Droit du seigneur

Vasily Polenov: Le droit du Seigneur (1874).
A nineteenth-century artist's painting of an old man bringing his young daughters to their feudal lord.

The Mugnaia in Ivrea

Droit du seigneur (/ˈdrɑː də seɪˈnjɜːr/; French pronunciation: ​[dʁwa dy sɛɲœʁ]) ("lord's right"), also known as jus primae noctis (/ʒʌs ˈpraɪmiː ˈnɒktᵻs/; Latin pronunciation: [ju:s ˈpri:mae̯ 'nɔktɪs]) ("right of the first night"), refers to a supposed legal right in medieval Europe, and elsewhere, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with subordinate women (the "wedding night" detail is specific to some variants). There is no evidence of the right being exercised in medieval Europe, and all known references to it are from later time periods.^[1][2]

Terminology

The French expression droit du seigneur translates as "right of the lord", but native French prefer the terms droit de jambage (French pronunciation: ​[dʁwa d(ə) ʒɑ̃.baʒ]) ("right of the leg") or droit de cuissage (French pronunciation: ​[dʁwa d(ə) kɥi.saʒ]) ("right of the thigh").

The term is often used synonymously with jus primae noctis,^[3] Latin for "right of the first night".

Historical references

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."^[4]

The medieval marriage fine or merchet has been interpreted as a payment for the droit de seigneur to be waived.^[2]

The supposed right was abolished by Ferdinand II of Aragon in Article 9 the "Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe" of 1486.^[5]

In 1527, Scottish historian Hector Boece wrote that the right had existed in Scotland until abolished by Malcolm III.^[6] William Blackstone mentioned the custom in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), echoing Boece's claim.^[7]

The right was mentioned in 1556 in the Recueil d'arrêts notables des cours souveraines de France of French lawyer and author Jean Papon (1505–1590).^[8] Voltaire mentioned the practice in his Dictionnaire philosophique, published in 1764.^[9]

In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in 1884, Friedrich Engels argued the "right of first night" had an anthropological origin.^[10] Paolo Mantegazza, in his 1935 book The Sexual Relations of Mankind, stated his belief that while not a law, it was most likely a binding custom.

In eighteenth-century France, a number of writers perpetuated other myths pertaining to the supposed power of the overlords during the Ancien Régime, such as the droit de ravage (right of ravage; providing to the lord the right to devastate fields of his own domain), and the droit de prélassement (right of lounging; it was said that a lord had the right to disembowel his serfs to warm his feet in).^[11]

As late as the nineteenth century, some Kurdish chieftains (khafirs) in Anatolia reserved the right to bed Armenian brides on their wedding night.^[12][13]

In the Hawaiian Islands, marriage in the Western sense did not exist until the arrival of Christian missionaries; there was no word for husband or wife in the Hawaiian language. The privilege for chiefs was often observed, according to "Sexual Behavior in Pre Contact Hawai‘i" by Milton Diamond.^[14] A young girl's parents viewed the coupling with favor.^[15] If she were lucky, she might conceive his offspring and be allowed to keep it. When western ships arrived, young girls and wives eagerly coupled with sailors who, given their weapons and large ships, may be gods.^[16]

In modern times Zaire's president Mobutu Sese Seko appropriated the droit de cuissage when traveling around the country where local chiefs offered him virgins; this was considered a great honor for the virgin's family.^[17]

