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ThePeerage of France (French:Pairie de France) was a hereditary distinction within theFrench nobility which appeared in 1180 during theMiddle Ages.
The prestigious title and position ofPeer of France (French:Pair de France) was held by the greatest, highest-ranking members of the French nobility.[1] French peerage thus differed fromBritish peerage (to whom the term "baronage", also employed as the title of the lowest noble rank, was applied in its generic sense), for the vast majority of French nobles, from baron to duke, were not peers.[note 1] The title ofPeer of France was an extraordinary honour granted only to a small number of dukes, counts, and princes of the Roman Catholic Church. It was analogous to the rank ofGrandee of Spain in this respect.
The distinction was abolished in 1789 during theFrench Revolution, but it reappeared in 1814 at the time of theBourbon Restoration, which followed the fall of theFirst French Empire, when theChamber of Peers was given a constitutional function somewhat alongBritish lines which lasted until theRevolution of 1848. On 10 October 1831, by a vote of 324 against 26 of the Chamber of Deputies, hereditary peerages were abolished, but peerages for the life of the holder continued to exist until the chamber and rank were definitively abolished in 1848.
Following theSeven Years' War shortly before the French Revolution, someCanadian titles in the peerage of France came under the control of the British crown. All but one of these have either become extinct, or fallen into abeyance as their holders remained loyal to the French crown. TheBaron de Longueuil holds the only French title of nobility that still exists today, as continued under themonarchy of Canada.
The French wordpairie is equivalent to the English "peerage". The individual title,pair in French and "peer" in English, derives from the Latinpar, "equal".It signifies those noblemen and prelates considered to be equal to the monarch in honour (even though they were his vassals), and it considers the monarch thus to beprimus inter pares, or "first among equals".[citation needed]
The main uses of the word refer to two historical traditions in the French kingdom, before and after theFirst French Empire ofNapoleon I. The word also exists to describe an institution in theCrusader states.
Some etymologists[who?] posit that the French (and English) wordbaron, taken from the Latinbaro, also derives from the Latinpar. Such a derivation would fit the early sense of "baron", as used for the whole peerage and not simply as a noble rank below the comital rank.
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Medieval French kings conferred the dignity of a peerage on some of their pre-eminentvassals, both clerical and lay. Some historians considerLouis VII (1137–1180) to have created the French system of peers.[note 2]
A peerage was attached to a specific territorial jurisdiction, either anepiscopal see for episcopal peerages or afief for secular ones. Peerages attached to fiefs were transmissible or inheritable with the fief, and these fiefs are often designated aspairie-duché (for duchies) orpairie-comté (for counties).
The original number of peers in the Middle Ages was twelve:
According toMatthew Paris, the Duke of Normandy and Duke of Aquitaine ranked above the Duke of Burgundy. However, given that the first two were absorbed into the crown early in the recorded history of the peerage, the Duke of Burgundy has become the premier lay peer. In their heyday, the Dukes of Normandy were undoubtedly the mightiest vassals of the French crown.
The constitution of the peerage first became important in 1202, for the court that would tryKing John of England in his capacity as vassal of the French crown. Based on the principle of trial by peers, a court wishing to acquire jurisdiction over John had to include persons deemed to be of equal rank to him in his capacity as either Duke of Aquitaine or Normandy. None of the peers had been specified, but since John's trial required the presence of the peers of France, it can be said that the first two peerages identifiable in the documents would be the duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy.
In 1216,Erard of Brienne claimed the County of Champagne through the right of his wife,Philippa of Champagne. Again this required the peers of France, so the County of Champagne is also a peerage. Six of the other peers were identified in the charter — the archbishop of Reims, the bishops of Langres, Chalons, Beauvais and Noyon, and the Duke of Burgundy. The tenth peerage that could be identified in the documents is the County of Flanders, in 1224. In that year John de Nesle entered a complaint againstJoan of Flanders; the countess responded that she could only be cited by a peer. The absence of the two remaining peers in the documents of this era can be explained thus: the bishop of Laon had only been recently elected at the time the other ecclesiastical peers were mentioned, in 1216, and probably not yet consecrated; the Count of Toulouse, on the other hand, is a heretic. Thus, though there had been differences in the dates of the identification of the twelve peers, they were probably instituted simultaneously and their identities were known to their contemporaries.
These twelve peerages are known as the 'ancient peerage' orpairie ancienne, and the number twelve is sometimes said to have been chosen to mirror the twelvepaladins ofCharlemagne in theChanson de geste (see below). Parallels may also be seen with the mythicalKnights of the Round Table underKing Arthur. So popular was this notion that, for a long time, people thought that peerages had originated in the reign of Charlemagne, who was considered a model king and a shining example for knighthood and nobility.
The dozenpairs played a role in the royalsacre orconsecration, during the liturgy of thecoronation of the king, attested to as early as 1179, symbolically upholding his crown, and each original peer had a specific role, often with an attribute. Since the peers were never twelve during the coronation in early periods, due to the fact that most lay peerages were forfeited to or merged in the crown, delegates were chosen by the king, mainly from the princes of the blood. In later periods peers also held up by poles abaldaquin orcloth of honour over the king during much of the ceremony.
This paralleled the arch-offices attached to theelectorates, the even more prestigious and powerful first college in theHoly Roman Empire, the other heir ofCharlemagne's Frankish empire.
