By 1250, the king’s court, which had always moved with him in his travels, became
resident at Paris, and a professional body of clerical and lay specialists in law gradually
appeared to administer justice in the king’s name. The great success of this law court
came from Louis IX’s decision to allow appeals from the lower courts of bailliages and
sénéchaussées, administrative subdivisions of France established by Philip II Augustus
after 1190. The greater part of the Parlement’s work would henceforth involve appeals
rather than cases in original jurisdiction.
In 1278, Philip III the Bold issued the earliest surviving regulations for operation of
the Parlement, and in the following half-century the court assumed most of the
organization and procedure that it would retain for the remainder of the medieval period.
It found its physical habitat within the royal palace at the western end of the Île-de-la-
Cité in Paris. Its personnel accomplished their work within three judicial departments, the
Grand’Chambre, the Chambre des Requêtes, and the Chambre des Enquêtes.
The Grand’Chambre was the original Parlement from which the two other chambers
emerged. It was also called the Chamber of Pleas, for the great cases of the realm were
pleaded there. It also heard pleas involving the death penalty and criminal cases involving
corporal punishment. It directed and gave oversight to the work of the other chambers,
but its most important responsibility was the issuance of the final legal decree, or arrêt, in
all cases.
The Chambre des Requêtes heard petitions from persons who wished to initiate suits
in the Parlement. If this chamber granted permission to cite one’s adversary before the
court, letters were issued to this effect and a commissioner was sent to the locality of the
dispute to gather testimony and to create a file of written documentation, which was
brought back as an enquête to the Grand’Chambre.
The Grand’Chambre examined the materials of the enquête to determine that the
investigation had been properly conducted and then sent it to the Chambre des Enquêtes
for extended examination and judgment. There was no pleading in this chamber; litigants
never appeared before it. The written documentation of the case was thoroughly
discussed and analyzed by the masters and returned with their conclusions to the
Grand’Chambre. There, the masters of the Grand’Chambre decided upon final judgment
in the case and then issued it as a definitive arrêt, or decree. From the mid-13th century,
secretaries, or greffiers, of the Parlement kept records of its decisions, called the Olim,
and in the 14th century and thereafter they produced series of records of most of the
Parlement’s work.
Franklin J.Pegues
[See also: LAW AND JUSTICE]
Aubert, Félix. Le Parlement de Paris de Philippe le Bel a Charles VII (1314–1422). 2 vols. Paris:
Picard, 1886–90.
Autrand, Françoise. Naissance d’un grand corps de l’état: les gens du Parlement de Paris (1345–
1454). Paris: Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981.
Bougnot, Arthur. Les Olim ou registres des arrêts rendus par la cour du roi. 3 vols. in 4. Paris:
Imprimerie Royale, 1839–48.
Bontaric, Edgard. Actes du Parlement de Paris, première série, de l’an 1254 a Van 1328. 2 vols.
Paris: Plon, 1863–67.
Mangis, Édouard. Histoire du Parlement de Paris. 3 vols. Paris: Picard, 1913–16.
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