"The jurisprudence of the arrêts": Marital union, civil society, and state formation in France, 1550-1650

Law and History Review

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 1-40

  Hanley, Sarah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

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EID: 33750115233     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3595067     Document Type: Review

References (153)

1. On legal studies, see Donald R. Kelley, The Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), chaps. 5-8
2. and The Human Measure: Social Thought in the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), chap. 10-11, contrasting this approach with the more static English view of common law origins
3. On institutions, see Sarah Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual, and Discourse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983; French ed. 1991), chaps. 1-4, table 1, tracing the creation of that constitutional assembly in 1527
4. Sarah Hanley, The Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Law, Litigation, and Local Knowledge, 1500-1800 (in progress), locates a law-centered public space and formation of public opinion in the 1600s anchored in lawsuits and the demand for legal information by an active public audience in the streets
5. This is a thesis contrary to that of Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1989), chaps. 2-3, positing for France a passive audience, 1500s-1600s, positioning a restricted "bourgeois public sphere" (space for publicity) only later in the 1750s, and narrowly confining that sphere to elite Enlightenment salon culture, "the realm of letters."
6. The product of lobbying by jurists, the Edict of 1604 (droit annuel) assured inheritance rights for a yearly fee (one sixtieth of the value); see Antoine Fontanon, Les Edicts et ordonnances des roys de France . . . (Paris, 1611), 2:575
7. On the surcharge, or forced loan of 5 percent, added in 1621 and offices doubling in value by 1664, see Roland Mousnier, La Vénalité des offices sous Henry IV et Louis XIII (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 355-60. In theory kings could repurchase offices; in fact they rarely could afford to do so by the 1600s
8. Jurists such as Charles Loyseau (1564-1627), Cinq livres du droit des offices. Les Oeuvres de Loyseau [1610] (Paris, 1666), defined title to offices as a male right but later allowed transformation of offices (as immoveables) into propres (see note 24 below) treated as inalienable (and therefore inherited by men and women)
9. see Paul Louis-Lucas, Étude sur la vénalité des charges et fonctions publiques . . . (Paris: Challemel aîné, 1883), 1: chap. 2
10. For some later family tactics, see Ralph E. Giesey, "Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France," American Historical Review 82 (1977): 271-89. When offices became heritable property (1604), women owned and inherited them, brought offices as dowries, invested in them, and nominated incumbents (as owner or tutor for the owner); therefore, Venality was a family affair
11. Robert Descimon, "The Birth of the Nobility of the Robe: Dignity versus Privilege in the Parlement of Paris, 1500-1700," in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 95-123, contrasts this "civil nobility," made noble through a legal fiction (imitating nature), with the sword nobility (cast in natural law terms)
12. Studying financial offices, Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, et société au grand siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984), demonstrates the importance of women's assets in supporting officeholding (477-88), as well as female networking through grandmothers, mothers, and aunts who provided offices, capital, and patronage (517-703)
13. Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), traces the way female hypergamy aided the rise of this officeholding elite
14. and Albert N. Hamscher, The Parlement of Paris after the Fronde, 1653-1673 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), discusses judicial family networks
15. Across ranks people with sufficient capital rushed to purchase, including critics like Charles Loyseau who parodied "Archomania" (office mania) in Cinq livres du droit des offices
16. The tendency to bypass patterns of law practice and to focus on the 1700s has hampered many fine studies: for example, Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), vol. 3, Le Droit familiale, forefronting legislation
17. Habermas, Structural Transformation, privileging the Enlightenment
18. Mary Ann Glendon, "Legal Concepts of Marriage and the Family," in Loving, Parenting, and Dying: The Family Cycle in England and America, Past and Present, ed. Vivian C. Fox and Martin H. Quitt (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1980), 103-4, adopting for Europe a misleading Anglo-American model
19. James F. Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Psychohistory Press, 1980), chaps. 1-2, assuming reform was initiated by royal legislation (46) and challenges to church doctrine were the product of Enlightenment thought in the 1700s (78)
20. Joan DeJean, "Notorious Women: Marriage and the Novel in Crisis in France (1690-1715)," The Yale Journal of Criticism 4 (1991): 67-85
21. and DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), chaps. 4-5, holding (with Traer) that the contract theory of marriage emerged only around 1690-1715 and relying on the much later work of Joseph Pothier (Traité du contrat de mariage, 1768) to sustain that judgment
22. and David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation of France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), chap. 1, denying "nation-building" before the 1700s
23. See François Olivier-Martin, Histoire de la coutume de la prévôté et vicomté de Paris (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1930), 1:86-88, 99-101, on compilations of regional customs (a fusion of Salic, Roman, and Feudal laws) ordered by kings in 1454, 1494, and 1509
24. and Pierre Petot, "Le Droit Commun selon les coutumiers," Nouvelle revue historique du droit français et étranger 28 (1960): 412-29, on the way customs came to be treated as "French common laws."
