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Cardin Le Bret and Lese Majesty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Ralph E. Giesey ,
Lanny Haldy  and
James Millhorn
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Extract

Cardin Le Bret, councillor of state during the ministry of Richelieu, is sufficiently distinguished to have merited two monographs in modern historiography. The basis of his renown is not his official deeds, however, but his political writings. Moreover, within the large corpus of those writings (630 folio pages, published three times), one treatise alone raises him from obscurity: De la Souveraineté du Roy, first published in 1632. And finally (to allot Le Bret the least that is due him), the fame of that treatise owes less to the perspicuity of its author than to the timeliness of its subject. It is one of the first comprehensive treatments of sovereignty to appear after Jean Bodin ‘invented’ that concept in his Six livres de la République (1576). Le Bret's treatise could thus provide important evidence of the status of ‘sovereignty’ in legal and political discourse two generations after Bodin.

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Law and History Review , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 23 - 54
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1986

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References

1. After the original publication as a separate book in 1632, De la Souveraineté du Roy was printed three times in collections of Le Bret's Oeuvres, twice during his lifetime (1635, 1642), each with extensive revisions, and once posthumously (1689), which copies the 1635 edition. The editions of 1632 and 1635 (in its 1689 version) were readily available to us, and Ms. Elizabeth McCartney kindly made professional collations of the 1642 edition for us from the Bibliothèque Nationale's copy. Le Bret's biographers are Picot, G., Cardin Le Bret (1558-1655) et la doctrine de la souveraineté (Nancy, 1948)Google Scholar and Comparato, Ivo, Cardin le Bret: ‘Royauté' e ‘Ordre’ nel pensiero di un consigliere del 600 (Florence, 1969)Google Scholar.

2. Church, William F., Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, 1972), p. 273–76Google Scholar (hereinafter cited as Church, Richelieu).

3. The fruits of Church's research before he died, in 1977, are found in a small archive, now in the John Hay Library of Brown University (see French Historical Studies, xi (1980) 635)Google Scholar, which consists chiefly of an extensive bibliography, photocopies of relevant works, notes on manuscripts in Paris, and even a few microfilms of those manuscripts. We would like to thank Mrs. Martha Mitchell, University Archivist at Brown University, for her assistance in utilizing the Church archive.

4. In the 1632 octavo edition, the chapter ‘Du Crime de lèse-Majesté’ (Souv. du roy, iv, 5) is found at 527–55; in the 1689 folio edition (having become iv, 6) at 140–46.

5. Ed. 1632, 532; ed. 1689, 141. Church, Richelieu at 274, relates only Le Bret's sternness about slander as a crime, not his caveats about excessive prosecution of it; consequently, Ranum, Orest, ‘Courtesy, Absolutism, and the Rise of the French State, 1630–1660,’ Journal of Modern History lii (1980), 435–36Google Scholar, relying on Church, rather over-stresses Le Bret's views on slander as evidence of the rise of courtesy. This is, however, nit-picking about an article which illuminates so well the subtle role of manners in the mentality of absolutism.

6. Ed. 1632, 537–38; ed. 1689, 142.

7. This is the fifth of the eight laws in (and by length two-thirds of) the Codex's title Ad legem Juliam maiestatis, which, along with the Digest's title of the same name (Dig. 48, 7), are the principal statements on lese majesty in the Corpus Juris Civilis. Roman law strongly influenced lese majesty in early compilations of Germanic codes (Lear, E.S., Treason and Related Offenses in Roman and Germanic Law (Houston, 1955Google Scholar) ), but in the Frankish monarchy the concept of offending the maiestas of the ruler yielded to the notion of infidelitas to the leader (Lemosse, M., ‘La lèse-majesté dans la monarchie franque’, Revue de Moyen Age Latin, ii (1946) 5–24Google Scholar). The twelfth-century revival of Roman Law created the basic condition for a juristic synthesis, but the ‘romano-feudal’ and the ‘classical-Roman’ traditions remained quite distinct up through the Renaissance. Lese majesty in late medieval France is discussed below, in Part Three.

