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If you have been reading Gay Globe for a long time, you know that we regularly publish a column dedicated to the great homosexual figures of the past who have shaped history and the modern world in which we live. In this field, there is certainly no shortage of material.
Over the years, we have written about kings, emperors, thinkers and philosophers, military leaders and politicians. In short, throughout human history, there have always been people who loved others of the same sex, and who, in their own way, shaped the perception of love and homosexuality. But not only that: they governed, influenced, discovered and transformed the world while being themselves, sometimes more or less openly.
The French Civil Code, do you know it? Better known as the Napoleonic Code?
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, homosexuality and the French Civil Code
The Napoleonic Code, officially called the Civil Code of the French, is a set of laws adopted in 1804 under the authority of Napoleon Bonaparte. Its purpose was to unify legal rules in France, as before the French Revolution laws varied greatly from one region to another.
The Napoleonic Code established principles that profoundly influenced modern legal systems: equality of all citizens before the law, protection of private property, freedom of contract, and the secularization of civil law. It regulated in particular marriage, divorce, inheritance, contracts, and property rights.
Its influence extended far beyond France. It served as a model for many countries in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and even parts of Africa. An important part of Quebec civil law, notably through the Civil Code of Québec, also finds its roots in this French legal tradition.
However, the Napoleonic Code also reflected the mentality of its time. Women were placed under the authority of their husbands and had very limited rights compared to men. Many of these provisions were gradually abolished or amended throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
When we refer today to the “Napoleonic Code,” we are therefore speaking of one of the most enduring reforms of the Napoleonic era, a text that helped shape modern Western legal systems, and that is no small thing.
But what almost nobody knows is that the main architect of the French Civil Code was Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès.
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès (1753–1824) was a jurist, statesman, and one of the most influential figures of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Born in Montpellier into a family of magistrates, he quickly distinguished himself through his legal talent and methodical mind.
During the French Revolution, he sat in the National Convention and actively participated in the restructuring of the country’s institutions. A trained jurist, he is best known for drafting several Civil Code projects aimed at unifying French law. Although these early drafts were not adopted as such, they formed the basis of the future Civil Code of 1804.
When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, Cambacérès became one of his closest collaborators. He was appointed Second Consul, and later Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. Behind the image of the conqueror embodied by Napoleon, Cambacérès was often considered the legal and administrative brain of the regime.
The vast majority of historians today consider Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès to have been homosexual. It was not a well-kept secret: his sexual orientation was known within the political and social circles of his time. He does not appear to have made any particular effort to marry or to project a heterosexual public image, unlike many men of his rank.
However, it is important to understand that the concept of homosexuality did not carry the same meaning it does today. At the time, homosexuality was not understood as an identity. Same-sex relationships were more often seen as private behaviour or social morality rather than an orientation defining a person.
His reputation was frequently the subject of jokes, rumours, and caricatures. After the fall of Napoleon, Restoration-era caricaturists often depicted him as effeminate or associated with relationships with young men. His homosexuality was therefore known and sometimes mocked, but it did not prevent him from reaching the highest offices of the state.
As for Napoleon Bonaparte, his attitude appears to have been pragmatic. He was fully aware of Cambacérès’ reputation and is said to have teased him about it on several occasions. A famous anecdote recounts that when Cambacérès claimed he had been delayed by ladies, Napoleon responded with irony.
Despite these remarks, Napoleon held him in extremely high regard. At Saint Helena, he described him as “our best jurist.” Cambacérès remained one of his closest collaborators for nearly fifteen years and played a central role in the administration of the Empire as well as in the drafting of the French Civil Code.
What is particularly remarkable for the period is that Napoleon never removed him from power because of his reputation. In a society where homosexuality could still provoke social contempt, Cambacérès rose to become Second Consul and later Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, one of the most powerful men in France. This makes him one of the most important and best-documented homosexual historical figures in European political history.
Did Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès go as far as decriminalizing homosexuality?
The decriminalization of homosexuality in France did not come from the Civil Code, but from the major legal shift introduced during the French Revolution with the French Penal Code of 1791. This text removed the crime of “sodomy” from French law, effectively decriminalizing consensual same-sex relations in private. This approach was later confirmed by the Napoleonic Penal Code of 1810.
Cambacérès, as a leading jurist and central figure in the consolidation of French law under the Consulate and the Empire, was therefore not the direct author of this decriminalization. However, he contributed to the stabilization and codification of a legal system that maintained the absence of criminal prohibition of homosexuality.
In other words, his role was indirect: he did not “liberate” homosexuality, but he worked within a legal framework in which it was no longer explicitly criminalized under French law, unlike in many other European countries at the time.
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès remains one of the most important figures in LGBTQ+ history, and in that sense we owe him a great deal, because a Civil Code is also an evolving system, and it is through modern civil law that many LGBTQ+ rights have continued to be affirmed.
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