25. For the national redaction of customs, Coutume de Paris (1510, revised 1580), see Olivier-Martin, Histoire de la coutume, 1: chap. 2, pts. 1-3; and chap. 2, pt. 4
26. This "Marital Law Compact" produced by "family-state negotiations" was first identified in Sarah Hanley, "Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France," French Historical Studies 16:1 (1989): 4-27
27. and "Engendrer l'État: Formation familiale et construction de l'État dans la France du début de l'époque moderne," Politix 32 (1995): 46-65
28. For the way these negotiations satisfying family and state interests contribute to his "theory of action," consult Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998; French ed. 1994), chap. 3, "Rethinking the State," 49
29. Formulated for a century this early juridical concept of a French "nation," part and parcel of evolving language, customs, and law, established the necessary base for all later extensions of the notion, such as that posited by Bell, The Cult of the Nation of France, chap. 1, who argues to the contrary that "the very idea of nation-building," rooted in language, law, and custom (the crux of nationalism), did not exist before the 1700s (22)
30. Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France, chap. 8, also 226-27, stresses negotiations between jurists and kings and repeated royal failure to practice "absolutism" as unevenly propagated in royal ideology
31. William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), points to negotiations between center and periphery
32. and Roger Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV's France (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), chap. 1
33. categorically denies "absolutist" rule, as does Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (New York: Longman Publishing, 1992)
34. Ordinance 1539 [Villers-Cotterêts] (art. 111): François- André Isambert et al., eds., Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises depuis l'an 410 jusqu'à la révolution de 1789 (Paris: Belin-Le-Prieur, 1821-1833), 12:622-23, states: ". . . all legal decisions (arrestz) and all procedures pertaining either to the highest courts or to the lower or inferior ones . . . should be pronounced, registered, and delivered to the litigants in the French vernacular language [langage maternel françois] and in no other way." Drafted by a famous jurist, Guillaume Poyet (c. 1474-1568), this edict officially replaced Latin, already marginalized, as the language of law
35. Glendon, "Legal Concepts of Marriage and the Family," 103-4, argues that in western Europe state jurisdiction of marriage was assumed by default (as the Catholic Church lost control) and that legal notions on marriage did not really depart from Catholic tradition until the Enlightenment [1700s]. But that Anglo-American thesis (presumed valid for westem Europe by other writers as well) does not fit the French case
36. Gilles Le Maistre (1499-1562), Décisions notables de feu messire Gilles Le Maistre, chevalier et premier président en la court de Parlement à Paris (Paris, 1566) [a rare tract in precarious condition], Treatise Five, chaps. 1-12, fol. 94r-107v. After a stunning career as an avocat at the Parisian bar, Le Maistre became avocat général (attorney general, 1540), président à mortier (judge, Parlement of Paris, 1550), and premier président (chief judge, Parlement of Paris, 1551)
37. In his valuable lectures on law practice, John P. Dawson, The Oracles of the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1968), chap. 4, detects the emergence of a "French way" sidestepping secrecy
38. See Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 83-124, 170-71, on this shift
39. John T. Noonan, "Marriage in the Middle Ages: Power to Choose," Viator 4 (1973): 419-34, discusses Gratian's innovative rubric on marriage (c. 1140). It was confirmed in Alexander III's papal decretal, Veniens ad nos (c. 1175) designating "words of consent" (present or future tense) and consummation for a proper marriage
40. see also Juliette M. Turlan, "Recherches sur le mariage dans la pratique coutumière (XIIe-XVIe siècles)," Revue historique de droit français et étranger 35 (1957): 477-528
