Communal, feudal, representative institutions have proved too weak to withstand the stress of foreign and civil war. The monarchy and the monarchical system alone retain their vitality unimpaired, and seem to acquire new vigour from misfortune. Under Charles VII the new regime was begun; under Louis XI and his daughter the ground was ruthlessly cleared of all that could impede regal action at home, while the wars of Charles VIII and Louis XII, purposeless and exhausting as they were, without seriously diminishing domestic prosperity, satisfactorily tested the strength and solidity of the new structure.
Thus equipped and prepared, France enters on the race of modern times as the most compact, harmonious, united nation of the European continent. All that she has suffered is forgotten. The sacrifice of individual and local liberty is hardly felt. In the splendour and power of the monarchy the nation sees its aspirations realised. Nobility, clergy, commons, abandon their old ideals, and are content that their will should be expressed, their being absorbed, their energy manifested in the will and being and operations of the King.
Institutions of independent origin give up their strength to feed his power, and exist if at all only by his sufferance. Time had been when clergy, nobility, even towns, had been powers in the State with which the King needed to reckon, not as a sovereign, hardly as a superior. Before the Reformation two of these powers had been yoked in complete submission, and the third was far on the way to final subjugation.
Critical in all respects, the period of Charles VII and his three successors was not least so in respect of the King’s relations with the Church and the Papacy. The Conciliar movement, fruitless on the whole, had an important effect in France. It initiated a fresh stage in the struggle between Church and State in France; and for a time Gallican liberties were conceived as something different from the authority of the French King over the French Church, and especially over her patronage.
From the beginning the King played a conspicuous part, and in the end he succeeded in seizing the chief share of all that was won from the Pope. But at first he assumed the air of an impartial and sovereign arbiter between Council and Pope. In 1438 the majority of the Council of Basel were in open rupture with the Pope, Eugenius IV. Charles VII, while negotiating on the one hand with the Fathers of the Council, and on the other with the Pope, and outwardly maintaining his obedience to Eugenius, was careful to preserve his liberty of action. In the same year a deputation of the Council waited upon Charles and communicated to him the text of the decrees of reform adopted up to that time by the Fathers. The King called an assembly of the clergy of his kingdom to meet at Bourges, where, together with himself and a considerable number of his chief councillors, ambassadors of Pope and Council were present. The result was the royal ordinance issued on July 7, 1438, and known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
In this solemn edict, issued by the sovereign authority of the prince, but supported by the consent and advice of the august assembly which he had summoned, more of conciliar spirit is observable than of royal ambition. The superiority of the Council to the Pope was acknowledged in matters touching the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the reform of the Church in Head and members. Decennial Councils were demanded. Election by the Chapter or the Convent was to be the rule for the higher ecclesiastical dignities; but the King and the magnates were not debarred from recommending candidates for election. The general right of papal reservation was abolished, and a strict limit placed on the cases in which it was permissible. No benefice was to be conferred by the Pope before vacancy under the form known as an expectative grace.
Provisions were made in favour of University graduates. In every cathedral church one prebend was to be given on the earliest opportunity to a graduate in theology, who was bound to lecture at least once a week. Furthermore, in every cathedral or collegiate church one-third of the prebends were to be reserved for suitable graduates, and the same principle was to obtain in the collation of other ecclesiastical benefices. Graduates were also to be entitled to a special preference in urban parish churches. No appeals or evocation of causes to Rome were to be allowed until the other grades of jurisdiction had been exhausted. Moreover, where the parties should be distant more than four days1 journey from the Curia, all ordinary cases were to be judged by those judges in partibus to whom they belonged by custom and right. The decree of the Council limiting the number of Cardinals to twenty-four was approved. Annates were abolished with a small reservation in favour of the existing Pope. A number of edicts of the Council, relating to the order of divine service and the discipline of the clergy, were confirmed. The decrees of the Council accepted without modification were to be put in force immediately within the kingdom, and the assent of the Council was to be solicited where modifications had been introduced. These purport to have been the decisions of the Council of Bourges, and the King at its request ordered that they should be obeyed throughout the kingdom and in Dauphine, and enforced by the royal Courts.
Yet republican as is the constitution of the Church as sanctioned at Basel and Bourges, it must be noticed that the sovereign authority of the King is expressly invoked by the Council of Bourges as necessary to secure execution of the reforms proposed; and in so far the Church of France is subordinated to the State, and the ultimate issue of these developments foreshadowed. The usurpation of authority is patent; and forgery was needed to support it. Few now believe in the Pragmatic Sanction of St Louis, which seems first to have seen the light after 1438. On the other hand the freedom of election conferred meant little more than the freedom to entertain recommendations from the King and other great personages. For the conflict of intrigue at the Court of Rome was substituted a conflict of influence within the kingdom, and the share of patronage obtained in this by the King was not destined long to satisfy him.
The position of the clergy and people was so far improved that the drain of treasure from France to Rome caused not only by the annates, but also in great measure by the receipts of non-resident beneficiaries, by the fees incident to litigation at Rome, and by the presents required from suitors and petitioners for favour, was under the Pragmatic greatly diminished. But the abuses in the Church, due to the holding of benefices’ in plurality, were not directly touched by the decree. The holding of abbeys and priories in commendam, so detrimental to the discipline of the religious orders, remained unaffected. The University received considerable privileges, and the power of the Parlement over the Church was greatly increased.
Charles VII, though consistent in supporting Eugenius against the Council’s Anti-Pope, as steadily maintained the Pragmatic against the repeated protests of successive Popes, and a very liberal Concordat offered by Eugenius for some reason never came into effect. The King did not however always respect the liberty of election which he had restored to the Church, and we even find him approaching the Pope to solicit his nomination for certain benefices. Louis on his accession went further. It was said that during his exile at Genappe he had promised to abolish the Pragmatic Sanction. No doubt he hoped in cooperation with a friendly Pope to secure more complete control over the appointment to prelacies than was possible under the system of elections established by the Sanction. He hoped at the same time, by making a favour of the repeal, to secure the Pope’s support for the Angevin claims on Naples against Ferrante. Accordingly, towards the end of 1461 the Pope was in possession of his formal promise to abolish the obnoxious edict; and the Parlement was forced to register the letter of abolition as a royal ordinance. But the Pope was too deeply pledged to Ferrante, and saw too clearly the danger of French intervention in Naples. John of Calabria, the representative of the Angevin claims, met an open enemy in Pius II. Neither did Louis find that promotion in France proceeded entirely according to his wishes. Thus from 1463 an anomalous situation prevailed.
The Pragmatic was not formally restored, but a series of edicts were passed against the oppression and exactions of papal agents, against those who applied at Rome for expectative graces or the gift of prelacies, against papal jurisdiction in questions relating to the possession of benefices, and against the export of treasure. In 1472 a Concordat was arranged between Louis and Sixtus IV for the division of patronage between the Ordinary and the Pope, and to regulate other matters of dispute; but hardly any attempt seems to have been made to carry this agreement into effect. On the whole, the policy of Louis seems to have been to keep the whole question open; to resist as far as possible the export of treasure; to discourage the independent exercise by the Pope of his