THE FRENCH COLLECTION

Of the approximately 10,000 titles in Special Collections, about 5,000 titles comprise the French Collection, a rich assembly of materials spanning the 15th through 19th centuries which includes French coutumes, or customary law, French legal codes, trials, materials documenting the conflict between church and state, and an extensive grouping of French Revolutionary materials. The French Collection was significantly enhanced as a result of two major European auction purchases in 2001 and 2002.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH COLLECTION

In October, 2001, Bonhams & Brooks (now Bonhams), a leading London auction house, offered an impressive collection of law books from the Birmingham Law Society. Among the purchases made by the Library was a large collection of 19th century French legal treatises and a group of coutumes. In March, 2002, the collection of the Bibliothèque du Château de Razat become available through auction at the gallery of Libert & Castor in Paris. This exceptional collection was assembled during the latter part of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century by Pierre Théodore Noël du Payrat (1761-1832), the châtelain of the Perigordian estate of Razat. A noted jurist and Counsellor to the King, Payrat would later become a member of the Conseil des Cinq-Cents (The Council of Five Hundred), one of the revolutionary legislative assemblies established by the Constitution of 1795. Carefully preserved by his descendants, Payrat's collection survived intact until its dispersal at auction in 2002. At that time, the Library was fortunate to acquire virtually all of the important works on French law from the Château de Razat collection, true cultural treasures which form the heart of the French Collection which the Library continues to build.

 SOURCES OF FRENCH LAW IN THE MIDDLE AGES

By far the most important sources of law were the coutumes, which represent France's earliest efforts to document regional customary laws and practices, and which in turn became an important source of modern French law. At the beginning of the 13th century, these customary laws were still largely oral and lacking in cohesion, but by mid-century, certain of the coutumes made their first written appearance, although official compilations did not appear until the 16th century.

The Library's collection of coutumes is one of the three largest held by academic law libraries in the United States, and includes such important examples as Coustumes de Bretaigne (1540); Nicholas de Bohier's Contenta: Biturigum Consuetudines (1547), a collection of the customary laws of the Touraine and other regions; Charles du Moulin's Le Grand Coustumier Général (1567); La Conférence des Coustumes Tant Générales Que Locales et Particulières du Royaume de France (1596); and Philippe de Beaumanoir's Coustumes de Beauvoisis (1690). Compilations of coutumes in the collection vary widely in physical style from large oversized folios such as Le Droit Commun de la France, et la Coutume de Paris (1770) to tiny duodecimos such as Les Coutumes du Maine (1658), reflecting differences in regional size and influence and the resulting complexity and volume of their documented customary laws.

CHURCH AND STATE

A substantial part of the French Collection highlights the often turbulent relations between church and state. One of the treasures of the collection is Le Songe du Vergier, an incunable printed circa 1500. Composed at the behest of Charles V in the 14th century in an effort to fortify the notion of royal sovereignty, Le Songe du Vergier introduces a dialogue between a knight and a cleric regarding the duty owed to the church and to the state. Works treating the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, Charles VII's controversial 1438 decree which dramatically restricted the Pope's powers and increased the King's, include two early treasures: Pragmatica Sanctio, an incunable printed at Lyon in 1497, and Les Ordonnances Royaulx des Feuz Roys Charles VII & Charles VIII (ca. 1512), which contains the text of the decree.

The Library also owns the writings of several controversial personalities from the period of religious strife during the 16th and 17th centuries, including those of François Hotman, the French Huguenot jurist who sought refuge with John Calvin during the St. Bartholomew's Massacre of 1572, and who estimated that 50,000 Protestants were killed in the whole of France during the two-month massacre. Also appearing in the collection are works of the outspoken Jansenist lawyer, Antoine Arnauld, whose celebrated 1594 presentation before the Parlement against the Jesuits and in favor of the University of Paris resulted in an order that the Jesuits leave Paris in three days and France in a fortnight.

FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MATERIALS

The French Collection includes scores of pamphlets covering the period of the Revolution from 1789-1799, ranging from decrees of the Assemblée Nationale through the Convention Nationale and the Reign of Terror (1793-1794). Dominated by Robespierre, this latter period was characterized by bloody executions of suspected enemies of the revolutionary government. A spectacular two-volume set of important pamphlets from the Convention Nationale contains the Discours de Maximilien Robespierre (1793), in which he proclaims his revolutionary views of property and the right of all citizens to enjoy it.

Many pamphlets concern the continuing unsettled church-state relations. As the Revolution erupted, church and state clashed yet again when the government adopted the Constitution Civile du Clergé in 1790, which empowered the state to confiscate the immense holdings of the church and exacted pledges of loyalty by the clergy to the state. This legislation is the subject of many of the Library's pamphlets which defend or condemn its result.

The Library's copy of Code National, ou Recueil de Tous les Décrets de l'Assemblée Nationale (1790-1791), a 26-volume set in wrappers, contains a grand mix of revolutionary documents from 1789 to 1791, including the Constitution de l'Assemblée, letters from the King to the Assemblee Nationale, ordonnances of the King, and excerpts of the minutes of sessions of the Assemblee Nationale. This set, the "nouvelle édition," is not in the recorded holdings of any other library in the world.

