7
The Engine of Repression
The Transitional Generation, 1540-1551
Collaboration of Crown and Parlement in Religious Policy During the 1540s
The Edict of 1539, by which the crown first took a direct part in the prosecution of heresy, had not been registered by the Parlement of Paris. Sutherland is undoubtedly right in believing that this was one reason for issuing another exactly a year later, but the Edict of Fontainebleau also specifies some new points of capital importance for the future, which is why it may be reckoned as the first step in the systematic assembling of machinery for the repression of heresy.[1] While royal courts and officials at all levels might initiate proceedings in heresy cases, the new edict required them to submit their findings to the criminal chambers of the Parlements, which were ordered to give these cases priority and report to the king every six months. Moreover, this edict constitutes the first of many attempts to define the relation of heresy to sedition, of the ecclesiastical to the secular authorities. Ambiguities and contradictions in phrasing on this subject in successive edicts are among the main causes of the incoherence of royal policy toward heresy. Contemporaries and historians have been equally confused. The major contribution of Sutherland's work on the Huguenots is that she has disentangled, summarized clearly, and analyzed all the edicts, letters patent, and other official documents on heresy from 1525 to 1598—for the first time ever. While this makes the incoherence even more conspicuous, it also enables us to follow the serpentine record step by step and attempt to relate each formulation to the specific historical and political context that produced it.
[1] . Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 33. Unless some other place is indicated, the edicts were issued in Paris.
The 1540 edict forbids association with heretics because the profession of false doctrine "contains in itself the crimes of human and divine lèse-majesté, popular sedition, and the disturbance of our state and the public peace."[2] In other words, heresy equals sedition; it is both a canonical and a criminal offense, imposing on the ecclesiastical authorities an obligation to cooperate with the secular authorities. The clergy took this as an encroachment on their authority, which resulted in another edict in 1543, allegedly to "clarify" the respective jurisdictions—heresy to lie in that of the church and sedition in that of the state. Clear enough on paper, but "not helpful" in Sutherland's words, because heresy itself had already been declared treasonable. The Edict of Fontainebleau was also modified by removal of the requirement that heresy cases be sent to the parlements to be judged; they were now merely to be reported to the sovereign courts within two months. If the ecclesiastical jurisdiction suffered in 1540, Parlement's was reduced in 1543. Sutherland's comment is a masterpiece of understatement, "By 1543 the heresy laws were in a state of confusion."[3] Nor did this condition end with the reign of François I.
Emergence of the jurisdictional problem was only one of the differences between the 1540s and the earlier tensions of 1525-35. Another was a reversal of roles as between the crown and the Parlement with regard to initiative in combating heresy. As long as parlementaires felt threatened by royal favor to heretics, they kept pressing the crown for action against them; we recall Parlement's demands on Louise de Savoie and its summary execution of Berquin to forestall (a third) royal intervention. In the early 1540s, on the contrary, it was the crown, acting in concert with the Sorbonne, that took the initiative. In 1541, the parlements were ordered to pursue heretics "with the utmost vigor"; the authority of Matthieu Ory, "Inquisitor of the Faith," was extended; the first special or regional commissioner, Jacques Le Roux, was appointed in 1542. Extirpation of heresy was stated as a prime objective in the Treaty of Crépy (1544), one of the ephemeral truces between France and the Empire, and the first special court for heresy cases (in Rouen) was established in 1545.[4] By then the Parlement and the crown were both engaged in "hot pursuit," which created serious divisions within the court, between acharnés and moderates.
The hardening of attitudes into ideological factions within Parlement
[2] . Ibid., 338-339.
[3] . Ibid., 340.
[4] . These matters and others included in ibid., 35-37; Weiss, Chambre ardente , xvi-xxxviii; Le Monnier, France sous Henri II , 383-386.
itself offers us the most important contrast between the early and transitional generations. The spectrum of opinion was very different. Where there had been a fluid continuum from generally open-minded to fearful and closed-minded, there was now a well articulated ultra-Catholic position, organized to launch the offensive about to be analyzed, with no balancing liberal position. The liberals of the Berquin period had either died (de Selve, Guillart, Budé) or had gone "underground." We know that a substantial minority of parlementaires held unorthodox views right through the crisis period of 1559-62 (chapter 8), but they were—wisely—keeping silent in the 1540s. The large majority in the center was more clearly than ever opposed to heresy, but they now faced a different problem: how far were they willing to go along with the increasingly severe measures of the ultraconservatives? They were often able to avoid taking a stand because of deviations from traditional parlementaire procedures imposed by the crown. With increasing frequency the king would order a case to be judged by particular judges (either as individual commissioners, or as a specially designated group); standard general votes and plenary sessions became rare. Parlementaire discontent, especially among the younger members of the Chambres des Enquêtes, erupted in a series of protests and demonstrations, which came to a head in the opening years of Henri II's reign. To Parlement's plea that "from now on all chambers be allowed to participate in the execution of justice, according to custom," the new king responded that "from now on, in order to avoid wasting time" only one président and two conseillers from each Chambre des Enquêtes would meet regularly with members of the Grand' Chambre in the Tournelle, for criminal cases.[5] The rarity of votes taken in these circumstances made it easy for those who were uncertain how they felt—or who merely wished to postpone taking a stand—to avoid committing themselves, until the reemergence of strong moderate leadership in the 1550s.
