ABSTRACT
In his Traité des Ordres (1613) the jurist Loyseau defined bourgeois simply as the inhabitant of a town or bourg. More commonly the term referred to the urban elite, and it was in this sense that it was used in Germany (bürger) and England (burgher). When referring to the middle section of society, Loyseau talked of ‘the Third Estate’, which again signified the urban classes, since of the three estates normally represented in parliaments of the time the third was drawn from representatives of the towns. The term ‘middle elite’ rather than ‘bourgeois’ will be used here for convenience to refer to the non-aristocratic elites of both town and country, but no single word is appropriate.1 The upper strata of this elite occupied different positions in the social scale, drew their wealth from different sources, and enjoyed differing privileges as well as distinct norms and ideals. Moreover, the leading citizens of many of the principal cities of Europe were in fact already nobles (as in the case of the elite capitouls of Toulouse) or about to become nobles.
