The edict is not one document but four, and the shape matters. Ninety-two general articles form the public text registered by the parlements. Fifty-six particular articles follow, dealing with named towns and cases. Two royal brevets, issued separately and not registered, carry the parts nobody wanted on the public record: a subsidy for Protestant ministers, and the grant of about a hundred places de surete, fortified towns garrisoned by Huguenots at the king's expense for eight years.
The general articles begin by burying the memory of the war. Everything done on both sides since 1585 is declared extinguished and not to be prosecuted. Liberty of conscience is granted throughout the kingdom without exception. Liberty of public worship is granted much more narrowly: in towns where it was practised in 1596 and 1597, in one place in each bailiwick, and on the estates of nobles with rights of high justice. It is excluded from Paris and from a radius around it, and from the court and the army.
Civil equality is the part that reached furthest. Huguenots are admissible to every office and dignity, may not be excluded from universities, schools or hospitals, and are to have their cases heard in chambers of the parlements composed of both confessions. Henry IV, who had been a Protestant and had accepted Catholicism to take the throne, was uniquely placed to impose it, and the parlements still resisted registration for months.