Lit De Justice

If I had been the master of ceremonies in the later sixteenth century, after the lit de justice had achieved its splendid ceremonial status during the reign of Francis I, I would have tacked that royal enthronement in Parlement onto the king's entry into Paris. In my ceremonial livret I would have explained the event in this way.

The new king has exercised royal power from the moment his father died; indeed, he had issued many edicts already. The ultimate demonstration of the kingly power, however, is his personal enthronement in Parlement at a lit de

justice. When the king makes his joyous entry into Paris after being crowned at Reims, he reveals to his people the sanctified nature of the royal power he has exercised heretofore out of necessity. The climactic event of the entry, of this revelation of royal power, is most rightfully found in the king's enthroning himself at the head of Parlement. The scepter and the main de justice exchange places in the king's hands, from how they had been held at Reims, for at the lit de justice it is only fitting that the main de justice have the dominant place, held in the right hand.

I might even have insinuated that the lit de justice was to couronnement what curing the king's evil was to the sacre.

There is a hint that a faint version of this scenario was carried out in 1549, when Henry II enthroned himself in Parlement just sixteen days after his formal entry into Paris. The event was not, however, entered into the registers of Parlement as a lit de justice but only as a royal séance . And we cannot suspect that this was an error of the clerk of Parlement, for that clerk was Jean Du Tillet, the person in all of France most learned in royal ceremonial and who had been a prime mover in shaping the lit de justice.^[12]

Michel de l'Hôpital, chancellor of France, was responsible for the first use of the lit de justice for inaugural purposes—the pronouncement of the majority of the king, Charles IX, in 1563.^[13] I see here, too, something of the spirit of legitimizing royal power I suggested earlier in my ceremonial fantasizing. Charles's "majority lit " rectifies a flaw in the royal power up to 1563; for, although he had been crowned as a minor in 1561 he had had to have a regent rule for him until he came of age. Still, France had been ruled in the name of King Charles IX for two years, under whatever auspices you choose, and that was enough to render the "majority lit " a weak instance of inauguration. L' Hôpital's power politics was more to the point. In the long run, constitutionally, the "majority lit " was clearly an ad hoc arrangement necessitated by the fact that the king was a minor; a ceremonial nicety to be sure, but (one surely hoped) not something that would often be necessary.

Fate dictated, however, that three successive kings of France would accede as minors in later times, in 1610, 1643, and 1715. Each of them had to have a regency government, and each held a lit de justice when he came of age. In these instances, however, the "majority lit " that was performed contained the merest token of inaugural significance compared with an earlier lit de justice that each of these kings had performed, the explicitly "inaugural lit de justice."

Only a matter of hours after Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 his eight-year-old son Louis, dressed in regal attire, was lifted onto the royal seat at the head of the Parlement of Paris and the regency of his mother, Marie de Médicis, promulgated in his name.^[14] Political exigency was obviously the motive: Marie was by no means everyone's choice for regent. No one, I daresay, gave any thought at that time to what this revelation of the new ruler,

presiding at a state ceremonial that expressed the royal power most awesomely—one reporter designated the event as literally the inauguration of the king^[15] —would mean for the traditional symbolism of the other state ceremonials. Indeed, all three of them would be performed within six months.

Before considering that question, however, let me put in simple terms what this "inaugural lit " meant for the basic inaugural principle I have been considering: in Paris in 1610 there was terminated a 340-year estrangement between the exercise of royal power and its ceremonial inauguration that had begun in Tunisia in 1270. I don't believe anyone in 1610 would have seen it that way. Even I today find it hard to regard the metaphor of estrangement as much more than a pedant's delight. It is, however, more worthwhile than the position that positivist-minded historians would be likely to take, which is that the events of 1270 and 1610 both show nothing of interest beyond the fact that political exigency always causes ceremonial proprieties to be treated slightingly, sometimes by disuse and other times by abuse.

Let us consider the abuse. It could be argued that the lit de justice was debased by its hasty and improvised utilization in 1610. On the other hand the lit de justice, unlike the other state ceremonials, was not a once-in-a-lifetime proposition for any king. Had it not already shown its versatility as an instrument of propagating (propagandizing?) royal authority in 1563? Was the lit de justice not the obvious means at hand to resolve the crisis of regency in 1610? If Charles IX could use one to end a regency why couldn't Louis XIII do the same to begin one? In short, the constitutional character of the lit de justice did not limit its ceremonial prospects.

