Volume I Part 6 (1/2)

[Footnote 52: Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, xiii. 317, etc.]

[Footnote 53: The Pragmatic Sanction is long and intricate, consisting in great part of references to those portions of the canons of the Council of Basle which it confirms. The entire doc.u.ment may be seen in the Ordonnances des Roys de Fr. de la troisieme race, xiii. 267-291, and in the Recueil gen. des anc. lois franc., ix. 3-47. Isambert thus defines the term _pragmatic_: ”On appelle _pragmatique_ toute const.i.tution donnee en connaissance de cause du consentiment unanime de tous les grands, et consacree par la volonte du prince. Le mot _pragma_ signifie p.r.o.noncee, sentence, edit; il etait en usage avant Saint Louis.”]

[Footnote 54: Abbe Claude Fleury, Libertes de l'eglise Gallicane, in Leber, iii. 321.]

[Footnote 55: ”Commemoravit (_i. e._, the papal legate) ea quae per ipsum tibi nostro nomine pollicenda, vovenda et promittenda, nos, antequam regnum suscepisemus, religionis instinctus quidam deduxerat.” Letter of Louis XI. to the Pope, Tours, Nov. 27, 1461.]

[Footnote 56: Louis XI.'s letter to the Pope, annulling the Pragmatic Sanction, is in the Ordonnances des roys de Fr. de la troisieme race, xv., 193-194. Its tone could not have been more submissive had it been penned for him by the Pope himself. The Pragmatic Sanction is referred to contemptuously as ”const.i.tutio quaedam in regno nostro quam _Pragmaticam_ vocant.” Louis professes to be moved by the consideration that obedience is better than all sacrifice, and that the Pragmatic Sanction is hateful to the Papal See, ”utpote quae _in seditione_ et schismatis tempore ... nata est; et quae, dum _tibi, a quo sacrae leges oriuntur et manant_, quantamlibet eripit auctoritatem, _omne jus et omnem legem dissolvit_.” It was ”as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.” Nothing could surpa.s.s Louis's obsequiousness: ”_Sicut mandasti_ ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus,” etc.

He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: ”Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos _in verbo regio_ pollicemur tuae Beat.i.tudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso,” etc. Louis was never more to be distrusted than when he bound himself by the most stringent promises.]

[Footnote 57: See the Remonstrances of Parliament, Ordonnances, etc., xv. 195-207.]

[Footnote 58: The calculations on which these figures are based can be seen in sections 73-76 of the Remonstrances above referred to. Ibid., xv. 195-207.]

[Footnote 59: ”Les autres ambitieux de benefices, si espuisoient les bourses de leurs parens et amis, tellement qu'ils demeuroient en grand'

mendicite et misere, ou'aucunesfois estoient cause de l'abreviation de leurs jours; et tout le fruit qu'ils emportoient, _c'estoit pour or du plomb_.” Ibid., section 64.]

[Footnote 60: Ibid., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 61: Historians have represented Cardinal Balue as enclosed in the very cage he had used for the victims of his own cruelty. This appears to be incorrect. There is an entry in the accounts of Louis XI., under date of February 11, 1469, of the payment of sixty livres Tournois to Squire Guion de Broc, to be used by him ”in having constructed, at the castle Douzain, an iron cage, which the said lord (_i. e._, Louis) has ordered to be made for the security and guard of the person of the Cardinal of Angers (Balue).” Vatout, Chateau d'Amboise, 64, 65, note.]

[Footnote 62: Fleury, _ubi supra_, 340.]

[Footnote 63: See Capefigue's animated description of the scene in the cathedral of Bologna, _ubi supra_, i. 229.]

[Footnote 64: The text of the concordat is given in the Recueil gen. des anc. lois, etc., xii. 75-97.]

[Footnote 65: Leue, publiee et registree par l'ordonnance et du commandement du Roy, nostre sire, reiteree par plusieurs fois en presence du seigneur de la Trimouille, etc. Recueil des anc. lois, xii.

