Charles held an assembly at Bourges in the month of July, 1438. He attended this himself, with the Dauphin, his son, afterward Louis XI, many princes of the blood, and other nobles, with a great number of bishops and doctors of the Church. The deputies of Pope Eugenius IV and those of the prelates of Basel were heard one after another.
The result of this Assembly of Bourges was an ordinance and twenty-three articles which were called the "Pragmatic Sanction," a name introduced under the ancient emperors. In this were adopted, sometimes with modifications, most of the decrees of Basel. Among them the first was conceived in these terms: "General councils shall be held every ten years, and the pope, according to the opinion of the council which is closing, shall designate the place of the next council, which cannot be changed except for most important reasons and by the advice of the cardinals. As to the authority of the general council, the decrees published at Constance are renewed, by which it is said that the general council holds its power immediately from Jesus Christ; that all persons, even of papal dignity, are subject to it in that which regards the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the reformation of the Church in the head and in the members; and that all must obey it, even the pope, who is punishable if he transgresses it. Consequently, the Council of Basel states that it is legitimately assembled in the Holy Ghost, and that no one, not even the pope, can dissolve, transfer, nor prolong it, without the consent of the fathers of the council."
The other articles may be reduced principally to the following propositions: Canonical elections shall be held, and the pope shall not reserve the bishoprics and other elective benefices. Expectant pardons shall be abolished. Graduates shall be preferred to others in the conferring of benefices, and for this reason they shall suggest their degrees during Lent. All ecclesiastical causes of the provinces at a distance of four days' journey from Rome shall be tried in the place where they arise, except major causes and those of churches which are immediately dependent on the holy see. In the case of appeals, the order of the tribunals shall be preserved. No one shall ever appeal to the pope without passing previously through the intermediate tribunal. If anyone, believing himself injured by an intermediate tribunal subject to the pope, makes an appeal to the holy see, the pope shall name the judges from the same places, unless there should be important reasons for bringing the cause directly to Rome. Frivolous appeals are punished. The celebration of divine service is regulated and spectacles in churches are forbidden. The abuse of ecclesiastical censures is repressed, and it is declared that no one is obliged to shun excommunicated persons, unless they have been proclaimed by name, or else that the censure shall be so notorious that it cannot be denied or excused. Such are the principal matters of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. It was registered at the Parliament of Paris, July 13, 1439; but the King ordered its execution from the day of its date, 1438.
The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges had a little defect; it was radically null; for every contract is null which is not consented to by both of the contracting parties. Now the Pragmatic Sanction was a contract between the churches of France and the pope to regulate their mutual relations. The consent of the pope to it was therefore absolutely necessary, the more especially as he was the superior. For if one must admit that a general council is superior to the pope, the Assembly of Bourges was certainly not a general council. Moreover, the first use that it made of its Pragmatic Sanction was to break it—and happily. In its first articles, it had recognized the Council of Basel as ecumenical and as superior to Pope Eugenius IV, with obligation to everyone to obey its decrees. Now, the following year, 1439, the Council of Basel deposes Eugenius IV, and substitutes for him Felix V, with obligation to everyone, under penalty of anathema, to reject the first and submit to the second. Nevertheless France does neither the one nor the other; she continues to recognize Eugenius IV, and derides the pope of Ripaille and of Basel, as she will declare in a new assembly of Bourges in 1440. Above certain laws which men write on sheets of paper, with a goose-quill and ink, they bear in themselves another law, written by the hand of God, and which is good sense. Happy the nations which never depart from this living and general law, or which, at least, know enough to return to it promptly!
Accordingly, September 2, 1440, in the new Assembly of Bourges, King Charles VII published a declaration by which he commanded all his subjects to yield obedience to Pope Eugenius, with prohibition to recognize another pope or to circulate among the public any letters or despatches bearing the name of any other one whomsoever who pretended to the pontificate. Nevertheless, Monsieur de Savoie, for so Charles VII called the antipope, was united to him by ties of blood. This declaration of the King and of the Assembly of Bourges was religiously observed in all France, except in the University of Paris, where they declared openly enough for the antipope. The reason of this is very simple: the doctors of the Church in Paris dominated in the mob of Basel, the antipope was of their own creation, and their colleagues of Paris could not fail to recognize him.
