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John I of France
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John I (15 November 1316 – 20 November 1316), called the Posthumous, was King of France and Navarre, and Count of Champagne, as the son and successor of Louis X, for the five days he lived. He thus had the shortest official reign of any French king.
He was born a king of the House of Capet and the posthumous son of Louis X and Clémence d'Anjou.
John lived for only a few days and many believed his uncle, the future King Philip V, caused his death in order to gain the throne.
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John I (15 November 1316 – 20 November 1316), called the Posthumous, was King of France and Navarre, and Count of Champagne, as the son and successor of Louis X, for the five days he lived. He thus had the shortest official reign of any French king.
He was born a king of the House of Capet and the posthumous son of Louis X and Clémence d'Anjou.
John lived for only a few days and many believed his uncle, the future King Philip V, caused his death in order to gain the throne. There were also stories that Philip had the child kidnapped and substituted a dead child in his place. During the 1350s, a man named Giannino di Guccio , claiming to be King John I, appeared in Provence. He was quickly put in prison in December 1360 and died there.
John reigned for five days under his uncle's regency, until his death on November 20, 1316. The infant King was buried in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his uncle, Philip V. The other claimant was John's half-sister, the then four-year-old Princess Joan (Jeanne in French), daughter of Louis X's marriage with Marguerite of Burgundy.
It was at this point that the question of the succession rights of women first arose in France. Late medieval scholars would later cite the death of John I as the time when the rule later called the Salic Law became established as the governing principle for the succession to the French throne. There is considerable dispute as the actual value, if any, placed on Salic Law in 1316. Some suggest that it was only centuries later that legal scholars connected the old, and forgotten, law of the Salien Franks to the 1316 decision to place Philip V on the throne in preference to Joan. One argument in favor of that interpretation is that the feudal law governing all other inheritances in France, and in territories such as England that followed French feudal law, allowed women to inherit in the absence of a male heir. Since Salic Law was originally intended to govern all inheritances, there is little logic in the argument that it should apply only to the inheritance of the French crown. Even other monarchies that eventually adopted the so-called Salic Law actually followed what is now called semi-salic successsion which allows females to inherit at some point when the male line is deemed to be exhausted in contrast to the French rule that women and their heirs never have a right to the French crown.
Joan, as a woman, had a disputed claim to the throne of France: under the rules that came to be identified as Salic Law, she could not succeed to the throne of France. Under feudal law (which had thus far controlled the inheritance of almost all fiefs in France), Joan would have been the next monarch of France. She did, however, have undeniable rights in the succession of Navarre where female monarchs were allowed - witness that kingdom being brought to the Capetians by Louis X's own mother (Joan's grandmother). These claims were ignored until after the deaths of her uncles Philip V and Charles IV.
A practical point having impact on this legal interpretation was a rumour that Joan was a product of her mother's adultery and not at all a daughter of Louis X. By interpreting the law as allowing only male succession, Joan's position was quashed altogether, and the danger of a bastard succeeding was avoided without even examining her real birth. Another factor was the reality that Joan was a four-year-old child who would be unable to take up the reins of government for, at least, a decade and then would likely fall under the influence of her future husband. In fact, the principle that a single woman could not inherit the crown but that a married woman could (since her husband would be the effective ruler) would accord equally well with the actual facts in Joan's life. When the thrones of France and Navarre again fell vacant on the death of Charles IV, the by-then married Joan inherited Navarre in preference to her cousin Philip VI who, unlike Joan, was not descended from the last independent ruler of Navarre, Joan I who was the grandmother of Joan and John I, and the mother of Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV. The married woman interpretation, however, would not have served the purpose of defeating the claims of Joan's first cousin, Edward III of England, or of the female-line grandsons of Philip V. For that reason, some scholars speculate that the so-called Salic Law was actually first applied decades after 1316 when Edward III claimed the French crown.
These events form part of the narrative of Les Rois Maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of historical novels by Maurice Druon.
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