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CHAP. XXXIV.: The same subject continued. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

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The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. XXXIV.

The same subject continued.

WHEN the fiefs were either precarious or for life, they seldom had a relation to any other than the political laws, for which reason in the civil institutions of those times there is very little mention made of the laws of fiefs. But when they were become hereditary, when there was a power of giving, selling, and bequeathing them, they had a relation both to the political and the civil laws. The fief, considered as an obligation of performing military service, depended on the political law; considered as a kind of commercial property, it depended on the civil law. This gave rise to the civil regulations concerning feudal tenures.

When the fiefs were become hereditary, the law relating to the order of succession must have been relative to the perpetuity of fiefs. Hence this rule of the French law, estates of inheritance do not ascend , was established in spite of the Roman and Salic§ laws. It was necessary that service should be paid for the fief; but a grandfather or a great uncle would have been too old to perform any service; therefore this rule took place at first only in regard to the feudal tenures, as we learn of Boutillier* .

When the fiefs became hereditary, the lords who were to see that service was paid for the fief, insisted that the females who were to succeed to the feudal estate, and I fancy sometimes the males, should not marry without their consent; insomuch that the marriage-contracts became in respect to the nobility both a feudal and a civil regulation. In an act of this kind under the lord’s inspection, regulations were made for the succession, with a view that the heirs might pay service for the fief; hence none but the nobility at first had the liberty of disposing of successions by marriage contract, as Boyer and Aufrerius have justly observed.

It is needless to mention that the power of redemption, founded on the old right of the relations, a mystery of our ancient French jurisprudence which I have not time to develop, could not take place with regard to the fiefs, till they were become hereditary.

Italiam, Italiam* . . . . . . .

I finish my treatise of fiefs at a period, where most authors commence theirs.

End of the Second Volume.

[]Book 4. de feudis, tit. 59.

[§ ]In the title of allodia.

[* ]Somme Rurale, book 1. tit. 96. page 447.

[]According to an ordinance of St. Lewis, in the year 1246, to settle the customs of Anjou and Maine, those who shall have the care of the heiress of a fief, shall give security to the lord, that she shall not be married without his consent.

[]Decision 155. No. 8. and 204. and No. 38.

[]In Capell. Theol. decis. 453.

[* ][The author concludes his elaborate work with an allusion to the joyful acclamations of Æneas’s followers upon coming in fight of the land of Italy, they so much desired, after long wanderings, great dangers, and furious storms undergone in quest of it.

  • —Humilemque videmus
  • Italiam! Italiam! primus conclamat Achates!
  • Italiam læto focii clamore salutant.
  • Æneid. lib. 3. ver. 522.]