Sixteenth-century France was characterised by a juridical split between “pays
de droit écrit” and “pays de droit coutumier” which reflected a linguistic
fragmentation between “pays de langue d’oc” and “pays de langue d’oeil”. In
universities and in court it was still latin which ruled uncontested, the lingua
franca of law as well as the legal language of the Sacred Roman Empire. In 1539,
in the attempt to overcome the different particularisms and to dismiss Latin,
Francis I issued the Decree of Villers-Cotterêts, declaring that hereafter all
juridical acts should have been “prononcez, enregistrez et delivrez en langaige
maternel françois”. The 1539 Ordonnance had then remarkable consequences
on other, broader fields than the strictly juridical one, and it also exerted a deep
influence over the language of French literature.
