Законите на кралството и конституцията на френската абсолютна монархия
The Laws of the Kingdom and the Constitution of the French Absolute Monarchy

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the evolution of the term „constitution“ in the years of the Ancien Regime in France and dwells especially upon that aspect of its meaning which gave the constitution the same status as the „fundamental laws“ of the monarchy (the law of succession to the throne and the law of the status of the king’s domain). These were the supreme legal principles which were presented in the theory of the absolute power as one of the significant curbs to the ruler’s omnipotence. The present analytic survey of the fundamental laws of the French Kingdom reveals their main function: to serve as a guarantee for the integrity and independence of the state as well as for the permanency of the established monarchic regime. The author assumes that in the period of absolutism France possessed a constitution, though not in the modern sense of the word but as a set of rules which used to organize and guide the wielding of power. From this point of view it is emphasized that the „fundamental laws“ of the kingdom did not by far exhaust the principles of the French monarchic constitution. The constitutional laws which guided the French monarchy can be classified in two groups. In the first group there is the „law“ of the king’s sovereignty which guaranteed his rights as a ruler, independent both of external powers and of his subjects. In the second one there are those rules which defined the limitations of the sovereign’s power. They were so numerous and varied that in comparison with them the requirements of the law of the succession to the throne and the one of the crown’s domain seem to be minimal. The principles of the monarchic constitution reveal the specificity of French absolutism which combined in a unique way the ideas of sovereignty and limitations, of power and consent.

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