[Footnote 56: 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.] [Footnote 57: See the Remonstrances of Parliament, Ordonnances, etc., xv. 195-207.] [Footnote 58: The calculations on which these figures are based can be seen in sections 73-76 of the Remonstrances above referred to. Ibid., xv. 195-207.] [Footnote 59: "Les autres ambitieux de benefices, si espuisoient les bourses de leurs parens et amis, tellement qu'ils demeuroient en grand' mendicité et misere, ou'aucunesfois estoient cause de l'abreviation de leurs jours; et tout le fruit qu'ils emportoient, _c'estoit pour or du plomb_." Ibid., section 64.] [Footnote 60: Ibid., _ubi supra_.] [Footnote 61: Historians have represented Cardinal Balue as enclosed in the very cage he had used for the victims of his own cruelty. This appears to be incorrect. There is an entry in the accounts of Louis XI., under date of February 11, 1469, of the payment of sixty livres Tournois to Squire Guion de Broc, to be used by him "in having constructed, at the castle Douzain, an iron cage, which the said lord (_i. e._, Louis) has ordered to be made for the security and guard of the person of the Cardinal of Angers (Balue)." Vatout, Château d'Amboise, 64, 65, note.] [Footnote 62: Fleury, _ubi supra_, 340.] [Footnote 63: See Capefigue's animated description of the scene in the cathedral of Bologna, _ubi supra_, i. 229.] [Footnote 64: The text of the concordat is given in the Recueil gén. des anc. lois, etc., xii. 75-97.] [Footnote 65: Leue, publiée et registrée par l'ordonnance et du commandement du Roy, nostre sire, réiterée par plusieurs fois en presence du seigneur de la Trimouille, etc. Recueil des anc. lois, xii. 97.]