History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 1

by Henry Martyn Baird

Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.

It is a somewhat anomalous circumstance that the first decided step in repressing the arrogant claims of the Papal See was taken by a monarch whose singular merits have been deemed worthy of canonization by the Roman Church. Louis the Ninth had witnessed with alarm the rapid strides of the Papacy toward universal dominion. His pride was offended by the pretension of the Pontiff to absolute superiority; his sovereign rights were assailed when taxes were levied in France at the pleasure of a foreign priest and prince. He foresaw that this abuse was likely to take deep root unless promptly met by a formal declaration placing the rights of the French monarch and nation in their true light. For this reason he issued in 1268 a solemn edict, which, as emanating from the unconstrained will of the king, took the name of the "Pragmatic Sanction of Saint Louis."

The preamble of this famous ordinance, upon the authenticity of which doubts have been unnecessarily cast,[50] declares the object of the king to be to secure the safety and tranquillity of the church of his realm, the advancement of divine worship, the salvation of the souls of Christ's faithful people, and the attainment of the favor and help of Almighty God. To his sole jurisdiction and protection had France ever been subject, and so did Louis desire it to remain. The provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction were directed chiefly to guarding the freedom of election and of collation to benefices, and to prohibiting the imposition of any form of taxes by the Pope upon ecclesiastical property in France, save by previous consent of the prince and clergy.[51]

In this brief document had been laid the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, not under the form of novel legislation, but of a summary of previous usage.

Philip the Fair and Boniface.

Political reasons, not long after the death of Louis, gave new vigor to the policy of opposition to which this king had pledged France. His grandson, the resolute Philip the Fair, found fresh incitement in the extravagant conduct of a contemporary Pope, Boniface the Eighth. The bold ideas advanced by Hildebrand in the eleventh, and carried into execution by Innocent the Third in the thirteenth century, were wrought into the very texture of the soul of Boniface, and could not be concealed, in spite of the altered condition of mediæval society. Intolerant, headstrong, and despotic, he undertook to exercise a theocratic rule, and commanded contending monarchs to lay down their arms, and submit their disputes to his arbitrament. To such a summons Philip was not inclined to submit. The crafty and unscrupulous prince, whose contempt for divine law was evidenced by his shameless practice of injustice, whose coffers were filled indifferently by the confiscation of the rich spoils of the commanderies of the Templars, and by recklessly debasing the national currency, did not hesitate to engage in a contest with the most presumptuous of Popes. He appealed to the States General, and all three orders indignantly repudiated the suggestion that their country had ever stood to the Papacy in the relation of a fief. The disastrous example of the English John Lackland had found no imitator on the southern side of the channel. The Pope was declared a heretic. Emissaries of Louis seized him in his native city of Anagni, within the very bounds of the "Patrimony of St. Peter," and the rough usage to which he was then subjected hastened his death. His successors on the pontifical throne proved somewhat more tractable.

The Popes at Avignon.

During his short and unimportant pontificate, Benedict the Eleventh restored to the chapters of cathedrals the right of electing their own bishops. Upon his death, Philip secured the elevation to the pontifical dignity of an ecclesiastic wholly devoted to French interests, the facile Clement the Fifth, who, in return for the honor conferred upon him, removed the seat of the Papacy to Avignon. Here for the seventy years of the so-called "Babylonish Captivity," the Popes continued to reside, too completely subject to the influence of the French monarchs to dream of resuming their tone of defiance, but scarcely less exacting than before of homage from other rulers. In fact, the burden of the pecuniary exactions of the Popes rather grew than diminished with the change from Rome to Avignon, and with the institution of rival claimants to the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his court, but recognized as legitimate by only a portion of Christendom. The devices for drawing tribute from all quarters were multiplied to an almost insupportable extent. So effectual did they prove, that no pontiff, perhaps, ever left at his death a more enormous accumulation of treasure than one of the Popes of Avignon, John the Twenty-second. Much of this wealth was derived from the rich provinces of France.

The Schism.

Close upon the "Captivity" followed the "Schism," during which the generally acknowledged Popes, who had returned to Rome, were opposed by pretenders at Avignon and elsewhere. A double incentive was now given to the monarchs of Europe for setting bounds to the ambition of the Papacy. For while the Popes, through the loss of a great part of their authority and prestige, had become less formidable antagonists, their financial extortions had waxed so intolerable as to suggest the strongest arguments appealing to the self-interest of kings. Hence the frequency with which the demand for "a reformation in the head and the members" resounded from all parts of the Western Church. And hence, too, those memorable councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which, coming in rapid succession at the commencement of the fifteenth century, bade fair to prove the forerunners of a radical reformation. It does not belong here to discuss the causes of their failure to answer this reasonable expectation. Yet with one of these assemblages is closely connected a very important incident in the history of the Gallican Church.