great an impulse in this
century, was largely brought about by a somewhat similar combination of
just impulses and of practical motives,--the latter being frankly
expressed by Beaumanoir and in several charters of the period.

The feudal court of the king had the double character of a council and
of a court of justice; with the growth of the royal authority the
functions of this court naturally increased, and it became necessary to
divide them,--there was accordingly constituted the political court, or
grand council, and the judicial court, or Parlement. Philippe le Bel,
who was far more of an innovator than even Saint-Louis, first gave the
latter a distinct organization. It was to sit twice a year at Paris,
two months at a time, in the Palais de la Cite, which, in 1303, took the
name of the Palais de Justice. The monarch counted upon his sovereign
court of justice, which extended its jurisdiction over the whole
kingdom, to bring the nation definitely under the royal authority. As
the Parlement had been separated from the _Grand Conseil_, or royal
court, so was there separated from it the _Chambre des Comptes_, charged
with the administration of the finances. With this monarch also
originated the institution of the _ministere public_, or magistrates
charged, in all legal cases, with the defence of the rights of the king
and of the public welfare.

[Illustration: CASTELLAN. REIGN OF LOUIS XIII. After a drawing by Adrian
Moreau.]

But the most important measure of the administration of this reign was
the convocation, in 1302, of the first States-General. "The _Etats
Generaux_ of Philippe le Bel," says Michelet, "constituted the national
era of France, its certificate of birth." Despotic as he was, the king
found himself under the necessity of seeking the support of the people
for aid in his enterprises and to sustain him against the intolerable
claims of the Papacy. The _Assemblees Generales_, in which the bishops
met with the seigneurs, had been convoked as early as the reign of Pepin
le Bref, in the middle of the eighth century, but in the _Etats
Generaux_ the sons of vilains took their seats with nobles and clergy.
And very loyally they came to the aid of the monarch, not only in
granting him the right to levy subsidies on the Church, but also in
protesting against the bull of excommunication which Boniface VIII had
launched against the king and the nation, and which Philippe had caused
to be publicly burned on the