Note 541 — Chapter XXIII · THE PAPACY AND THE TEMPORAL POWERS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

Under the grâce expectative the pope conferred upon a prelate a benefice which at the time was filled, to be assumed as soon as it should fall vacant. Benefices of larger importance, such as the offices of bishop and abbot, were often subject to the réserve; that is, the pope regularly reserved to himself the right of filling them, sometimes before, sometimes after, the vacancy occurred. These acts constituted clear assumptions by the popes of power which under the law of the Church was not theirs, and, though the framers of the Pragmatic Sanction had motives which were more or less selfish for combatting the réserve and the grâce expectative, there can be no question that the abuses aimed at were as real as they were represented to be.