iss confederation and certain universities. Germany
remained neutral; Charles VII. of France confined himself to securing to
his kingdom by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which became law on the
13th of July 1438, the benefit of a great number of the reforms decreed at
Basel; England and Italy remained faithful to Eugenius IV. Finally, in 1447
Frederick III., king of the Romans, after negotiations with Eugenius,
commanded the burgomaster of Basel not to allow the presence of the council
any longer in the imperial city. In June 1448 the rump of the council
migrated to Lausanne. The antipope, at the instance of France, ended by
abdicating (7th April 1449). Eugenius IV. died on the 23rd of February
1447, and the fathers of Lausanne, to save appearances, gave their support
to his successor, Nicholas V., who had already been governing the Church
for two years. Trustworthy evidence, they said, proved to them that this
pontiff accepted the dogma of the superiority of the council as it had been
defined at Constance and at Basel. In reality, the struggle which they had
carried on in defence of this principle for seventeen years, with a good
faith which it is impossible to ignore, ended in a defeat. The papacy,
which had been so fundamentally shaken by the great schism of the West,
came through this trial victorious. The era of the great councils of the
15th century was closed; the constitution of the Church remained
monarchical.

AUTHORITIES.--Mansi, vol. xxix.-xxxi.; Aeneas Sylvius, _De rebus Basileae
gestis_ (Fermo, 1803); Hefele, _Conciliengeschichte_, vol. vii.
(Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874); O. Richter, _Die Organisation und
Geschaftsordnung des Baseler Konzils_ (Leipzig, 1877); _Monumenta
Conciliorum generalium seculi xv., Scriptorum_, vol. i., ii. and iii.
(Vienna, 1857-1895); J. Haller, _Concilium Basiliense_, vol. i.-v. (Basel,
1896-1904); G. Perouse, _Le Cardinal Louis Aleman, president du concile de
Bale_ (Paris, 1904). Much useful material will also be found in J. C. L.
Gieseler's _Ecclesiastical History_, vol. iv. p. 312, &c., notes (Eng.
trans., Edinburgh, 1853).

(N. V.)

BASEMENT, the term applied to the lowest storey of any building placed
wholly or partly below the level of the ground. It is incorrectly applied
to the ground storey of any building, even when, as for instance in the
case of Somerset House, London, the ground floor is of plain or rusticated
masonry, and the upper storey which it supports is d