The funeral ceremony, however, suffered irreparable damage in 1610. One of its cardinal rules was that the new king should stay out of the public eye until his predecessor's lifelike effigy had had its allotted weeks to make visible the marvel that the K ing lived on although the k ing had died. Louis XIII's inaugural lit vitiated the purpose of his father's effigy before the effigy was even made. No one at the time seems to have noticed this, and Henry IV's funeral was conducted in the traditional fashion. But never again after 1610.^[16]

The inaugural lit of 1610 also preempted whatever notion tradition had implanted that a fully ceremonious entry of the new king into Paris should be the first public manifestation of royal power in the capital city. I pushed that idea to the limit in an earlier section, especially in my fantasy that the king's first lit de justice should have been celebrated as the climax of the entrée. In 1610 it came first. The fact is that the entrée was very flexible. The one into Paris might enjoy the status of a state ceremonial but entrées into provincial cities could be just as grand, even grander because nothing in those cities' experience was likely to equal the king's coming, Not so in Reims, of course, where the king's entry, however great its pomp, could be just a prelude to the

most sublime of all French royal ceremonials. Looked at another way, however, whatever pomp attended the king's precoronation arrival at Reims was sure to involve the entrée per se with the inaugural principle at large.

Louis XIII's coronation took place in mid-October of 1610. During the six months that had elapsed since he had become king, those responsible to stage his entrée into the city of Reims and ordain his sacre et couronnement in Reims' Cathedral gave considerable thought to the question of how their ceremonials could be made to jibe with the inaugural lit de justice performed the day after Henry IV died in mid-May. What they accomplished shows that ceremonial exigencies could be just as great as political ones. Their deeds have been analyzed keenly from two different points of view, by Richard Jackson as they influenced the sacre, by Sarah Hanley as they reflected awareness of the lit de justice.^[17]

The most inspired innovation was the ritual of the "sleeping king" performed in an antechamber of the cathedral when two archbishops came to fetch Louis for his coronation. By a series of three knockings on the door and callings out of his name they insinuated that Henry IV's son was still asleep while the god-given King of France was fully awake. This skit brought to perfection an earlier form of precoronation ritual for a minor king that intimated (and resolved) the tension between the want of years and the wearing of the crown, but in 1610 it also linked the wide-awake kin about to be crowned with the king who had already been "inaugurated" at a lit de justice.^[18]

The stage for the "sleeping king" had already been set when Louis entered Reims the day before. One tableau juxtaposed the lit de justice of May with the sacre et couronnement of October in terms of designating the king (Rege designato) and receiving the kingdom (Regno suscepto), and another linked the two ceremonials as the king's betrothal, then marriage, to the kingdom. The theme "the King never dies" also received considerable attention, but only as found in writings of jurists (the entry's director was a legist) and not with reference to its ceremonial expression in the royal funeral where it had first been articulated a century before and last performed just a few months earlier.^[19]

The inaugural aspects of French royal ceremonial had never before been as conscientiously unified as they were in 1610. Ad hoc as the arrangements surely were on that occasion, they provided the format for the inauguration of the next two kings because they too acceded as minors and had to hold inaugural lits to establish regencies. For a very long period during the ancien régime—150 years if one counts the time until the next adult king acceded, in 1760—the sacre-coronation found itself at the tail end (the inaugural lit being at the head) of the inaugural ceremonies. Yet another irony, for getting crowned had been during all the early centuries of the monarchy the exclusive terminus a quo for dating the reign and acting like a king. But yet, it was

not anomalous in the context of the new order of things. The perpetuity of royal power, or (as well) of the nation itself, had become the salient component of fundamental law. The inaugural principle as such was essentially superannuated. Perfect kingly status was achieved by the first breath the new king drew in after his predecessor had breathed his last. The sacre et couronnement was needed in order to dramatize this new theory of royalty as much as it had been required in times past to initiate the reign of every new king.