ABSTRACT
French jurists spent countless hours discussing the true meaning of the term ‘terra Salica’, but in reality it was simply an ethnographic adjective to differentiate the land of a Salian from that of another people. Many writers since the sixteenth century have taken the position that the Pactus Legis Salicae was intended specifically for private laws and had no impact on royal succession. Francois Hotman was the first to assert this in his Francogallia, but others soon took the position as well and it was held by many historians and jurists well into the twentieth century. The Benedictine monk Richard Lescot, working out of the royal Abbey of Saint-Denis outside of Paris, rediscovered a manuscript of the Lex Salica Emendata while searching for justifications for the Valois succession to use against the claims of Charles II. The monk referenced the law when scribing a short genealogy of the kings of France dating back to Clovis.
