e delegate, the organ, the
representative of the king; it was in the name of the king himself that
he affirmed the absolute power of the kingship and the absolute duty of
submission. Francis I. could not have committed the negotiation with Leo
X. in respect of Charles VII.'s Pragmatic Sanction to a man with more
inclination and better adapted for the work to be accomplished.

The Pragmatic Sanction had three principal objects:--

1. To uphold the liberties and the influence of the faithful in the
government of the church, by sanctioning their right to elect
ministers of the Christian faith, especially parish priests and
bishops;

2. To guarantee the liberties and rights of the church herself in
her relations with her head, the pope, by proclaiming the necessity
for the regular intervention of councils and their superiority in
regard to the pope;

3. To prevent or reform abuses in the relations of the papacy with
the state and church of France in the matter of ecclesiastical
tribute, especially as to the receipt by the pope, under the name of
annates, of the first year's revenue of the different ecclesiastical
offices and benefices.

In the fifteenth century it was the general opinion in France, in state
and in church, that there was in these dispositions nothing more than the
primitive and traditional liberties and rights of the Christian church.
There was no thought of imposing upon the papacy any new regimen, but
only of defending the old and legitimate regimen, recognized and upheld
by St. Louis in the thirteenth century as well as by Charles VII. in the
fifteenth.

The popes, nevertheless, had all of them protested since the days of
Charles VII. against the Pragmatic Sanction as an attack upon their
rights, and had demanded its abolition. In 1461, Louis XI., as has
already been shown, had yielded for a moment to the demand of Pope Pius
II., whose countenance he desired to gain, and had abrogated the
Pragmatic; but, not having obtained what he wanted thereby, and having
met with strong opposition in the Parliament of Paris to his concession,
he had let it drop without formally retracting it, and, instead of
engaging in a conflict with Parliament upon the point, he thought it no
bad plan for the magistracy to uphold in principle and enforce in fact
the regulations of the Pragmatic Sanction. This important edict, then,
was still vigorous in 1