The ecclesiastical jurisdictions survived to the end, but with diminished scope. Their competency had been considerably reduced by the Ordinance of Villers Cotterets of 1539, and by an edict of 1693. But a series of ingenious legal theories had been principally efficacious in gradually depriving them of most of the cases which had hitherto come under them. In the 18th century the privilege of clergy did not prevent civil suits in which the clergy were defendants from being almost always taken before secular tribunals, and ever since the first half of the 17th century, for all grave offences, or _cas privilegies_, the royal judge could pronounce a sentence of corporal punishment on a guilty cleric without this necessitating his previous degradation. The inquiry into the case was, it is true, conducted jointly by the royal and the ecclesiastical judge, but each of them pronounced his sentence independently. All cases concerning benefices came before the royal judges. Finally, the _officialites_ had no longer as a rule any jurisdiction over laymen, even in the matter of marriage, except in questions of betrothals, and sometimes in cases of opposition to marriages. The parish priests, however, continued to enter declarations of baptisms, marriages and burials in registers kept according to the civil laws. The "customs." The general customs of the _pays coutumiers_ were almost all officially recorded in the 16th century, definite procedure for this purpose having been adopted at the end of the 15th century. Drafts were prepared by the officials of the royal courts in the chief town of the district in which the particular customs were valid, and were then submitted to the government. The king then appointed commissioners to visit the district and promulgate the customs on the spot. For the purpose of this _publication_ the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of the district, with representatives of the towns and of various bodies of the inhabitants, were summoned for a given day to the chief town. In this assembly each article was read, discussed and put to the vote. Those which were approved by the majority were thereupon decreed (_decretes_) by the commissioners in the king's name; those which gave rise to difficulties were put aside for the parlement to settle when it registered the _coutume_. The _coutumes_ in this form became practically written law; henceforward their text could only be modified by a formal revision carried out according to the same procedure as the first version. Throughout the 16th century a fair number of _coutumes_ were thus revised (_reformees_), with the express object of profiting by the observations and criticisms on the first text which had appeared in published commentaries and notes, the most important of which were those of Charles Dumoulin. In the 16th century there had been a revival of the study of Roman law, thanks to the historical school, among the most