41. and Adhémar Esmein, Le Mariage en droit canonique (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1929, 1935), 1:100-101. These "marriage promises" regulated by Canon law required no formal ritual, public pronouncement, paternal or parental consent; and the age of majority (taken from Roman Law) was fourteen for boys, twelve for girls (changed by French Customary law to twenty and seventeen)
42. In France the legal disputes in ecclesiastical courts over vague "marriage promises" from 1455 to 1494 are discussed by Beatrice Gottlieb, "The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage," in Family and Sexuality in French History, ed. Robert Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 49-80
43. While many writers and reformers (such as Rabelais, Erasmus, and Luther) called for parental consent, Le Maistre proposed a civil law solution, not one merely suggested, or left to church ordinances (Catholic or Protestant)
44. Judith Evans Grubbs, Law and Family in Late Antiquity: The Emperor Constantine's Marriage Legislation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), argues that Constantine decreed strict penalties for the crime of forcible abduction and marriage (raptus) in response to social demands, not Christian influence
45. See Le Maistre, Notable Decisions, Treatise Five, chap. 3, fol. 96v-98v, on the French rapt charge. Note "parental consent" includes father and mother (and/or tutors or curators)
46. Long applied to clerical cases, this appeal procedure was adapted for use in marital affairs; consult Robert Génestal, Les Origines de l'appel comme d'abus (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950)
47. Le Maistre, Notable Decisions, Treatise Five, chap. 3, fol. 96v-98v: arrêt 9 March 1541 (Françoise de Lizian and Pierre de Tinteniac [the couple] - René d'Orvaux (parental complaint against Pierre, the son), followed by Le Maistre's quote. For the arrêt of 1555, pronounced by Le Maistre and later reported by Papon, see note 35 below. In legal affairs married women used the natal family name
48. Julien Brodeau, La Vie de maistre Charles Du Molin, advocat au Parlement de Paris . . . (Paris, 1654), "Avis de lecteur" (4 unnumbered pages); he speaks of arrêts "noticed by all the Arrestographes, ancient and modern, that have judged a very celebrated Question of law. . . ." (61-62)
49. Neither spouse could alienate propres of the other, and 4/5 was reserved for legitimate successors. (See note 36 below on this French inheritance custom.) In general, see Philippe de Renusson (1632-1649), Traité de la communauté de biens, entre l'homme et la femme conjoints par mariage . . . (Paris, 1692)
50. Jean de Coras (1513-1572), Arrest mémorable du Parlement de Toloze, contenant une histoire prodigieuse de nostre temps, . . . (Lyon, 1561), wrote a commentary on the Martin Guerre - Arnaud du Tilh decision (1560)
51. The erudite Coras, a law professor, taught at universities in Toulouse, Angers, Orléans, Valence, and Paris, and also at Padua and Ferrara in Italy, before becoming a judge in the Parlement of Toulouse, where he was assassinated during the religious wars. On the imposture case, see the classic account of Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983)
52. The task was accomplished in 1610 by the avocat Jacques Baron, who edited and translated the Latin work and also added "ordinances, edicts, and arrêts from the Parlement of Paris." See (Coras [and Baron]), Resolutions de droict, contenans cent questions notables de matières . . . traictées et décidées au Parlement de Tholose . . . (Paris, 1610)
53. Jean de Coras, Des Mariages clandestinement, et irrévé rement contracté par les enfans de famille, au deçeu, ou contre le gré, vouloir, & consentement de leurs pères et mères . . . (Toulouse, 1557)
54. and Coras, Arrest mémorable
55. Coras, Clandestine Marriages, 1-7 and 51. For edicts dated old style (o.s.), I provide new-style (n.s.) dating, which began January 1566; and for arrêts and books lacking the month, the year as printed is given
56. Coras, Arrest mémorable, lists clandestinity and rapt among crimes committed by the imposter
57. Jean Papon (1505-1590), Recueil d'arrests notables des courts souveraines de France . . . (Paris, 2d ed. 1565 [1st ed. not located]), fol. 1r-532r, earned repute for his consultations
58. see also the Epistre (8 unnumbered folios) on "interpretation of law."
