viscounttitle feminine viscountess
Main
a European title of nobility, ranking immediately below a count, or earl.
In the Carolingian period of European history, the vicecomites, or missi comitis, were deputies, vicars, or lieutenants of the counts, whose official powers they exercised by delegation. As the countships eventually became hereditary, the lieutenancies did as well: for instance, in France the viscounts in Narbonne, in Nîmes, and in Albi appear to have made their office hereditary by the beginning of the 10th century. Even so, viscounts remained for some time with no other status than that of the count’s officers, either styling themselves simply vicecomites or qualifying their title with the name of the countship whence they derived their powers.
France
By the end of the 11th century, the universal tendency of feudalism to associate status with the possession of land caused the French viscounts to qualify their title with the name of their own most important fief. In Aquitaine, of which the counts of Poitiers were dukes, and in the county of Toulouse the viscounts were great barons often able to assert themselves against their suzerain. In the Île-de-France, in Champagne, and in part of Burgundy, on the other hand, the viscounts by the end of the 12th century were surviving only as minor feudatories, having lost their special administrative functions to the prévôts.
In Normandy, however, the judicial functions of the viscounts as deputies of the duke remained important for some time longer. By the middle of the 11th century most of the country was administratively divided into vicecomtés (this explains the Norman use of the Latin term vicecomes for the sheriff in England); under Henry I of England the hereditary holders of the vicomtés in his Norman possessions were to a large extent replaced by ducal officials.
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