Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/630

620 Reviezos of Books the pope to establish the Gallican liberties on so firm a basis that no assault of Rome ever after wholly overthrew them. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges reproduced almost literally the chief findings of Basel concerning the supremacy of general councils, liberty of episcopal elections, suppression of annates, and limitation upon appeals to Rome. Yet in considering the revolutionary nature of this action, which over- threw the edifice of the medieval papacy almost completely, one needs to guard against going too far and rashly concluding that the whole fabric of the church was changed. It is well to bear in mind that in the fif- teenth century no one contested the church's right of teaching or of possession ; nor of interdicting any of the manifestations of the Catholic faith. The aim of the Pragmatic Sanction was to define clearly the ties which bound the clergy of France to the Holy See, without intention of breaking them, and to emancipate the church and people of France from " the yoke of an undue servitude ". The student of the history of the Hundred Years' War will find it of interest to follow the influence of its events upon the progress of these negotiations. For example, at Paris where the government of the con- stable Armagnac had refused to recognize the new pope unless the lib- erties of the church of France were guaranteed (March, 1418), the concordat of Martin V. would not have had any chance of adoption if at this very moment the atrocious revolution of the Burgundian party had not been successful. It immediately took the other course and sus- tained the prerogatives of the papacy with as much ardor as their op- ponents had advocated the integrity of Gallican liberties; an ordinance of September 9, 1418, entirely annulled the March decree and declared the concordat of Martin V. obligatory in the Burgundian provinces of France. The same regime obtained in the provinces of France under direct English domination. Pierre Cauchon, the famous bishop of Beauvais, before whom Jeanne d'Arc was tried, owed his appointment to this circumstance, for Martin V. conferred the bishopric upon him. It is an interesting speculation whether Cauchon would have become bishop if the chapter of Beauvais had enjoyed the right of election, as the findings of Basel provided: and whether the fate of Jeanne d'Arc would have been otherwise if the bishop of Beauvais had not presided at her trial. Another interesting feature is the conduct of the University of Paris at this time. Although formerly the university had sustained the cause of Gallican liberties, about 141 1 it perceived that it had more to gain by support of pontifical prerogative, and from that hour both in Paris and at Rome pleaded for the " reserves " of the Holy See. The inconsistency of the English policy in France " qui ne se piquait pas de logique " is another interesting fact. From the time of Wyclif England had strenuously opposed the claims of the papacy and was the most ardent supporter of the independence of the English church, yet in France in the fifteenth century the government found it convenient to