October 12, 1998

droit du seigneur

I encountered the French phrase "droit du seigneur" in a column by Maureen Dowd. She writes about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal: "Rather than joining the capital's proud pantheon of droit du seigneur with the Kennedy brothers, Bill Clinton joined Messrs. Thomas and Packwood in the embarrassing pantheon of maladroit du seigneur." I have only found the words "droit" and "seigneur" separately in my French dictionary. Could you shed some light on the phrase?

Mmm, more sex! I guess it's just the national obsession right now.

The phrase droit du seigneur literally means 'the right of the lord', but is used specifically to refer to the supposed right of a feudal lord to have sexual intercourse with the bride of a vassal on their wedding night. This is also referred to as jus primae noctis, Latin for 'law of the first night'. The existence of a droit du seigneur plays a big part in the plot of the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro.

Droit du seigneur is also used in transferred senses, referring to the ability of a man in a position of power to have sex with women (Ms Dowd's sense), or even more generally of any right exercised by a powerful man. I find "maladroit du seigneur" a pretty funny pun, I must say.

Though the belief in such a right is fairly widespread, and such a right is found in some primitive societies, actual evidence for the practice in medieval Europe is scanty. There are records of payments made by vassals to avoid the enforcement of the law, for example, but no records of the actual enforcement of the law. It is therefore thought that the the supposed right was just another excuse to levy a tax on one's followers.

The phrase droit du seigneur is first found in English sources in the early nineteenth century.