towns used avocats-conseillers to counsel them and to conduct their legal business, many
on a permanent basis and others occasionally. These counselors usually held degrees in
law, and the number engaged in this kind of work increased steadily from the 13th
century through the 15th and beyond. Trained as they usually were in Roman law, they
provide a striking example of the use and influence of Roman law in the development of
French institutions.
While the 12th century produced the great revival of Roman law and the origins of
canon law, only in the 13th century did French customary law come to be written; Roman
and canon law provided the inspiration for this activity. Customary law varied from one
region of France to another, and the writing of such law took place within regional or
provincial boundaries. The results were coutumiers, collections of laws, legal customs,
ways of holding court and doing justice. Their content was as much procedural as
substantive law. The first of these to appear was the Ancien coutumier de Normandie in
the early part of the 13th century. By the middle of the century, a larger and more
complete collection for Normandy appeared under the name of the Grand coutumier de
Normandie, a volume whose contents would remain applicable for centuries. Pierre de
Fontaines, a royal administrator and bailli of Vermandois, produced ca. 1258 a coutumier
for that area called Conseil a un ami. The unknown author of the Livre de jostice et de
plet (1260) addressed the area of Orléans, and the Établissements de saint Louis (ca.
1270), far from being an official or royal compilation, contained two anonymous treatises
for the Orléannais and the region of Touraine-Anjou.
The most important legal treatise written in medieval France was the great collection
of customary law made by Philippe de Beaumanoir ca. 1283, the Coutumes de Clermont
en Beauvaisis. Beaumanoir became the bailli of the count of Clermont in 1279, his first
important position, and his book must be considered the result of all that he learned in
holding the courts of the count, observing cases in nearby courts, and in frequently
attending the Parlement de Paris. He cited more than one hundred cases from his judicial
experience to support the rules and precedents that he discussed. And whereas the earlier
coutumiers contained quotes and texts from Justinian’s Corpus, comparing Roman with
French customary law, Beaumanoir was the first to achieve a successful merging of the
two. He believed that for laws to be valid and just they must be made by great counsel,
for the common profit of the realm, and for reasonable cause. The idea that laws should
be for the common profit is also found in canon and Roman law.
The extent to which Roman and customary law confronted each other in 13th-century
France is further illustrated in the work of Jacques de Révigny, the most prominent of the
professors in the law school at Orléans. The formal teaching of Roman law at Orléans
represented its farthest penetration in northern France, and Révigny was deeply
concerned with the connection between the two legal systems. Writing in the 1270s, he
gave much attention to the similarities and differences between the two laws and
expressed his views in his commentaries on various Roman laws, distinguishing custom
from the Roman statute and trying to reconcile the two.
While these developments were taking place in French law, the French king’s role as
lawmaker or legislator slowly came into prominence. No legislation has survived from
the early Capetian kings. Louis VII was the first to issue ordinances, when in 1144 he
banished the relapsed Jews from the kingdom and in 1155 established the Peace of God
for ten years. Both measures were made with heavy church sponsorship. Apart from the
The Encyclopedia 1007