With the encouragement of the king, the Sorbonne produced a program that provides a measure of the temper of the 1540s: in 1542 the faculty drew up a preliminary list of books to be banned, which included the works of the German and Swiss reformers (in the original or in translation) as well as unorthodox works of French authors such as Clément Marot and Étienne Dolet, followed in 1543 by twenty-five fully elaborated "articles of the faith" that explicitly reaffirmed the doctrines of transubstantiation, papal supremacy, and others under attack, as well as a list of condemned articles of belief. The wording and organization of these documents are very
[5] . See Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:596-598.
similar to those later drawn up by the Council of Trent, as noted by both Weiss and Sutherland.[6] It is quite possible that the Sorbonne's formulations did influence the church council, whose definitive doctrinal pronouncements date from its last session (1563), but more interesting than this speculation is the fact that the Sorbonne's action came at a critical juncture in the history of the Roman church.
In the mid-1530s Pope Paul III had given a small group of reformers in the College of Cardinals an opportunity to produce a program for reform of the Catholic church "in the head and in the members." When embodied in a document (De ecclesia emendanda , 1538) presented to the sacred college, it was overwhelmingly voted down. With hindsight this does not seem surprising, since its recommendations were antipathetic to the course of reform actually taken in the following years, but at the time this was hidden in the future. The liberal leadership did not disintegrate until after the death of Cardinal Contarini and the withdrawal of other reformers, while the Counter-Reformation leaders had not yet closed ranks, though there too the machinery was being created: both the Index and the revived Inquisition (in the papal states) were already in being, and Paul III had extended the status of priesthood to members of the recently formed Society of Jesus (1540), who would become active in the movement. In spirit and in the instruments of implementation the 1540s measures against heresy in Paris resemble those later taken in Rome on an international scale and for a much longer time.
Led by premier président Pierre Lizet, who had held this most important office since the death of Jean de Selve in 1529, the Parlement of Paris made its own contributions to the completion of the repressive policy. In 1542, coincident with the Sorbonne Index, Parlement forbade possession of Calvin's Institutes (which had recently appeared in French, earlier editions were in Latin) and decreed the surrender of copies within twenty-four hours, on pain of death . The court began at this time to acquire allies among the Parisian clergy, some of whom were fanatics, denouncing heretics in very extreme terms and inciting the populace to violence against them. This pattern would become increasingly familiar in the coming decades, as we will see in each phase of the religious wars, culminating in a high degree of stylization by the 1590s. The excess of zeal expressed in the pulpits offended many, even parlementaires actively engaged in enacting repressive legislation. In 1543, coincident with the Sorbonne articles of faith, procureur général Noël Brulart so feared the consequences that he asked the Grand'
[6] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , xxxvi; Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 36-38.
Chambre to discipline the most vituperative of the preachers, and premier président Lizet himself tried to persuade them to moderate their language. There is no evidence that he succeeded, however, and the dominant theme of inflammatory sermons continued to be that heresy was getting worse every day. In 1544, in accord with the Treaty of Crépy (with the emperor), the court condemned the works of Calvin and Dolet to be burned on the Parvis Notre-Dame, with the bells of the cathedral ringing to celebrate the event.[7] The Parlement then enacted the arrêt des luthériens , which was the legal cornerstone of the special chamber for heresy cases known as the Chambre Ardente.
Even so, Catholics both inside and outside Parlement feared that the king might withdraw his support and there were rumors that he was about to soften his stand on the heresy of the Vaudois. The momentum could not be arrested, however, even had François wished to do so. The point of no return had been passed, as Weiss notes: les bûchers sont partout allumés .[8]
By 1545 the several constituent elements—royal edicts, Sorbonne definitions, clerical propaganda—were joined by arrêts of Parlement into a structure for official French policy toward heresy. The engine of repression was set in motion when François created the Rouen Chamber in the spring of 1545 and appointed five members of the Paris Parlement as commissioners to investigate and root out heresy, each in a particular region noted for the incidence of "infection": Claude des Asses in Anjou and Touraine, Jacques Le Roux in Sens, Nicole Sanguin in Meaux, Guillaume Bourgoing in the Bourbonnais, and Louis Gayant in Orléans and Blois.[9] They would figure among the most experienced members of the Chambre Ardente in 1547-50.
Heresy—and persecution—had raged out of control in the Pays de Vaud for some months already and fears of a return to leniency on the king's part focused on that region, homeland of Farel and wide open to currents of opinion from Switzerland and Italy. A number of pleas for mercy to the Vaudois had been presented to the king, but after the premier président of the Parlement of Aix (falsely) accused them of conspiring to seize the city of Marseille in 1544, the whole region was marked for punishment. In only ten days, twenty-two villages were totally destroyed and nearly four thousand inhabitants killed or taken captive. Riding roughshod over protests,
[7] . Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 35; Weiss, Chambre ardente , xxiii-xxvii; AN x1a 1550, fols. 298, 352v.
