The Laws of Rollo as a Primitive Constitution for Normandy: Writing and Rewriting Legal History in France during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

The article examines the role and interpretation of the laws attributed to Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Norman historiography and legal thought. It highlights how early modern jurists and historians used medieval sources to assert Normandy’s legal particularism and provincial rights, framing Rollo as a founding legislator whose laws symbolized the province’s original constitution. Two contrasting eighteenth-century legal perspectives are detailed: one, represented by David Hoüard, viewed Rollo’s authority as absolute and foundational to monarchical power; the other, exemplified by Guillaume Delafoy, emphasized a proto-constitutional assembly limiting ducal power and affirming the sovereignty of the Norman nation. The article situates these debates within broader provincialist and constitutionalist discourses of Ancien Régime France, noting that after the Revolution, the significance of Rollo’s laws diminished but continued to influence regional identity into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.