Note 17 — Book the First
Reading edition
Pragmatic Sanction, term of Byzantine origin, was applied to Imperial Edicts (Τὸ Πραγματικόν) containing decrees issued as Fundamental Laws. The Decrees of the Council of Basilea were embodied in a Pragmatic Sanction by the Diet of Mainz, 1434; but at the Council of Vienna 1448 most of the advantages which it intended to secure for the Church in Germany were abandoned.