59. These factors - the notable arrêts requiring parental consent given prior to 1557, the intense lobbying by jurists, and the admission that deliberations on the Edict of 1557 were lengthy (see note 40 below) - undermine the assertion that Henry II issued the Edict of 1557 because the pope delayed annulling the clandestine marriage of François de Montmorency (to whom the king wished to marry his illegitimate daughter) set forth in Ourliac and Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, vol. 3, pt. 2, chap. 2, sec. 3, 204-5
60. and repeated by many historians, including Traer, Marriage and Family, 33
61. and André Burguière, "The Formation of the Couple," Journal of Family History 12 (1987): 39-53
62. Edict 1557 [o.s. 1556 February] (art. 1-5): Isambert, Recueil, 13:469-71. The preamble states that this applies to "enfans de famille" (legitimate issue) and "parents" includes "fathers and mothers"; art. 1 notes that deliberations took a "long time" and speaks of "public integrity" and "[public] utility"; art. 4 states the new provisions are not retroactive
63. Barnabé Le Vest (son, n.d.) published his father's notes, CCXXXVII Arrêts célèbres et mémorables du Parlement de Paris. Recueillis par M. Barnabé Le Vest . . . , publiés par Barnabé Le Vest, son fils, conseiller du roy, . . . avocat en la cour [de Parlement] (Paris, 1612)
64. As Le Vest (son) tells readers, most of these decisions were "pronounced solemnly in Red Robes" in that Parlement; see "Avertissement . . . aux Lecteurs" (2 unnumbered pages)
65. On rapt, see the arrêt 1554, no. 61, pp. 284-86 (26 March 1554, Catherine de Constard - Fleury Liguier [minor son]
66. fines and imprisonment until paid. He also cites an early clandestinity case punishing accomplices; arrêt 1535, no. 195, pp. 955-58 (3 June 1535, Nicolas d'Anjou [a minor, 15] - Catherine de Mareuil, widow of Guy de Clermont, married 15 December 1533), fines against the accomplices, her mother, the notaries who issued a marriage contract based on "promises" (paroles de présent), and the priest who married them. Le Vest (father, n.d.), avocat in the Parlement of Paris, conseiller (judge), maître des requêtes, also served as avocat for the queen mother, Catherine de Médicis
67. See Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (1518-1563) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1997), chap. 3, pts. 4-5
68. for debates and French complaints in 1563; and Hubert Jedin, Crisis and Closure at the Council of Trent (London: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 142-43, on the marriage decree Tametsi (1563)
69. Charles Dumoulin (1500-1566), Conseil sur le faict du concile de Trente (Lyon, 1564), was revered for his knowledge of French Customary law and for his efforts to unify French laws; see Brodeau, La Vie de maistre Charles Du Molin
70. For Barnabé Brisson (c. 1530-1591), see Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF), Département des Manuscrits, Collection Dupuy 115, fol. 235r-236v
71. A well-known jurisconsult, Brisson was attorney-general (1573), then judge, Parlement of Paris (1580)
72. earlier he wrote a Latin treatise on marriage law, De ritu nuptiarum (1564)
73. Brisson's arguments and the arrêt of 11 December 1576 (Françoise Le Loup and Pierre Morel [the couple] - Jean Nagaret [tutor of Morel] and Morel's relatives) was published by Louis Servin, Arrest de la Cour de Parlement donné en l'audience de la Grand Chambre le 12 juillet 1601, suivant l'ordonnance du Roy Henry III faicte à Paris au mois de May 1579 . . . (Paris, 1602), 53-68; and 61-65 on the illegal church-court ruling and need for a "severe [French] law."
74. Ordinance 1579 [Blois] (art. 40-44, 281)
75. Isambert, Recueil, 14:391-92, 443
76. Ordinance 1561 (o.s. 1560 January) [Orléans] (art. 111): Isambert, Recueil, 14:91, where art. 111 prohibits surreptitious use of lettres de cachet "to sequester girls and marry them . . . against the wishes and without the consent of fathers, mothers and relatives, tutors or curators . . . "; judges directed to charge perpetrators and accomplices with rapt. Ordinance 1579 (art. 44 and 281)
77. Isambert, Recueil, 14:391-92 and 443: see art. 44 on rapt de séduction and art. 281 on rapt [de violence] threatening nobles (chargeable in the Edict of 1561) who force a marriage without consent of parents with loss of nobility
