MAGE;JUGE-ORDINAIRE; REQUÊTES, MAÎTRE DES; MISSI DOMINICI;
PRÉVÔT/PRÉVÔTÉ; ROYAL DOMAIN; SEIGNEUR/SEIGNEURIE; SENESCHAL;
TAILLE; TRÉSOR DES CHARTES]
Bournazel, Eric. Le gouvernment capétien au XIIe siècle, 1108–1180: structures sociales et
mutations institutionelles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976.
Henneman, John Bell. Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Captivity and Ransom of
John II. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier. Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge. 3 vols.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958, Vol. 2: Institutions royales.
Strayer, Joseph R. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1970.
ROYAL DOMAIN
. Historians apply the term “royal domain” (domaine, demesne) to the lands, rights, and
revenues directly controlled by the king, beginning in the 10th century, when it amounted
to little. It has been described as the king’s patrimony or as his personal seigneurie. No
single synonym or brief description captures precisely the meaning of the term. It
consisted of lands, revenueproducing rights, jurisdiction, and what we might call
patronage. Contemporaries viewed the domain largely in economic terms, as that which
provided the king with the revenues he required, but it also had a political aspect that had
to do with power rather than wealth.
Nowadays, historians tend to view the royal domain from a territorial perspective, as
the area in which the king exercised direct authority, contrasted with such lands as
territorial principalities, great fiefs, or certain apanages, in which he lacked such
authority. It has become customary to portray on maps the growth of the royal domain.
For all its convenience, this territorial approach is probably the least accurate way to
portray the domain. If the king tightened control over his local officials, suppressed
public disorder, and compelled his nominal vassals to honor their obligations, he might
derive sharply increased resources, and therefore power, from his domain without adding
territory. If, on the contrary, he acquired direct control over a large but poorly organized
territory, its addition to the domain might add little to his effective wealth and power.
The first Capetian kings controlled some remnants of the old Carolingian holdings,
mostly around Laon and Soissons, as well as lands and rights in and around Paris,
Orléans, Étampes, Corbeil, and other places in the Île-de-France. They also possessed
rights of patronage over about one-fifth of the kingdom’s bishoprics and around a dozen
monasteries. They were continually adding to this domain and also giving away parts of
it. In the 11th century, the crown added Dreux, Sens, Melun, the Gâtinais, and the French
Vexin, plus scattered places of lesser importance. Philip I purchased the viscounty of
Bourges ca. 1100. Louis VI, by contrast, added little territory, but his vigorous measures
made the existing domain far more profitable, as did a favorable economy. Louis VII got
little but trouble from his temporary acquisition of Aquitaine through his first marriage to
Eleanor. He made more modest but enduring additions in the later years of his reign.
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