As for King Charles VII, at the close of the year 1441 he sent an embassy to Pope Eugenius to ask the convocation of a general council which should put an end to the troubles of Christendom. The principal orator was the Bishop of Meaux, Pierre de Versailles, formerly Bishop of Digne, and originally a monk of the Abbey of St. Denis. He had an audience in full consistory December 16th, and he spoke to the Pope in the following terms:
"The most Christian King, our master, implores your assistance, most holy Father, or rather it is the entire people of the faithful who address to you these words of Scripture: 'Be our leader and our prince.' Not that any one among us doubts that you have not the princedom in the Church; for we know that the state of the Church was constituted monarchical by Jesus Christ himself; but we ask you to be our prince by functions of zeal and by considerateness. We pray you to manage wisely the boat of St. Peter, in the midst of the tempests by which it is buffeted. The princes of the Church, most holy Father, ought not to resemble those of the nations. The latter have frequently no other rule of government than their own will; on the contrary, the princes of the Church ought to temper the use of their authority; and it is for that that the holy fathers have established laws and canons. Now, here is the source of the ills which afflict the Church. There are two extremes: one consists in exercising ecclesiastical authority as the princes of the nations exercise theirs, without rule and without measure; the other is the enterprise of those who, in order to correct its abuses, have desired to annihilate authority, who have denied that supreme power rests in the Church, who have given this power to the multitude, who have changed the entire ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable schism among the faithful.
"These considerations, most holy Father, have touched the most Christian King; and to mitigate these two extremes, he has resolved to solicit the convocation of a general council. That of Basel pushed the second extreme too far when it undertook to suppress the truth as to the supreme power in one alone. That of Florence, which you are now holding, has well elucidated this truth, as may be seen in the decree concerning the Greeks; but it has determined upon nothing to temper the use of this power. This has caused many to believe it too near to the first extremity. A third will be able, therefore, to take the just mean and restore everything to order.
"I shall be told, no doubt, that there is no more need of general councils; that there have been enough of them up to this time; that the Roman Church suffices to terminate all controversies; that a prince does not willingly intrust his rights to the multitude; that we would be again exposed, by the convocation of another council, to the movements which agitated the assembly at Basel; but, in order to answer that, it is sufficient to cast our eyes upon the present state of the Church. There should rest in you, most holy Father, and in all other prelates, two kinds of authority; one of divine power and institution, the other of confidence in the people and of good reputation. The first, although it cannot fail you, has, however, to be amenable to the second, and you will obtain this by means of a general council, not such a one as that of Basel, but such as the most Christian King asks; that is to say, a council which shall be held at your order, and which shall be regulated according to the decrees of the holy fathers. Such an assembly will not be a confused multitude; and your monarchical power, which comes from heaven, which is attested by the Gospel, which is recognized by the saints and by the universal Church, will not be exposed to any danger."
The orator then shows how dangerous it is to refuse the convocation of this council, dwelling long upon the enterprises of the prelates of Basel, whom he emphatically blames, even to the extent of saying that, from their practice and their maxims, there is no more peace possible in the Church, and that a great many are asking if this schism be not that great apostasy of which St. Paul spoke to the Thessalonians, and which should open the door to the Antichrist. He finishes the address by this declaration: "I have desired to say all this in public, most holy Father, in order to make known to you the upright intentions of the King my master in the present affair. He does not attach himself to flesh and blood, but he hears the voice of the celestial Father. From this source he learns to recognize you and to revere you as the sovereign pontiff and the head of all Christians, the vicar of Jesus Christ, conformably with the doctrine of the saints and of the whole Church. And because he sees that these truths are obscured to-day, he asks for the call of the general council. In this he equally manifests his justice and his piety.