SALIC LAW. — The most original of the barbarian laws (v.), almost untouched by foreign influences, the oldest among those of the Frankish group, represents an intermediate legal state between the age of Tacitus and that of the new Germanic kingdoms, and depicts a still primitive society devoted to hunting and pastoralism, pervaded by warlike spirits, and largely migratory.
The absence of any reference to Christianity could lead one to believe it dates from the period 448–81, before Clovis, and at the beginning of his reign, while the absence of pagan norms has led some to consider it subsequent to the partial conversion of the Franks (496). However, this hypothesis is uncertain, as one might admit that the most ancient part was lost in later redactions, with only the undoubtedly pagan chapter preserved, which alludes to animal sacrifices; thus, the safer attribution of the original text is to the age of Clovis or to the period immediately after his death and before the *Pactum pro tenore pacis* (508–11). Equally debated is its formation, whose history is obscured by the presence of the two prologues, which are not contemporary with the text, as in the Lombard *Editio*, but later, and by epilogues found in some manuscripts along with a *recapitulatio legis salicae*.
Issued as the *Pactus Legis Salicae*, now lost, it attests to the intervention of the people and the *proceres gentis*: it thus aligns with the other Frankish and Suevian *pacta*, which mark an agreement between the monarchy and the aristocracy or between the people and the aristocracy, unlike the Burgundian law and later the Lombard law, which collected royal law in written form. The popular tribunals (*mallberg*) in which the original formalistic norms were applied—and thus the Salic Law with its provisions concerning private offenses—stood in contrast to the royal tribunal, which dealt with offenses against the army, public morals, and the common good, and which functioned as a court of equity. With the functions of the two tribunals remaining distinct, the drafting of the popular norms proceeded without royal intervention, the king appearing only when he had to complete them, for example, by excluding the right of succession.
Roman influence, received through Burgundian law from the Theodosian Code or from the compendia of Gaius’ *Institutions* or Paul’s *Sententiae Receptae*, determined the division into titles and paragraphs and also certain typical Roman concepts among the refugees. The purpose of these latter was then to ennoble the Salic Law, first by ascribing to it the mythical antiquity of a pre-monarchical or already monarchical era of the progenitor King Pharamond, whose legislators, Wisogast, Arogast, Salogast, and Widogast, with the names of the cardinal points, indicate chosen representatives of the entire Salian nation; then by exalting as authors and reformers of the Salic Law Clovis, Childebert, and Clotaire; and finally by giving the character of a war of liberation to what had been merely an invasion and destruction of the last Roman province, defended by Aegidius and Syagrius, and by testifying to the Catholic primacy of the Salian Franks over all other Germans.
The second prologue, considered more recent, with its exaltation of the gens Francorum, *auctore Deo condita... ad catholicam fidem nuper conversa et immunis ab haeresi*, recalls the conversion of the 6th century and the Eastern heresies, especially iconoclasm, which certainly had a wide resonance in the West. The Franks are even declared to be the vindicators of the Roman yoke, defenders of the faith, and protectors of the bodies of martyrs whom the Romans would have burned or thrown to beasts—a clear distortion of 5th-century history, perhaps now too distant and forgotten, given that it was precisely the Romans who transmitted the cult of the martyrs to the Franks. The conversion, which occurred directly from paganism to Catholicism without passing through Arianism, is emphasized in the prologue to justify the predominance of the Salian Franks over other Germans, the conquest of Gaul, the support for the Church, and the policy—free from Byzantine influence—of Clovis, styled *consul* and *Augustus*.
Despite its obscure Latin-Germanic terminology and the symbolic formalities of the archaic world, such as the breaking or offering of twigs to create or dissolve kinship, the Salic Law is of great importance due to its extension into the Carolingian Empire and thus also into Italy, in the counties and among the higher clergy. This explains why, alongside the revisions made by the successors of Clovis, there were those of Charlemagne (*Lex Salica emendata*, perhaps of 768), of Louis the Pious (819), and of Charles II (864). Its diffusion is attested by the Lombard *Editio* and cartulary, as well as by declarations of law in documents: even in the 11th century, Countess Matilda of Tuscany, of Lombard origin, declared herself Salian by marriage.
A type of succession to the throne is based on the Salic Law. This derives from the exclusion of women from land succession established in tit. LIX, 5 *de alodis*, later mitigated by chap. 3 of the Capitulary of Chilperic (573–75), which substituted the right of preference for male successors of equal degree: a principle of private law which, with the evolution of the monarchy from elective to hereditary, passed into public law, perhaps influencing feudal inheritance law among the Franks. Based on the Salic Law, the exclusion of women from the throne of France was attested by Gilbert of Metz (1434) and by the royal judge Claude Seyssel (1519), who praised this *première spécialité* of the kingdom under Francis I. The principle was defended in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which assigned Sicily to the Dukes of Savoy, and in the Treaty of London (1718) for Sardinia. Later, against the attempts of Metternich, who, to the detriment of the Carignano line, sought to transfer the succession to Duchess Beatrice, wife of Archduke Francis of Este, in order to extend Austrian influence over the Savoyard state, in 1814 Napione and Balbo wrote defenses of the Salic principle, which prevailed at the Congress of Vienna (1815) for the cession of Genoa and at the Congress of Verona (1822) in defense of Charles Albert. Though not cited in the French, Belgian, and other constitutions that adopted it, it was explicitly included in the Statute issued by Charles Albert in 1848.