8. See infra note 57.

9. Ed. 1632, 541; ed. 1689, 143.

10. W.F. Church, who knew the literature of French constitutional history as few others, stresses how Le Bret balanced his convictions about legal procedure against his belief in the sovereign's absolute authority; Church, Richelieu, 270 ff.

11. Le Bret's ‘legalistic’ attitude mentioned in the previous note is noticeably absent here, especially in the sense of not qualifying treason according to the station of the culprit. Since this form of lese majesty was by far more prosecuted among ordinary folk than among the élite and Le Bret elsewhere is concerned only with the latter, he must have had a special fear of the demonic.

12. Ed. 1632, 555; ed. 1689, 146.

13. Belloy's is the only work on lese majesty anterior to Le Bret's that Church mentions in his Richelieu (at 273, n. 275—which begins: ‘Treatments of lèse-majesté are surprisingly rare in this period’), but we feel more than did he that correspondences between the two works are coincidental.

14. Baudouin, François, Ad legem maiestatis sive perduellionis commentarius (Paris, 1563)Google Scholar, cited by us from Heinneccius, Johann Gottlieb, Jurisprudentia Romana et Attica (Leyden, 1738), i, 994–1024Google Scholar; Antoine Le Conte, Ad legem Juliam Majestatis [part 1 on Dig. 48, 7, part 2 on Codex 8.9; to which is appended] Index omnium conjurationem … [etc., as translated below in our text], composed in 1570 according to the dedicatory letter but published only in the 1612 edition of his Opera omnia, cited by us from the edition of Naples, 1725, 114–42. The facile assumption that references to lese majesty in classical literature are so numerically limited that any two modern writers on the subject must quickly overlap is disproven already by comparing Baudouin's and Le Conte's and Le Bret's works; there are hundreds of such references, as can be seen in the monographs by Bauman, R.A., The Crimen Maiestatis in the Roman Republic and the Augustan Principate (Johannesburg, 1967Google Scholar) and Impietas in principem (Munich, 1974Google Scholar)—two works that merit the attention of students of lese majesty in any time or place.

15. Ed. cit., 1021, to which it is worth adding this parenthetical remark found a few pages later (at 1024c): ‘for often Princes, forgetful of their true nature and humanity, exalt too greatly their majesty’.

16. Cf. ed. cit., 1021 and 1024d.

17. Baudouin, ed. cit., 1024q. Sbricolli, (see infra note 36), at 135–48, shows the importance of Qui sint rebelles, which joined two other medieval imperial edicts as ‘Extravagantes’ appended to the Corpus Juris Civilis. In sixteenth-century printed editions of the Roman law, the gloss on Qui sint rebelles attained a size one hundred times greater than the text itself.

18. Baudouin, ed. cit., 1024. The lese majesty appendage to the Golden Bull is treated conventionally as Chapter 24 of that document; see Fritz, Wolfgang D., Die Goldene Bulle Kaiser Karls IV. vom Jahre 1356 (Weimar, 1972), 80–82Google Scholar. Baudouin's apprehensions about lese majesty in 1563 were legitimated by Belloy's treatise in 1585 (supra note 13).

19. Le Conte, ed. cit., 133–42. The fact (see supra note 14) that Le Conte's treatise was not published during his lifetime suggests that he may not have finished it when he reached Justinian. (Just before that, however, he had worked in some rebellions during Merovingian times.) The editor in 1612 did not fail to insert a prefatory remark about the timeliness of the work in light of the recent regicide in France.

