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The King in Parlement: The Problem of the Lit De Justice in Sixteenth-Century France*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mack P. Holt
Mack P. Holt
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

‘You ask me what a Lit de justice is? I will tell you!’ Thus exclaimed Louis-Adrien Le Paige, an eighteenth-century parlementaire who was excoriating the current spectacle of the king's appearance in person in the Grand-Chambre of the Parlement of Paris. Denied their ancient and customary rights of consultation and deliberation in important affairs of state, which in their view meant an active or participatory role in the legislative process, magistrates like Le Paige felt coerced in 1756 into the passive role of registering policies presented to them as faits accomplis. And thus also opens Professor Sarah Hanley's penetrating and revisionist study of this complex ceremony where monarch and magistrates met together in the legislative arena: the lit de justice. In a tour de force of painstaking scholarship Professor Hanley has convincingly proved that this ceremony, in which the king personally appeared in Parlement and sat on a specially decorated ‘seat of justice’, had evolved out of legend and myth. The lit de justice did not, as generations of parlementaires like Le Paige had claimed, emerge in the middle ages shortly after the creation of the court itself in the late thirteenth century. As Professor Hanley shows, the first such ceremony did not occur until much later, in the reign of Francis I in 1527. More importantly, she demonstrates that at its inception the lit de justice was not associated in any way with the adversarial scene depicted by Le Paige in 1756, with the king forcing his will on a recalcitrant court by making a personal appearance in the Grand-Chambre in order to force the registration of unpopular legislation.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 507 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Hanley, Sarah. The lit de justice of the kings of France: constitutional ideology in legend, ritual, and discourse (Princeton, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see her articles, ‘The lit de justice and the fundamental law’, Sixteenth Century Journal, VII (1976), 3–14Google Scholar; ‘L'Idéologie constitutionnelle en France: le lit de justice’, Annales: Economies, Socié;tés, Civilisations, XXXVII (1982), 32–63Google Scholar; ‘Constitutional ideology in France: legend, ritual, and discourse in the Lit de justice assembly, 1527–1641’, in Rites of power: symbolism, ritual, and politics since the middle ages, ed. Wilentz, Sean (Philadelphia, 1985)Google Scholar; and ‘Constitutional discourse in France, 1527–1549’, in Politics and culture in early modern Europe: essays in honour of H. G. Koenigsberger, ed. Mack, Phyllis and Jacob, Margaret C. (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hanley, , The lit de justice, p. 5Google Scholar.

3 Ibid. pp. 223–5.

4 See the chart compiled by Hanley in ibid. pp. 347–9. She has adopted a literal interpretation of the registers of Parlement: that is, if no lit de justice is mentioned, she assumes that none took place. She has used the same procedure in deciding whether the king was even present in the Grand-Chambre of the court; if there is no mention of his presence in the registers, she assumes that he was not in attendance. For reasons which I shall detail below, I think the registers are clearly not a complete account of what took place in the sessions of the court.

5 Ibid. pp. 212–14.

6 Hanley's useful summary of traditional views, and her rejection of them, in ibid. pp. 212–13, n. 9.

7 Ibid. pp. 212–14. Hanley has chosen to distinguish two different types of royal visits to the Parlement: the ‘royal séance’ to describe visits when the registers of the court do not specifically mention or describe a lit de justice ceremony, and a ‘lit de justice assembly’ when such a ceremony is explicitly mentioned in the court's registers. As will become clear in the discussion which follows, contemporary accounts including the Parlement's own registers made no such distinction and the terms ‘royal séance’ and ‘lit de justice assembly’ were not used by contemporaries.

8 See Mémoire de la vie de Jacques-Auguste de Thou, conseiller d'Etat (Amsterdam, 1713), p. 15Google Scholar; Kinser, Samuel, The works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (The Hague, 1966), pp. 245–6Google Scholar; and Diefendorf, Barbara B., Paris city councillors in the sixteenth century: the politics of patrimony (Princeton, 1983), pp. 85–6, 130–3, and 185–9Google Scholar.

9 See Brunet, et al. , eds., Mémoires-journaux de Pierre de l' Estoile, vol. XII (Paris, 1896), p. ivGoogle Scholar; and Roelker, Nancy L., The Paris of Henry of Navarre as seen by Pierre de l' Estoile (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 14–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Hanley, , The lit de justice, pp. 212–14Google Scholar.

