Organic Conditions of Royal Succession in France

Vocabulary flashcards covering the organic conditions of French royal succession, including masculinity, primogeniture, and catholicity.

Primogeniture

The rule of succession establishing that the Crown is transmitted hereditarily strictly to the eldest child.

Apanage

Estates or lands granted to the younger siblings (cadets) of the royal family, which reverted back to the king in the absence of a male heir.

Queen Consort

A queen whose role was limited to dynastic duty (bearing a male heir) and who could not directly exercise political power or sign official acts in her own name.

Capetian Miracle

The historical period from Hugues Capet to Louis X le Hutin during which every King of France had at least one surviving son to inherit the throne.

Salic Law

A legal code originally drafted under Clovis concerning land inheritance, later altered by Richard le Scot to replace 'lands' with 'kingdom' to legally justify excluding women from the French throne.

Nemo dat quod non habet

A Roman legal maxim meaning 'no one can give what they do not have,' used in 1328 to argue that women could not transmit succession rights to their sons because they could not hold the throne themselves.

Les femmes peuvent faire pont et planche

A French customary legal principle meaning 'women can act as a bridge and plank,' cited by Édouard III to argue that women could transmit throne rights even if they could not reign themselves.

Cujus regio, ejus religio

An international law principle established in 1555 meaning 'whose realm, his religion,' stating that the religion of the king determines the religion of his subjects.

Édit d'Union

An edict promulgated in 1588 by Henri III requiring the king to exterminate heretics and ordering French subjects to disobey any non-Catholic king.

Arrêt Lemaistre

A solemn 1593 ruling by the Parliament of Paris establishing that a king must simultaneously meet all organic conditions (male, eldest, French, and Catholic), requiring Henri de Navarre to convert to Catholicism.

François de Meyronnes's Clerical Argument

A 1322 divine-right argument stating that the royal sacre turns the king into a priest-like figure, and because Catholic priests must be men, the king must also be male.

Cardin Lebret's Natural Law Argument

A misogynistic legal argument from Traité de la souveraineté du roi asserting that women are biologically incomplete and naturally incapable of governing.