Edict of Compiègne

The source of the "contagion", as court pamphleteers put it, was Geneva, where the French-born John Calvin achieved undisputed religious supremacy in 1555, the same year that the French Reformed Church organized itself at a synod in Paris, not far from the royal residence at the Louvre.

At the Peace of Augsburg signed that same year in Germany, the essential concept was cuius regio eius religio, "Whose region, his religion".

When the King approached the Parlement for its formal advice beforehand on the best means of punishing and stamping out heresy, the moderate voices of président Séguier and conseiller du Drac urged against the proposed new edict (as unnecessary) and specifically opposed the introduction of an Inquisition into France, an innovation that would appear to circumvent the king's justice, vested in the parlement.

[5] The preamble of the Edict of Compiègne, like earlier ones, remarked on the ineffectiveness of the courts in acting against "heretics", because of the malice or lenience of judges.

The Edict sanctioned a papal brief that established a court of Inquisition in France, though the Parlement delayed in acting upon it, and it was rescinded in April 1558.