[8] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , xxix.
[9] . Ibid., xxxiii-xxxiv; Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 340.
the king decreed that the prisoners must abjure within two months or pay with their lives.[10]
The tempo of persecution was quickening throughout the kingdom. Many of the victims were humble folk, but some enjoyed high patronage, like François Bribart, secretary of Bishop Jean Du Bellay, martyred in Paris in March 1545. The bloody climax of this period, marking the final months of François I's reign, occurred in the summer and fall of 1546, in Paris. Among the victims were printers of forbidden books in July; the humanist Étienne Dolet in August; and finally, on October 7, fourteen members of the groupe de Meaux (out of fifty-seven condemned) were burned in a giant auto-da-fé in the Place Maubert. It did not stop there. As Brantôme wrote some thirty years later, "François's path to the tomb was lighted by the fires he had set."[11] There were five such executions in the first weeks of January 1547 (not all in the capital). On January 14 a solemn procession was held in expiation of the mutilation of a statue in the Cemetery of the Innocents, which the lawyers and procureurs of Parlement were ordered to attend. Absentees would incur a fine of sixty Parisian sous and the risk of being removed from the rolls .[12] The machinery of repression was moving uncomfortably close to the Paris robe, although only its lower echelons were affected, as yet.
François I fell ill shortly thereafter and died on March 31. Contemporaries have left different versions of his dying sentiments on the religious issue. The most favorable account attributes to him a deathbed repentance in regard to the slaughter of the Vaudois. "He charged his son . . . not to defer the punishment of those who, abusing his name and authority, were responsible for the harsh escalation . . . because otherwise God, who does not permit such [violent acts] . . . to go unpunished, will exact vengeance Himself." But another quotes him as saying that he had no remorse, that his conscience was clear because he had "never done or had done, injustice to anybody in the world, as far as he knew." We are not in a position to decide between these two accounts, but even if the apologist is correct, it matters little; after a lifetime of adjusting expression of his sentiment on religious issues to the advantage of the moment, to satisfy the pope at one time, the Protestant German princes at another, the dying François I doubtless wished to present the best possible face to win the Almighty's favor.[13]
[10] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , xxxiv-xxxv.
[11] . Ibid., xxxiv-xxxix, citing the sieur de Brantôme, xxxix.
[12] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , xli-xlii; my italics.
[13] . Ibid. xl-xlii.
For the Vaudois the aftermath was equivocal. Premier président Oppède of the Parlement of Aix, responsible for the worst of the persecutions, was arrested and his trial lasted for three years, but he was finally acquitted. All his offices and honors were restored and he was later made a Knight of the Order of Saint John by the pope. Only the lawyer Guérin did not escape punishment, among those responsible, while the Vaudois heretics continued to be both prosecuted and persecuted. For the Parlement of Paris, storm clouds were thickening; despite their robes, conseillers returning from François's funeral were jostled by hostile crowds shouting menacing epithets, of which the worst was Fauteurs d'hérésie![14]
Climax of the Collaborative Policy, 1548-1550
The new king was very different in temperament and in habits from le roi chevalier . Less active in the physical sense, Henri II tended to stay near the capital, usually at Fontainebleau, instead of moving from one château to another for good hunting; less changeable in his affections, he remained faithful to one mistress, many years his senior, and allowed her to interfere in all aspects of royal policy, instead of playing his favorites (all definitely his creatures) off against one another. The same contrast can be seen in their approaches to the religious issue: where François had favored some accused and treated others with ruthless severity, Henri II was consistent in his opposition to unorthodoxy of any kind, in any degree. He replaced his father's advisers with his own, and they all stood at the conservative end of the spectrum. Constable Anne de Montmorency, a "bluff soldier" according to all who knew him, was an old-fashioned traditional Catholic, while twenty-two-year-old Charles, cardinal de Lorraine, was a highly sophisticated politician, a master of both polemics and strategy. At the coronation, he emphasized the primacy of the king's religious obligation, "to exterminate all those whom the Church designates as given to error." Lorraine asked God "to make the king's sword the terror of all the enemies of the Church." Henri II embraced this goal. Edicts against blasphemers were implemented with greater physical violence; press censorship was tightened. Between April and November 1547, Parlement passed seventy arrêts against heresy in the Loire valley, the greatest single number in Blois, where Antoine Le Coq was carrying out an inquisitorial commission with exceptional zeal. Henri II's response to a delegation of Parlement that waited on him for instructions, on December 3, 1547, as reported by conseiller
[14] . Ibid. lxii.