78. Ordinance 1579 (art. 40-44, 281): Isambert, Recueil, 14:391-392, 443
79. For cases litigated, see Hanley, "Engendering the State," 15-21
80. also Constard - Liguier (1554) at note 41 above
81. The Marital Law Compact also drew under civil jurisdiction cases for adultery, separation, dissolution of marriage for impotence, and property issues (including dowries given to convents); for marital separation and adultery, see Sarah Hanley, "Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Law, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500-1800," American Historical Review 102.1 (1997): 27-52
82. See the informative study of Jeffrey R. Watt, The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neuchâtel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), chap. 2. However, in this discussion of Protestant Neuchâtel, where the custom of "marriage promises" prevailed through the 1600s, Watt continues to use (as did contemporaries) the terms "promises" and "contracts" interchangeably (60-77). As a result, it is not made clear here that the source of the ongoing legal confusion still lay in the failure to distinguish betrothal from marriage and in the acceptance of parental consent even after unions - that is, the precise practices French civil law aimed to stop. For similar confusion caused by marriage promises in England, see notes 109-11 below
83. See Matteo Bandello (c. 1485-1561), Nouvelles, Novella 9 (c. 1550s)
84. and Shakespeare (1564-1616), Romeo and Juliet (c. 1594-1595)
85. See Pierre Boaistuau (c. 1520-1556), Histoires tragiques extraictes des oeuvres italiennes de Bandel, et mises en nostre langue Françoise, . . . [1559] (based on Bandello), ed. Richard Carr (Paris: Librairie Honore Champion, 1977), "Histoire troisième," 77, re "clandestine marriage," 91 on punishments for rapt and disobedience, and for cases litigated, see Hanley, "Engendering the State," 15-21 (and those cited here)
86. Servin (c. 1555-1616), Arrest de la Cour de Parlement (1602), 1-52: (Pierre Houlbronne [and Houlbronne parents] - Elisabeth Pallier), arrêt 12 July 1601. The arrêt also declared Elisabeth and Pierre free to marry others (a decision usually reserved for church courts). The avocat Servin practiced in the Parlement of Tours (1589), then the Parlement of Paris (1594)
87. Edict 1580 [Edict of Melun] (art. 24-25): Isambert, Recueil, 14:464-77, a response to "remonstrances of the clergy" on appeals
88. Pierre Pithou (1539-1596), Traité des libertés de l'eglise gallicane (Paris, 1594), laid out "Gallican liberties" (83 articles) said (in art. 3) to be derived from "two fundamental [French] maxims": one being (art. 4) "Our kings are independant of the pope in temporal [matters]."
89. This was reiterated by Antoine Loisel (1536-1617), Institutes coutumières [1607], ed. André Dupin and Édouard Laboulaye (Institutes coutumières d'Antoine Loysel) (Paris: Videcoq père et fils, 1846), vol. 1, maxim 8, and readily confirmed by jurists, including Bignon, Grandeur (note 82 below)
90. In some Protestant states, such as England (notes 109-11 below), Neuchâtel (note 51 above), Scotland, some German states, and Geneva, the troublesome custom of accepting vague verbal "promises" to constitute a marriage continued; and in some states on the continent, where parental consent was written into new ecclesiastical ordinances, permission still could be obtained after the marriage. In France a special civil court (Chambre de l'Edit) staffed by judges of both cults was instituted for Protestant marriage cases; see Diane Margolf, "The Paris Chambre de l'Edit: Protestant, Catholic, and Royal Justice in Early Modem France," Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1990
91. Jean Chenu (1559-1627), Cent notables et singulières questions de droict, décidées par arrests mémorables des cours souveraines de France . . . (Paris, 2nd ed., 1603 [1st ed. 1602 not located]). An avocat, Chenu was a well-known legal scholar
92. Nicole and mother Jacqueline (accomplice) charged with rapt; he also cited Houlbronne - Pallier (1601). Chenu and cohorts provide names of litigants (as do most authors henceforth)