97.]

[Footnote 66: Appellatio Univ. Parisiensis pro sacrarum Electionum et juris communis defensione, adversus Concordata Bononiensia, _apud_ Gerdes. Hist. Ev. Renov. i. 61-69 (Doc.u.ments). ”Idcirco,” it runs, ”a domino nostro Papa non recte consulto, et ... pragmaticae sanctionis statutorum abrogatione, novorum statutorum editione, ... ad futurum concilium legitime ac in tuto loco, et ad quem libere et c.u.m securitate ... adire poterimus ... provocavimus et appellavimus, prout in his scriptis provocamus et appellamus.”]

[Footnote 67: I have made considerable use of the very clear dissertation on the Pragmatic Sanction and the concordat, republished in Leber, Collection de pieces relatives a l'hist. de France, tome 3. The commotion in Paris at the introduction of the concordat is described in a lively manner by the unknown author of the ”Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois I^er,” 39, 70, etc.]

[Footnote 68: Almanach royal pour l'an 1724 (Paris), 34.]

[Footnote 69: Leo X. also obtained from Francis, as an equivalent for the concessions embodied in the concordat, the sum of 100,000 _livres_, as the dower of Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a princess of royal blood, married in 1518 to Lorenzo de' Medici, Count of Urbino, the Pope's nephew. The money was to be levied upon the next t.i.the taken from the revenues of the French clergy, which Leo thus authorized. Catharine de' Medici sprang from this marriage. See the receipt of Lorenzo for the instalment of a quarter of the dower, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, ix. (1860), 122.]

[Footnote 70: Mignet, etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Reforme a Geneve, Memoires, ii. 243. etienne Pasquier draws a dark picture of the barbarism reigning at Paris at the accession of Francis. More highly honored than any other university of Europe, that of Paris had fallen so low that the Hebrew tongue was known only by name, and as for Greek, the attention given to it was more apparent than real. ”Car mesmes lors qu'il estoit question de l'expliquer, ceste parole couroit en la bouche de plusieurs ignorans, _Graec.u.m est, non legitur_.” The very Latin, which was the language in ordinary use, was rude and clumsy. Recherches de la France, 831.]

[Footnote 71: La Harpe, Cours de literature, vi. 405.]

[Footnote 72: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois premier (Paris ed., 1769), vii. 282-300. Felibien, among the many interesting doc.u.ments he has preserved, reproduces one of the first programmes of the professors of the College Royal, preserved from destruction, doubtless, simply from the circ.u.mstance that it formed the ground of a citation of the professors by the syndic of the university (Beda), January, 1534, wherein he alleges that ”some simple grammarians or rhetoricians, who had not studied with the faculty, had undertaken to read in public and to interpret the Holy Scriptures, as appears from certain bills posted in the streets and squares of Paris.” In the programme, Agathius Guidacerius, Francis Vatable, P. Arnesius (Danesius), and Paul Paradisus figure as lecturing--the first two upon the Psalms, the third on Aristotle, and the last on Hebrew grammar and the book of Proverbs.

Michel Felibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1725), iv. 682.]

[Footnote 73: The law of 1523 thus sets forth some of their exploits: ”Outre mesure multiplient leurs pilleries, cruautez et meschancetez, jusques a vouloir a.s.saillir _les villes closes_: les aucunes desquelles ils out prinses d'a.s.saut, saccagees, robees et pillees, force filles et femmes, tue les habitans inhumainement, et cruellement traitte les aucuns _en leur crevant les yeux, et coupant les membres les uns apres les autres, sans en avoir pitie, faisant ce que cruelles bestes ne feroient_,” etc. Isambert, Recueil des lois anc., xii. 216. See also Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (1516), 36; and Lettres de Marguerite d'Angouleme, Nouvelle Coll., lettre 7.]

[Footnote 74: Journal d'un bourgeois (1516), 37.]

[Footnote 75: Ibid, (anno 1527), 328.]