A baron is a rank of nobility or title of honor, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent of a baron is a baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch, and they are less often the vassals of other nobles. In many kingdoms, they were entitled to wear a smaller form of a crown called a coronet. In Spain, the title follows Vizconde in the noble hierarchy, and ranks above Señor. Baronesa is the feminine form, for the wife of a baron or for a woman who has been granted the title in her own right.
In the feudal system of Europe, a baron was a “man” who pledged his loyalty and service to his superior in return for land that he could pass to his heirs. The superior, sovereign in his principality, held his lands “of no one”—i.e., independently—and the baron was his tenant-in-chief. In early feudal times, the baron in turn, in a process of subinfeudation, might have had his own subordinate barons. The subsequent slow decline of the law-enforcing powers of the barons so reduced the importance of the baronies that the term baron became at one time in Scotland a synonym for freeholder, while in England the term became a title for those in the lowest rank of the peerage. Life peers, whose rank is not heritable, are styled baron. In Scotland today, a baron is still one who holds a feudal rank, and the lowest rank of the Scots peerage, equivalent to the rank of baron in the peerages of England, of Great Britain, of Ireland, and of the United Kingdom, is lord of parliament.
In summary, a baron is a title of nobility or honor, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. It denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. The title is often held directly from the monarch, and barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. In the feudal system of Europe, a baron was a “man” who pledged his loyalty and service to his superior in return for land that he could pass to his heirs.
