Peace of Fexhe

Signed the June 18th 1316 with Fexhe-the-High-Bell-tower, the Paix of Fexhe introduces a democratic spirit into the administration of the Principauté of Liege and its capital, Liege. It is the formal and legal recognition division of the government between the prince and the country.

The Peace of Fexhe is the most famous document of the history of the Pays of Liege where it takes the same place as the Magna Carta in the history of England.

It states three great principles which will train until 1795 the bases of the public Droit inhabitant of Li2ege and political freedoms by the installation of various protection measures of the citizens like, for example, the suppression of the arbitrary judgments, the oath-taking imposed to the magistrates, the creation of a true representation of the country by founding beside the executive power a legislative power, emanation of the various classes of the population.

  1. the franknesses from the cities can agree abolished only common of the prince-bishop and social groups which profit from it;

  2. Each one must be judged in accordance with the law, “by judgment of the aldermen and the men”: there cannot be emergency courts emanating from the justice of the prince-bishop;
  3. the right can be revised only by agreement between the prince-bishop, the chapter of Saint-Lambert, the knights and the agents of the Bonnes Cities.

Two essential provisions of them are withdrawn:

  • the first wants that the legislative power belongs within the meaning of the country, i.e. an assembly where the nobility, the clergy and the middle-class were found like three states. The mission first of this assembly was to interpret the common law and, if necessary, to amend the laws.
  • the second guarantees individual freedom and founds a good justice.

Moreover, the Peace of Fexhe, sealed by the representatives of all the public authorities of the principality, the close communities and all the rural communes, revêt character of a national and either local public peace. This peace takes the aspect of a true constitutional charter.

The decree project instituting a Walloon Constitution refers while starting to the Peace of Fexhe.

Currency of the Peace of Fexhe

Reader, appreciates your freedoms with their right values, but remember that the freedom of the ones stops where that of the others begins

External bond

  • Original text, preserved at Maastricht

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