Henry M. Baird · 293 of 379

CHAPTER XI · Opposition of the Parliament of Paris.

It would have been not a little surprising if so tolerant an edict, even though it did little more than repeat the provisions of the last royal letters on the same subject (of the twenty-eighth of January), had been accepted without opposition by the Romish party. Still more strange if parliamentary jealousy had not taken umbrage at the neglect of immemorial usage, when the letter was sent to the lower courts before having received the honor of a formal registry at the hands of the Parisian judges. It is difficult to say which offence was most resented. Toleration, parliament remonstrated, was a tacit approval of a diversity of religion—a thing unheard of from Clovis's reign down to the present day. Kings and emperors—nay, even popes—had fallen into error and been proclaimed heretical or schismatic, but never had such calamity befallen a king of France. It were better for Charles to make open profession of his intention to live and die in his religion, and to enforce conformity on the part of his subjects, than to open the door wide to sedition by tolerating dissent. Better to renew the prohibition of heretical conventicles, and to reiterate the ancient penalties. Particularly ill-advised was it that Charles should be made to pronounce seditious those who applied the names "Papist" and "Huguenot" to their opponents, for it seemed to establish side by side two rival sects, although the name of the one was so novel as never to have found a place in any former missives of the crown.