships, but the abolition of feudalism coin