The Estates of Lower Austria

This chapter explores the composition of the Estates and how admission to their ranks was regulated. It also considers relations among the four Estates. Membership in the Estates of prelates and townsmen was largely static over time, while that in the lords and knights was changing. As a body, the Estates were not monolithic. Lines of fissure ran between nobility and clergy, within and between the various formal and informal groups of nobles, and between the townsmen and the others. There were also confessional and geographical factors that produced vertical divisions. These distinctions governed the dynamic not only within the halls of the Landhaus but also between the Estates and government.