s dominions. When the pontiffs refused to recognize this almost
schismatical position taken by France, the Pragmatic Sanction was
further fortified by a law sentencing to death any person who should
bring into the country a bull repugnant to it. Strenuous efforts of
the papacy were directed to secure the repeal of this document, and in
1461 Pius II induced Louis XI to revoke it in return for political
concessions in Naples. This action, opposed by the University and
Parlement of Paris, proved so unpopular that two years later the
Gallican liberties were reasserted in their full extent.

Harmony was established between the interests of the curia and of the
French government by the compromise known as the Concordat of Bologna.
[Sidenote: 1516] The {43} concessions to the king were so heavy that
it was difficult for Leo X to get his cardinals to consent to them.
Almost the whole power of appointment, of jurisdiction, and of taxation
was put into the royal hands, some stipulations being made against the
conferring of benefices on immoral priests and against the frivolous
imposition of ecclesiastical punishments. What the pope gained was the
abandonment of the assertion made at Bourges of the supremacy of a
general council. The Concordat was greeted by a storm of protest in
France. The Sorbonne refused to recognize it and appealed at once to a
general council. The king, however, had the refractory members
arrested and decreed the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1518.

In Italy and Germany the growth of a national state [Sidenote: Italy]
was retarded by the fact that one was the seat of the pope, the other
of the emperor, each of them claiming a universal authority. Moreover,
these two powers were continually at odds. The long investiture
strife, culminating in the triumph of Gregory VII at Canossa [Sidenote:
1077] and ending in the Concordat of Worms, [Sidenote: 1122] could not
permanently settle the relations of the two. Whereas Aquinas and the
Canon Law maintained the superiority of the pope, there were not
lacking asserters of the imperial preeminence. William of Occam's
argument to prove that the emperor might depose an heretical pope was
taken up by Marsiglio of Padua, whose _Defender of the Peace_
[Sidenote: c. 1324] ranks among the ablest of political pamphlets. In
order to reduce the power of the pope, whom he called "the great dragon
and old serpent," he advanced the civil government to a complete