This article is for the Ancien Régime institution. For the post-Revolutionary and present-day institution, see French Parliament.

Parlements (pronounced /paʀləmɑ̃/ in French) in ancien régime France were political institutions that developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis. In the thirteenth century, judicial functions were added. Originally, there was only the Parlement of Paris, born out of the king's council in 1307, and located inside the medieval royal palace on the Île de la Cité, now the Paris Hall of Justice. The jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris covered the entire kingdom, but its jurisdiction did not automatically advance in step with the personal dominions of the kings. In 1443, following the turmoil of the Hundred Years' War, King Charles VII of France granted Languedoc its own parlement by establishing the Parlement of Toulouse, the first parlement outside of Paris; its jurisdiction extended over the most part of southern France. From 1443 until the French Revolution several other parlements were created in some provinces of France, until at the end of the ancien régime provincial parlements were sitting (clockwise from the north) in Arras, Metz, Nancy, Colmar, Dijon, Besançon, Grenoble, Aix, Perpignan, Toulouse, Pau, Bordeaux, Rennes and Rouen. All of them were administrative capitals of regions with strong historical traditions of independence before they were incorporated into France. Assembled in the parlements, the largely hereditary members, the provincial noblesse de robe, were the strongest centrifugal force in a France that was actually multifarious in its legal systems, taxation, and custom than it might have seemed under the apparent unifying rule of its kings. Nevertheless, the Parlement of Paris had the largest jurisdiction of all the parlements, covering the major part of northern and central France, and was simply known as "the Parlement".

In some regions provincial Estates also continued to meet and legislate with a measure of self-governance and control over taxation within their jurisdiction.

All the parlements could issue regulatory decrees for the application of royal edicts or of customary practices; they could also refuse to register laws that they judged contrary to fundamental law, the local coûtumes, of which there were some three hundred jurisdictions in France or simply as being untimely. Membership in those courts was generally bought from the royal authority; and such positions could be made hereditary by payment of the tax to the King (la Paulette).

Provincial "parlements" or "conseils souverains" (shown in historic provinces of France) during the ancien régime. Dates indicate creation of the parlement. [1]

1. Île-de-France (Paris c.1260) 4. Normandy (Rouen 1499/1515) 5. Languedoc (Toulouse 1443) 7. Dauphiné (Grenoble 1453) 12. Guyenne and Gascony (Bordeaux 1462) 13. Burgundy (Dijon 1477) 16. Provence (Aix-en-Provence 1501) 20. Brittany (Rennes, briefly at Nantes, 1553) 26. Béarn (Pau 1620) 27. Alsace (capital Strasbourg, cons. souv. in Colmar 1667) 28. Artois (cons provinc. in Arras 1640) 29. Roussillon (cons souv. Perpignan 1660) 30. Flanders and Hainaut (capital Lille, parliament first in Tournai, then in Douai 1686) 31. Franche-Comté (Besançon 1676; formerly at Dôle (1422)) 32. Lorraine (Nancy 1776) 37. Savoy (Chambery 1537-1559) (not indicated) Dombes (Trévoux 1523-1771) (not indicated) Corsica (cons. souv. in Bastia 1768) (not indicated) Trois-Évêchés (Metz 1633) Note: The map does not show the jurisidctions of the parlements. The map reflects France's modern borders and does not indicate the territorial formation of France over time. Provinces on this list may encompass several other historic provinces and counties.

Political role

Joseph-Gaspard de Cauzaubon, marquis de Maniban, First President of the Parlement of Toulouse in 1723 (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse).

In theory, parlements were not legislative bodies, but courts of appeal. They had the duty, however, to record all royal edicts and laws. Some, especially the Parlement de Paris, gradually acquired the habit of refusing to register legislation with which they disagreed until the king held a lit de justice or sent a lettre de cachet to force them to act. Furthermore, the parlements could pass arrêts de réglement, which were laws that applied within their jurisdiction.

In the years immediately before the French Revolution, their extreme concern to preserve ancien régime institutions of bourgeois and noble privilege prevented France from carrying out miscellaneous reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had the support of theoretically absolute monarchs.

This behavior is one of the reasons why, since the French Revolution, French courts have been forbidden by Article 5 of the French civil code to create law and act as legislative bodies, their only mandate being to interpret the law. France, through the Napoleonic Code, was at the origin of the modern system of civil law in which precedents are not as powerful as in countries of common law. Since then, Courts have gradually regained some power, but it is still controversial whether unelected magistrates should gain too much power.

Judicial proceedings

In civil trials, judges had to be paid épices (literally "spices" – fees) by the parties. Civil justice was out of reach of most of the population, except the most wealthy and well connected.

Regarding criminal justice, the proceedings were markedly archaic. Judges could order suspects to be tortured in order to extract confessions, or induce them to reveal the names of their accomplices: there existed the question ordinaire ("ordinary questioning"), the ordinary form of torture, and the question extraordinaire ("extraordinary questioning"), with increased brutality. There was little presumption of innocence, if the suspect was a mere poor commoner. The death sentence could be pronounced for a variety of crimes, including mere theft; depending on the crime and the social class of the victim, death could be by decapitation with a sword (for nobles), hanging (for most crimes by commoners), the breaking wheel (for some heinous crimes by commoners), and even burning at the stake (for heresy, or advocacy of atheism). Some crimes, such as regicide, exacted even more horrific punishment.

Judicial torture and cruel methods of executions were abolished in 1788 by King Louis XVI.^[2]

Parlement of Toulouse

Modeled on the Parlement of Paris, the Parlement of Toulouse was first created in 1420, but definitely established by edicts in 1437 and 1443 by Charles VII as an appellate court of justice on civil, criminal and ecclesiastic affairs for the Languedoc region, including Quercy, the County of Foix and Armagnac. It was the first parlement in the south of France, and it gained in prestige both by its distance from Paris and from the differences between southern France's legal system (based on Roman law) and northern France's.

After the Parlement of Paris, the Parlement of Toulouse had the largest jurisdiction in France. Its purview extended from the Rhône to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Pyrénées to the Massif Central, but the creation of the Parlement of Bordeaux in 1462 removed from its jurisdiction Guyenne, Gascony, Landes, Agenais, Béarn and Périgord.

On 4 June 1444, the new parlement of Toulouse moved into a chamber of Toulouse's château narbonnais; its official opening occurred on 11 November of that year.

In 1590, during the French Wars of Religion, Henri IV created the rival parlement of Carcassonne, attended by parlementarians faithful to the king.

The most famous trial of the parlement of Toulouse was the Calas affair. On 9 March 1762, Jean Calas was condemned to death by the parlement.

With the French Revolution, the parlement of Toulouse, as too the municipal Capitoul of Toulouse, was suppressed.

Current usage

In current French language usage, parlement means parliament.

See also

• Parliament of France
• Belgian Federal Parliament
• Walloon Parliament
• Parliament of Canada

References and Notes

• The section on the Parlement of Toulouse is based on a translation of the article Parlement de Toulouse from the French Wikipedia, retrieved on 19 March 2007.

Books

• (French) Bluche, François. L'Ancien régime: Institutions et société. Collection: Livre de poche. Paris: Fallois, 1993. ISBN 2-253-06423-8
• (French) Jouanna, Arlette and Jacqueline Boucher, Dominique Biloghi, Guy Thiec. Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion. Collection: Bouquins. Paris: Laffont, 1998. ISBN 2-221-07425-4
• (French) Pillorget, René and Suzanne Pillorget. France Baroque, France Classique 1589-1715. Collection: Bouquins. Paris: Laffont, 1995. ISBN 2-221-08110-2

Notes