After having withdrawn, as we have said, from obedience to both the candidates for the papacy, the Gallican church began to regulate itself agreeable to the primitive laws, and received with transport the decrees of the councils of Constance and Basle, which limited the power of the pope and subjected it to that of the united church. The council of Basle, when Eugene IV. had quitted it, sent its decrees to the king of France, Charles VII. who communicated them to the great nobles of his kingdom, secular as well as ecclesiastical, met together for this purpose in the holy chapel of Bourges. The decrees of Basle and of Constance, approved and modified by this assembly, formed the pragmatic sanction, which was read and proclaimed as the king’s edict, in the parliament of Paris, the 3d of July, 1439. It is determined by this edict, that general councils ought to be held every ten years, that their authority is superior to that of the pope, that the number of cardinals should be reduced to twenty-four, that the presentation to ecclesiastical benefices should be perfectly free, that the first fruits should no longer be demanded, and that neither reservations or reversions should be recognised.²⁸² All orders of the state received this “pragmatic” with enthusiasm; and the whole course of history attests how dear it was to the French.
²⁸² We must observe, said the president Henault, that in 1441 the king issued a declaration respecting the pragmatic sanction, implying that his design and that of the assembly at Bourges, was, that the arrangement made between Eugene IV. and his ambassadors should take effect from the day of the date of this pragmatic, without any regard to the date of the Basle decree, issued before the date of the pragmatic; and from this it is concluded, that the decrees of general councils, as respects discipline, have no force in France until after they have received authority from the edicts of our kings.—Ab. Chron. of Hist, of France, ann. 1438.
In Italy the schism had gradually produced a revolution in their political views. Under doubtful and rival demi-popes; under the feeble influence of the emperors Robert, Sigismund, Robert II. Frederick III. the Guelph and Ghibeline factions become almost extinct either from want of heads or of standards, or lassitude consequent on four or five centuries of madness and misfortune. The Visconti, become the chiefs of the Ghibelines, sunk and disappointed, replaced by the Sforza, a family just hatched and destined to combat for interests new as itself. The Medicis, less recent, laboured to calm the commotions which agitated Florence, and indulged the hope of seeing liberty, laws, and literature flourish, in the loveliest country they could make their abode.— Impelled also by the idea of their advances in the fine arts, other cities of Italy aspired to free themselves altogether from the German yoke, and to exercise an habitual influence over the people they had outstripped in civilisation. This national pride it was which reconciled them secretly to the papacy, disposed them to consider it as the centre of Italian power, and to mourn over the ancient splendour of this once dreaded focus. The middle of the fifteenth century, is the true era in which was confirmed, and propagated in Italy, the doctrine elsewhere denominated ultramontane, a doctrine which has since been but the mask of the political interests of this nation, well or ill understood by her. Since then, the Italians have generally abstained from seconding the resistance that the English, the Germans, the French, have not ceased to oppose to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, to his worldly ambition, and abuse of his spiritual ministry. Already, in the councils of Constance and Basle, the Italian prelates were in general remarked for the lukewarmness of their zeal in the reformation of ecclesiastical irregularities. Terrified no doubt, by the rash boldness of Wickliffe and many other innovators, they did not perceive that propriety of manners and wise laws would be the most certain security against alterations in doctrine; or rather, the preservation of the faith was not what they most sincerely desired to secure. Behold then, in what disposition the successors of Nicholas V., found the clergy, the learned, the rulers, and consequently the people of Italy; and such were the points of support on which the pontifical levers went to work, in order to put it under way once more.