France had a monarchy in some form for over 1,000-years - from the days of the Frankish dynasties to the 19th century. However, there was never a Queen monarch that ruled the country. Here, Melissa Barndon considers why France never had a Queen.
Marie Antoinette, Queen Consort of France from 1774 to 1792.
For as long as there have been queens in France, there has never been a female monarch. No daughters of the King, the princesses of royal blood, have succeeded to the French crown and ruled in their own right.
But wait, you say, what about Marie Antoinette? Wasn’t she a French queen?
Yes, but she was a Queen consort. Most French kings had wives, whose sole duty really was to produce an heir (and a spare if they were lucky).
In many European kingdoms, women could inherit power on the same terms as men. This was the case in England, the kingdom of Navarre, the kingdom of Naples, Hungary, Poland, and in Scandinavian countries. Isabella I, Queen of Castille, and Ferdinand of Aragon governed Spain together from 1479-1504. So why could women not govern in France?
Salic Law
Many people would respond to that question with ‘Because of Salic Law’. Salic Law is a legal code from the sixth and seventh centuries in which laws regarding property and penalties were compiled for the first time as a written code. It is called Salic Law because many of the laws referred to the Salian Franks, a territory in what is today largely northern France, the Netherlands and Belgium. King Clovis, who is believed to have begun compiling the Salic Laws, was the first to unite all the Frankish tribes and is considered the first king of France.
One article of Salic Law prohibited women from laying claim to ‘familial lands’, or terra salia. It did not restrict women from inheriting property; it only stopped them from inheriting Salic land which had usually been granted to men by Frankish kings or nobles in exchange for their servitude. Women could not provide the same service as men at the time, so they were not allowed to have control of these lands.
Crises of Succession
In 1316 there was a crisis of succession for the French throne. There had not been a crisis such as this before, as the French crown had always passed from father to son. Louis X, or Louis the Stubborn, died in that year leaving behind no male heir to take the crown. He had a daughter, Joan, from his first marriage, and his current wife, Clementia, was pregnant. The maternal uncle of the 4- year old Joan entered into negotiations with Philip, the brother of Louis X.
It was agreed that if the as yet unborn child was a boy, Philip would rule as the Regent. If the baby was a girl, Philip would act as Regent for Joan until she was 12 years old, after which she would renounce her right to the throne. This is important, as it recognizes that females had the right to rule France.
The baby was a little boy. The jubilation did not last very long, however, as he died after only 5 days (thus becoming John the Posthumous). This particular outcome had not been considered, so Philip had himself crowned as king, Philip V. There was some opposition to his usurpation of the throne in place of the rightful heir, but an official declaration made clear that women were not permitted to inherit the kingdom of France. Significantly, there was no mention of Salic Law.
Philip V, also known as Philip the Tall, died in 1322, leaving no sons. The crown passed to his brother, Charles IV, with little opposition.
When Charles IV passed on very shortly afterwards, in 1328, it led to another crisis of succession. There were no sons and no brothers to inherit the throne. However, there was a sister.
Isabella of France was the sister of Philip V and Charles IV, and the wife of Edward II, King of England. She claimed the French crown belonged to her son, Edward III, who was a direct grandson of Philip IV. However, the nobles declared that women could not pass on a right to rule they did not have, citing the two previous coronations. They declared the new king to be Philip of Valois, a first cousin and therefore the next indirect male heir, who was crowned Philip VI.
The historical records of these events make no mention whatsoever of Salic Law.
The rediscovery of Salic Law
Salic Law was ‘rediscovered’ in 1358 by a monk in the library of the Monastery of Saint-Denis. One hundred years later a treatise called La loi Salique, première loi des Français, women and their descendants were officially excluded from inheriting the French crown because of their unstable nature and their inability to make war or to hold an office.
Prior to this convenient discovery of Salic Law, the dismissal of female rights to the throne reflected the general situation of women in medieval Europe. Women were legally dependent on their fathers, husbands or brothers, and required to submit and obey. Theirs was the domestic sphere, where they were responsible for child-bearing and child-rearing. The public sphere belonged to men – justice, government and war was their domain. While in some regions they could inherit land and wield power in the absence of a male heir, generally women could not underwrite contracts, testaments or legal articles; they had to be drafted with their husband’s or father’s consent.
Greek philosopher Aristotle had much to say on the natural weakness of women, and his ideas were also ‘rediscovered’ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Aristotle believed women were born with a weaker body and little wisdom; while men were naturally the opposite with a strong physique and a developed intellect. According to the bible, women had been born of Adam to be his companion and to bear his children. Eve had given in to temptation when she took the apple in the Garden of Eden, and therefore all women were never to be trusted with matters of importance as they were too easily tempted. They must remain subjugated. A twelfth-century abbot warned men that a woman’s anger makes females “poisonous animals ... [T]he poison of asps and dragons is more curable and less dangerous to men than the familiarity of women.” A popular and common theme for church sermons was the sins of females – they were liars, temptresses, gossips, lustful, proud and backstabbing. A proverb of the time stated: “Woman is an evil that man cannot avoid”.
Females were not without their virtues. A virtuous woman was kind, gentle and compassionate. She was dedicated to her children and to managing the household. It was these virtues which ‘allowed’ women to act as Regent for her son if he were to become the heir while still a minor. It was assumed the queen regent would always act out of love by keeping at heart the interests of her late husband and her child. Charles VI wrote in an ordonnance giving his wife Isabeau of Bavaria the duty of governing his heirs, with “written reason and natural instinct, a mother has the most tender love and the most gentle heart towards her children, and is more diligent in protecting and nourishing them affectionately than any other person, even those next of kin, and for this [the mother] must be preferred to any other.”
Women as Regents
Being a queen regent was one of few opportunities for the wife of a French king to gain power. From 1350 to 1500, we see some queens ruling in the place of their husbands who had become mentally ill or were absent at war. Philip VI, whom as we saw above had gained the French throne by usurping his cousin’s daughters, trusted his wife, Joan of Burgundy, more than he did his courtiers. In 1338, faced with war against England, Philip VI designated his wife as regent during his lifetime with full powers in government, public finance, and justice if he were occupied elsewhere. According to Philip VI, his wife “was raised with him and must fall with him; who better to entrust with the dynastic heritage?”
Isabeau of Bavaria held an unprecedented position for a queen of France because of the attacks of insanity suffered by Charles VI and his subsequent descent into mental illness. In 1402, Isabeau’s powers were extended to act in place of the king when he was unfit to do so. It was confirmed she held “power, authority and special instruction to appease all debates, discords, dissensions and divisions” that existed now or erupted in the future.
There have been many great French queens – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Anne of Bretagne, Catherine de’ Medici, to name just a few. All were raised in noble families, educated, more than capable of running their kingdoms as well as they ran their households, while producing heirs at the same time. But they were constrained by the same laws and restrictions placed on almost all women throughout history. However, they found their niche, whether it be a ceremonial role in the royal court, a nurturing role as Queen mother, or a political role as regent. In the early fourteenth century, chronicler Jean le Bel wrote “The kingdom of France is so noble that it must not go to a female by succession”. The French queens may not have been allowed to officially wear the crown, but they left their legacy in a myriad of other ways.
What do you think of the roles of Queens in French history? Let us know below.
References
Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle, Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016.
Morrison, Susan Signe, A Medieval Woman's Companion : Women's Lives in the European Middle Ages, Oxbow Books, Limited, 2015.
Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, edited by Zita Eva Rohr, and Lisa Benz, Springer International Publishing AG, 2016.
