Council of Ancients

From Vero - Wikipedia
(Redirected from Council of the Ancients)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox legislature

The Council of Ancients or Council of Elders (Template:Langx) was a house of the French bicameral legislature under the Constitution of the Year III, during the period commonly known as the Directory (French: Directoire), from 22 August 1795 until 9 November 1799, roughly the second half of the period generally referred to as the French Revolution.

Role and function

Thomas Bouquerot de Voligny (1755–1841) in his uniform as a member of the Council of Ancients (Musée de la Révolution française)
The Council of Ancients in session

The Council of Ancients was the senior of the two-halves of the republican legislative system. The Ancients were 250 members who could accept or reject laws put forward by the Council of Five Hundred (Conseil des Cinq-Cents). Each member had to be at least forty years of age, and a third of them would be replaced annually. They had no authority to draft laws, but any bills that they renounced could not be reintroduced for at least a year.<ref>Paul R. Hanson, Contesting the French Revolution, John Wiley & Sons 2009 p.131.</ref>

Besides functioning as a legislative body, the Ancients chose five Directors, who jointly held executive power, from the list of names put forward by the Council of Five Hundred. The Council of Ancients had their own distinctive official uniform, with robes, cape and hat, just as did the Council of Five Hundred and the Directors.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Under the Thermidorean constitution, as Boissy d'Anglas put it, the Council of Five Hundred was to be the imagination of the Republic, and the Council of Ancients its reason.<ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Title missing</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The name adopted for the body was based on the French translation/adaptation of the term Senate.<ref>senate (n.) c. 1200, "legal and administrative body of ancient Rome," from Old French senat or Latin senatus "highest council of the state in ancient Rome," literally "council of elders," from senex (genitive senis) "old man, old" (from PIE root *sen- "old"). Attested from late 14c. in reference to governing bodies of free cities in Europe; of national governing bodies from 1550s; specific sense of upper house of U.S. legislature is recorded from 1775. Online Etymology Dictionary accessed 1/11/2017.</ref>

Presidents of the Council of Ancients

See also

References

Template:Reflist

Sources

Template:French Revolution navbox Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Council_of_Ancients&oldid=451161"