After having withdrawn, as we have said, from obedience to both the candidates for the papacy, the Gallican church began to regulate itself agreeable to the primitive laws, and received with transport the decrees of the councils of Constance and Basle, which limited the power of the pope and subjected it to that of the united church. The council of Basle, when Eugene IV. had quitted it, sent its decrees to the king of France, Charles VII. who communicated them to the great nobles of his kingdom, secular as well as ecclesiastical, met together for this purpose in the holy chapel of Bourges. The decrees of Basle and of Constance, approved and modified by this assembly, formed the pragmatic sanction, which was read and proclaimed as the king’s edict, in the parliament of Paris, the 3d of July, 1439. It is determined by this edict, that general councils ought to be held every ten years, that their authority is superior to that of the pope, that the number of cardinals should be reduced to twenty-four, that the presentation to ecclesiastical benefices should be perfectly free, that the first fruits should no longer be demanded, and that neither reservations or reversions should be recognised.²⁸² All orders of the state received this “pragmatic” with enthusiasm; and the whole course of history attests how dear it was to the French. ²⁸² We must observe, said the president Henault, that in 1441 the king issued a declaration respecting the pragmatic sanction, implying that his design and that of the assembly at Bourges, was, that the arrangement made between Eugene IV. and his ambassadors should take effect from the day of the date of this pragmatic, without any regard to the date of the Basle decree, issued before the date of the pragmatic; and from this it is concluded, that the decrees of general councils, as respects discipline, have no force in France until after they have received authority from the edicts of our kings.—Ab. Chron. of Hist, of France, ann. 1438.