20. The standard work is Perrot, Ernest, Les cas royaux: Origine et développement de la théorie aux Xllle et XIVe siècles (Paris, 1910)Google Scholar, but for the lese majesty aspect of cas royaux one should now consult the works of Sbricolli and Cuttler (infra notes 36 and 37) at 64–67 and 18–19 respectively. There are many problems of terminology. Cas royaux, droits royaux and cas privilégés are not exactly the same, but lese majesty appears in each of them in a slightly different context (but is not further defined in any of them). The designation of lese majesty ‘au premier chef,’ ‘au second chef, ‘avec tous ces branches’ (and the like) is a confused practice that seems to be based on a passage from Ulpian in digest 48, 4, 2 (see Sbricolli, infra note 36 at 249); Perrot's claim (at 27, n. 7 and at 28, n. 1) that Guillaume du Breuil's Stilus curie Parlamenti (1330) clarifies first, second and so forth ‘headings’ is not borne out in Aubett's edition of the Stilus (Paris, 1909) at 122Google Scholar.

21. As said in the previous note, droits royaux is another category in which lese majesty is found mentioned, and Le Bret's Souveraineté du Roy is cast throughout in the mold of droits royaux. As Loyseau explained the matter in 1610, droits royaux are ‘acts of sovereignty’ (six of them, which he adopts from Bodin, , République, i, 10Google Scholar: making laws; creating officers; arbitrating war and peace; ultimate appeal in justice; coining money; taxation), from which cas royaux derive as aspects of justice—in fact, one should really say cas des Justices Royales (Charles Loyseau, Seigneuries [1608], xivGoogle Scholar, 1 et sqq. with back reference to iii, 81–84 [ed. Oeuvres, 1666, 106, 20–21].) Loyseau on cas royaux is treated by Basdevant-Gaudemet, Brigitte, Charles Loyseau (Paris, 1977), at 154–56Google Scholar, not without some oversimplifying statements about lese majesty but rightly noting the separation of the public interest from that of the king.

22. de Grassaille, Charles, Regalium Franciae, libri duo: iura omnia et dignitates christianissimi Galliae regis contenentes, i, 14 (ed. Lyons, 1538, 205–16Google Scholar). These three items happen (just so?) to be the three cas privilégiés mentioned in the Grand Coutumier (infra note 34 at 102) but the latter two are not called lese majesty.

23. Bacquet, Jean, Des Droits du Domaine de la couronne de France (1580), iii, 7, 9 (ed. Oeuvres, Paris, 1601: pp. 19, 58ff)Google Scholar.

24. Choppin, René, Traité du Domaine de la Couronne de France (1580), II, 6 (ed. Oeuvres, Paris, 1662, II, 218–9Google Scholar). Choppin also reviews cas royaux when commenting upon article 65 of the Coutume d'Anjou [1603] (ed. Oeuvres, Paris, 1662: I, 352–53).

25. Supra note 21.

26. Six Livres de la République (1576), i, 10 (ed. Paris, 1583 [repr. 1961], 211–251 (218f or the passage on officiers).

27. De republica libri sex et viginti [1596] ix, 1 (ed. Frankfort, 1609, 579) for the list of royal rights in the cas royaux vein, and xxiii, 4 (ed. cit., 849–50) for the treatment of sedition. Also worthy of mention is Grégoire's rehearsal of links between ‘divine’ and ‘human’ lese majesty (viii, 3 [ed. cit., 328–31]).

28. François Le Jay, De la dignité des rois et princes souverains (Tours, 1589), speaks of many things which were surely regarded as treason but does not call them lese majesty (cf. 27, 65, 84f, 225). One passage where the term is used, however, is perhaps worthy of special note as a forerunner of Le Bret's thoughts about injuring the king's officials: ‘mais la principale raison pour laquelle les voyes de faict, contre ceux qui sont aupres des Princes, sont qualifiées du crime de leze Majesté, c'est que soubz pretexte du serviteur, on en veut communement au maistre’ (ibid. at 93).

29. de L'Hommeau, Pierre, Les Maximes generalles du droit françois [before 1614], i, 11–13 (ed. Paris, 1657, 27–29Google Scholar) gives as three instances of lese majesty the violation of three droits royaux (buying taxes, coining, war and peace), but never has occasion to mention the primary case of injuring the ruler.

