As far as Canon law and the liturgy are concerned, the feast of the _Conceptio B.M.V._ remained in the fourteenth century as incomplete as it had been in the twelfth and thirteenth. Generally speaking, however, each bishop had then the right of appointing the festivals for his own diocese, but this right was always restricted to the appointment of those festivals already recognised and permitted by the Church universal which he desired should be observed within his own diocese—as, for example, whether St Mary Magdalene should be kept as a holiday or not. But in this case it was not a question of a feast already recognised by ecclesiastical authority, and its opponents could always object with reason: _Non est authenticum_. Important if not decisive steps were at length taken by ecclesiastical authorities in the fifteenth century. In the meantime, the doctrine, which had been defined and formulated by Duns Scotus was so widely accepted, except among the Dominicans, and enjoyed so much popularity among the people, who violently took sides on the question, that it was possible for the Council of Basel (which began by being ecumenical, but became schismatical after its quarrel with the pope), to state in its thirty-sixth session, on the 17th September 1439, in answer to the petition of the theological faculty of Paris, that the doctrine that Mary by a special gift of grace had never been subject to original sin was “pious and agreeable to the worship of the Church, the Catholic Faith, and the teaching of Holy Scripture.” The Council forbade the contrary doctrine to be taught. At the same time it renewed the decree in regard to the feast of “her Holy conception, which was kept on the 8th December both by the Roman Church and by others.”[561] Granting that the Council was ecumenical, all circumstances connected with the feast, with regard to both doctrine and ritual, were now formally settled. This decree was not without effect, as soon appeared from the fact that in the Mainz Breviary of 1507 the lections for the second nocturn of the feast are drawn from it. It also certainly influenced the further spread of the feast, as soon appeared from its being expressly authorized and received by a provincial synod at Avignon, held under the presidency of a papal legate in 1457.[562]