The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

Détail central du grand retable sculpté de la chapelle en cours de restauration

Villers-Cotterêts, a literary land, did not wait for the birth of Alexandre Dumas to mark the history of the French language. Already, in 1539...

Villers-Cotterêts, in the heart of the History of the French language

The ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, what is it ?

The ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts is the oldest law still in force in France: it survived twelve successive regimes! But what exactly is it about?

In August 1539, François I signed this "general ordinance on justice" at the royal castle of Villers-Cotterêts. Its articles 110 and 111 impose the French language in all the acts with legal scope of the administration and justice of the kingdom.

We want from now on that all judgments, together with all other procedures, [...] be pronounced, registered and delivered to the parties in French mother tongue and not otherwise.

The use of French thus took precedence over Latin, the language of the Church, which was considered less accessible.

A key event for the French language

If the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts is so famous - and its interpretation remains the subject of debate among historians and jurists to this day - it is becauseit set a first milestone for the development of the French language.

First of all, it made it theinstrument of an administration and a justice on the scale of the kingdom, which will allow it to progressively gain ground to the detriment of the language of oc and the other languages.

From the 17th century onwards, French became the language of the aristocracy and of educated people throughout Northern Europe, in Germany, Poland, Russia...

It is also considered, since the 18th century, as the language of diplomacy. All international treaties were written in French from the Treaty of Rastatt (1714) until the Paris Conference in 1919.

But if the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts contributed in the long term to the political unity of the kingdom, it had little impact on the daily language of the French, who at that time still used "regional" languages: Breton, Norman, Occitan, Gascon...

It is from the Revolution, but especially from the Third Republic and the Jules Ferry laws, that the French language spreads and becomes generalized on the whole territory, until its status of official language is registered in the Constitution in 1992.

From the signing of the ordinance to the creation of the Cité internationale de la langue française, Villers-Cotterêts continues to be a symbolic place of the French language.