Policies of Silvio Berlusconi despite the policy divide between the U.S. and many founding members of the European Union (Germany, France, Belgium) during the Bush administration. Under his lead the Italian Government also shifted its traditional position on foreign policy from being the most pro-Arab western government towards a greater friendship with Israel and Turkey (Silvio Berlusconi acted as wedding witness for the son of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) than in the past, hence rebalancing relations with all the Mediterranean countries to reach "equal closeness" with them. Berlusconi is one of the strongest supporters of Turkey's application to accede to the
Droit du seigneur of the "right of first night" with money payment as an alternative. According to Howarth, this suggests that "droit du seigneur" was a familiar notion to people at that time, which he traces back to Boece. The Jesuit hagiographical work Acta Sanctorum (Acts of the Saints), published from 1643 onwards, recorded the existence of "jus primae noctis" in its biographies of St Margaret and St Forannan. English lexicographer Thomas Blount recorded the "right" as a medieval custom of some English manors in "Fragmenta Antiquitatis" in 1679. French philosopher Montesquieu referred to the practice in The Spirit of the Laws (1748),