The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
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 power to provide for prelacies; to oppose reservations and expectative graces; to keep the jurisdiction in question of prelacies and benefices in the hands of the royal judges; and thus, sometimes by suggestion at the Court of Rome, sometimes by election under pressure, sometimes by means of the King’s influence on the Parlement and other Courts, and not infrequently by the blunt use of force, to retain all important ecclesiastical patronage at his own disposal;-and this without any acute breach with Rome or with the Gallican clergy. His means were various and even inconsistent, but his general policy is clear.
The great Estates of Tours in 1484 showed the trend of feeling, both lay and ecclesiastical. The Estate of the Church demanded the restitution of the Pragmatic Sanction. And the third Estate speaks feelingly of the “evacuation de pecune” resulting from the papal exactions, and prays for reform. The Bishops indeed protested in defence of the authority of the Holy See. But the King’s Council took no decisive step. The old confusion continued; it was impossible to say whether the Pragmatic was or was not in force. Louis XII on his accession confirmed the Pragmatic, and the Parle-ment as before seized every opportunity to enforce it by its decisions. But so long as the King and the Pope were on good terms no serious question arose; for Amboise held continuously the office of legate for France and was in effect a provincial Pope. Julius promised to nominate to prelacies in France only titularies approved by the King. After the breach between Louis and Julius the kingdom was in open disobedience, and the law was silent. It was left for Francis I and Leo X to put aside the principle of free election so long defended by Parlement and clergy, and to agree upon a division of the spoils, which ignored the liberties of the Gallican Church, while conferring exceptional privileges on the King of France.
The result was the Concordat of 1516. Elections were abolished. The King was to nominate to metropolitan and cathedral churches, to abbeys and conventual priories, and if certain rules were observed the papal confirmation would not be refused. Reservations and expectative graces were abolished. The third of benefices was still reserved to University graduates. The regular degrees of jurisdiction were to be respected, unless in cases of exceptional importance. By implication though not by open stipulation annates were retained. The Lateran Council accepted this agreement. The Pragmatic was finally condemned. Although the Parlement and the University of Paris protested energetically, resistance was in vain. No power in France could withstand this alliance of King and Pope, by which the material ends of each were secured, without any conspicuous tenderness being shown for the spiritual interests of the Church.
During the same period the proud independence of the University of Paris was successfully attacked. In 1437 the exemption from taxation claimed for its numerous dependents was abolished. In 1446 it was first made subject to the jurisdiction of the Parlement. In 1452 the Cardinal d’Estouteville, acting in concert with the King and the King’s Parlement, imposed upon it a scheme of reformation, and its independence of secular jurisdiction was at an end. Under Louis XII the old threat of a cessation of public exercises was used in resistance to royal proposals of reform. The scholars soon found that the King was master, and were like the rest of the kingdom obliged to submit. The condemnation of the Nominalists by Louis XI is a grotesque but striking proof that even the republic of letters was no longer exempt from the interference of an alien authority.
The Church, whose independence was thus impaired by progressive encroachments, could not claim that its privileges were deserved by virtues, efficiency, or discipline. Plurality, non-residence, immorality, neglect of duty, worldliness, disobedience to rule, were common in France as elsewhere. Amboise did something for reform in the Franciscan, Dominican, and Benedictine Orders; but far more was needed to effect a cure. Unfortunately the Concordat of Francis I tended rather to stimulate the worldly ambitions and interests of the higher clergy, than to aid or encourage any royal attempts in the direction of reform.
Passing to those secular authorities that were in a position to refuse obedience to the King, we have first to notice the appanaged and other nobility of princely rank. The successful Wars of 1449-53 drove the English from the limits of France, extinguished the duchy of Aquitaine, and left only Calais and Guines to the foreigner. The English claims were still kept alive, but the only serious invasion, that of 1475, broke down owing to the failure of cooperation on the part of Burgundy. The duchy of Aquitaine was revived by Louis XI as a temporary expedient (1469-72) to satisfy the petulant ambition of his brother, while separating him by the widest possible interval from his ally of Burgundy. On the death of Charles of Aquitaine the duchy was reoccupied. But during the English Wars a Power had arisen in the East which menaced the very existence of the monarchy. In pursuance of that policy of granting escheated or conquered provinces as appanages to the younger members of the royal house, which facilitated the transition from earlier feudal independence to direct royal government, John had in 1363 granted the duchy of Burgundy to his son, Philip, and the gift had been confirmed by Charles V. By marriage this enterprising family added to their dominions Flanders, Artois, the county of Burgundy, Nevers and Rethel, Brabant and Limburg; by purchase Namur and Luxemburg, and, mainly by conquest, Hainault, Holland, and Zeeland. Enriched by the wealth of the Low Countries, fortified by the military resources of so many provinces, animated against the house of France by the murder of his father (1419), released from his oath of allegiance and further fortified by the cession of the frontier fortresses along the Somme by the Treaty of Arras in 1435, during thirty years after the conclusion of that treaty Philip the Good (1419-67) had been content to maintain a perfect independence, and to gather his strength in peace. Then, as the old man’s strength failed, his son’s opportunity came. Enraged that Louis had been allowed in 1463 to repurchase the towns on the Somme under the terms of their original cession, Charles the Bold contracted a League with the discontented princes and nobles of France, and in 1465 invaded the kingdom, and with his allies invested Paris.
The Treaties of St Maur des Fosses and of Conflans dissolved the League of the Public Weal, but restored to Burgundy the Somme towns, and established Charles of France in the rich appanage of Normandy. Then in four campaigns Liege and the other cities of her principality, which in reliance on French support had braved the power of Burgundy, were brought low, and in 1468 the episcopal city was destroyed in the forced presence of the King of France. Meanwhile, in 1467 Charles the Bold succeeded to the duchy whose policy he had controlled for two years, and in 1468 he married the sister of Edward IV, the hereditary enemy of France.
The fortunes of Charles of Burgundy perhaps never stood higher than at the fall of Liege. Louis XI, his prisoner at Peronne, had been forced to promise Champagne to Charles of France, the ally of Burgundy, which would have made a convenient link between