11 de l'Estoile, Pierre, Journal de l' Estoile pour le règne de Henri III (1574–1589), ed. Lefèvre, Louis-Raymond (Paris, 1943), p. 81Google Scholar.

12 de Thou, Jacques-Auguste, Histoire universelle (11 vols. Basel, 1742 edn), V, 204Google Scholar.

13 The king's visit to Parlement was recorded by other contemporaries besides De Thou and l'Estoile. See, for example, the dispatch of 27 August 1575 from the papal nuncio in Paris at the time, Salviati, Antonio Maria: ‘La corte di Parlamento non voleva emologare le lettere: ma il Re in persona vi è andato, commandando che ciò si faccia in ogni modo. Et alla fine se ben non siè opposta, nondimeno manco ha voluto consentire a l'atto, trattandosi di smembrare, et non augumentare le giurisdittioni della Corona.’ Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondance du nonce en France Antonio Maria Salviati, 1572–1578, ed. Hurtubise, Pierre and Toupin, Robert (Rome, 1975), p. 289Google Scholar.

14 de Thou, Jacques-Auguste, Histoire universelle, V, 311Google Scholar.

15 l'Estoile, Pierre de, Journal, ed. Lefèvre, , pp. 115 and 117 (italics mine)Google Scholar.

16 A[rchives]N[ationales, Paris], X1A 1652, fol. 49r for the register entry for 14 May 1576 and fols. 189–92 for the entry of 7 June 1576. Other records of Parlement prove that the king, contrary to Professor Hanley, clearly was present in the court on those occasions. The list of arrêts, ordinances, and edicts actually registered by the Parlement was usually recorded by the same clerk who recorded the account of each session's proceedings in the registers (though he often wrote up the accounts in the official registers from his own minutes months after the fact). Nevertheless, in the list of edicts published on 14 May and 7 June 1576, the king's presence is duly noted on both occasions: ‘A Paris en parlement, Le Roy y seant, le quatorz[i]eme jour de may, l'an mil cinq cens soixante seize.’ See A.N., X1A 8683, fo. 35r (for 14 May 1576) and fo. 52V (for 7 June 1576). Thus, the clerk of Parlement clearly knew that the king was present in the court on both those occasions and even noted that fact in the final texts of the edicts registered on those days. Why he deliberately chose to omit the king's presence altogether from the official registers of the court will be addressed below. Finally, many other observers noted the presence of the king in Parlement on 14 May and 7 June 1576. See, for example, the dispatch of the papal nuncio, Salviati, , in Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondence de Salviati, p. 448Google Scholar: ‘[On 14 May] tal pace fu publicata in Parigi: et il Re medesimo andò in Parlamento per farla registrare.’ And also see the dispatch of the Florentine ambassador in Paris, in Desjardins, Abel and Canestrini, Giuseppe, eds., Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane (6 vols. Paris, 1859–1886), IV, 67Google Scholar: ‘Alli XIV il Re trasferitosi nella camera di questo parlamento de Parigi, con l'assistenza di questi Guisi ed altri signori della corte e di tutto il parlamento, fece leggere pubblicamente tutti li articoli della pace resoluti e approvati da Sua Maestà e dagli altri, e registrati nella detta camera con il consenso di quelli cui s'apparteneva darlo; si publicò la pace universale…’ And see ibid. p. 72 for the same ambassador's description of the king's visit to the Parlement of 7 June 1576.

17 de l'Estoile, Pierre, Journal, ed. Lefèvre, , p. 267Google Scholar. The identical scenario is recounted by De Thou, in his Histoire universelle, VI, 130Google Scholar.

18 ‘Le Roy est venu au jourduy’, A.N., X1A 1671, fos. 131r–133V for the register entry of 4 July 1581. This is also true in a number of other instances, the entry for 26 July 1580 for example, in A.N., X1A 1669, fo. 141V, where in the bottom left-hand corner of the page is added: ‘Le Roy est venu ce iour.’ It is clearly in a different hand from the rest of the entry and must have been added at a later date. It raises a number of questions (which I shall address below), especially as no mention at all is made of the king's presence in the remainder of either of these entries in Parlement's registers.

19 On how Henry spent his money between 1581 and 1583, see my The duke of Anjou and the Politique struggle during the wars of religion (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 196–8Google Scholar.

20 de l'Estoile, Pierre, Journal, ed. Lefèvre, , pp. 324–5Google Scholar.