93. For one example of many, see Le Vest (son), CCXXXVII Arrêts célèbres (1612), note 41 above
94. Edict 1606 (art. 2 and 12): Isambert, Recueil, 15:304-5, and 307, on "complaints and remonstrances of the clergy."
95. For example, Charles Fevret (1583-1661), Traitté de l'abus et du vrai sujet des appellations qualifées de nom d'abus . . . (Dijon, 1654), used "Jurisprudence of the Arrêts" to designate the whole system: notable arrêts, edicts, and the appeal procedure (appel comme d'abus); see also Furetière (n. 108 below)
96. Correctness aside, the thrust of that term (commonly used) also was politically problematic, because it appeared to support Parlement's claim (since the early 1500s) to exercise co-legislative functions with the king and thus to undermine the contrary royal claim that kings alone enjoyed the legislative prerogative. On those conflicting claims, 1500s-1600s, see Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France, especially 6-9, 11-14
97. and for contests in 1667 and 1699 negotiated but not solved, see Hanley, "The Transmission of Legal Knowledge and the Genesis of Civil Society in Early Modern France," Historians and Ideologues, ed. Anthony Grafton and J. H. M. Salmon (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2001), 74-75
98. Loisel, Institutes. The work (1607) was reprinted twice before Loisel's death (1617), eleven times more in enlarged editions from 1637 to the 1780s. Denying Canon law (vol. 1, maxim 8)
99. Loisel also negates the letter of the Roman law: for example, he explains how the precept puissance paternelle was modified by French law (vol. 1, maxim 122)
100. Loisel, Institutes, vol. 1, pp. xxxv-xxxviii
101. Le Vest (son), Arrêts célèbres (1612), "Dedication," fols. aii r-v; and "Avertissement" (2 unnumbered pages)
102. Julien Brodeau (d. 1653), Recueil d'aucuns notables arrests donnez en la cour de Parlement de Paris. Pris des Memoires de feu Monsieur Me. Georges Louet, conseiller du Roy en icelle (Paris 1633)
103. published six times, 1614-1650, before his death (1653), eight more times augmented by other jurists, 1655-1742. Brodeau built upon valuable notes of an eminent judge, Parlement of Paris, Georges Loüet (1540-1608), printed after Loüet's death by the jurisconsult, Gabriel Michel de la Rochemaillet (1561-1642) in 1610; and virtually all the Arrestographes, 1630s-1700s, cited Brodeau
104. Claude Le Prestre (n.d.), Questions notables de droict, decidees par plusieurs arrests de la cour de Parlement . . . de Paris (Paris, 1645)
105. In the long treatise, Questions notables, Le Prestre divides sections into "Centuries" (each containing one hundred arrêts followed by a topical index); at each additional "Century," sections are repaginated. For clandestine marriage cases, see Second Centurie (1-251), chap. 6, 20-28. The shorter work attached, Traicté des mariages clandestins, is separately paginated (1-50)
106. Le Prestre, Questions notables, Second Centurie, chap. 6, 25-28: arrêt 26 July 1603 (Anne d'Estang and Jean de Montalambert [deceased spouses]); the court granted the children (Jean and Louise) 250 livres a year for life from the inheritance diverted (pointing to a compromise often followed in later cases)
107. Ordinance 1629 (Code Michaud) (art. 39-40 and 169): Isambert, Recueil, 16:234-35, 267, and 273-74. For the quote from the preface, see 16:224-25. Gaston d'Orléans, the king's only brother (see note 85 below), sat in the Royal Council when this ordinance was discussed (see preface, 225)
108. Ordinance 1629 (art. 39-40, 169): Isambert, Recueil, 16:234-35, 267, 273-74
109. Ordinance 1629: Isambert, Recueil, 16:273-74. Art. 169 (quote, 273): ". . . we wish that all those who commit rapt and abduction of widows, sons, and daughters under the authority of fathers, mothers, tutors, and relatives; or [those who] attempt to seduce them in order to marry; and [those] who have aided and abetted such marriages, without the advice and consent of relatives, tutors, or others so charged, will be punished as violators of the laws and disturbers of public peace." When "[such] crimes can no longer be excused and hidden, . . . these enterprises will be stopped."
110. If all direct heirs (from the "source") are ruled illegitimate, collateral relatives would inherit (as occurred in D'Estang - Montalambert, 1603); and if no collaterals remained, presumably the state could "confiscate" assets (as was the case for bastards, even those legitimated, if they left no heirs)
111. For a later high-profile instance where collateral relatives sued, see Brun - Saulx-Tavannes (1732) in Hanley, "Engendering the State," 16-17
112. See Hanley, "Social Sites," figs. 1 and 2, and 37-39, for marital separation cases. Circulation of legal information also aided slaves brought to France who sued for freedom from the 1680s on; see Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
113. BNF, Collection Thoisy 418, Lettre de M. Séguier . . . à M. Bignon . . . à travailler à une ordonnance sur les mariages clandestins . . . avec la réponse . . . 1633 . . . ," fol. 242r-254v
114. and "Pensées de M. Bignon sur le mariage," fol. 255r-264r
