The historian's mountain of paper: the Parlement of Paris and the analysis of civil suits in the eighteenth century

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Feutry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Parlement Of Paris

A Lawyer's Defense of a Wine Merchant against a Carpenter's Deposition: A Story about Friendship and Betrayal

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-384
Author(s):  
Santo L. Aricò
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parlement Of Paris ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Sacred Laws

In 1770, Antoine-Louis Séguier, the avocat général (king's advocate) of the Parlement of Paris, defended Jean-Baptiste Dubarle, a Parisian wine merchant, against charges of theft, seduction, kidnapping, and adultery initiated by a carpenter, Eustache Chefdeville. For all of the offenses, Chefdeville demanded monetary reparation.The case, summarized in a mémoire, connects the history of family law in France under the ancien régime to the skillful use of lawyerly forensics. But it also relates to literary portrayals of social scapegraces who betray the esteemed values of friendship and gratitude: in fact, this member of Paris's menu peuple emerges from the pages of the case abstract as a dissembling traitor. Séguier's legal brief, viewed as a work of fiction, projects Chefdeville as an ungrateful betrayer who feigns comradery. In Séguier's telling, this disfigured pariah, albeit socially inferior, takes his place next to the deceptive worldlings described in many eighteenth-century novels. Like them, he violates the sacred laws of sincerity, turning himself into a moral pervert. Séguier's mémoire is rich precisely because it demonstrates how a skilled lawyer attempting to win his case adopts the form of a story characterized by all the literary qualities of the day—love, friendship, avarice, and betrayal. It illustrates a classic legal approach and also reads like a novel from beginning to end.

Parlements and Provincial Estates

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Swann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Wishful Thinking ◽  
Direct Descendant ◽  
The Social ◽  
Parlement Of Paris

After the King and his councils, the French parlements and provincial estates stood out as two of the most prestigious political, legal, and administrative institutions in the kingdom. By the eighteenth century, there were no fewer than thirteen parlements, proudly dominating the social, cultural, and even economic lives of cities such as Aixen-Provence, Besancon, Rennes, and Toulouse. It was, however, the Parlement of Paris that was generally recognized as the senior court, with a jurisdiction covering approximately one-third of France, including provinces such as Auvergne, Champagne, and Poitou as well as the major cities of Orleans and Lyon. The Paris Parlement and its many ardent apologists frequently claimed that it “was as old as the monarchy” and a direct descendant of the Frankish assemblies that had once met on the Champs de Mars. It was an argument that placed the Parlement above the Estates-General as the French national representative body, but it was, in reality, little more than antiquarian wishful thinking and the Parlement was of more recent vintage, having been founded during the fourteenth century. The various provincial parlements had been established later, often when formerly independent provinces had been absorbed into France.

The Literary Campaign for Toleration of the Huguenots

1951 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Shelby T. McCloy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Parlement Of Paris ◽  
The Government ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The City

After the Calas Case of 1762–64 the more severe of the anti-Protestant laws fell into disuse. Raids on the open-air religious meetings ceased; few if any clergy were executed; no laity were sent to the galleys; and no property apparently was seized. The Protestant pastors became bolder and, in the 1780's, Paul Rabaut and his son Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the two foremost of them all, lived without disguise and without molestation as they served their flock in the city of Nîmes. The pastor Frossard, whose name has passed down to us as the author of an able antislavery pamphlet, worked without harm in Lyons, where he was visited by Brissot in 1782. Court de Gebelin, son of the daring pastor Antoine Court and himself a pastor, lived openly in Paris from 1763 to 1784 without annoyance, became secretary of the celebrated Freemason's Lodge of the Nine Muses frequented by Voltaire and Franklin, and acquired some reputation as a writer and scholar. And when at length he died (in 1784) his funeral was unmolested, and Quesnay de SaintGermain, a councillor at the Parlement of Paris, and the pastor Rabaut Saint-Etienne addressed the assemblage. Even earlier, in 1748, Simon Louis de Ry, son of a Protestant refugee at Cassel, came to Paris and studied architecture. Either the government did not know or care who he was. Likewise his sister, married to a French Protestant refugee named Le Clerc, returned to Paris for a period of three months in 1773 without molestation. The Protestant physician Paul Bosc went to Paris in the 1750's and not only lived untroubled but even became a court physician, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was sent on a government mission to England. He died a noted scientist in 1784. As a youth he had even been a Protestant pastor. What did that matter? Paris did not care. Paris throughout the eighteenth century was perhaps the safest place for a Protestant in France.

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