. Promulgated by Charles VII in 1438, the royal decree known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges regulated the relationship among the crown, the French church, and the papacy. The crown reformed church governance stressing French independence from papal authority: it suppressed papal taxation, subjected church courts to royal courts, and reaffirmed the right of local clerical bodies to elect or appoint ecclesiastical dignitaries. The occasion for the decree was the meeting of a French synod in support of the Council of Basel, which had asserted the supremacy of the council over the papacy.
The twenty-three articles of the decree represent the fulfillment of the Gallican tradition in development since the reign of Philip IV. It was issued in the Roman-law form of a “Pragmatic” to emphasize historical sources of secular authority in this domain. Clergy and crown shared an interest in rejecting papal authority, but the vexatious question of whether the king could impose his will on the clergy remained unresolved. Political circumstance led both Louis X and Charles VIII to suspend the decree, but Louis XII insisted on its enforcement after 1499, and it remained the basis of church governance in France until superseded by the Concordat of Bologna in 1516.
Paul D. Solon
[See also: CONCORDAT OF AMBOISE; GALLICANISM]
Delarulle, Etienne, Edmonde-Rene Labande, and Paul Ourliac, eds. L ’eglise au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliare, 1378-1449. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1962.
Lewis, P. S. Later Medieval France: The Polity. New York: St. Martin, 1968.
Martin, Victor. Les origines dugallicanisme. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939.
Valois, Noel. Histoire de la Pragmatique Sanction de Bourges sous Charles VII. Paris: Picard,
1906.
World History