115. Pierre Séguier (1588-1672), an elegant orator, was president, Parlement of Paris (1624), keeper of seals (1634), and chancellor (1635). Jérôme Bignon (1589-1656), attorney general (1625) and royal librarian (1642), wrote La Grandeur de nos roys et de leurs soveraine puissance (Paris, 1615), arguing royal prerogatives are superior to papal ones and citing an assembly of September 1510 limiting papal power (215)
116. Fig. 1: Engraving, Abraham Bosse, Le Contrat de Mariage (1633), BNF, Cabinet des Estampes, C6943. The main scene (left) depicts the public nature of parental-familial accord as two sets of parents, or relatives (as tutors), negotiate for the couple a legal contract recorded by a notary. The secondary scene (right) suggests the personal nature of couple consent as the two (cast as grown-up versions of the younger children at play) court alone (their consent presumed witnessed by family accord) as they discuss (see the attached verse) male "empire" in the household
117. Mathieu Mole (1584-1656), Mémoires de Mathieu Molé, in Société de l'histoire de France, ed. Aimé Champollion-Figeac (Paris: J. Renouard et cie, 1855-1857), 2:227, and comments on the Ordinance of 1579, 2:225
118. On the Bourbon - Lorraine case (1634), see BNF, ms. fr. 2750, fol. 1r-245r: "Memoire de plusieurs mariages traictez par aucune Princes et seigneurs avec des estrangeres et ennemies sans l'adveu et consentement des Roys leurs souverains et des peines ordonnée contre ceux qui les ont contractez" (12 parts, 89 items). Since Louis [XIV] was not born until 1638 (after twenty-five years of marriage), hope for issue was dim in 1634 and Gaston the presumed successor. Gaston (b. 1608) had the king's consent (1626) when forced by Richelieu to marry his first wife, Marie de Bourbon-Montpensier (d. 1627). Present in the Royal Council when the Ordinance of 1629 was discussed (see note 74 above), Gaston was twenty-four in 1632; his comrade, Charles IV, duke of Lorraine, waged campaigns, off and on, against France
119. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion against the marriage): "Secular princes by laws and ordinances can make marriages to maintain peace in their states, and the church must confirm them [the marriages]." Orléans cannot marry "without the consent of the king, father of the people and administrator of the kingdom. . . ." At stake is not just the "ruin of a family" but the ruin "of a great kingdom" (fol. 4r-5r)
120. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion against): procuror general, Parlement of Paris (fol. 127r-v); Parlement of Paris, 24 March 1634, order for Charles, duke of Lorraine to appear on the rapt charge (fol. 134v-135r)
121. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion against): French jurists, 4 January 1634 (fol. 144r-148v); Parlement's decision, arrêt 5 September 1634, and the king's lettres patents against Lorraine alleging "rapt and rebellion" (fol. 137r-142r)
122. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion against): observations, Assembly of the
123. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion against): the church must confirm marriages touching "raison d'état" (fol. 9r-v)
124. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion for the marriage): letters to cardinals, reputation besmirched (fol. 234r-236r); French "injustice" (fol. 233v-234r); alleging "violation of the rights of the Holy See [by the French] . . . and ruin of its authority" (fol. 234r-v)
125. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion for): Trent, Edict 1579, Gallican church (fol. 220v-232r)
126. BNF, ms. fr. 2750 (opinion for): marriage (with couple consent) is valid if celebrated before a priest and witnesses (fol. 240r-241r). Only after nine years of separation and Louis XIII's death was this marriage recognized in France through a "rehabilitation" accorded the couple (slipping around the edicts of 1629 and 1639), then an odd ceremony reenacting marital vows by royal consent (all orchestrated by Queen Regent Marie de Médicis for the minor king, Louis XIV)
127. Declaration 1639 (art. 1-7): Isambert, Recueil, 16:520-24. No doubt Bignon and Séguier (see above note 82) contributed to this formulation. A royal déclaration amended, or clarified, prior edicts and ordinances
128. Declaration 1639 (art. 1-7): Isambert, Recueil, 16:520-24
129. This was published in Saint-Domingue through the Code Noir (1685, art. 10), but slaves were exempted from obtaining parental consent (it was said) because consent of the master sufficed
130. Declaration 1639 (preamble): Isambert, Recueil, 16:520-21
131. Le Prestre, Questions notables (1645), the advertisement (title page)
132. and the Bosse engraving, La Galerie du Palais (c. 1640), BNF, Département des Estampes, B17771 (version with verse), fig. 2 here
133. For a full view of the Great Hall (Salle des pas perdus), see Bernard Sur, Histoire des avocats en France des origines à nos jours (Paris: Dalloz, 1998), 43
134. Fig. 2: Bosse, La Galerie, verse quoted
135. Le Prestre, Questions notables (1645), Second Centurie, chap. 6, 20-25
