Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/209

 FRANCE

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FRANCE

Charles VI, or even the last years of Charles V, dates the custom of giving to the French kings the exclusive title of Rex Chrislianissimus. Pepin the Short and Charlemagne had been proclaimed "Most Christian" by the popes of their day; Alexander III had con- ferred the same title on Louis VII ; but from Charles VI onwards the title comes into constant use as the special prerogative of the kings of France. " Because of the vigour with which Charlemagne, St. Louis, and other brave French kings, more than the other kings of Christendom, have upheld the Catholic Faith, the kings of France are known among the kings of Chris- tendom as 'Most Christian'." Thus wrote Philippe de Mdzieres, a contemporary of Charles VI. In later times the Emperor Frederick III, addressing Charles VII, wrote : " Your ancestors have won for your name the title Most Christinn, as a heritage not to be sepa- rated from it." From the pontificate of Paul II (1464) the popes, in ad- dressing Bulls to the kings of France, always use the style and title Bex Chris- tianissimus. Furthermore, European public opinion always looked on Bl. Joan of Arc, who saved the French monarchy, as the heroine of Christenilom, and believed that the Maid of Orleans meant to lead the king of France on an- other crusade when she h:id secured him in the peaceful possession of his own coun- try. France's national heroine was thus heralded by the fancy of her con- temporaries, by Christ iiii' de Pisan, and by that \'(-'- netian merchant whose letters have been preserve 1 for us in the Morosini Chronicle, as a heroine whose aims were as wide as Christianity itself.

The fifteenth century, during which France was growing in national spirit, and while men's minds in France were still conscious of the claims of Christen- dom on their country, was also the century during which, on the morrow of

the Great Schism and of the Councils of Basle and of Constance, there began a movement among the powerful feudal bishops against pope and king, and which aimed at the emancipation of the Galil- ean Church. The propositions upheld by Gerson, and forced by him, as representing the University of Paris, on the Comicil of Constance, would have set up in the Church an aristocratic regime analo- gous to what the feudal lords, profiting by the weak- ness of King Charles VI, had dreamed of establishing in the State. A royal proclamation, in 1418, issued after the election of Pope Martin V, maintained in opposition to the pope "all the privileges and fran-

king a right of patronage over 500 benefices in his kingdom. This was the beginning of the practice adopted by the French kings of arranging the gov- ernment of the Church directly with the popes over the heads of the bishops. Charles VII, whose struggle with England had left his authority still very precarious, was constrained, in 1438, during the Council of Basle, in order to appease the powerful prelates of the .Assembly of Bourges, to promulgate the Pragmatic Sanction, thereby asserting in France those maxims of the Council of Basle which Pope Eugene IV had condemned. But straightway he bethought him of a concordat, and overtures in this sense were made to Eugene IV. Eugene replied that he well knew the Pragmatic Sanction — " that odious act" — was not the king's own free doing, and a concordat was discussed between them. Louis XI (1461-83), whose domestic policy aimed at ending or weak- ening the new feudalism which had grown up dur- ing two centuries through the custom of presenting appanages to the brothers of the king, extended to the feudal bishops the ill will he professed towards the feudal lords. He de- tested the Pragmatic Sanc- tion as an act that strength- ened ecclesiastical feudal- ism, and on 27 November, 1461, he announced to the pope its suppression. At the same time he pleaded, as the demand of his Par- liament, that for the future the pope should permit the colk^tion to ecclesiastical benefices to be made either wholly or in part through the civil power. The Con- cordat of 1472 obtained from Rome very material concessions in this respect. At this time, besides " epis- copal Gallicanism ' ', against which pope and king w'ere working together, we may trace, in the writings of the lawyers of the closing years of the fifteenth cen- tury, the beginnings of a "royal Gallicanism "which taught that in France

Cathedral of Sainte-Cecile. Albi

the State should govern the Church.

The Italian wars undertaken by Charles VIII (1493- 98), and continued by Louis XII (1498-1515), aided by an excellent corps of artillery and all the resources of French furia, to assert certain French claims over Naples and Milan, did not quite fulfil the dreams of the French kings. They had, however, a threefold result in the worlds of politics, religion, and art. Politically, they led foreign powers to believe that France was a menace to the balance of power; and hence arose alliances to maintain that balance, such, for instance, as the League of Venice (1495) and the Holy League (1511-12). From the point of view of chises of the kingdom", put an end to the custom of art they carried a breath of the Renaissance across annates, limited the rights of the Roman court in col- the Alps. And in the religious world they furnished

lecting benefices, and forbade the sending to Rome of articles of gold or silver. This proclamation was a.s- sented to by the young King Charles VII in 1423, but at the same time he sent Pope Martin V an embassy ask- ing to be absolved from the oath he had taken to up- hold the principles of the Galilean Church and seeking to arrange a concordat which would give the French

France an opportunity on Italian soil of asserting for the first time the principles of royal Gallicanism. Louis XII and the Emperor Maximilian, supported by the opponents of Pope .Julius II, convened in Pisa a council that threateneil the rights of tlie Holy See. Matters looked very serious. The understanding be- tw'een the pope and the French kings hung in the bal-