Nobility of Birth

Nobility of Birth Seems a Fortuitous Fact, but It Results from a Benevolent Design of Heaven

From the allocution of Leo XIII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility

on January 21, 1897:

Our heart rejoices to see you here again, united by a concord of ideas and affections that honor you. Our charity knows no partiality, nor ought to know any, yet it is not to be blamed if it takes particular pleasure in you and in the very social rank that was assigned to you in what may seem a fortuitous manner, but was in truth the benign will of heaven. How can one deny special esteem to the prominence of a noble line if the Divine Redeemer manifested the same regard? Of course, during His earthly pilgrimage, He adopted a life of poverty and never wished for the company of riches, yet He chose His own lineage from royal stock.

Coronation of the Virgin by Jacobello del Fiore

We remind you of these things, beloved Children, not to flatter any foolish pride, but rather to give you comfort in works worthy of your rank. Every individual and every class of individuals has its function and its value; from the ordered accord of all is born the harmony of mankind. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that in the public and private orders the aristocracy of blood is a special force, as are property and talent. And if it were somehow in contradiction to the will of nature, it would never have been what it has been in all ages, one of the moderating laws of human history. Wherefore, judging from the past, it is not illogical to infer that, however the times may evolve, an illustrious name will always have some validity to one who knows how to bear it worthily.

Leonis XIII Pontificis Maximii Acta (Rome: Ex Tipografia Vaticana, 1898), Vol. 17, pp. 357-358 in Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Documents IV, p. 470.