21 de Thou, Jacques-Auguste, Histoire universelle, VI, 293Google Scholar. For a similar description of this meeting, see the dispatch of the Florentine ambassador in Paris at the time, in Desjardins, and Canestrini, , eds., Négociations diplomatiques, IV, 458–9Google Scholar.

22 In her discussion of this session of Parlement on 7 March 1583, Professor Hanley quotes at length from Harlay's, speech (see The lit de justice, pp. 216–17)Google Scholar. Contrary to her reference, however, that speech was not recorded in the Parlement's registers in A.N., X1A 1679, fos. 387V–89V, where only the short speech by the king's agent, Augustin de Thou, is mentioned. Harlay's speech is recorded in full, however, in Godefroy, Théodore, Le Cérémonial françoys, 2 vols. (Paris, 1649), II, 595–600Google Scholar, which Professor Hanley also cites and is clearly the source of her quotation of the First President's speech. Why the official registers do not always tell the full story of what happened in the court is important and is discussed below.

23 Hanley, , The lit de justice, p. 219Google Scholar.

24 de Thou, Jacques-Auguste, Histoire universelle, VI, 486Google Scholar. For l'Estoile's, description, see his Journal, ed. Lefèvre, , p. 384Google Scholar. Two others who recorded this session and noted its significance (though with clearly contrasting degrees of approval) were Etienne Pasquier, a counsellor in Parlement, and Girolamo Ragazzioni, the papal nuncio in Paris at the time. See Pasquier, Etienne, Lettres historiques pour les années 1556–1594, ed. Thickett, Dorothy (Geneva, 1966), pp. 244–5Google Scholar (in a letter to a M. Maillant, a fellow counsellor in Parlement who happened to be absent from this session): ‘Le Roy est venu le XVIII, de juillet dernier, en son Parlement, où il a solemnellement cassé tous les Edicts précédens qui avoient donné tolérance à l'exercise de la nouvelle religion…Il est dit qu'il n'y aura plus, en toute la France, que la religion apostolique, catholique, romaine…En somme, ceste paix est le renouvellement d'une vieille guerre.’ And in another letter in ibid. p. 260, Pasquier writes a shorter version to a M. de Saincte-Marthe that also makes clear the king was present: ‘Le roy est venu en personne le dix-huistiesme Juillet pour faire publier l'Edict au Parlement’; and Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondance du nonce en France Girolamo Ragazzioni, 1583–1886, ed. Blet, Pierre (Rome, 1962), p. 434Google Scholar: ‘Hoggi [18 July 1585] il Re in publico Parlamento ha con demonstratione di gran zello levati et scanzellati del tutto gli Editti di pacincatione fatte già in favore di questi heretici, et ha terminato, con consenso et applauso di tutti li consiglieri, che imediate che sarà publicato questo Editto ne le provincie, si restituischino le piazze tenute da essi heretici, et che fra un mese tutti li ministri, o predicanti, partino del regno, et che altri heretici fra sei mese possano venir a la fede cattolica.’ For an additional view of this meeting, see the dispatch of the Florentine ambassador, in Desjardins, and Canestrini, , eds., Négociations diplomatiques, IV, 589Google Scholar.

25 See A.N., X1A 1692, fos. 372r–75r and U 2071, fos. 104r–105r, the registers of Parlement for 17 July 1585 (the second of these is quoted in Hanley, , The lit de justice, p. 219, n. 28Google Scholar). As already noted, there is no entry at all for 18 July.

26 ProfessorHanley, incorrectly claims that there is no entry at all for this date in Parlement's registers (The lit de justice, p. 220, n. 33)Google Scholar. There is a partial entry in A.N., X1A 1698, fos. 236V–237V. Although the beginning of this entry is not included in the registers, it clearly refers to Monday, 16 June 1586.

27 de l'Estoile, Pierre, Journal, ed. Lefèvre, , p. 449Google Scholar.

28 Jacques-Auguste, de Thou, Histoire universelle, VI, 680Google Scholar. Among other contemporaries who recorded this meeting, see the dispatch of the papal nuncio, Ragazzioni, , in Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondance de Ragazzioni, pp. 596–7Google Scholar.

29 Hanley, , The lit de justice, pp. 222–3Google Scholar. Again, I should stress that this distinction between a ‘royal séance’ or ordinary visit and the ceremonial lit de justice ‘assembly’ is one of Professor Hanley's making and is not to be found in any of the original sources, including Parlement's own registers.

