Peerage of France

[note 1] 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.

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.

The Baron de Longueuil holds the only French title of nobility that still exists today, as continued under the monarchy of Canada.

The constitution of the peerage first became important in 1202, for the court that would try King John of England in his capacity as vassal of the French crown.

Based on the principle of trial by peers, a court wishing to acquire jurisdiction over John had to include persons deemed to be of equal rank to him in his capacity as either Duke of Aquitaine or Normandy.

Six of the other peers were identified in the charter — the archbishop of Reims, the bishops of Langres, Chalons, Beauvais and Noyon, and the Duke of Burgundy.

In that year John de Nesle entered a complaint against Joan of Flanders; the countess responded that she could only be cited by a peer.

So popular was this notion that, for a long time, people thought that peerages had originated in the reign of Charlemagne, who was considered a model king and a shining example for knighthood and nobility.

Since the peers were never twelve during the coronation in early periods, due to the fact that most lay peerages were forfeited to or merged in the crown, delegates were chosen by the king, mainly from the princes of the blood.

By 1789, there were 43, including five held by princes of the blood (Orléans, Condé, Bourbon, Enghien, and Conti), Penthièvre (who was the son of a legitimized prince, the Count of Toulouse, also a pair de France), and 37 other lay peers, ranking from the Duchy of Uzès, created in 1572, to the Duchy of Aubigny, created in 1787.

Members of the peerage had also the right to sit in a lit de justice, a formal preceding and speak before the Parlement, and they were also given high positions at the court, and a few minor privileges such as entering the courtyards of royal castles in their carriages.

While many lay peerages became extinguished over time, as explained above, the ecclesiastical peerages, on the other hand, were perpetual, and only a seventh one was created before the French Revolution, taking precedence behind the six original ones, being created in 1690 for the Archbishop of Paris, after centuries as a mere suffraganage, styled as second archevêque-duc for he held the Duchy of Saint-Cloud.

Louis XIV tried to promote the status in protocol of his legitimized bastards in various minor respects, and Saint-Simon devotes long chapters of his memoirs to his struggles against this.

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.

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[2] (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).