EDICT

(Lat. edico, / speak out.) An instrunVnt signed and sealed by a despotic prince to serve as a law to his subjects. In ancient Rome, the ordinances of the magistrates, but especially of the two praetors, prat or urbonus and prabtor peregrin us, were so called. Previously to the time of August us, the grand principles of Roman law were exceedingly ambiguous and undefined; and to remedy this defect in some measure, the praetors used to publish, on their acce ion to office, edicts or rules for regulating the practice of their courts, as well as for their own guidance in the decision of doubtful cases. A jurisdiction, however, thus vague and arbitrary in its nature, being constantly abused, it was enacted by the Corneliar. Law (b. c. 56), that the praetor of the year should be compelled to adhere to the spirit and letter of his first procla mation. The edicts of the preceding praM or were not binding on his succe or. If the latter confirmed them, they were styled edict a Vetera, or tralatitia; in contradistinction to edict a nova, those framed by himself. (See Prjetor.) Under the emperor Hadrian, a digest of the best decisions of the praetors from the earliest times was made by Sylvius Julian us, collected into a volume called Edictum Perpetuum, or Perpetual Edict, ratified by the emperor and senate, and fixed as the invariable standard of civil jurisprudence. The Edict of Milan was a proclamation i ued by Const an tine after the conquest of Italy (a. d. 313), to secure to the Christians the restitution of their civil and religious rites, of which Ihey had long been deprived, and to establish throughout his extended dominions the principles of a wise and enlightened toleration. The most famous edict of modern history is the Edict of Nantes, i ued by Henry rv. in 1593, to secure to the Protestants the free exercise of their religion. This act, after continuing in force nearly a century, was repealed by Louis XIV.; and, as is well known, its revocation led to a renewal of the persecutions and bloody scenes which previously to the i uing of this edict had been enacted against the Protestants. The depopulation caused by the sword was also increased by emigration. Above half a million of her most useful and industrious subjects deserted France, and exported, together with immense sums of money, those arts and manufactures which had chiefly tended to enrich the kingdom. About 50.000 refugees pa ed over into England; and there can be little doubt that their representations of the cruelties perpetrated by the King of France tended to excite the suspicions of the English against their own Roman Catholic sovereign, and in some degree accelerated the advent of the Revolution of 1688. See Huguenots. In the French law, the term edict has a wide signification, beinz applied equally to the most momentous and the most trifling proclamations of the government. [s. 400]