Robert Bonete was, "the king charges messieurs of the court to administer good justice, and chiefly to act in the matter of the Lutherans."[15]
The Sorbonne articles, the suppression of the Vaudois, the fervor of the parlementaire commissaires , the whole-hearted dedication of the new administration—all contributed to a climate of opinion dominated by fear; in the "infested" areas, suspects multiplied. Moreover, there were now more visible targets, organized groups that had in fact withdrawn from the Roman church to form new congregations to worship in a different way. The phrase "French Reformed Churches" in midcentury is shorthand that covers congregations in various stages of development. Calvin distinguished between églises plantées and églises dressées . Only the latter were fully constituted, though often having to share the services of a pastor with others; églises plantées were emerging groups, usually self-generated, that would appeal to Geneva to send them a pastor. There were always more congregations than pastors. Calvin tended to give priority to calls from great nobles for chaplains—consistent with his belief that the best chance for the reform in France lay in the conversion of the top echelons of the social order. The reformed congregations were small and apt to be clandestine, to meet at night in open fields. The lay leaders and pastors needed pseudonyms and were frequently in flight.[16]
There were poles of religious opinion in France in the reign of Henri II, ultra-Catholics at one extreme and Calvinists at the other, but it would be inaccurate to describe the country as polarized thereby. The great majority of French believers was Catholic, sufficiently alarmed by the "menace of heresy" to go along with the right-wing argument that harsh measures were necessary to save the church, and the state. And as is usually the case, the majority was disorganized. In two respects the Parlement of Paris did not reflect the country in this period; there were no declared Protestants in the court, and the ultra-Catholics were much more highly organized than in the general population. The court accurately reflected the country in one respect, however; the traditionalist majority of both was leaderless.
The Chambre Ardente
Nathanaël Weiss, who made a full study of the "engine of repression," believed that the Chambre Ardente was set up in Paris sometime between December 11, 1547, and May 2, 1548, on which date it began to function
[15] . Ibid., lxii, lviii, and 1-18; AN x1a 1561.
[16] . Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 37-39; R. M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France (Geneva, 1956).
officially, ceasing in January 1550.[17] There are some gaps in the records, for instance the trials of the victims of the autos-da-fé that marked the triumphal entrée of Henri II into his capital in July 1549 are missing. Twenty-three parlementaires served at one time or another in the Chambre Ardente; the usual bench comprised twelve. The presidency was alternately in the hands of Pierre Lizet and François de Saint-André, both veterans of the Parlement, Saint-André since 1514, Lizet (as avocat du roi) between 1519 and 1529, when he became premier président. Weiss has very pronounced opinions about their respective performances in office, noting the conspicuously smaller number of capital sentences when Saint-André was in the chair; his efforts went rather into "obtaining retractions, with punishments confined to amende honorable and procedures designed to intimidate the prisoners." Lizet, on the other hand, is described as "all the more ferociously conservative in religion because he prided himself on [his knowledge of] theology, of which he understood nothing." The founding of the special court is generally attributed to Lizet, and Weiss adds, "the arrêts signed by him certainly contributed to its nickname, Chambre Ardente. He distinguished himself not only by implacable severity but also by the care he took with numerous details designed to terrorize the victims and those tempted to imitate them."[18]
Saint-André had a reputation for intellectual cultivation—he purchased the bulk of Budé's library, as Weiss points out—but Lizet was recognized as a man of prodigious learning in the legal field and was much more highly respected by contemporaries. His integrity impressed them, and one finds frequent reference to the fact that he died poor, which is pointedly contrasted to the financial situation of his two (notoriously venal) successors, Jean Bertrand and Gilles Le Maistre. His strict orthodoxy and collaboration with the Sorbonne cannot be doubted, but he was not subject to pressures from outside the court, as was Saint-André, especially in the 1560s (see chapter 9). Furthermore, we have noted that in at least two crucial situations he intervened to reduce tensions and bring about accommodation, as avocat du roi in 1523 with regard to Berquin, and in the 1540s when he urged the fanatical preachers to cool their oratory in order to prevent the populace
[17] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , lxxii; but see Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 42-43, for a somewhat different interpretation.
[18] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , lxxii-lxviii; the Huguenots were rumored to have attempted to assassinate Lizet (Aubert, "Parlement au XVIe siècle" [1906], 130). As a supplement to Weiss, see documentation of the background of the Chambre Ardente, with the names and previous assignments of members, in Taber, "Religious Dissent," 9-18, esp. 12, on Lizet.
from taking the law into its own hands, leaving control of heresy to those whose legal responsibility it was. Some sixteenth-century writers also credited Lizet with resisting the poursuites of Béda in the early 1520s, but I have not found any firsthand evidence of this claim. He was, in any case, unbending in his loyalty to the law and to his duty as he saw it.[19]
A comparison of Saint-André's 1548 presidency (May 2-July 19) with that of Lizet (July 19-October 30) bears out Weiss's contention in that death sentences and the use of violence were more frequent in the latter period: there were only two martyrdoms under Saint-André compared to twelve under Lizet. Torture also figured routinely in the Lizet period. The difference in length of term (three months, ten days, as compared to two-and-a-half months) is not significant in view of the nearly equal number of cases in the two periods, ninety under Saint-André and eighty-six under Lizet. At the other extreme, there is also a marked contrast in the incidence of leniency: under Lizet, only two of the accused were élargis with no punishment at all, a mere admonition vivre en bon catholique , as compared to a dozen under Saint-André. Between the extremes there is little difference except that there were somewhat fewer public whippings under Lizet (eight as against fourteen under Saint-André). Banishments were about equally frequent, though the sentences of Saint-André show a greater flexibility, two are for one year only, while under Lizet all but one were for life and that one was for five years.[20]
While there is no denying the harshness of the most severe sentences and the horror they inspire even on the printed page, it should be noted that in both periods the majority of the accused was punished by public humiliation and admonition. The usual sentence called for confession of one's errors—specified, as was the place(s) of the recantation, followed by attendance at a special church service at which an official spokesman of the faith would preach on the particular "errors" involved; followed by amende
[19] . François de Larfeuil, Études sur Pierre Lizet (Clermont-Ferrand, 1856), esp. 26 on Béda, 45 on Lizet's integrity.
