Droit du seigneur

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

Droit du seigneur (/ˈdrɑː də seɪnˈjɜr/; French pronunciation: [dʁwa dy sɛɲœʁ]) is an alleged legal right allowing the lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs' maiden daughters. There is no historical evidence that such a right ever existed.^[1]

Terminology

The French expression Droit du seigneur roughly translates as the lord's right, but native French prefer the terms droit de jambage or droit de cuissage, where jambage and cuissage (from jambe, "leg" and cuisse, "thigh") refer to the exercise of this right. The term is often used synonymously with jus primae noctis /dʒʌs ˈpraɪmiː ˈnɒktɨs/,^[2] which is Latin for "law of the first night".

History

The "Mugnaia" in Ivrea

The origin of this popular belief is difficult to trace, though readers of Herodotus were made to understand that a possibly similar custom had obtained among the tribe of the "Adyrmachidae" in distant ancient Libya, where Herodotus thought it unique: "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]

Early mention of the right used as social criticism occurs in the work of French lawyer and author Jean Papon (1505/7-1509).^[4] It acquires widespread currency after Voltaire accepts the practice as historically authentic, in his Dictionnaire philosophique; soon it becomes used frequently, especially in satire.^[5] 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.^[6]

Instances of the right have, however, been observed elsewhere, such as the Ottoman Empire. As late as the early twentieth century, Kurdish chieftains (khafirs) in Western Armenia reserved the right to bed Armenian brides on their wedding night.^[7][8]

Literary and other references

Despite the lack of historical evidence for the existence of such a right, cultural references to the custom abound. Examples:

• In the biography Cissy, Ralph G. Martin describes Cissy Patterson's observations on the estate of a Russian/Polish count she is married to, around the turn of the 19th-20th century - including the fact that several of the peasant children closely resemble the count, and that his permission is required before the peasants can marry each other. In this context Martin mentions the Droit du seigneur.^[9]
• In the episode "Queen Of Hearts", of the BBC series Merlin, Prince Arthur and Guinevere (the maid of Arthur's stepsister Morgana) tried to keep their romance secret as Uther would not allow such a match to happen. However, he caught them on a secret picnic, but at first assumed that Arthur was just exercising his droit de seigneur.
• Voyages historiques de l'Europe (Volume IV: pages 140–141), by Claude Jordan, first published in 1694; the description is similar to Boece's, but attributes the change to Malcolm I of Scotland, in the 10th century.
• 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 famous Italian novel, The Betrothed, starts when the priest refuses to let Renzo and Lucia marry because the local nobleman, Don Rodrigo, has his eye on her.
• In George R.R. Martin's novel A Dance with Dragons, the right is mentioned by Roose Bolton but never invoked
• Oroonoko (1688), a short novel by Aphra Behn; the young prince, Oroonoko, sees his bride kidnapped by his grandfather, who attempts to rape her claiming he has the right to do so.^{[citation needed]}
• Lorenzaccio (1834), by Alfred de Musset^[where?]
• 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, Suzanne in the play, Susanna in the opera.
• La Sorcière by Michelet (1862) in which the droit de 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.
• Woman, Church and State (1893) by Matilda Joslyn Gage—Chapter IV: Marquette
• 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 de seigneur to claim her on her wedding night. Based on Leslie Stevens' play The Lovers.
• Braveheart; ius primae noctis is invoked by Edward Longshanks (Edward I of England) in an attempt to breed the Scots out, although historically inaccurate for this was never invoked by the English in Scotland, at any point in history.
• Chapter 7 of the first part of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, 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
• Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court makes frequent reference to the 'right.' For example, in Chapter 25, King Arthur, acting as Chief Judge of the King's Bench judges a case where a bishop attempts to claim the estate of a recently married young orphan girl whose property the Church held in seignory on the grounds that because she had married privately, she had cheated the Church out of the right.
• Kanashimi no Belladonna (1973), a film directed by Eiichi Yamamoto^[where?]
• The Discworld novel, Wyrd Sisters, 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 an episode of The Office, Michael Scott declares that he is instituting "prima nocta" to ensure everyone dresses well for Phyllis's upcoming wedding. Then Jim explains to the camera that "prima nocta is when the king got to deflower every new bride on her wedding night". Michael later admits that he might have misunderstood the meaning of the phrase.
• In the Epic of Gilgamesh, hero Enkidu is appalled by King Gilgamesh's use of droit de seigneur at wedding ceremonies. Driven by his anger, Enkidu confronts and wrestles Gilgamesh. The two later become great allies and friends.
• In the X-rated film Caligula, written by Gore Vidal, Malcolm McDowell in the title role exercises the Roman emperor's droit by having sex with both the bride and groom.
• In the 1973 movie And Now the Screaming Starts, the curse afflicting a family of British nobles is punishment for an ancestor's presumptive invocation of prima nocta.
• In Family Guy season 9 episode "Brothers & Sisters", an English 'local noblemen' attempts to invoke his right of 'prima noctus' on Lois' sister after she agrees to a date with Mayor West.
• In the Author's Note to La Catedral del Mar, Ildefonso Falcones incorrectly asserts that the medieval Usages of Barcelona enshrined the right of a lord to lie with the bride of any of his serfs on her wedding night.

References

Notes

1. ^ Classen, Albrecht (2007). The medieval chastity belt: a myth-making process. Macmillan. p. 147. http://books.google.com/books?id=r_hncxYRQIoC&pg=PA147. 
2. ^ "jus primæ noctis". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2nd ed. 1989.
3. ^ Herodotus, iv.168 (on-line text).
4. ^ Boureau 203.
5. ^ Boureau 41.
6. ^ Journal of Sex Research, Vol 28, No. 1 pp. 163-166)
7. ^ Barsoumian, Hagop. "The Eastern Question and the Tanzimat Era" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.) New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 200. ISBN 0-3121-0168-6.
8. ^ Astourian, Stepan. "The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity, and Power," in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, eds. R.G. Suny, Fatma Muge Goçek, and Norman Naimark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 60.
9. ^ Cissy: The Extraordinary Life of Eleanor Medill Patterson by Ralph G. Martin, Simon and Schuster, 1979

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.
• 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.
• 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.

External links

• 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
• BBC article about Uttar Pradesh with section describing high caste landowners sleeping with Dalit farmhands' wives on wedding night