Judging the French Reformation : Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements

This angle on the French Reformation pits immovable object - the French appellate courts or parlements - against irresistable force - the most dynamic forms of the Protestant Reformation.

The work investigates systematically the judicial history of the French Reformation.

It examines the myriad encounters between Protestants and judges in French parlements, extracting information from registers of official criminal decisions both in Paris and in provincial capitals, and identifying more than 425 prisoners condemned to death for heresy by French courts between 1523 and 1560.

The author notes the ways in which Protestants resisted the French judicial system even before the religious wars, and sets their story within the context of heresy prosecutions elsewhere in Reformation Europe, and within the long-term history of French criminal justice.