re of any kind.

Other articles regulate the order of ecclesiastical appeals, which, with
the exception of the "_causa majores_" specified by law, and those
relating to the elections in cathedral and conventual churches, are
henceforth to be decided on the spot by the ordinary judges; appeals are
to be carried in all cases to the court immediately superior; no case to
be referred to the pope "_omisso medio_," _i.e._, without passing
through the intermediate tribunals. The remaining clauses consist of
regulations for the performance of divine service, and various matters
of discipline. The reader will remember that Pope Eugenius, on the
occasion of his temporary reconciliation with the Council of Basel in
1433, expressed his approbation of all its synodal acts up to that date;
and this sanction of their validity is held by Gallicans to extend to
the period of the second and final rupture in 1437. It follows that the
provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, so far as they coincide
with the decrees of Basel prior to 1437, were authorized by the holy
see; and this includes them all, with two exceptions.

The Pragmatic Sanction was registered by the Parliament of Paris on
July 13, 1439; becoming thereby part of the statute law of France. Its
publication caused universal satisfaction throughout the kingdom. At
Rome, on the other hand, it was indignantly censured and resolutely
opposed. Eugenius IV vainly strove to obtain the King's consent to an
alteration of some of its details. Nicholas V protested against it
without effect; but the superior genius and subtle measures of Pius II
were more successful. This Pontiff denounced the Pragmatic at the
Council of Mantua in 1460 as "a blot which disfigured the Church of
France; a decree which no ecumenical council would have passed nor any
pope have confirmed; a principle of confusion in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy. Since it had been in force, the laity had become the masters
and judges of the clergy; the power of the spiritual sword could no
longer be exerted except at the good pleasure of the secular authority.
The Roman pontiff, whose diocese embraced the world, whose jurisdiction
is not bounded even by the ocean, possessed only such extent of power in
France as the parliament might see fit to allow him." The ambassadors of
Charles VII, however, reminded his holiness that the Pragmatic Sanction
was founded on the canons of Constance and Basel, which had been
ratified by