Note 56 — Chapter I

Louis XI.'s letter to the Pope, annulling the Pragmatic Sanction, is in the Ordonnances des roys de Fr. de la troisième 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 "constitutio quædam 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 quæ in seditione et schismatis tempore ... nata est; et quæ, dum tibi, a quo sacræ 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 surpass 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 tuæ Beatitudini 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.