CHAPTER 1
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND PROFESSIONAL ATTACHMENTS
"So much of our fine youth lives uselessly," complained the military nobleman Blaise de Monluc, in the early 1570's, "although these youths would be very capable of bearing arms. Entering from time to time the Parlements of Toulouse and Bordeaux, ... I have continually been astounded that so many young men could thus amuse themselves in a law court, since ordinarily youthful blood is boiling." Monluc's comments reflect the disdain with which the nobility of the sword regarded the nobility of the robe. His comments also point to the complex reasons which underlay the nobility's feeling. He did not complain about the low birth or excessive powers of the magistrates; on the contrary, he was disturbed that such "fine youth," well suited to more aristocratic pursuits, should devote themselves to so unlikely a profession. The tension between robe and sword, as Monluc perceived it, was not one between disparate castes, but rather between differing professional mentalities.
Some of the issues which Monluc's comments raise — in particular the question of whether robe and sword nobilities were in fact distinct castes — must await consideration in later chapters. The central question which his comments pose concerns the nature of the special professional outlook which membership in the magistracy created. What were the daily professional demands that magistracy imposed? How seriously were members of the Parlement affected by them? What effects did their particular outlook have on their relationship with the surrounding society? These are the questions to which the present chapter is directed.
Nearly all of the Norman magistrate's professional life took place in Rouen's Palace of Justice, a magnificent flamboyant Gothic building set in the center of the city. Construction on it was begun shortly after the Parlement's foundation, in 1499, and it was completed in the second decade of the sixteenth century. The Palace was a scene of enormous activity in the sixteenth century, in which the magistrates were only the central figures. The arcades along its first floor were filled with shops, rental from which helped to pay for the building's maintenance. Book and paper sellers had regular positions in the corridors inside. A special room housed the attorneys (procureurs), who numbered about fifty in the later sixteenth century and who needed always to be present in case something affecting their clients arose. A more motley collection was made up by the clerks and mere "practitioners," men who lacked both legal education and office but who were ready to undertake legal chores and who usually survived as clerks for lawyers and judges. They, together with the sergeants and other lesser figures, formed the notoriously rowdy world of the basoche. Despite periodic repression, each year they performed satirical, sometimes scandalous, plays, and they seem to have been the leading participants in the brawls which occasionally took place in the halls of the Palace: as in 1583, when a paper seller assaulted a clerk in pursuit of an unpaid debt. One of those charged with managing such disorders, the sergeant and poetaster Jacques Sireulde, described the scene in about 1550: "Ought one to see in a Palace of Justice so many hawkers, men and women alike? So many pages and valets? So many messengers? And then there are the fruit sellers, who come whether wanted or not. ... all of these have to be kept out to assure that the commonality stops coming to piss beneath this vault." Finally there were the litigants and all those who had requests to make of the magistrates, whether as part of a lawsuit or concerning administrative matters.
The magistrates' appearance was eagerly awaited. They were expected to arrive early in the morning, usually at 6:00, clothed in the black robes that they were required to wear everywhere in the city and riding the mules that were equally the mark of their position (but which in the late sixteenth century fell victim to the new vogue for carriages). The magistrates' arrival must have been an impressive sight, for this was the moment for petitioners to present their grievances or other papers. The magistrates then moved to the court's different chambers. As the court was organized in 1600, the twenty-three senior councillors made up the Grand' Chambre, forty-five junior councillors made up the Chambre des Enquêtes, and eight specially designated councillors made up the Chambre des Requêtes; in addition, members of the Grand' Chambre and the Chambre des Enquêtes served on a rotating basis on the Tournelle, the court's criminal chamber, and in the Chambre de l'Edit, created by the Edict of Nantes to try cases concerning Protestants. Most of their work was devoted to appeals, cases from the province's royal and seigneurial jurisdictions, but privileged individuals and institutions might begin their cases in the Chambre des Requêtes.
