From a society of estates to a society of qualification: the libraries of the Parisian judges in the 16th and early 17th centuries

A step in the development from a society of estates to a society of qualification finally realized in the French Revolution may be observed at the highest judges of the Parlement de Paris in the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. Not content of being assigned to the Third Estate, they demanded a new structure of both society and state. Their living conditions and especially their libraries give insights into their intellectual backgrounds.