RS 27

michel de l’hôpital & christophe de thou Protestants risked providing ammunition to those who harbored social jealousyagainst the power of therobes. For the besieged judges, under pressures from the urban groups, going to mass was no longer sufficient; they had to adopt an exaggerated stance of Catholicism.126 The institutional postulation of Catholic values meant that even the judges with a moderate religious stance felt compelled to stress the imperative of the unity of religion and oppose the royal policy granting toleration to Protestants. Unfortunately for the religious moderates in the 1560s, any reservation against religious persecution rendered their Catholicism suspect. It is well known that L’Hôpital’s religious toleration policy exposed him to the charges of being a huguenot. His opponents at court muttered “Dieu nous garde de la messe du chancelier,” accusing him of attending mass only for expediency’s sake.127 When Artus de Cossé, surintendant des finances, went to the Parlement of Paris in March 1563 with a mission to persuade the court to register the highly unpopular Edict of Amboise, he had to tell the magistrates that “I am speaking without passion, I am not a huguenot. [But] I plead the court not to delay the registration of the edict.”128 It was not something that the judges of the Parlement could not relate. Many of them had humanist education and had a solid understanding of cultural relativism and even religious relativism.129 But the judges were constantly watched and suspected of heresy by the Catholic population in Paris. The mercuriales at the Parlement of Paris critically reflected the progressive emphasis in French society on moral and religious qualities of the judges.130 From the 1550s, the judicial corps felt the need to delineate its collective identity, separate from its bourgeois roots as well as the gentilhommes. Also the regular waves of incoming new judges at the Parlement of Paris in the 1560s posed problems of integration and internal discipline, prompting a self-propelled campaign for judicial integrity and 126 Ibid. p. 26. 127 Kim, Seong-Hak 1993b p. 595-620. 128 Médicis, Catherine de 1880 vol. 2 p. iii-iv. 129 Kaiser, Colin 1982 p. 17. 130 Ibid. p. 22. 162

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