[20] . The 1548 cases reproduced in full by Weiss: May 2-August 8, 1-188 (112 cases); August 8-October 30, 190-318 (64 cases). Note that these official terms do not correspond with the dates of the two presidencies: Lizet took over from Saint-André on July 19. This accounts for the two periods mentioned in the text, with ninety cases under Saint-André and eighty-six under Lizet. Because on the one hand many cases involve more than one defendant (up to as many as fifteen) and, on the other, some individuals figure in multiple cases (up to as many as eight) it is not feasible to attempt a precise count of the numbers tried. Weiss's study also includes brief resumés of cases between November 1548 and April 1549 and between November 1549 and March 1550. See also Taber, "Religious Dissent," 10-13.
honorable , that is, walking a prescribed route in the town(s) where the sins had been committed, barefoot and all but naked, carrying a lighted candle of prescribed size and weight. The sinner was admonished to live henceforth as a good Catholic, avoiding association with heretics or fugitives, sometimes on pain of banishment or the fire. We have noted Alfred Soman's revisionist analysis of criminal justice with regard to sorcery. The Parlement of Paris showed similar leniency with regard to heresy in appellate cases under the moderate Tournelle judges in the late 1550s (see chapters 4 and 8).
In cases involving a group, the leader(s) would be more severely dealt with than the followers, condemned to the fire with no leeway, having first been tortured to extract other names. Those guilty of any form of preaching or proselytizing, or of harboring these activities in their houses, received the harshest sentences. It is often not clear what the precise content of the crime was; blasphemy against the "sacrament of the altar" was one of the most frequently cited, attendance at illicit assemblies was another. The occupational categories of the accused were consistent throughout the two periods and featured clergy, mostly regulars, artisans and women (the latter often wives of accused artisans). There was a sprinkling of lawyers and notaries. In one case the local officers of Cognac, as a group, were accused of sympathy with heretics and refusal to prosecute them, but since individuals were not named, strictly speaking there was no immediate case. They were suspended from their functions pending further inquiry.[21] Regions of greatest incidence of heresy cases in this period include the upper parts of Burgundy (Sens, Auxerre), Poitiers, Picardy (Amiens), as well as the Orléanais, and the Loire valley.
Only two nobles figured in the 176 cases judged in the six months analyzed; they were brothers, Guillaume du Monceau, seigneur de la Brosse, prior of Sermoises, and Lancelot du Monceau, seigneur de Tignonville. Each was cited before the Chambre Ardente half a dozen times, the last three times together. On April 8, 1549, one Louis Jolippon of Étampes was taken from the Conciergerie to the Place Maubert and tortured for names of his accomplices before being executed. The court's order decreed that if he named either of the Monceaux, he should confront them. Five days later Lancelot was convicted of "stubborn persistence in heresy" and condemned to amende honorable in front of the main portal of the church in Tignonville before perpetual banishment and confiscation of all his prop-
[21] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , case no. 159; Le Monnier, France sous Henri II , 243-244.
erty. We do not know the fate of Guillaume. Members of the Tignonville and de la Brosse families were still active in the Huguenot party a generation later. The commander of the defense of Niort, a heroic episode of July 1569, who was honored in a special ceremony by Jeanne d'Albret, was a seigneur de la Brosse; the governess of her daughter Catherine de Bourbon, was a Madame de Tignonville (born into the family of Jean de Selve) known for her puritan zeal.[22]
The personnel of the Chambre Ardente was quite stable. In the lists published by Weiss (from the Parlement's registers) there were always at least ten and sometimes as many as fourteen serving in a given session, but both these figures were exceptional. A nucleus of eleven sat almost every day and usually there were twelve. When neither of the présidents was in attendance, a veteran conseiller presided, either Jean Tronson, Guillaume Bourgoing, Franéois Tavel, or Louis Gayant. Other regulars were Jean Barjot, Nicolas Chevalier, Antoine Le Coq, and Pierre Hotman. Occasional participants, in descending order, were Jean Florette (twelve times), Nicolas Martineau, Nicole Du Val, Guillaume Luillier, Pierre Grassin, Martin Le Camus, and Oger Pinterel (each three times); Étienne de Montmirail, Jacques Le Roux, and Claude Anjorrant each sat once. Not all of these should be reckoned as equally hard-core acharnés ; some stood at times (during the civil wars) with the moderates. In general, however, the membership of the Chambre coincided with the ultra wing of the transitional generation. The gens du roi were not consistently aligned with this group—as Lizet had been as avocat du roi—except for Le Maistre (avocat civil , 1541-50), who was much less effective in each of the offices formerly held by Lizet. Avocat criminel Gabriel Marillac (1543-51) was a moderate; and Noël Brulart, procureur général 1541-57, although often associated with the ultras, also showed a balance and sense of the public interest as in his attempts to control the violent rhetoric of Parisian sermons. Brulart also spoke boldly to the king in opposition to the admission of the Jesuits in 1551, joining forces with his fellow gens du roi , Marillac and Pierre Séguier, both known moderates.[23]
For an inkling of the identities of the suppressed liberal (or even heretical) minority, we must have recourse to other sources, such as the police report of suspects in 1562, which, as we shall see (chapter 8) also raises questions,
[22] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , cases nos. 139, 276, 289; Roelker, Queen of Navarre , 316, 400.