30 Ibid. p. 223.

31 See Shennan, J. H., The Parlement of Paris (London, 1968), pp. 151–205Google Scholar.

32 Indeed, it has been amply demonstrated how the inquisition in the Midi had been virtually taken over by the Parlement of Toulouse by 1560. See Mentzer, Raymond A. Jr, Heresy proceedings in Languedoc, 1500–1560 (Philadelphia, 1984)Google Scholar.

38 This reaction is well-documented. See, for example, Kelley, Donald R., The beginning of ideology: consciousness and society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), esp. pp. 255–87Google Scholar. This attitude extended to the provincial parlements as well. For the Parlement of Rouen, see Dewald, Jonathan, ‘The perfect magistrate: parlementaires and crime in sixteenth-century Rouen’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LXVII (1976), 284–300Google Scholar; for the Parlement of Bordeaux, see Powis, Jonathan, ‘Order, religion, and the magistrates of a provincial parlement in sixteenth-century France’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LXXI (1980), 180–96Google Scholar; and for the Parlement of Dijon, see A[rchives] M[unicipales], Dijon, B 198, fol. 30r, 20 July 1560.

34 Pasquier, , Lettres historiques, p. 40Google Scholar.

35 For the popular religious violence in Rouen see Benedict, Philip, Rouen during the wars of religion (Cambridge, 1981), esp. pp. 58–70Google Scholar.

36 Dijon, A. M., B 198, fo. 30r, 20 07 1560: ‘…ceulx de la cour seront massacrez et le feu mis p[ar] toute la ville de dijon’Google Scholar.

37 A. M. Dijon, B 199, fos. 81r–82r, 1 November 1561.

38 Quoted in Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, Les paysans de Languedoc (2 vols. Paris, 1966), I, 393CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Salmon, J. H. M., Society in crisis: France in the sixteenth century (New York and London, 1975). pp. 138–9Google Scholar; and Powis, Jonathan, ‘Order, religion, and the magistrates of a provincial parlement’, p. 193Google Scholar, who demonstrates that although the peasant antagonism against Fumel was primarily a social revolt, the magistrates of the Parlement of Bordeaux blamed the protestants for causing the breach in social order.

39 Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘The rites of violence’, in Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, 1975), pp. 152–87Google Scholar. For non-enforcement of the edict of January by the magistrates, see [de Bèze, Théodore], Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, ed. Baum, G. and Cunitz, E. (3 vols., Paris, 1883–1889), II, 483–4Google Scholar: ‘Les horribles violences & outrages faits [against the Huguenots], tant à Dijon qu'ailleurs, à divers jours, ne furent reprimés par la Cour, en sorte quelconque.’

40 Davis, , ‘The rites of violence’, p. 165Google Scholar; and Salmon, , Society in crisis, p. 136Google Scholar.

41 [De Bèze, ], Histoire ecclésiastique, II, 537–8 and 719–20Google Scholar, as quoted in Davis, , ‘The rites of violence’, p. 152Google Scholar.

42 On the Catholic view of protestantism as ‘pollution’, see Davis, , ‘The rites of violence’, pp. 157–60Google Scholar; and Benedict, , Rouen during the wars of religion, pp. 62–4Google Scholar.

43 Desjardins, and Canestrini, , eds. Négociations diplomatiques, VIII, 503Google Scholar, dispatch of the Florentine ambassador of 27 March 1563. The ambassador also noted that the Parlement of Rouen opposed the edict, in ibid. VIII, 504, dispatch of 30 April 1563.

44 For a discussion of this edict see Sutherland, N. M., The Huguenot struggle for recognition (New Haven, 1980), pp. 356–7Google Scholar.

46 Bodin, Jean, Les six livres de la République (Paris, 1583 edn), pp. 152–3Google Scholar (bk. 1, ch. 8).

46 Hanley, , The lit de justice, p. 154Google Scholar.

47 Ibid. pp. 170–1.

48 B[ibliothèque] N[ationale, Paris], Fonds français 22304, fo. 14 (copies of the registers of the Parlement of Dijon), 19 June 1563.

49 On this episode see Hauchecorne, F., ‘Le Parlement de Bordeaux pendant la première guerre de religion’, Annales du Midi, LXII (1950), 329–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Powis, Jonathan, ‘Order, religion, and the magistrates of a provincial parlement’, pp. 194–5Google Scholar.

