[Sidenote: Advantages gained by the crown.] The clergy reluctantly admitted the concordat into their books after the lapse of two centuries, but solely, as they declared, for convenience of reference. The restoration of the Pragmatic Sanction continued to be demanded by one or all the orders of the States General, during the reigns of Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth, and their successors, not least on the ground that the day that witnessed its repeal also beheld the introduction of the "heresy" that had since attained such formidable proportions.[67] But, if opposed and denounced, the concordat was carried into execution, so far as most of its provisions were concerned, until the French revolution. The advantages gained by the crown were too palpable to be voluntarily relinquished. Almost the entire patronage of the church was thrown into the hands of the king, who, in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, held at his disposal eighteen archbishoprics, 112 bishoprics, 1,666 abbeys for men, and 317 abbeys and priories for women.[68] It must not be forgotten that the _annats_, or first-fruits of benefices, now regularly falling into the pontifical treasury, made the concordat scarcely less valuable to the Papal See.[69] [Sidenote: Era of the Renaissance.] The most enviable distinction of the reign of Francis the First consisted in the fact that it was the era of that extraordinary development of the fine arts and of literature known as the _Renaissance_. Illustrious during the Middle Ages, and foremost in the pursuit of scholastic learning, France had unfortunately lost that proud eminence when the revival of letters enkindled elsewhere a new passion for discovery. Her adventurous sons had taken the lead in the crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but three hundred years later no expeditions were fitted out in her ports to explore and appropriate the virgin territories beyond the western sea. The art of printing and the impulse given to astronomical research originated abroad. The famous mediæval seat of learning seemed to have been suddenly visited with a premature decay. Even the exiled scholars of the East, fleeing before Turkish barbarism, disdained to settle in a country where the treasures of ancient science which they had brought with them from Mount Athos and Constantinople were so inadequately appreciated.[70] [Sidenote: Francis's attainments overrated.] [Sidenote: A munificent patron of art.]