136. also Mariages, 3-13, 17-29. In the historical spectrum covered, Mariages (3-13) - Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Christians - France stands out: "But, if ever a nation has forbidden clandestine marriages [successfully], it is the French [nation]. . . "; and Mariages, 17-18 against Trent (1563). He alerts readers to other suspicious "marks of clandestinity," such as lack of a marriage contract notarized, one person unequal in status, suspicion of prior concubinage, no marital banns posted; Questions notables, Second Centurie, chap. 6, 23-41
137. Le Prestre, Mariages, 17-18 (quote); for the term "civil society," see note 106 below
138. Also cited in several places are the famous precedents, Le Loup-Morel - Nagaret (1576) and Houlbronne - Pallier (1601)
139. see Questions notables, Second Centurie, chap. 6, 24-25; First Centurie, chap. 53, 144-46
140. and Mariages, 19-22
141. On marriages "against the Ordinance of 1579 and the arrêts of the court" nullified, see Le Prestre, Questions notables, Second Centurie, chap. 6, 25-28: arrêt 16 October 1602 (Henry Joubert and Anne du Chastelet), marriage nullified, Henry banished for nine years. Arrêt 8 July 1605 (Robert Baudesson and Anne d'Innal [couple] - Baudesson [parents]), Robert forbidden to approach Anne afterward
142. Le Prestre, in Questions notables, marginal notes throughout; and in Mariages (at the end), "Extracts" (42-46) include Edicts of 1556, 1561 (art. 3), 1579 (art. 40-44), 1606 (art. 12), 1629 (art. 39), and 1639 (art. 1-7); and relevant arrêts, 1564 to 1642 (found in 11 unnumbered pages), as well as in another section, "Celebrated arrêts" (1-32)
143. See Sarah Hanley, "The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right," Politics, Ideology, and Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 107-26
144. Le Prestre, Mariages, 1: "The effects of marriage [families] are . . . most admirable, since from it derives the source of civil society (société civil); it [marriage] is the foundation for families which compose Republics, and so [marriage] is the seed-bed (séminaire) for states (estats)." Although he invokes classical authority (alleging Cicero, Offices, 1-3), a reading of that very different Ciceronian passage (bk. 1, chap. 17) points to Le Prestre's ingenuity in refashioning the message to fit modern France
145. Declaration 1639: Isambert, Recueil, 16:520: (preamble) ". . . marriages are the seedbed (séminaire) for states (états), the source and the origin of civil society (société civile), and the foundation for families which compose republics. [From families] . . . come principles that serve to form . . . governing regulations [polices], . . . and . . . [in families] the natural reverence of children towards their parents is the [exemplary] bond for the legitimate obedience of subjects [in the state] towards their sovereign. . . ." Here, in addition, obligations of obedience are spelled out: wives obey husbands (in marriages), children the parents (in families), and subjects obey kings (in the state). Le Prestre may have been the source (compare with note 106). In Ourliac and Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, 3:204-5, this passage is mistakenly thought to originate in an Edict of 1697
146. See Hanley, "The Transmission of Legal Knowledge," on the popular Dictionaire universel . . . (1690), composed from 1648 to 1680 by Antoine Furetière (1619-1688), who defined and added to the famous trio of legal systems - Roman, Canon, and Feudal law - this fourth French system just as eminent
147. [Factum]: "Conclusions civiles, pour la Dame de Grosvenor accusatrice. Contre Ludovic Fenwick, moine Anglois son Aumônier, Édouard Fenwick son frere, & leurs complices . . . en supposant un faux mariage" (1702), 1-17; quote, 17
148. [Factum]: "Conclusions civiles . . . Grosvenor. . . ," 1-17; summary of grounds printed at the end (16), including excerpts from the Ordinance 1579 (Blois), art. 42, on rapt of a minor (widow, twenty-five years) and art. 281, crime of rapt for abduction and forced marriage; also from the Ordinance 1629, art. 169 (the tough provision cast in angry tones discussed above, notes 76-79, renewing the rapt charge)
149. Consult Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530-1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), chap. 4, on proliferation of clandestine marriages; scandals involving incest, bigamy, bastardy; squalid marriages in the Fleet; and corruption of the clergy; chap. 5 on the Hardwicke Marriage Act (1753) requiring banns, church nuptials by regular clergy, and parental consent. In short, says Stone, "marriage law . . . in practice in England . . . from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries was a mess" resulting in "moral and legal confusion," 135-36
150. R. B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1588-1850 (Rio Grande, Oh.: Hambledon Press, 1995), traces bills advanced in Parliament to outlaw clandestinity that failed up to 1753
151. See Hanley, The Social Sites of Political Practice in France (in progress)
152. On the way events by the later decades of the 1600s influenced women's demands for a "separation of powers" in the household, a domestic precept on governance picked up and applied to the state during the French Revolution, see Hanley, "Social Sites"; and for separation cases from the 1770s to the 1790s, now rhetorically clothed in melodramatic literary wrappings
153. see Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)