[23] . On Brulart see Aubert, "Parlement au XVIe siècle" (1906), 194.
by inclusion of some unexpected names and omission of some that seem more likely from what we otherwise know of them.
Reaction to the Chambre Ardente, 1549-1554
Outside the special chamber events were taking place that would affect religious policy, and especially Parlement's part in it. The "clarifying" edict of 1543 had not satisfied the clergy in the matter of their jurisdiction, and they pressed the king to reiterate the exclusive right of bishops over "simple heresy" in their dioceses. A new edict of November 1549 did so, but it also specified that for related offenses involving scandalle publicque the clergy must cooperate with the royal courts, at all levels; the right of appeal was reserved to the Parlements.[24] Weiss imputes another motive (undeclared) to the clergy: the negative reaction to the excessive persecution was turning public opinion against the Roman church. It is true that the number of heretics was constantly increasing and that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church"—in this case, the Reformed Church. According to Weiss, the measures taken by the Chambre Ardente constituted "overkill. It was better to keep waverers in the fold, even if only formally, rather than 'exterminate' them in a way that increased their numbers." Parlement disapproved of "fudging" the issue—a tactic that implied condoning hypocrisy; the court insisted that heresy was a crime and should not go unpunished.[25]
Another factor was becoming increasingly important. The authorities charged with disciplining heretics often failed to do so. Sometimes they refused outright and became suspects or acknowledged converts. The Parlement itself was under suspicion, but the proportion of suspects was always much greater in the lower courts and among local officers. We have noted the case of the officers of Cognac, suspended as a group for failing to prosecute known Protestants. In the southern provinces Protestants were often a substantial majority in the lower ranks of the robe. Of forty notaries in Bordeaux, twenty-eight were Calvinists; further east in towns like Nîmes and Béziers, virtually all the notaries, lawyers, and procureurs were members of Reformed congregations. Every instance of defection in their own profession facilitated the efforts of the ultras to persuade the moderates of the necessity of repression—and brought it closer to the sovereign courts
[24] . Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 341-342; Weiss, Chambre ardente , cxxvii-cxxviii; Le Monnier, France sous Henri II , 203.
[25] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , cxxiv-cxxxi.
themselves.[26] This situation, as will be seen in the next chapter, was a major cause of the political crisis that could not be settled without civil war.
The factional power struggle at the king's court became entangled with religious policy. Each of the chief rivals for the king's favor was Catholic and each wished to place his or her own clients in the most advantageous positions in the royal bureaucracy, and none were more advantageous than the Parlement. Constable Montmorency's influence was being eroded by that of the Guises and the latter's alliance with Diane de Poitiers assured their triumph. The powerful duchess was determined to ruin Lizet, who had made thinly veiled hostile references to her influence on the king. In the later decades of the century it was generally believed that Lizet's disgrace reflected the strategy of the cardinal of Lorraine. The cardinal had advised Diane "to allow only persons who were wholly loyal to her" to hold high office "and to get rid of any who stood in her way. She began with Pierre Lizet, auvergnat, premier président, a man very learned in the law, both Roman and French." Lizet had also boldly risked some sharp encounters with the powerful cardinal directly. His disgrace took effect on July 12, 1550, and while the court gave him some support, the remonstrances were half-hearted because "they too [other parlementaires] were threatened by the creatures of the Guises." The content of the remonstrances is not recorded in the registers, but we do find the following references under dates of June 16 and 20.
[When the Parlement sent remonstrances to the king about the disgrace of Lizet and high-handed treatment of some other members] the chancellor replied that . . . the king found it marvelously strange that the Parlement, which stood watch every day to make certain that its own arrêts were observed, should make difficulty for him, so just a prince, in his own [jurisdiction]. . . . Moreover, he had done nothing contrary to established practice, as the offense had been committed by the premier président blatantly, in the Privy Council, and two fingers from the king's own person. . . . Furthermore, although the king had admonished him . . . he had persevered in his obstinate contumaciousness. [June 16]
The king has since forgiven him and sought him out for a high (and more profitable) office, but [Lizet] has given him no occasion to continue him in royal favor. . . . If [the king] has shown more indulgence to others [Saint-André and Minard], it was at the request of some grands seigneurs . . . . What's more, everybody knows that he had a particular cause in regard to Lizet. [June 20][27]
[26] . Weiss, Chambre ardente , case no. 159; Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 45; Monluc, Commentaires , 4:472, 486-487.