For some hours these chambers worked in closed session, hearing witnesses, examining documents, and voting decisions. The dominant figures in this work were the four presidents, of whom two presided over the Grand' Chambre, one over the Enquêtes, and one over the Tournelle; the three king's attorneys, who were expected to intervene whenever the king's interests seemed to be involved in a case; and the reporter, the councillor chosen by the presidents to summarize the evidence in a case, lead discussion of it, and recommend a decision. Mid-mornings on most days, litigants and their lawyers were admitted for oral arguments, usually in public sessions. Such arguments in principle were limited to the Grand' Chambre, though apparently arguments were sometimes also heard in the Chambre des Enquêtes. These were dramatic moments in the routine of the Parlement, for the closing arguments of well-known lawyers were greatly appreciated by contemporaries. "There is nothing which more greatly flatters our senses or tickles our minds than to hear a learned and eloquent lawyer argue the merits of a case," wrote the Parisian magistrate and political conspirator Louis D'Orléans of his former profession: "It is a marvelous thing to see him command all those present with powerful and imperious words; it is delightful to see him ... make himself loved and admired by even those who cannot see him, and who let themselves be carried away by the power of his words." The magistrates agreed, and arranged that important visitors hear the closing arguments of famous local lawyers. At the close of this dramatic and public oratory, the magistrates announced decisions in the cases which they had completed, then went home for their dinners. They reassembled for normal sessions at 2:00 and continued closed discussions for two hours. If the quantity of business demanded it, they continued in extraordinary session into the late afternoon.
Occasionally this routine was broken by closed assemblies of the chambers, called by the presidents or the king's attorneys to discuss issues of general importance, in particular political issues. Other events were still more infrequent: mercuriales, in which failings of the company as a whole or of individuals were discussed, examinations and receptions of new members, ceremonial events, such as the burial of a colleague (in which the court normally marched as a group) or public processions (in which they were quite reluctant to take part), and assemblies to receive the visits of important dignitaries, colleagues from other courts, subordinate judges, or city councillors. Each year's session opened on St. Martin's day, November 12th, with an address by the first president, and closed August 31st; during the court's two-month vacation, cases were heard and decided by a Chambre des Vacations, drawn by rotation from the Grand' Chambre and the Enquêtes.
All of this professional activity was carried on in a setting of explicit symbolism. Much of this symbolism was religious, as for instance the large painting of the crucifixion which hung at the front of the hall used by the Grand' Chambre and for all general meetings of the court; its purpose, according to the Toulousan parlementaire Bernard de La Roche Flavin, was "to cool off and hold back by this commemoration of holy things the too active and too greedy minds of the judges." The theme of restraint was repeated in the costumes which the magistrates themselves ordinarily wore, everywhere save in their own houses and in the privacy of their country properties. The magistrates wore robes "the same as the priests,'" as a Norman lawyer pointed out, and this was meant to remind them and others of the special characteristics of their position: first, of the nearly sacerdotal, divinely instituted functions of the judge; second, and perhaps more important, of the need for maturity and moderation in performing their tasks. To contemporaries the robes were not just reminiscent of the magistrate's closeness to the priesthood. They also called forth images of age and of retirement from active pursuits. In this sense also the magistrates' costumes were meant to symbolize and encourage mature self-restraint: precisely the qualities which Monluc found so surprising when assumed by young men.
The symbolism of age was repeated in the constant stress within the Parlement, echoed throughout the magistrate's workday, on rankings according to seniority of service. Nearly everything that the magistrates did involved some affirmation of seniority. When the court took part in a procession, it marched in the order of its members' reception; when opinions were given, either on political issues or in the more typical discussions of lawsuits, the same order was followed; and the question of seniority repeatedly came up in arguments over precedence, especially between the court's two junior chambers, those of Requêtes and of Enquêtes.
Such were the magistrates' daily activities and some of the meanings which those activities were commonly supposed to contain. They formed the surface of the magistrates' professional lives. To understand these professional lives more deeply, we must pose further questions, about the training and background of those who entered the magistracy and about the nature of the work they did.
The formal educational requirements for entering the Parlement were straightforward. Candidates were required to have a licence from one of the law schools, for the Parlement as for all positions in the royal judiciary. Normally this required about six years' study in the arts curriculum of the universities, culminating in the licence in arts, then the two or three years spent studying Roman law which normally were needed for the licence in law. AU of this education could be acquired within Normandy itself, but most magistrates studied outside the province. Local institutions had never been vigorous, and were in steady decline during the sixteenth century. At Rouen there was only the Collège des Bons Enfants, which was mainly for the education of the poor and which was rarely frequented by the magistrates or their children. Both arts and law courses could be had at the University of Caen, in lower Normandy, but this too had few attractions. Charles de Bourgueville, a judge at Caen and an enthusiastic local patriot, noted in the 1580's that the university "has been as famous as any in the kingdom; but it has lacked Maecenases, princes or lords, to favor it and to maintain there famous doctors." The civil wars were especially difficult for the provincial university. Funds were inadequate and many of the endowments had been alienated. Few law professors remained in these circumstances (there were only two doctors of law in 1564), and only a few students listened to their lectures.