30. de Lalouette, François, Des affaires d'état: des finances, du prince, de la noblesse (1595) ii, 6 (ed. Metz, 1597, 77Google Scholar), makes the observation in extolling French justice that St. Louis did not himself sit in the lese majesty trials of two nobles; indeed, all officers, superior and inferior, have such freedom in judging all civil and criminal cases ‘de domaine ou leze Maieste’ that they pronounce freely against the king as well as for him.

31. Bignon, Jerome, De l'excellence des roys et du royaume de France (Paris, 1610)Google Scholar.

32. Le Roy, Louis, De l'excellence du gouvernement royal (Paris, 1575)Google Scholar.

33. La Roche Flavin, Bernard de, Treze livres des Parlemens de France (Bordeaux, 1617)Google Scholar.

34. Laboulaye, & Dareste, , eds., Grand Coutumier de France (Paris, 1868) 100, 102Google Scholar.

35. Brisson, Barnabé, Le Code du Roy Henry III (1587), viii, 5 (ed. Paris, 1615: 228v–230)Google Scholar; the intensive commentary by Charondas Le Caron in editions after 1600 provides Roman law analogues to the French, but not sufficiently similar to Le Bret's citations to make a case for direct influence.

36. Crimen laesae maiestatis: il problema del reato politico alle soglie della scienza penalistica moderna (Milan, 1974)Google Scholar. This is a work of great erudition—covering Latin, German, French, and English as well as Italian sources—and the author's mastery of the subject is revealed in the clarity and logicality of the topical divisions he employs. We owe thanks to Orest Ranum for bringing it to our attention, after it had slipped through the net of our bibliographical sifting.

37. The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar. Sbricolli seems to have slipped through Cuttler's net, too.

38. Ibid. at 2, 4–27. We have checked a handful of readily available chronicle sources used but not quoted verbatim by Cuttler, and found several instances where what he dubs ‘treason’ is specified as lèse-majesté. If the hundreds of unprinted archival sources used but not quoted verbatim by Cuttler were to be sorted out according to the precise terminology used and plotted according to the nature of the crime and the status of the culprit, we might develop a clear notion of the process of differentiation and integration of the feudal and Roman traditions. Still, it is hard to imagine that the conclusions in Cuttler's work would be altered thereby.

39. That complicated history is related fully in two recent works by Bellamy, J. G., The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and The Tudor Law of Treason, an Introduction (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

40. Bib. Nat. ms. fr. n.a. 3360, fols 135v–146r (a series of pieces from the registers of Parlement) refer to Bourbon's crimes nine different times, not once using the same combination of terms. In order of frequency they are lèse-majesté (8), rébellion (6), transfugat (4), félonie (3), perduelle (1), and trahison (1), and the last of these only as part of a subset of terms used in a phrase that has Roman law reverberations: ‘Les factions, coniurations, conspirations, et trahisons par luy et ses complices faictes et comises contre la personne du Roy, et de son Royaume’ (ibid., at 138r).

41. Cf. du Haut-Jusse, B. -A. Pocquet, ‘Une idée politique de Louis XI: la sujétion éclipse la vassalité’, Revue historique, 226 (1961), 383–98Google Scholar.

42. ‘La souveraineté est la puissance absoluë & perpetuelle d'une République, que les Latins appellent maiestatem’, Les six livres de la République (1576) (ed. Paris, 1583—repr., 1961), 122Google Scholar. When Bodin translated his work into Latin in 1586, the chapter title De la souveraineté became De iure maiestatis and the opening words just quoted rendered as follows: ‘Maiestas est summa in cives ac subditos legibusque soluta potestas’ De republica libri sex (ed. Paris, 1691, 123Google Scholar). Here we see, as not in the French, how the modern term absolue is linked to the maxim princeps legibus solutus est (Dig. 1,3,31) so bruited in later medieval times.

43. The French words majesté and souverain seem to have experienced a chassé-croisé in the sixteenth century: majesté, earlier close to dignité as an impersonal designation of the office of the ruler, became a personal sobriquet; souverain, earlier used to designate the king personally, became, in the form souveraineté, a depersonalized abstraction of the ruler's power.

