Salic Law

Salic Law, a collection of the popular laws of the Salic or Salian Franks (see FRANKS), purporting to have been committed to writing in the 5th century, while the people were yet heathens. There exists several Latin texts of this code, and considerable obscurity rests over its history. It relates principally to the compensation and punishment of crimes, and there is a chapter containing provisions regarding the succession to what are called Salic Lands, which seems to have been inserted at a later date. Although the Frankish law did not in general exclude females, the succession to these salic lands, whatever they were, was confined to males, probably from the importance of securing the military service of the chief proprietors. It was but a doubtful analogy that led the rule of succession to Salic lands to be extended to the succession to the French crown, and it seems to have been only in the 14th century that the exclusion of females from the throne became an established principle. The accession of Philip the Long was probably the first occasion on which it received public sanction, and the fact that Edward III. rested his claim on female succession doubtless led to that instance being regarded as an unquestionable precedent. See Lex Salica, the Ten Texts with the Glosses, edited by Hessels (1880).