PRAGMATIC SANCTION OF BOURGES
. Promulgated by Charles VII in 1438, the royal decree known as the Pragmatic Sanction
of Bourges regulated the relationship among the crown, the French church, and the
papacy. The crown reformed church governance stressing French independence from
papal authority: it suppressed papal taxation, subjected church courts to royal courts, and
reaffirmed the right of local clerical bodies to elect or appoint ecclesiastical dignitaries.
The occasion for the decree was the meeting of a French synod in support of the Council
of Basel, which had asserted the supremacy of the council over the papacy.
The twenty-three articles of the decree represent the fulfillment of the Gallican
tradition in development since the reign of Philip IV. It was issued in the Roman-law
form of a “Pragmatic” to emphasize historical sources of secular authority in this domain.
Clergy and crown shared an interest in rejecting papal authority, but the vexatious
question of whether the king could impose his will on the clergy remained unresolved.
Political circumstance led both Louis X and Charles VIII to suspend the decree, but Louis
XII insisted on its enforcement after 1499, and it remained the basis of church
governance in France until superseded by the Concordat of Bologna in 1516.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: CONCORDAT OF AMBOISE; GALLICANISM]
Delarulle, Étienne, Edmonde-René Labande, and Paul Ourliac, eds. L’église au temps du Grand
Schisme et de la crise conciliare, 1378–1449. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1962.
Lewis, P.S. Later Medieval France: The Polity. New York: St. Martin, 1968.
Martin, Victor. Les origines du gallicanisme. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939.
Valois, Noel. Histoire de la Pragmatique Sanction de Bourges sous Charles VII. Paris: Picard,
1906.
PRAGUERIE
. See ARISTOCRATIC REVOLT
PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONAL
MATERIALS
. Prayers and devotional materials in Old French belong to two broad categories: those
derived from the liturgy and those of more literary and personal inspiration. The liturgical
works include French versions of the Te Deum, the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus, and the
Agnus Dei; translations and paraphrases of the Credo and the Pater Noster, including the
The Encyclopedia 1419