44. Des recherches de la France, viii, 5 (ed. Paris, 1660, 669). Pierre de Lestoile refers to the sonnet in 1575 (Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, s.v. ‘majesté’). If we accept the statement of a modern author (Decrue, Francis, Anne, Duc de Montmorency (Paris, 1889), 15Google Scholar) that ‘Á l'imitation du roi d'Espagne, Henri II adopte volontiers le titre de majesté réservé jusq’ alors a l'Empereur, then we have the odd twist of a king copying an Emperor (Karl V) who was king (Carlos I) in his own realm. In England, ‘Your Majesty’ did not become the preferred title for the sovereign until the seventeenth century (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘majesty’).

45. d'Orléans, Regnault (Breton jurist and antiquary), Les observations de diverses choses remarquées sur l'Estat, Couronne, & Peuple de France, tant ancien que moderne (Vannes, 1597), 138Google Scholar. In a chapter ‘De la MajestÉ Royale’ (at 133–51), d'Orleans has several anecdotal paragraphs on lese majesty. None of them intersects with Le Bret's later writing, but d'Orléans, like so many others (e.g., supra notes 10, 15), remarks how easily the use of lese majesty is abused. The titular promise of a work by Poisson, Pierre (a counterpart of d'Orléans's in Anjou), Traité de la Maiesté royalle en France (Paris, 1597)Google Scholar, is not fulfilled in the reading.

46. In the French edition cited above, supra note 42 at 155. Bodin is speaking here about the Roman law in Spain, but just before that he had cited several French kings' warnings about free allegation of the Roman law. Bodin wishes here to argue that Roman law had never had free reign in sovereign nations, but the royal proclamations he cites are sure evidence of the gravity of the problem.

47. The title given the treatise by the editor of the first (and only complete) edition, de Sauset, Jacques Bonaud, Contra Rebelles suorum (Lyon, 1526Google Scholar) rings true only for the third tract (fols. 48–110—cf. 74v–75r on lese majesty). Three later printings by François Hotman (as appendices to tracts of his own—cf. Giesey, R.E., The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right to the French Throne (Philadelphia, 1961)Google Scholar;—Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 51:5), 31, n. 115—have only the first two tracts, since they were useful to promote Henry IV's claim to the French throne in the mid-1580‘s. Sbricolli had absorbed Terre Rouge's third-tract ideas (cf. 74, 81, 128, 133, 136–37, 222, 272) as has Cuttler (esp. at 23–25), but they had no reason to dally over the most valuable historical element in it, the elaboration of the corpus mysticum regni. Regretably, the person who could have exploited Terre Rouge the most fully in that respect only knew Hotman's truncated editions when he wrote: Kantorowicz, Ernst H., The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar.

48. The most widely held copy of De seditiosis is that found in Tractatus Universi Iuris xi: 1 (Venice, 1585), 89v–98r, which we have used. Sbricolli integrates Bohier with the Italian tradition (cf. 215, 282, 305–6, 317–23), but Cuttler ignored Bohier, considering him probably (but in our opinion not correctly) as beyond the medieval limits of his research.

49. See Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York, 1970), esp. at 87Google Scholar et sqq.

50. The new Renaissance status of Roman law in respect to French law might be described as ‘separate but equal’, to judge from the many efforts of jurisconsults to establish the conférence between them; eighteen such, from the later sixteenth century until the Revolution, are listed by Camus and Dupin, Profession d'Avocat (Paris, 1832), ii, 322–25.

