Editing Lettres de cachet (section)

==History==
[[Image:Bastille lettre 1759.jpg|thumb|''Lettre de cachet'' ordering [[Jean-François Marmontel]]'s detention at the Bastille, signed by [[Louis XV]] and [[Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Saint-Florentin|minister Louis Phélypeaux]] in 1759]]
The power to issue ''lettres de cachet'' was a royal privilege recognized by the French monarchic civil law that developed during the 13th century, as the [[House of Capet|Capetian monarchy]] overcame its initial distrust of [[Roman law]]. The principle can be traced to a maxim which furnished a text of the ''[[Digest (Roman law)|Pandects]]'' of [[Justinian I|Justinian]]: in their Latin version, "''Rex solutus est a legibus''", or "The king is released from the laws". "The French legal scholars interpreted the imperial office of the Justinian code generically and arrived at the conclusion that every 'king is an emperor in his own kingdom', that is, he possesses the prerogatives of legal [[Absolute monarchy|absolutism]] that the ''[[Corpus Juris Civilis]]'' attributes to the Roman emperor."<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Norman F. Cantor |last=Cantor |first=Norman F. |title=The Civilization of the Middle Ages |year=1993}}</ref>

This meant that when the king intervened directly, he could decide without heeding the laws, and even contrary to the laws. This was an early conception, and in early times the order in question was simply verbal; some [[letters patent]] of Henry III in 1576 state that [[François de Montmorency]] was "prisoner in our castle of the [[Bastille]] in [[Paris]] by verbal command" of the late king [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]].

In the 14th century, the principle was introduced that the order should be written, and hence arose the ''lettre de cachet''. The ''lettre de cachet'' belonged to the class of ''[[letters close|lettres closes]]'', as opposed to ''[[letters patent|lettres patentes]]'', which contained the expression of the legal and permanent will of the king, and had to be furnished with the seal of state affixed by the [[chancellor]].

The ''lettres de cachet'', on the contrary, were signed simply by a secretary of state for the king; they bore merely the imprint of the king's privy seal, from which circumstance they were often called, in the 14th and 15th centuries, ''lettres de petit signet'' or ''lettres de petit cachet'', and were entirely exempt from the control of the chancellor.