Old French law, referred to in French as l'Ancien Droit, was the law of the Kingdom of France until the French Revolution. In the north of France were the Pays de coutumes, where customary laws were in force, while at the south were the Pays de droit écrit, where Roman law had remained paramount. Roughly speaking, the line separating the two areas was the riverLoire, from Geneva to the mouth of the Charente, although this was not a firm border between the two categories of law. As worded by George Mousourakis, "in both zones, the law in force also included elements derived from royal, feudal, and canonical sources."
''Pays de coutumes''
In the north existed a variety of customs "with a Frankish-Germanic character." The coutumes were asserted and enforced under feudalism during the Middle Ages and in the early modern period by the French kings and their vassals, especially in the lands of the Île-de-France, to the exclusion of Roman law. A number of regional customs were compiled in custumals starting from the 13th century: e.g. the Coutumes de Beauvaisis, compiled by Phillipe de Remy. By the 16th century the Coutume de Paris would eventually extend to all of the Parliament of Paris' jurisdiction and beyond in cases of lacunae in the local customs. Further development of customary law had been halted by the late 16th century. For example, Claude de Ferrière commented that "community of goods" prevailed "throughout all customary France, except Normandy, Rheims and Auvergne."
''Pays de droit écrit''
As worded by George Mousourakis, "after the revival of Roman law in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries and the spread of its study from Bologna to Montpellier and other parts of France, the Roman law of Justinian was rapidly received in southern France and came to be accepted as the living law of the land", even though, as emphasized by Ernest Glasson, "coutumes did develop in those southern regions, and they often contradicted Roman law." "Prior to this, the pays de droit écrit in the south followed pre-Justinian Roman law, based primarily on the Code of Theodosius II ", as reissued in the Alarician Breviary. As worded by Antonio Padoa-Schioppa,
Attempts at codifying
In the 18th century, Voltaire declared that in travelling through France one changed the laws as often as one changed horses. When the Napoleonic Codeentered into force in 1804 all the coutumes were abolished. However, French customary law was incorporated into the substance of the code.