51. Gigas's, De crimine laesae maiestatis is found conveniently in Tractatus Universi Iuris, xi: 1Google Scholar (supra note, 48). fols. 33V–89V. According to Ghisalberti, Carlo, ‘Sulla teoria dei delitti di lesa maestà nel diritto comune’, Archivio Giuridico (Fil. Serafini), 149 (1955), 140Google Scholar, Gigas represents the maturation of three and a half centuries of doctrinal thought on lese majesty. Sbricolli, at 178, would concur, though he himself chooses Benedict Carpzov's Practica nova Imperialis Saxonica rerum criminalium (1635) as a more relevant terminus ad quern for his own social-political approach to the question. (Ghisalberti's long article, a rather straightforward legal-historical study, should not be thought to have been superseded by Sbricolli's monograph.) If Le Bret knew any foreign criminologist's work, however, it is most likely to have been that of Farinaccio, De crimine laesae maiestatis (dated 1608 by the letter of dedication) found in Part Five of his compendious Praxis et theoricae criminalis (libri), one edition of which is dated Lyon, 1631–35. Farinaccio adopts Gigas's scheme, for the most part, but achieved much greater fame than he.

52. Letter from Alfred Soman to W.F. Church, 5 December 1975 (in the Church Archive, supra note 3, folder n. 1), based upon records of the Conciergerie in Paris. See also Soman, , ‘Le procès de sorcellerie au Parlement de Paris (1565–1640),’ Annales (E.S.C.) 32 (1977), 796–98Google Scholar.

53. la Rochette, Le Brun de, Le Procès criminel (Lyon, 1628), 65–69 (divine), 69–74Google Scholar (humaine). Among the earlier French jurists who employ this distinction is Charles de Grassaille (supra note 22).

54. Picot, Le Bret, 49–52.

55. Petitot, , ed., Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, (Paris, 1823), ii, 76–77Google Scholar; vii, 175–81, 217–19; x, 262–97, 488–500. On the Assembly of Notables see Avenal, , ed., Lettres … du Cardinal de Richelieu, (Paris, 1853), ii, 321–23Google Scholar; Grillon, , ed. Les papiers de Richelieu, vols. (Paris, 1976), i, 584–85Google Scholar; and Petit, Jeanne, L'assemblée des notables des 1626–1627 (Paris, 1936), 195–204Google Scholar.

56. Isambert, , Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises (Paris, 129), xvi, 274–76Google Scholar (articles 170–79).

57. Ibid., at 276. An obvious possible source of influence on Le Bret, which we have studied in some detail, is the work of the royal antiquaries Pierre Dupuy and Théodore Godefroy. They had been associated with Le Bret during his intendency in Lorraine and were compiling records of past lese majesty trials (now mostly in the Bibliothèque Nationale) in the 1630s when Le Bret wrote. Not finding specific traces of influence, we forbear digressing upon this very complex body of manuscripts. Such restraint would not be possible, however, in a large-scale investigation of lese majesty in France such as that planned by W.F. Church, in whose archive (supra note 3) will be found extensive notes on these manuscripts.

58. Ed. 1632, 541; ed. 1689, 143.

59. Bonney, Richard, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624–1661 (Oxford, 1978), 114–15Google Scholar drawing largely on Picot, who (p. 54) points out that there is little known about Le Bret's specific activity on the commissions extraordinaires except for an interesting accusation brought up by Guy Patin against Le Bret in the trial of the Maréchal de Marillac, half-brother of Michel Marillac. Patin claimed Le Bret cast the decisive vote for the death sentence against Marillac in exchange for the presidency of the Parlement of Metz. This dishonorable design on Le Bret's part has never been further substantiated, nor did he ever occupy the presidency of the Parlement of Metz. What is a well-established fact, however, was the irregularity of the trial and Richelieu's utter determination to receive a guilty verdict. For more details on the controversy surrounding the trial of Marillac, see Church, Richelieu, 225–31.

60. Richou, Jacques, Histoire des commissions extra-ordinaires sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1905), 3–32, 46–78Google Scholar. Lloyd Moote has observed that the use of commissions extraordinaires to try crimes of lese majesty was the most visible aspect of the offensive against the powers of officiers; The Revolt of the Judges: the Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652 (Princeton, 1971), 44Google Scholar.