[27] . On Lizet's disgrace see Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:232, 234-235, and 596 (but Maugis regards the whole story as a roman ); Larfeuil, Pierre Lizet , 41-42; Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire , 2:1034; Blanchard, Présidents , 46; Aubert, "Parlement au XVIe siècle" (1950), 130; AN x1a 1567, fols. 219, 223.
Lizet's disgrace was in fact only one part of an elaborate scheme to bring the highest echelons of the law under Guise control. Jean Bertrand held the office of premier président briefly before assuming that of garde des sceaux . (François Olivier, a man of outstanding integrity, had already been stripped of the substance of the office of chancellor on the pretext of poor health, but he was allowed to keep the title and privileges.) Gilles Le Maistre, another Guise client, then became premier président, and held the office until 1562.[28]
We do not know what "high office" Lizet scorned, but there is no doubt that he became abbot of the abbey of St-Victor, to which he retired, and where he died in 1554. It is noteworthy that the Protestant historian Regnier de La Planche joins the ranks of other historians and legists in his laudatory epitaph of Pierre Lizet, the scourge of heretics: "[It is a great shame] that this good old man who had served in the front ranks of justice, should be disgraced and forced out."[29]
It is safe to assume that the power plays of les grands did not escape parlementaire notice. Those who were not Guise clients would be alarmed by the course of events through self-interest. There was also a reaction against the entire system of repression among the mainstream parlementaires, of whose Catholic piety there was no question, on grounds that skirt the religious question entirely—that could justifiably be called "constitutional." The Chambre Ardente was an "exceptional jurisdiction" and thus an invasion of Parlement's sphere, encroaching on its powers as the supreme and most ancient judicial body in France. We have noted the consistent resistance to what Parlement regarded as usurpation by the Conseil du Roi, and in the following chapters we will follow its furious protests when the crown attempted to bypass the parlements by sending royal edicts directly to the presidial courts and especially when the provincial Parlements were used to bypass the Parlement of Paris.[30] The Chambre des Luthériens was staffed by parlementaires. When repeated remonstrances against the exceptional chamber were unsuccessful, members of the court resorted to another strategy, using every pretext for refusal to serve when called upon
[28] . On Bertrand and Olivier see Blanchard, Présidents , 57-58; and Aubert, "Parlement au XVIe siècle" (1905), 130. On Le Maistre see Aubert, 130-131; and Blanchard, 69-71. See also Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:234 n.4.
[29] . Larfeuil, Pierre Lizet , 48; Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 3:189.
[30] . Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:595-601; Taber, "Religious Dissent," 16.
by the king to discharge particular tasks, and finally by abstentions and absenteeism. In January 1550, a delegation of parlementaires exhorted the king to terminate the Chambre Ardente and leave heresy cases to the regular criminal chamber, the Tournelle. The Chambre did indeed cease to function at that time, although Henri II could not abolish it officially without losing face.
As of 1550 the moderates lacked effective leadership, but their time was not far off. An early sign was the expression of protest against the manipulation of the chancellorship and first presidency, on grounds that the appointments of Bertrand and Le Maistre violated all the rules, and the request for a plenary session to deliberate the matter. The time was not yet ripe, however; the court dismissed the argument and voted to register the appointments as raisonnables .[31] Yet, as at its lowest point the tide begins imperceptibly to turn, so forces favorable to a shift in the balance of power between the factions of the court soon provided an opportunity for the moderates to recapture the leadership.
Decompression
In 1551 an issue arose that diverted Parlement's attention from heresy. The first session of the Council of Trent had broken up (1547) because of national rivalries, especially between France and the Hapsburgs, and differences over organization and procedure among the prelates. The French specifically opposed a recall of the same council by Julius III, at Trent in November 1550, which made the interval a mere adjournment. Henri II retaliated with traditional Gallican moves, a threat to hold a national council, an embargo on the export of gold to Rome, and preparations to use the ultimate weapon, the "withdrawal of obedience" from the church. Schism was avoided by the diplomatic mediation of cardinal de Tournon, and the episode of 1551 ranks among the least of the "Gallican crises." Nevertheless, the revival of the old ultramontane menace drew the ultras closer to the mainstream, a rapprochement facilitated by the king's abolition of the Chambre Ardente on the one hand and his granting the Society of Jesus teaching privileges on the other.[32]
Simultaneously, although a new edict (Chateaubriand, 1551) marked a shift to what Sutherland calls "positive persecution," the king's attention was diverted for three or four years by the renewal of war. After a number
[31] . AN x1a 1566, fols. 117, 170, June 11 and 27, 1550.