50 Desjardins, and Canestrini, , eds., Négociations diplomatiques, III, 505–6Google Scholar, dispatch of 17–18 August 1563.

51 This speech is quoted by Bodin, Jean, Les six livres de la République, p. 358 (bk. III, ch. 1)Google Scholar; and also by Pasquier, Etienne, Ecrits politiques, ed. Thickett, Dorothy (Geneva, 1966), p. 293Google Scholar.

52 Professor Hanley does not include this particular assembly in her study, doubtless because her only source for the provincial lits de justice, Théodore Godefroy's Le Cérémonial françoys, omits it as well. Full details on preparations, arrangement of the Grand-Chambre in Dijon, ceremonial dress of the presidents and counsellors (red gowns and mortar boards), etc. are in B.N., Fonds français 22302, fos. 1–10 (copies of the registers of the Parlement of Dijon): ‘Le jeudy 24 May 1564 tous les seigneurs du parlement assistans en la grand'chambre ayans eu avertissement que le Roy entendoit entrer ledit jour en son lict de justice, ont fait préparer la chambre du plaidoyé d'un trosne pour sa Maiesté…’ (quote from fo. 6).

53 The lit de justice in the Parlement of Bordeaux clearly did not take place a year earlier in 1564 as ProfessorHanley, indicates (The lit de justice, pp. 198, 348, et al.)Google Scholar. She must have taken her date of April 1564 from Godefroy, who used the old-style date, which is clear from his wording. See Godefroy, , Le Cérémonial françoys, II, 577Google Scholar: ‘LICT DE JUSTICE DU ROY CHARLES IX au Parlement de Bordeaux, l'an mil cinq cens soixante et quatre, le onzième Avril avant Pasques, pour admonestrer ceux de ladite cour de rendre bonne Iustice’. Moreover, a check of the court's itinerary clearly indicates that the king never reached Bordeaux until April 1565.

54 Godefroy, , Le Cérémonial françoys, II, 580–1Google Scholar, speech of Michel de l'Hôpital before the Parlement of Bordeaux, 11 April 1564/5 (much of this passage is also quoted by Hanley, , The lit de justice, p. 199Google Scholar). The identical speech appears to have been delivered in both Dijon and Toulouse. For Dijon see B.N., Fonds français 22302, fos. 7–10, and for Toulouse see Godefroy, , Le Cérémonial françoys, II, 590Google Scholar.

55 Powis, Jonathan, ‘Order, religion, and the magistrates of a provincial parlement’, p. 185Google Scholar.

56 This process is admirably described by Professor Hanley, who shows how the clerk of the Parlement of Paris, Jean du Tillet, was one of those chiefly responsible. See Hanley, , The lit de justice, pp. 102–25Google Scholar.

57 A.N., X1A 1665, fo. 13V, register for 18 July 1579.

58 Godefroy, , Le Cérémonial françoys, II, 595–9Google Scholar, as quoted and translated in Hanley, , The lit de justice, pp. 216–17Google Scholar.

59 Pasquier, Etienne, Les Recherches de la France (Paris, 1621 edn), book n. p. 62Google Scholar. For other evidence of Parlement's attempt to create its own history better to substantiate its own importance in the legislative process, see Denault, Gerard F., ‘The legitimation of the Parlement of Paris and the Estates-General of France’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, St Louis, 1975)Google Scholar. I wish to thank Dr Denault of Harvard University, for making a copy of his dissertation available to me.

60 Bodin, Jean, Les six livres de la République, p. 453Google Scholar (bk. ra, ch. 6).

61 See above, n. 16.

62 Denault, , ‘The legitimation of the Parlement of Paris’, pp. 156–7Google Scholar.

63 This entire episode can be followed in the dispatches of the nuncio. See Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondance du nonce en France Anselmo Dandino, 1578–1581, ed. Cloulas, Ivan (Rome, 1970), pp. 714–55Google Scholar; and Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae: Correspondance du nonce en France Giovanni Battista Castelli, 1581–1583, ed. Toupin, Robert (Rome, 1967), pp. 51–5Google Scholar. For evidence of the deletion of documents from Parlement's minutes, see A.N., X1B 627, passim.

64 B.N., Collection Cinq Cents de Colbert 500, fos. 127–31, ‘Advis de Monseigneur de Quelier, les chambres de la cour assemblées pour délibérer sur les Estats généraux, 1588’. I wish to thank Dr Gerry Denault for pointing out this reference to me.