Cultural references

• In Epic of Gilgamesh, king Gilgamesh is abusing his power by having right of first night.
• Former Makati City representative Teodoro Locsin, Jr. once quipped that Philippine vice-presidential candidate Alan Peter Cayetano would favor same-sex marriage provided that Cayetano be granted jus primae noctis.
• In the Ulster Cycle, the king Conchobar is placed in the awkward position of having to bed Cú Chulainn's wife to avoid challenges to his authority.
• Rashi, the 11th century rabbi, in his commentary on Genesis 6, describes the Nephilim as engaging in this practice.
• The Talmud in tractate Ketubot discusses what may be done in a situation where a bride must "Have relations first with the Hegemon".^[18]
• In the fourteenth-century French epic, "Baudouin de Sebourc", a tyrannical lord claims the jus primae noctis unless he receives part of the bride's dowry.^[2]
• Jack Cade mentions the custom in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene VII.
• Voltaire wrote the five-act comedy Le droit du seigneur or L'écueil du sage (ISBN 2-911825-04-7) in 1762, although it was not performed until 1779, after his death.
• The Marriage of Figaro (1778) by Beaumarchais (and the 1786 opera of the same name by Mozart) whose plot centres on Count Almaviva's foiled attempt to exercise his right with Figaro's bride.
• The Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto and Don Giovanni in Mozart's Don Giovanni act in a way that perpetuates this custom.
• La Sorcière by Michelet (1862) in which the droit du seigneur prerogative is invoked to explain why the wives of serfs succumb to the temptations of home demons who promise protection and succour from the oppression of their feudal overlords.
• In The Adolescent (1875), Fyodor Dostoevsky writes from a translation by Andrew MacAndrew: "Yes, although Miss Sapozhkov was passed over, it all began from Versilov's use of his droit du seigneur."
• Mark Twain cites the practice several times in his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), including having King Arthur himself rule in favor of confiscation of a young woman's property because she denied her local lord his "right".
• "Adventure Eight: Mary Ann and The Duke" in Eric Knight's ^[19] The Flying Yorkshireman (Pocket Books 493, 1948; 273 pages) has the nobleman negotiating for an alternative to his allegedly obligatory "drewit de segner."
• Chapter 7 of the first part^[20] of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which "the law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories" is an element of the Party's propaganda.
• The War Lord (1965), a film by Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Charlton Heston as a knight who falls in love with a peasant woman, using droit du seigneur to claim her on her wedding night. Based on Leslie Stevens' play The Lovers.
• Wyrd Sisters (1988), a novel from the Discworld series, satirizes the idea in several places, with several characters appearing to be under the impression that "Droit de Seigneur" is a type of dog, leading to a recurring double entendre about it having to be "exercised" often. The late King Verence's "exercise" of his "big hairy thing" later proves to be a key plot point.
• In The Pillars of the Earth, the Earl of Shiring, William Hamleigh, while scouting his earldom to see if he can raise more taxes, finds a woman who married without his consent. Despite her obvious lack of virginity as she has a baby, he rapes her, claiming the right to sleep with her.^[21]
• In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, the Lord's Right used to be a legal practice in the Seven Kingdoms, but was outlawed by King Jaehaerys I Targaryen on the advice of his sister-wife Queen Alyssane, around two centuries before the series begins. However Lord Roose Bolton uses it to justify hanging a miller who had not informed him of his marriage and raping the miller's wife, thus siring his bastard Ramsay Bolton. He claims it is still practiced in other areas of the North.
• In the film Braveheart, the doctrine was exercised on at least one occasion when one of Sir William Wallace's compatriots was married. Additionally, this was suggested to be one of the reasons why Wallace married in secret. Scholars and others have noted that such references support claims that Braveheart suffers from several historical inaccuracies as there has been no evidence presented that confirms Jus primae noctis was in practice at the time Wallace was alive and active.^[21][22]

References

Bibliography

• Boureau, Alain. The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-06742-4.
• Evans, Hilary. Harlots, whores & hookers: a history of prostitution. Taplinger Pub. Co., 1979.
• Schmidt-Bleibtreu, Hermann Friedrich Wilhelm. Jus Primae Noctis im Widerstreit der Meinungen. Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1988.
• Utz, Richard. "'Mes souvenirs sont peut-être reconstruits': Medieval Studies, Medievalism, and the Scholarly and Popular Memories of the 'Right of the Lord's First Night'", Philologie im Netz 31 (2005), 49–59.
• Wettlaufer, Jörg. "The jus primae noctis as a male power display: A review of historic sources with evolutionary interpretation", in Evolution and Human Behavior Vol. 21: No. 2: pages 111–123. Elsevier, 2000.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Droit de seigneur.

• The Straight Dope: Did medieval lords have "right of the first night" with the local brides?
• Urban Legends website investigates the issue
• Jus primae noctis. Scientific resources (in German)
• The above resource in English translation