34 royal power, the French justice system was increasingly taken over by royal magistrates. At the time, and to a large extent all the way to the Revolution, a large part of criminal justice was delegated to seigniorial courts as an Integral part of the feudalist system.^’ There were three levels of seigniorial courts: low, medium, and high {basses, moyennes and halites). Basically, the seignior’s judicial power extended over all those who “retired and rose” {“couchaient and levaient”) within the boundaries of the seignior’s lands.^ Using the concept of cas royaux, the royal power began increasingly to intervene in the domain of seigniorial justice fromthe thirteenth century onwards. According to the theory of cas royaux, crimes related to the person, property or rights of the king, or to the peace for which the king was responsible, belonged to the exclusive judicial domain of the monarch. By the Revolution, a wide range of crimes, ineluding lese-majesty, sacrilege, counterfeiting, arson, rape, adultery, suicide, popular disturbance and all crimes committed by royal officials, were brought under the concept of cas royaux.^ As far as lawof proof was concerned, in the beginning of the thirteenth century the French monarchy confronted a choice between two basic alternatives: the system of group inquest, dating back to Charlemagne’s time, in which a group of local inhabitants was responsible for answering under oath the questions that were put to them by inquisitors of the Crown, and the more modern Roman-canon modes of proof. The second alternative was chosen and brought to the statutory level in the royal ordinance of Louis IXin 1258. The ordinance prohibited the use of the judicial duel in royal courts and, instead, ordered that the king’s judges should examine individual witnesses in secret.^ At the statutory level, the ordinance introduced the inquisitorial procedure and the legal theory of proof into French law. But the ordinance of 1258 did not change the law of proof completely and overnight. Instead of strongly directing the course of law, the ordinance refleeted the wishes and goals of its authors. Although the ordinance did not directly affect the seigniorial courts at all, the trend was toward centralization of the court apparatus. The struggle between the local nobility and the crown is clearly seen in royal courts as well, for the nobility had the right to a judicial ^ Esmein 1882 pp. 3-8; Olivier-Martin 1984 pp. 139-144; Rutf 1984 p. 24; and Carbasse 1990 pp. 79-82. ^ Esmein 1882 pp. 3-4. ** Ibid. p. 23; Ruff 1984 p. 24. Dawson 1960 p. 44, 47. Dawson suggests that the Roman-canon methods of proof mav have been first introduced because of the difficulty of gathering six or more persons to pronounce a group verdict. Taking individual witnesses into a secret place and extracting testimonies fromthem would have been easier. According to Dawson, thus, the adoption of Roman-canon proof would be interpreted as a sign of weakness of the royal power rather than a demonstration of its strength. Ibid. p. 48.
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