[32] . Sutherland, Huguenot Struggle , 342-343; Kelley, Foundations , 165-166.
of encounters, military and diplomatic, in Italy, Henri II decided to attack the emperor in a more sensitive area, the middle strip of the old Carolingian empire, which bordered France on the east. The constable would attack Metz while the king and Guise would penetrate Lorraine. Before leaving for the front, Henri extended an olive branch to Parlement by recognizing its right of remonstrance but asked also that the court accept the actions and edicts of Catherine de Médicis as regent in his absence and register them without remonstrance.
The strategic fortress of Metz became the focus of Franco-imperial rivalry in 1552. The constable took the city in the spring but the emperor could not accept its loss, and in the latter part of the year he attempted to drive the French out. The siege of Metz was one of the great military events of the century and the brilliance of its successful defense made the reputation of François, duc de Guise, with consequences for the history of France later in the sixteenth century that are hard to exaggerate.[33]
Charles V was defeated in battle and the long years of struggling to hold together his far-flung holdings had worn him out; he abdicated in 1556, but the military threat to France did not disappear. By 1557 she was on the defensive against Philip II on her vulnerable north-eastern frontier. Long years of expensive war had profoundly affected the relations of king and Parlement by stimulating an extraordinary increase in venality and exploitation of offices for money. Responsibility for these developments and for the entire chain reaction of consequences should be attributed to king and magistrates in about equal shares. Without entering into details, we need to follow the main outlines in order to understand changes occurring within Parlement between the early years of Henri II's reign and the long crisis over religious policy that began in its final years and reached a climax after his death.
Henri II's systematic exploitation of parlementaire ambition, greed, family pride, and vanity leaps out of the record. War imposed actual fiscal needs, yet the cynicism with which the king would reiterate reform intentions and recite the rules intended to regulate the composition and operation of the court in the very act of breaking them is reminiscent of the twentieth-century uses of "the big lie." Maugis contrasts Henri II's methods with those of his father—hardly a model respecter of procedures: "Where François I had proceeded more or less subtly with small steps of equivocation, menace and constraint, the art of his son lay entirely in deception, indirect means, that is of diplomacy aided by corruption." Maugis adds, "he scarcely
[33] . Le Monnier, France sous Henri II , 147-154.
bothered to deny that his one thought was to sell more offices." The principal means was by illegal private arrangements with those présidents and conseillers "known to be ready for seduction, who had something to gain from the proposed creations [of offices] for their elder sons, benefices for the younger ones, marital alliances for their daughters. The game began on the first day [of the reign]." The offices thus gained became a part of the family heritage, droits acquis , and some of the greatest parlementaire families were involved in these transactions, not excluding the de Thou, the Séguier, and the Harlay.[34]
Nevertheless, there were periodic protests and attempts to restore the traditional dignity and discipline. In March 1554, when he was still avocat du roi, Pierre (I) Séguier spoke out against a royal edict abolishing the old system of épices (unofficial but customary fees in addition to legally defined fees) and substituting new taxes on every act, commission, order, inquiry, record, or other transaction in every royal court, including inferior jurisdictions such as the presidial courts and those of the bailliages . Arguing for retention of the old system, Séguier pointed out that whereas the épices were paid at the end of a case, when sentence had been pronounced, under the new system litigants "would have to put their hand in their pockets in order to get a hearing and again at every step of the judicial process, with the risk for a poor man that he would be denied justice entirely. What a scandal, not only for the king's subjects, but even more for foreigners accustomed to revere French justice!"
The edict was registered de mandato expresso on April 28, after much debate, but it was abolished along with the entire système de semestre (a doubling of the numbers in the court, with one-half to serve in one-half of the year) four years later (January 1558). Séguier's eloquence had not prevailed in the spring of 1554, but he was promoted to a presidency on June 30 of that year, one day after Christophe de Thou. Although at the time he expressed some resentment that a mere avocat at the bar of the court should outrank him, the avocat du roi, he accepted the situation. It seems possible that this slight humiliation was the king's reprisal for Séguier's opposition. If so, it did not turn him into a docile rubber stamp of royal policy. Nor did any serious antagonism from this initial rivalry develop between him and de Thou. On the contrary, they joined forces repeatedly, and as leaders of the moderate mainstream they were able to wrest control from the ultras and enlist the majority on their side.[35]
[34] . Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:191-192, 208, 217-219.
[35] . Ibid., 1:193, 197, 211, 203.
In 1550, the expiration of the Chambre Ardente and parlementaire reaction against flagrant manipulation of the two ranking judicial offices (chancellorship and first presidency) had brought about a lessening of tensions within the court. Recognition of Parlement's rights in heresy cases and the "Gallican crisis" healed the breach still further in 1551. The détente this time was of brief duration, however. Even though Henri II's attention was mainly on the war until financial necessity obliged him to prepare for peace in 1558, he resumed the offensive in religious policy as early as 1555. Neither he nor the ultra parlementaires would easily accept the shift of parlementaire opinion toward modification of uncompromising repression of heresy.