marie seong-hak kim civil wars” because they “added audacious and wicked spirit (quia addidere animos audacibus et improbis).”63 Finally, the chancellor exhorted the magistrates to unite for peace. The chancellor’s tirade was answered by an improvised remonstrance by Premier Président de Thou. It proved no less acerbic. In one of his most striking public speeches, de Thou remarked that the court “did not aim at anything other than observing [the royal ordinances] and having them observed, knowing how much harm their infractions could bring, but it sees that some ordinances were like spiders’ webs, which can catch minor things but are broken by big things.”64 By this analogy, de Thou questioned, not so implicitly, the overall wisdomand efficacy of the royal laws: they might have been able to compel and restrain the lowly but were completely ineffective, ignored by the powerful; they merely focused on achieving immediate results without paying attention to broader consequences. This public exchange revealed that paternalistic admonitions the chancellor hurled at the Parlement were not taken kindly by the judges. It has been argued that Chancellor L’Hôpital and the Parlement of Paris did not share the same concept of time. As the law court, the Parlement “sought assured, not contingent, truth” and valued prudence in the exercise of justice.65 L’Hôpital could not afford such constitutional complacencies. He needed to limit the harm to civil peace caused by the delay in implementing pacification edicts. The parlements’ right of remonstrance, practiced to the extreme, had to be suspended. The ideal of religious unity ought to yield, temporarily, to political exigency. While the court functioned in terms of the time of reflection, the chancellor was concerned about the time of making a quick decision, an urgent action to deal with the troubles. At the law court, everything moved slowly and prudence conformed to the exercise of stable and immutable justice.66 63 Ibid. p. 69. 64 BN, ms. fr. 4398, fol. 499. See Filhol, René 1937 p. 23; Daubresse, Sylvie 1998a p. 402-403. 65 Daubresse, Sylvie 2005 p. 262-263. 66 Ibid. 147 Legislation and Justice
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