61. Quoted in Church, Richelieu, 327, from Bibl. de l'Arsenal, MS, 2832, fol. 213V.

62. Ed. 1632, 550; ed. 1689, 145.

63. Ed. 1642, 290–91.

64. Ibid.

65. Porchnev, Boris, Les soulèvements populaires dans la France de 1623 à 1648 (Paris, 1963), 48–81Google Scholar; Foisil, Madeline, La révolte des nu-pieds et les révoltes normandes de 1639 (Paris, 1970), 289Google Scholar. Séguier's powers were not that of the commission extraordinaire but even greater, beyond what any chancellor had ever wielded.

66. Bonney, Political Change, 219.

67. Mercure français, xix (1633), 68–73. The 1633 declaration followed upon the flight from France of Le Coigneux, President of the Parlement of Paris, in the company of Gaston d'Orléans and some prominent nobles. When Gaston later returned to France, the nobles were pardoned, President Le Coigneux not; see Church, Richelieu, 319–20.

68. Ed. 1642, 291.

69. Ed. 1689, 146. In a Remonstrance of 1625, Le Bret used a mixed metabolism to describe body-polity relations: the king (as the heart) used officiers (along with laws and ordonnances) to spread ‘les rayons de son auctorité’ through the arteries to the members of the state, to animate each of them to its duties. Comparato, Le Bret, 75–76, cites this when developing the thesis of the transformation in Le Bret's thought from the binomio ‘king-magistrate’ to the binomio ‘king-counselor’, seeing this as the newer notion. In terms of political physiology, however, the rayon passage of 1635 cited in our text is more absolutist than the rayon passage of 1625. Nor are we persuaded by Comparato's suggestion that Le Bret's 1625 arterial metaphor was inspired by Harvey's 1628 discourse on movement of the heart and circulation of blood; not only is the anachronism glaring, but also Le Bret's metaphor of the rays suggests he held to the old theory that air as well as blood circulated in the arteries.

70. The ‘culprit’ complex of officiers is also found expressed in the 1635 edition, far removed from the lese majesty chapter. In the original text, chapter 3, 4, and 5 of Book II were devoted respectively to judicial, military, and financial officers, delineating their duties. In 1635 a new chapter on each of these groups was inserted after the appropriate original chapter, and we have dubbed these the ‘penalty chapters’ because of their concentration upon crimes by, and suitable punishments for, officials guilty of negligence and malfeasance. Although lese majesty is scarcely mentioned in these penalty chapters, the punishments recommended correspond with the severity of confiscation of goods which is special to lese majesty, and the spirit of these chapters conforms with the spirit of the 1642 additions to the lese majesty chapter indicting the officialdom of Rouen.

71. When Comparato, Le Bret, 154, says that, according to Le Bret, officiers can judge ‘crimes of rape, arson, counterfeiting, and lese majesty’ to the exclusion of Hauts Seigneurs, and cites Souv. du Roi iv, 4, we can be sure that he sees iv, 5 (royal judges and lese majesty) as flowing directly from the last paragraph of iv, 4 (the ‘regular’ cas royaux chapter) where the first three of those crimes are mentioned.

72. Ed. 1632, 713; ed. 1689, 189. If the main intent of the first few sentences is, as we believe, to suggest obliquely that lese majesty is not a regular part of royal officiers, jurisdiction, the last sentence giving a Roman example is an oblique way of suggesting how officiers themselves are easily capable of committing lese majesty.

73. Cf. Doolin, P.R., the Fronde (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. Ed. 1632, 140; ed. 1642, 277.

75. Lemaire, André, Les lois fondamentales de la monarchie française (Paris, 1907), 160–61Google Scholar, makes special note of Le Bret's evocation of the ‘louable coutume’ of founders of republics to propose ‘certaines lois fondamentales’ and take care always ‘de les observer exactement. Lemaire finds it curious to see ‘cette conception un peu écoliere’ combined with the theory of divine right in writers like Le Bret, and we see the contradiction nowhere more revealing than in his treatment of lese majesty.