In 1595, Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire granted a title of nobility to Thomas Arundell of Wardour. The document, composed in Latin, begins not with a list of military victories or ancestral exploits, but with an observation:
Insignes etiam virtutes quibus illustre genus tuum magis ac magis domi forisque illustras, ut liberalibus primum disciplinis pectus imbueris, peregrinas Provincias adieris, multorum mores, multorum & Urbes videris, magnúmque rerum usum acquisieris…
Roughly translated: “The distinguished virtues by which you increasingly illuminate your noble lineage, both at home and abroad, in that you first imbued your heart with the liberal disciplines, then journeyed through foreign provinces, observed the customs of many peoples and cities, and acquired a great breadth of practical experience…”
It is a striking moment. In a document that bestows formal noble status, the first justification is education. Not a battle. Not an estate. Not even a family name. Arundell had all of those, but is declared noble because he studied, because he traveled, because he learned from others. And it works the other way to, Arundell does not merely possess noble birth; he honors it through learning. Education is not an escape from ancestry. It is a tribute to it.
This is not the way Americans tend to talk about status. Indeed, it sits awkwardly with many currents in American political and cultural life today. Across large swaths of the country, there is an ambient suspicion of the educated. Anti-intellectualism is not just a feature of American populism; it is one of its foundations. Experts are distrusted. Professors are mocked. Liberal arts are dismissed as a luxury, or worse, a scam.
And yet here, in the early modern period, we see something else entirely. Nobility is not just inherited. It is cultivated. It is earned through a commitment to the liberal disciplines, through exposure to other cultures, and through the shaping of judgment that comes only from encountering the unfamiliar. This was not a liability. It was a virtue, and the most important one.
There is a Roman echo here. In antiquity, virtus was not simply morality or goodness. It was excellence in action, most especially the kind that prepared a man for public service. For centuries, the liberal arts were understood in just this way, not as a form of self-expression, but as the intellectual and moral training required to become good citizens and better human beings.
This connection between learning and nobility is not merely rhetorical. It was formalized in custom and law. Charles Boutell, writing in the nineteenth century, observed that “Barristers at Law, Masters of Arts, and Bachelors of Law and Physic” were customarily recognized as esquires. And in the British system, esquire is not just an honorific, it is a grade of the nobility. It does not confer a peerage, but it places one within the broader structure of social precedence, just below the knights of the United Kingdom. That is to say: a man could be ennobled solely by virtue of his education.
This was not a symbolic nod. It was a recognition that education, especially in the liberal disciplines, law, and medicine, formed a class of people entrusted with the health, justice, and instruction of the realm. Their knowledge made them valuable. Their learning made them honorable. And their rank followed accordingly.
That idea used to have some purchase in the United States, too. The early American republic was filled with classical references, not because of aesthetic snobbery, but because the framers believed self-government required educated citizens. Jefferson did not establish the University of Virginia by accident. Adams, though often mocked for his verbosity, saw in education the only defense against demagoguery.
There is, in this, a quiet rebuke to our present moment. For years, the cultural tide in the United States has turned against the very things Arundell is praised for. Against the liberal arts. Against global awareness. Against the idea that learning itself is a noble endeavor. We are left with a political culture that treats expertise with contempt and treats inherited status as its own justification.
But that ideal has eroded. The democratization of knowledge, a good in itself, has been accompanied by its delegitimization. Higher education is too often treated as a cultural affront. “Elites” are castigated, but the category is no longer defined by power or wealth; it is defined by degrees. The banker is respectable. The professor is suspect.
This is not just a political phenomenon. It is a philosophical one. If education is reduced to credentialing, and the goal of credentialing is mere employment, then the idea of learning as a noble pursuit collapses. The Arundell grant reminds us of a different view, one in which knowledge is not instrumental, but formative. The reward of learning is not a job. It is character and it is honor.
Of course, no one today is getting an imperial title for reading Aristotle and touring the Continent. But that is not the point. The point is that there was once a deep cultural consensus that learning mattered, not just for utility, but for identity. It was something that dignified the person. It was, quite literally, ennobling.
And that idea has not vanished. It is still found in the quiet resolve of those who study the hard things without applause. It is found in the classrooms where teachers still believe their work is meaningful, even when it is disparaged. It is found, sometimes, in the humility of travel and the widening of horizons that comes with it.
Thomas Arundell’s title may seem quaint now, a relic of imperial bureaucracy and aristocratic theater. But the first lines of his grant carry a lesson that still matters. Education, serious, sustained, liberal education, is not a badge of arrogance. It is the labor of becoming more fully human. And there is nothing more noble than that.