Note 572 — Chapter VIII

"A right of appeal to the supreme courts has hitherto been, and still is, granted to persons guilty of poisoning, of forgery, and of robbery; yet this is denied to Christians; they are condemned by the ordinary judges to be dragged straight to the flames, without any liberty of appeal.... All are commanded, with more than usual earnestness, to adore the breaden god on bended knee. All parish priests are commanded to read the Sorbonne Articles every Sabbath for the benefit of the people, that a solemn abnegation of Christ may thus resound throughout the land.... Geneva is alluded to more than ten times in the edict, and always with a striking mark of reproach." Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), Eng. tr., iii. 319, 320. I cannot agree with Soldan (Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 228) in the statement that the Edict of Châteaubriand left the jurisdiction essentially as fixed by the ordinance of Nov. 19, 1549. For the edict does not, as he asserts, permit "the civil judges—presidial judges as well as parliaments—equally with the spiritual, to commence every process." It deprives the ecclesiastical judge, 1st, of the right which the ordinance of 1549 had conferred, of initiating any process where scandal, sedition, etc., were joined to simple heresy, and these cases—under the interpretation of the law—constituted a large proportion of cases; 2d, of the right of deciding with the secular judges in these last-named cases; and 3d, of the power of arrest. De Thou, himself a president of parliament (ii. 375, liv. xvi.), therefore styles it "un édit, par lequel le Roi se réservoit une entière connoissance du Luthéranisme, et l'attribuoit à ses juges, sans aucune exception, à moins que l'hérésie dont il s'agissoit ne demandât quelque éclaircissement, ou que les coupables ne fussent dans les ordres sacrés."