Even without the disasters of the late sixteenth century, Caen would have had difficulty attracting the magistrates and their children. Caen in the sixteenth century was "two good days' travel" away from Rouen, just as far as Paris. More important, it was widely accepted that education — and especially legal education — ought to involve travel, in a search for famous teachers and famous sites. Bourgueville's own career well illustrates this restlessness. "Some time after [1521], when Master Guillaume Desmares of the town of Caudebec and I were [at Caen], continuing our studies, we received the degree of bachelors; then I traveled to the universities of Angers and Poitiers, in the years 1524 and 1525. ... There was a great deal of excitement at Poitiers [because of] two learned doctors ..., and at Angers [there were] Masters Vallin Gizay and Anguinare Baro. And also three young and learned lecturers had been brought from Toulouse. ... I consider myself very fortunate to have been the student of such learned men."
Most magistrates apparently received cosmopolitan educations. Their studies usually began at home, with a private reading master; after a year or two of this tuition, they were sent out to a private schoolmaster, who in some cases fed and lodged them. After two or three years of such rudimentary education, at the age of about twelve, the child was sent to one of the colleges attached to the University of Paris, usually in the company of a master or compagnon d'études sent to watch over him. His stay at the college lasted several years, during which he was expected above all to acquire a solid Latin education. Once he had finished his arts degree, the young man's travels normally began: to the famous law schools, like Bourgueville, or, with increasing frequency during the later sixteenth century, throughout Europe. Rome seems to have been an especially popular objective — so much so that Gentien Thomas, oldest son of a member of Rouen's Chambre des Comptes, sold all his linen, books, and other possessions to finance an unauthorized trip from his Parisian college to Rome. The German universities were also popular. These patterns were only slightly changed by the foundation of a Jesuit college in Rouen in the 1590's. The college did mean that, for the first time, respectable local educational institutions were available, and many magistrates did send their children there. Paris remained attractive to many, however, and extensive travel after leaving the arts course became if anything more prevalent.
Contemporaries were aware, however, that such an education had disadvantages as well as certain attractions. The cosmopolitan quality of their education brought future magistrates into a wide network of acquaintance with future lawyers and judges from throughout France. Most future magistrates also achieved a solid grounding in Latin; in the critical eyes of the seventeenth century, at least, the quality of the magistrates' Latin eloquence improved markedly over the sixteenth century, probably in the direction of closer conformity to classical rather than to scholastic standards. But the quality of the magistrates' legal training was haphazard, as their extensive travels would suggest. Complaints of fraud in the granting of law degrees were common in the early sixteenth century, and tended to become more frequent. The crown's periodic efforts to reform the system of legal education served only to highlight its deficiencies: as for instance the early seventeenth-century requirement that the student have studied for at least six months in the university which gave him his licence in the law.
What the law schools provided, it appears, was some familiarity with the specific elements of Roman law, some notion of what contemporaries called the "theory" of the law, and above all an appreciation of the historical setting and meanings of the law. At least in the disapproving view of some contemporaries, this last facet of legal education seemed to be growing at the expense of the more straightforward elucidation of the texts of Roman law. "These days," complained La Roche Flavin, "the young have no interest in studying the law; instead we amuse ourselves with literature (lettres humaines), and God knows how we make use of it." The historical study of Roman law, the so-called mos Gallicus, was in his view a "very great abuse," which ought to be driven out of the universities.
No one expected the law schools to provide a further element which the magistrate would need, familiarity with legal procedure and the customary laws which governed most property transactions; throughout the sixteenth century the law schools concerned themselves only with Roman law. To meet this need, candidates were required to spend at least one year as lawyers in the Parlement before being admitted to the magistracy itself. The candidate was not expected to practice seriously. Rather, he was to visit the courts regularly, find out what he could about procedures and about local law, and continue his reading of Roman law.