The twelve original peers were divided in two classes, six clerical peers hierarchically above the six lay peers, which were themselves divided in two, three dukes above three counts:
| Rank | Bishops | Lay |
|---|---|---|
| Dukes | Reims, archbishop, premier peer, anoints and crowns the king | Burgundy, premier lay peer, bears the crown and fastens the belt |
| Laon bears thesainte ampoule containing the sacred ointment | Normandy holds the first square banner | |
| Langres, the only one of the five bishops not in the Reims province, bears the sceptre | Aquitaine, also calledGuyenne after its refounding, holds the second square banner | |
| Counts | Beauvais bears the royal mantle | Toulouse carries the spurs |
| Châlons bears the royal ring | Flanders carries the sword | |
| Noyon bears the belt | Champagne holds the royal standard |
In 1204 theDuchy of Normandy was absorbed by the French crown, and later in the 13th century two more of the lay peerages were absorbed by the crown (Toulouse 1271, Champagne 1284), so in 1297 three new peerages were created, theCounty of Artois, theCounty of Anjou and theDuchy of Brittany, to compensate for the three peerages that had disappeared.
Thus, beginning in 1297 the practice started of creating new peerages byletters patent, specifying the fief to which the peerage was attached, and the conditions under which the fief could be transmitted (e.g. only male heirs) for princes of the blood who held anapanage. By 1328 all apanagists would be peers.
The number of lay peerages increased over time from 7 in 1297 to 26 in 1400, 21 in 1505, and 24 in 1588. By 1789, there were 43, including five held by princes of the blood (Orléans,Condé,Bourbon,Enghien, andConti),Penthièvre (who was the son of a legitimized prince, theCount of Toulouse, also apair de France), and 37 other lay peers, ranking from theDuchy of Uzès, created in 1572, to theDuchy of Aubigny, created in 1787.
One family could hold several peerages. The minimum age was 25. The majority of new peerages created until the fifteenth century were for royal princes, while new peerages from the sixteenth century on were increasingly created for non-royals. After 1569 no more countships were made into peers, and peerage was exclusively given to duchies (duc et pair). Occasionally theParlement (Parlement de Paris) refused to register theletters of patent conferring peerage on them.
Apart from the coronation of French kings, the privileges of peers were largely matters of precedence, the titlesMonseigneur,Votre Grandeur and the addressmon cousin, suggesting parentage to the royal family, or at least equivalence, by the King, and apriviligium fori. This meant that judicial proceedings concerning the peers and theirpairie-fiefs were exclusively under the jurisdiction of theCourt of Peers. Members of the peerage had also the right to sit in alit de justice, a formal preceding and speak before theParlement, and they were also given high positions at the court, and a few minor privileges such as entering the courtyards of royal castles in their carriages.
While many lay peerages became extinguished over time, as explained above, the ecclesiastical peerages, on the other hand, were perpetual, and only a seventh one was created before the French Revolution, taking precedence behind the six original ones, being created in 1690 for theArchbishop of Paris, after centuries as a meresuffraganage, styled as secondarchevêque-duc for he held theDuchy of Saint-Cloud.
The expressionpair was also sometimes used for groups of nobles within a French fief (e.g. thePrince-Bishop of Cambrai, who held theCounty of Cambrai, was the overlord of its twelvepairs). These "peers" did not benefit from the royal privileges listed above.
A fanatical defender of the privileges of the peers was the memoiristLouis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon, who was neither very wealthy (by ducal standards), nor influential at court, but whose father had been made a peer. Louis XIV tried to promote the status in protocol of his legitimized bastards in various minor respects, and Saint-Simon devotes long chapters of his memoirs to his struggles against this.
The original peerage of the French realm, like other feudal titles of nobility, was abolished during theFrench Revolution, on the night of August 4, 1789, theNight of the Abolition of Feudalism.
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French from 1804, 'reinvented' the functions of theanciennes pairies, so to speak, as he created in 1806 the exclusiveduchés grand-fiefs (in chief of politically insignificant estates in non-annexed parts of Italy) in 1806 and first recreated the honorary functions at (his own) imperial coronation, but now vested in Great Officers, not attached to fiefs.
Napoleonreinstituted French noble titles in 1808 but did not create a system of peerages comparable to the United Kingdom. He did create a House of Peers on his return from Elba in 1815, but the House was not constituted before his abdication at the end of theHundred Days (Cent jours).
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The French peerage was recreated by theCharter of 1814 with theBourbon Restoration, albeit on a different basis from before 1789. A newChamber of Peers (Chambre des Pairs) was created, similar to the model of the BritishHouse of Lords. The Chamber of Peers survived theJuly Revolution of 1830, with some revisions, as theJuly Monarchy'sCharter of 1830 merely revised rather than overturned the Charter of 1814. Throughout both the Restoration and July Monarchy, the Chamber met in theLuxembourg Palace. However, the establishment of theFrench Second Republic in theRevolution of 1848 broke cleanly with the 1814 Charter and disbanded the Chamber of Peers definitively, establishing a unicameralNational Assembly.
TheKingdom of Jerusalem, the onlycrusader state equal in rank to such European kingdoms as France (the origin of most of Jerusalem's knights) and England, had a peerage modelled on the French and using the French language.
In the medieval Frenchchansons de geste and material associated with theMatter of France that tell of the exploits ofCharlemagne and his knights—such asThe Song of Roland—the elite of the imperial army and Charlemagne's closest advisors were called "The Twelve Peers". The exact names of the peers vary from text to text. InThe Song of Roland (Oxford edition), the peers are:Roland,Olivier, Gerin, Gerier, Berengier, Oton, Samson, Engelier, Ivon, Ivoire, Anseïs, andGérard de Roussillon[2] (Charlemagne's trusted adviserNaimes and the warrior-priestTurpin are, however, not included in the 12 peers in this text; neither isGanelon the traitor). The number of peers is thought to parallel thetwelve apostles.[2]
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