France

When Francis I (1494-1547) took the throne of France in 1515, he asked the political theorist Claude Seyssel (c. 1450-1520) to write a work describing the French monarchy. His La grande monarchie de France (The great monarchy of France, 1519) explained how royal power had been tempered by Christian standards, custom, and local regulations. The French kings were, in fact, named “Most Christian” at their coronation, a title taken seriously during the Renaissance. The “custom” referred to by Seyssel was customary law, which prevailed in the north of France, with regional parliaments adjudicating disputes. In the south of France, Roman law was stronger, often modified to conform to the local needs of municipal government. French kings during the 15th century recognized that this fragmentation of legislative and judicial policy hindered the administration of government at the national level. With ducal kingdoms competing against the Crown, centralization was quite difficult. Although the Valois king Charles VII (1403-61) began a project to record and organize local customary laws throughout France, not until 1510 was the first compilation published, during the reign of Louis XII (1462-1515). This early 16th-century monarch was able to begin uniting France as a centralized monarchy. Because of his focus on Italian military campaigns, however, the continuation of this endeavor fell to Francis I.