ndence to the national church, and to free the
consciences of men from the horrible power of their spiritual
confessors. Jansenism was a timid protest against spiritual tyranny, a
mild kind of Puritanism, which found sympathy with many people in
France. The Parliament of Paris caught the spirit of freedom, and
protected the Jansenists and those who sympathized with them. It so
happened that a certain bishop published a charge to his clergy which
was strongly imbued with the independent doctrines of the Jansenists.
He was tried and condemned by a provincial council, and banished by
the government. The Parliament of Paris, as the guardian of the law,
took up the quarrel, and Cardinal Fleury was obliged to resort to a
_Bed of Justice_ in order to secure the registry of a decree. A Bed of
Justice was the personal appearance of the sovereign in the supreme
judicial tribunal of the nation, and his command to the members of it
to obey his injunctions was the last resort of absolute power. The
parliament, of course, obeyed, but protested the next day, and drew up
resolutions which declared the temporal power to be independent of the
spiritual. It then proceeded to Meudon, one of the royal palaces, to
lay its remonstrance before the king; and Louis XV., indignant and
astonished, refused to see the members. The original controversy was
forgotten, and the cause of the parliament, which was the cause of
liberty, became the cause of the nation. The resistance of the
parliament was technically unsuccessful, yet, nevertheless, sowed the
seeds of popular discontent, and contributed to that great
insurrection which finally overturned the throne.

[Sidenote: Functions of the Parliament.]

[Sidenote: The Bull Unigenitus.]

It may be asked how the Parliament of Paris became a judicial
tribunal, rather than a legislative assembly, as in England. When the
Justinian code was introduced into French jurisprudence, in the latter
part of the Middle Ages, the old feudal and clerical judges--the
barons and bishops--were incapable of expounding it, and a new class
of men arose--the lawyers, whose exclusive business it was to study
the laws. Being best acquainted with them, they entered upon the
functions of judges, and the secular and clerical lords yielded to
their opinions. The great barons, however, still continued to sit in
the judicial tribunals, although ignorant of the new jurisprudence;
and their decisions were directed by the opinions of