What was lettre de cachet

The power which the king exercised on these various occasions was a royal privilege recognized by old French law, and can be traced to a maxim which furnished a text of the Digest of Justinian: "Rex solutus est a legibus. This was an early conception, and in early times the order in question was simply verbal; thus some letters patent of Henry III.

But 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 lettres closes, as opposed to 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 formerly known as secretaire des commandements for the king; they bore merely the imprint of the king's privy seal, from which circumstance they were often called, in the r4th and r5th centuries, lettres de petit signet or lettres de petit cachet, and were entirely exempt from the control of the chancellor.

While serving the government as a silent weapon against political adversaries or dangerous writers and as a means of punishing culprits of high birth without the scandal of a suit at law, the lettres de cachet had many other uses.

They were employed by the police in dealing with prostitutes, and on their authority lunatics were shut up in hospitals and sometimes in prisons. Style: MLA. More from Merriam-Webster on lettre de cachet Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. Love words? Need even more definitions? Just between us: it's complicated.

Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Humans spent a long time domesticating cattle, and what they were trying to do, in essence, was de-domesticate them. The band was still on its way back as De Blasio and his wife departed. Yet even after the funeral protest, de Blasio was booed and heckled while addressing a new class of recruits as well. Madame de Condillac stood watching him, her face composed, her glance cold.

Then the door opened, the portiere was swept aside, and Anselme announced "Monsieur de Garnache. San Antonio de Bexar lies in a fertile and well-irrigated valley, stretching westward from the river Salado.