Philippe LE ROYER
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Senator, President of the Senate, Minister of Justice, Freemason.
A lawyer born in Geneva, senator for the Rhône from 1875, he was Minister of Justice in 1878 — the amnesty of the Communards fell to him — then presided over the Senate for eleven years. Of that whole career, his friends kept only one word on the stone: “Au président LE ROYER, ses amis” — to President Le Royer, his friends.
The story
Philippe Élie Le Royer presided over the Senate for eleven years, from 1882 to 1893. Yet he had never entered it by an election: he was one of the seventy-five senators for life.
Born in Geneva on 27 June 1816, a barrister at the Lyon bar, Le Royer came into politics in 1871 as deputy for the Rhône. On 13 December 1875 the Assembly chose him among the senators it appointed for life — the very year the Republic gave itself its constitutional laws. He sat in the Senate until his death, twenty-two years later. Keeper of the Seals in 1879, then vice-president of the Senate, he took the presidency in 1882.
A freemason, he belonged to that generation of republican lawyers who gave the Third Republic its institutions and its personnel — the men who pleaded in the morning and legislated in the afternoon.
He died in Paris on 22 February 1897, a serving senator. His grave in Division 89, granted free of charge by the City, carries a medallion and a limestone sculpture signed André d'Houdain, and an epitaph that gives neither his offices nor his dates: “Au président LE ROYER, ses amis” — to President Le Royer, from his friends.
The grave
The inscription runs to six words: “Au président, LE ROYER, ses amis” — to President Le Royer, his friends. Neither the Ministry of Justice, nor the twenty-two years in the Senate, nor the Lyon public prosecutor's office he headed, nor even the dates — the stone leaves it to the City to know who rests there, the perpetual plot having been granted free of charge by prefectoral order. His friends paid for the wording; the State paid for the place.
On site, do not miss
The medallion and the limestone sculpture are the work of André d'Houdain, and he signed them: the signature can be read on the stone, beside an epitaph which, for its part, names no one but the dead man.
Visitors' questions
Where is Philippe Le Royer's grave?
In Division 89, avenue Carette, first row. You know the stone by its six-word epitaph: “Au président, LE ROYER, ses amis” — to the president, from his friends. It gives neither office nor dates.
Louis LucipiaWhat offices did he hold?
Minister of Justice in 1879 in the Waddington government, then President of the Senate from 1882 to 1893. He had been public prosecutor at Lyon, deputy for the Rhône from 1871, and he sat as a life senator until his death.
Victor SchœlcherWhat did he do during the Commune?
Nothing in Paris: he was in Lyon, charged with putting down the unrest that followed the war of 1870, and spent most of his effort keeping the men of the Second Empire out of arbitrary detention. He resigned in January 1871. It was later, as Minister of Justice, that the question of an amnesty for the Communards landed on his desk.
the Communards' WallWas he a Freemason?
He was: Worshipful Master of the Le Parfait Silence lodge. Born in Geneva to a family from La Rochelle exiled to Switzerland at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he kept his dual French and Swiss nationality all his life.
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