Resumen de Provincial Estates and the revision of customary law in medieval and early modern France: evidence from the procès-verbal narratives
In this article, Kathleen Parrow has studied the procedures followed in those areas of the French kingdom, nearly two-thirds of the whole, where customary law prevailed for codifying the laws into a definitive written format. The processes could be initiated either by subjects asking for written confirmation, or by agents of the royal government, who showed an increasing interest in general codification, starting from the Ordinance of Charles VII of 1454, which envisaged a comprehensive programme and officially claimed to have been achieved by the 1660s. The aim was to settle the law, removing contradictions and ambiguities through a final draft, confirmed by the king, and formally proclaimed. It was a complex process, initially confined to the requests of individual subjects or corporate groups for clarification of specific points of law relevant to their interests. For this there was an inquest procedure, the enquêtepar turbe, when a select local jury determined the ruling. For the kind of comprehensive codification of the whole provincial custom, which most interested the royal government, a special royal commission was appointed including both crown officials and local Estates representatives. It was open under either procedure to confirm what was understood to be local custom, or to amend it, if thought necessary. But in any case for a valid codification a local consensus was required, before being submitted to the king for confirmation. The article is mainly based on printed evidence from Poitou, where the surviving record material is unusually comprehensive. The study suggests that codification of provincial custom was a very typical process of negotiation between the subjects and the royal government, and also between the different Estates and communities within the local societies. It reflected the survival of the basic principle that what touches all should be approved by all. The article is therefore a further contribution to the ongoing debate about the realities of royal centralization in medieval and early modem societies.
