Droit de Signeur

(((Primae Noctis - The first night - Droit de Seigneur. Is a much-circumscribed tyrannical tradition imposed by Emperors, kings and higher nobles throughout the history of human civilization. This, by the Nobility, self-imposed right to engage in intercourse with marriageable women (first night of the lord) from the population strata was used long before medieval Europe in several continents. But in this case, this rule was used in medieval Europe just before the 9th century by the newly rich nobles, aristocrats and nobles with private armies as a retinue. They came from the south and east after the fall of the Roman Empire and the Khazar Empire and quickly built castles and palaces with advanced stone building technology in a Europe where the populations still lived in huts with mud floors. At this time, the power of the Nobility and kings was inherited by the firstborn. But this rule created tensions within the bloodlines of the Nobility as many 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th (etc) born with bloodline from the Primae Noctis rule grew up and demanded a share of the inheritance. 

This was usually refused to them and eventually they organized themselves and formed strong resistance movements against the rules of the vertical power structure within the Kingdom and the foremost nobility. They formed a horizontal power opposition to the royalist vertical power structure. These tensions grew over several hundred years and manifested within The Knights Templar movement which grew increasingly stronger by the mid 13th century. The Knights Templars formed Switzerland in 1291 and the confrontation between the French Royalist vertical rule and the Templars horizontal opposition was manifested in the French King Philip IV (4) the Fair's arrest of 138 Knight Templars, among them the leader Jacques de Molay. After extensive interrogation and torture, 

54 Templars were found guilty of heresy, blasphemy, Satanism and various occultism by the French monarchy and burned to death in Paris on May 12, 1310. The Order of the Knights Templar is officially suppressed on March 22, 1312. The leaders Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burned at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. Most of the Templars escaped the French kings arrests and ambush in 1307 and fled to their newly formed Sion in the Alps, Switzerland, where they reformed into the original organization under the Hospitallers.)))

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Droit du seigneur[a] ('right of the lord'), also known as jus primae noctis[b] ('right of the first night', recently sometimes incorrectly referred to as prima nocta[c]), was a supposed legal right in medieval Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with any female subject, particularly on her wedding night. There are many references to the alleged custom throughout the centuries but little evidence that it actually existed.

Terminology

The French expression droit du seigneur translates as "right of the lord", but modern French usage prefers droit de jambage (French: [dʁwa d(ə) ʒɑ̃baʒ], from jambe, 'leg') or, more commonly, droit de cuissage (French: [dʁwa d(ə) kɥisaʒ], from cuisse, 'thigh').[citation needed]

The term is often used synonymously with jus primae noctis,[1] Latin for "right of the first night".

Ancient times

The practice is referenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literature. In the narrative, the protagonist's exercise of the right is one of the grievances that led the people of Uruk to pray for a rival (Enkidu) to stop his tyranny.[2]

The Greek historian Herodotus mentions a similar custom among the Adyrmachidae in ancient Libya: "They are also the only tribe with whom the custom obtains of bringing all women about to become brides before the king, that he may choose such as are agreeable to him."[3]

When the plebeians of the Etruscan city of Volsinii rebelled against the aristocrats in 280 BC, the account of Valerius Maximus[4] claims that "[t]hey took their wives for themselves and placed the daughters of the nobles under the jus primæ noctis, while all their former masters on whom they could lay hands were tortured to death."[5]

It is also mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 3b. The Talmud discusses what a groom should do in a case of תיבעל להגמון (tibael lehegmon), where a local ruler decrees a bride must be taken to him before their wedding.[6]

Middle Ages

Europe

Artistic interpretations by Jules-Arsène Garnier (1872) and José Martí y Monsó (1871) of the theme where a newly-wed woman is taken away by a feudal lord, while her distraught husband looks on.

The medieval marriage fine or merchet has sometimes been interpreted as a payment for the droit du seigneur to be waived.[7] Alternatively, it has been interpreted as compensation to the lord for the young women leaving his lands.[8] Encyclopædia Britannica states that the evidence indicates it was a monetary tax related to vassal marriages, since a considerable number of seigneurial rights revolved around marriage.[9]

A similar payment to church authorities has also been interpreted as relating to the droit du seigneur. However, according to British scholar W. D. Howarth, the Catholic Church at some times prohibited consummation of a marriage on the first night. The payment was for an indulgence from the church to waive this prohibition.[10]

In the Wooing of Emer in Irish mythology the King Conchobar has the droit du seigneur over all marriages of his subjects. He is afraid of Cú Chulainn's reaction if he exercises it in this case, but is equally afraid of losing his authority if he does not. The druid Cathbad suggests a solution: Conchobar sleeps with Emer on the night of the wedding, but Cathbad sleeps between them.[11]

The biography of Gerald of Aurillac written by Odo of Cluny (879–942) gives an account of the young nobleman demanding to rape one of his serfs, only to have the act averted by a miracle, sending Gerald on the road to sainthood. American historian Vern Bullough suggested that this illustrates that such behaviour was commonplace in the period, and that the "legend [of droit du seigneur] reflected the reality".[12]

In the 14th-century French epic poem Baudouin de Sebourc, a tyrannical lord claims the jus primae noctis unless he receives part of the bride's dowry.[7]

The only medieval legal document to mention this practice is Article 9 of Ferdinand II of Aragon's Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe in 1486, in which the king forbids lords from having sex with a new bride of a peasant. However, this Article does not suggest that such a right actually existed, as Article 9 lists various abuses that do not derive from any earlier seignorial rights. Furthermore, in an earlier draft document related to the Sentencia, the Catalan lords replied that they doubted that any lord had actually demanded such a practice.[13]

References

Citations

1. "jus primæ noctis". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
2. George, Andrew (2003). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Classics. p. 171. ISBN 978-0140449198. He will couple with the wife-to-be, he first of all, the bridegroom after.
3. Herodotus, iv.168 (Wikisource text)
4. Valerius Maximus. "9.1". Facta et dicta memorabilia.
5. Von Vacano, Otto-Wilhelm, The Etruscans in the Ancient World, p. 164 (Indiana University Press)(ISBN 0253200814).
6. "Ketubot 3b:1". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 9 July 2022.
7. The jus primae noctis as a male power display: A review of historic sources with evolutionary interpretation Archived 18 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine by Jörg Wettlaufer - Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol 21, Nr. 2 (2000): 111-123. See also: Jörg Wettlaufer. Das Herrenrecht der Ersten Nacht, Hochzeit, Herrschaft und Heiratszins im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Campus Hist. Studien, Bd. 27, 1999, pp. 150-161.
8. Walker 1988, p. 328.
9. "Droit du seigneur". Retrieved 11 July 2019.
10. Howarth 1971, pp. 301–302.
11. Thomas Kinsella, The Táin, Oxford University Press, 1969, ISBN 0-19-281090-1, pp. 25–39
12. Bullough 1991, pp. 164–165.
13. Boureau 1998, pp. 239–240.

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