TRIALS

A colorful and intriguing constituent of the French Collection comprises materials which document famous trials. A 22-volume 1737 imprint entitled Causes Célèbres et Intéressantes includes accounts of such notable cases as the 1560 affair of false identity "Le Faux Martin Guerre," which made two film appearances more than 400 years later, first as The Return of Martin Guerre and subsequently as Sommersby. One set of 1762 court documents contains materials prepared for the Jean Calas case, an especially notorious case denounced by Voltaire in which a father was barbarously executed on the wheel for the "murder of his eldest son [who many suspected had committed suicide], to prevent his turning Roman Catholick." A two-volume set from 1783 chronicles the trial of Radix de Sainte-Foy, accused of embezzling funds while serving as Surintendant des Finances of the estate of the Comte d'Artois (later Charles X). This set provides penetrating insight into the legal process of the 1780s, and contains manuscript notes which add to its appeal.

In the early 19th century, five contemporary pamphlets document aspects of the military trial in the disturbing Maréchal Ney affair of 1815, which resulted in Ney's execution. A group of contemporary 19th century imprints, which includes coroner's documents, transcripts of court sessions and excerpted letters of the victim, concern the Choiseul-Praslin affair, in which the Duc de Praslin, arrested for the 1847 murder of his wife, committed suicide before he could be brought to trial. Consequences of this unpleasantness were the disruption of the government of Louis-Philippe, and in the next century, providing the plot for the 1940 Bette Davis film All This and Heaven Too.

FRENCH LEGAL CODES

The Napoleonic, or Civil Code, has been called by scholars "the most important single repository of French law." When the Code Civil des Français appeared in 1804, it had been fourteen years in the making, but once promulgated, other codes followed in quick succession: civil procedure, commerce, criminal procedure, criminal, and forestier. Drawing its weightiest influence from the coutumes, the Code Civil brought order to what had been the chaotic legal atmosphere of the Ancien Régime. The Library's fine examples of the Code Civil include many editions, plus English, German, Italian and Dutch translations. Also included in the collection are analytical studies of the Code Civil, such as Jacques de Maleville's Analyse Raisonnée de la Discussion du Code Civil (1822), and works derived from contemporary "legislative history" documents such as the Esprit du Code Napoléon (1805-1814) of Baron de Locre. The five later codes also are amply represented in the collection, with numerous editions and translations, including two first official editions of the Code de Procedure Civile (1806). One appealing volume intended for use in everyday practice is Les Six Codes du Royaume (1829), a diminutive work color-coded by subject for easy reference by the attorneys consulting it.

EARLY FRENCH LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP AND COMMENTARY

The influential French legal scholars and commentators of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries are well-represented in the collection. The earliest French jurisconsult of note was Charles Du Moulin (1500-1566). Famous for his commentaries on the coutumes, especially the Coutume de Paris, Du Moulin is represented abundantly by works which include the early Traicté de l'Origine, Progres et Excellence du Royaume & Monarchie des François (1561); Le grand coustumier général (1567); and La Coustume de Paris (1666). Works of Jean Domat (1625-1696), whose writings significantly influenced Pothier in the 18th century, include several editions of Les Loix Civiles Dans Leur Ordre Naturel (1735, 1756, 1767 and 1777), noted as a source for several articles of the Code Civil. The eminent legal writer Robert Joseph Pothier (1699-1772), whose contributions to French law particularly influenced the Code Civil, is also represented significantly in the collection by many editions of his works. Best known for his Traité des Obligations (1768), the French Collection also includes copies of Coutumes d'Orleans (1776), and an important later 10-volume edition of his work, Bugnet's Oeuvres de Pothier (1845) which is annotated to the Code Civil.

THE PRACTICING LAWYER'S LIBRARY IN THE 19TH CENTURY

The library of a French attorney in the 1800s would have contained a number of the practitioners' titles found in the French Collection, and so too would the cultivated American practitioner's library of that era. Among the mainstays of research in French law practice would have been the six French codes, as well as the works of the great commentators.

In America, the influence of French law, and consequently civil law principles, in post-Revolutionary times extended well beyond Louisiana, America's only civil law jurisdiction. Americans identified strongly with France during this period of repudiation of British authority, and civil law principles figured prominently in the practice of early American law, especially in the early part of the 19th century. No less a legal luminary than Roscoe Pound, legal educator and Dean of Harvard Law School, wrote a law review article entitled "The Influence of French Law in America," in which he chronicles the role played by civil law, by route of French legal principles, in the development of law in America. As Pound points out, the prominent American jurists and commentators, Joseph Story and James Kent, freely cited to the Civil Code, as well as to Domat and Pothier; law reformer David Dudley Field examined the codes of other countries, including France, in his studies preliminary to his work in codifying common law practice and procedure in New York, and was influenced by Edward Livingston's codification work in Louisiana. Indeed, America in its infancy possessed a decided inclination toward the civil law evidenced by its early drive for codification of laws.

Although common law ultimately dominated in American legal practice, the early influence of French civil law is indisputable, and the study of the history of law in this country is incomplete without reference to the French codes and commentators, and indeed, even the earliest compilations of coutumes. The French Collection offers a unique window to these earlier worlds of legal thought and practice, providing an unsurpassed resource for the legal scholar, historian, and researcher.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For information about the French Collection, or to order a brochure, please contact Jennie C. Meade, Bibliographer and Rare Books Librarian, at (202) 994-6857 or via e-mail at jmeade@law.gwu.edu.