The Peerage of France (French: Pairie de France) was a hereditary distinction within the French nobility which appeared in 1180 during the Middle Ages.
The prestigious title and position of Peer of France (French: Pair de France) was held by the greatest, highest-ranking members of the French nobility. French peerage thus differed from British peerage (to whom the term "baronage", also employed as the title of the lowest noble rank, was applied in its generic sense), for the vast majority of French nobles, from baron to duke, were not peers. The title of Peer of France was an extraordinary honour granted only to a small number of dukes, counts, and princes of the Roman Catholic Church. It was analogous to the rank of Grandee of Spain in this respect.
The distinction was abolished in 1789 during the French Revolution, but it reappeared in 1814 at the time of the Bourbon Restoration, which followed the fall of the First French Empire, when the Chamber of Peers was given a constitutional function somewhat along British lines which lasted until the Revolution of 1848. On 10 October 1831, by a vote of 324 against 26 of the Chamber of Deputies, hereditary peerages were abolished, but peerages for the life of the holder continued to exist until the chamber and rank were definitively abolished in 1848.
Following the Seven Years' War shortly before the French Revolution, some Canadian titles in the peerage of France came under the control of the British crown. All but one of these have either become extinct, or fallen into abeyance as their holders remained loyal to the French crown. The Baron de Longueuil holds the only French title of nobility that still exists today, as continued under the monarchy of Canada.
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The words pair and pairie
The French word pairie is equivalent to the English "peerage". The individual title, pair in French and "peer" in English, derives from the Latin par, "equal". It signifies those noblemen and prelates considered to be equal to the monarch in honour (even though they were his vassals), and it considers the monarch thus to be primus inter pares, or "first among equals".
The main uses of the word refer to two historical traditions in the French kingdom, before and after the First French Empire of Napoleon I. The word also exists to describe an institution in the Crusader states.
Some etymologists posit that the French (and English) word baron, taken from the Latin baro, also derives from the Latin par. Such a derivation would fit the early sense of "baron", as used for the whole peerage and not simply as a noble rank below the comital rank.
Under the monarchy: feudal period and Ancien Régime
Medieval French kings conferred the dignity of a peerage on some of their pre-eminent vassals, both clerical and lay. Some historians consider Louis VII (1137–1180) to have created the French system of peers.
A peerage was attached to a specific territorial jurisdiction, either an episcopal see for episcopal peerages or a fief for secular ones. Peerages attached to fiefs were transmissible or inheritable with the fief, and these fiefs are often designated as pairie-duché (for duchies) or pairie-comté (for counties).
The original number of peers in the Middle Ages was twelve:
Archbishop-Duke of Reims, premier peer
Bishop-Duke of Laon
Bishop-Duke of Langres
Bishop-Count of Beauvais
Bishop-Count of Châlons
Bishop-Count of Noyon
Duke of Normandy
Duke of Aquitaine, also called Duke of Guyenne
Duke of Burgundy
Count of Flanders
Count of Champagne
Count of Toulouse
According to Matthew Paris, the Duke of Normandy and Duke of Aquitaine ranked above the Duke of Burgundy. However, given that the first two were absorbed into the crown early in the recorded history of the peerage, the Duke of Burgundy has become the premier lay peer. In their heyday, the Dukes of Normandy were undoubtedly the mightiest vassals of the French crown.
Under the First Republic and the First Empire: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period
The original peerage of the French realm, like other feudal titles of nobility, was abolished during the French Revolution, on the night of August 4, 1789, the Night of the Abolition of Feudalism.
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French from 1804, 'reinvented' the functions of the anciennes pairies, so to speak, as he created in 1806 the exclusive duchés grand-fiefs (in chief of politically insignificant estates in non-annexed parts of Italy) in 1806 and first recreated the honorary functions at (his own) imperial coronation, but now vested in Great Officers, not attached to fiefs.
Napoleon reinstituted French noble titles in 1808 but did not create a system of peerages comparable to the United Kingdom. He did create a House of Peers on his return from Elba in 1815, but the House was not constituted before his abdication at the end of the Hundred Days (Cent jours).
Chamber of Peers
The French peerage was recreated by the Charter of 1814 with the Bourbon Restoration, albeit on a different basis from before 1789. A new Chamber of Peers (Chambre des Pairs) was created, similar to the model of the British House of Lords. The Chamber of Peers survived the July Revolution of 1830, with some revisions, as the July Monarchy's Charter of 1830 merely revised rather than overturned the Charter of 1814. Throughout both the Restoration and July Monarchy, the Chamber met in the Luxembourg Palace. However, the establishment of the French Second Republic in the Revolution of 1848 broke cleanly with the 1814 Charter and disbanded the Chamber of Peers definitively, establishing a unicameral National Assembly.
Peerage of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, the only crusader state equal in rank to such European kingdoms as France (the origin of most of Jerusalem's knights) and England, had a peerage modelled on the French and using the French language.
Charlemagne's twelve peers
In the medieval French chansons de geste and material associated with the Matter of France that tell of the exploits of Charlemagne and his knights—such as The Song of Roland—the elite of the imperial army and Charlemagne's closest advisors were called "The Twelve Peers". The exact names of the peers vary from text to text. In The Song of Roland (Oxford edition), the peers are: Roland, Olivier, Gerin, Gerier, Berengier, Oton, Samson, Engelier, Ivon, Ivoire, Anseïs, and Gérard de Roussillon (Charlemagne's trusted adviser Naimes and the warrior-priest Turpin are, however, not included in the 12 peers in this text; neither is Ganelon the traitor). The number of peers is thought to parallel the twelve apostles.