But, at bottom, the royal nominations were not the thing which most excited the clamours of the parliament; it complained more particularly of the first fruits, and the bull of Leo against the pragmatic sanction; of the first fruits, which, from St. Louis to Charles VII. all the kings of France had prohibited, and which the early popes had declared improper and simoniacal, when they were enacted by the emperors; of the bull of Leo, which denounces as a public pest, as an impious constitution, a pragmatic, founded on the decrees of general councils, cherished by the people and promulgated by the sovereign. This bull suspended, excommunicated, menaced with loss of temporal possessions, civil or ecclesiastic, the French prelates, and even lay lords, who should re-demand or regret the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. In fine, they dared to cite in this same bull of Leo X. the bull of Boniface VIII. “Unam sanctam,” in which the right of humbling thrones, of taking and bestowing crowns, is ascribed to the Roman pontiff. This is what provoked the opposition of the parliament; and we must admit, apparently, this was neither unreasonable nor contrary to the interests of the monarchy.³⁰⁰ If the question had only been to substitute to the right of confirming the elections, possessed for a long time by the monarch, that of making the choice himself, we have reason to think the registry would have experienced much less difficulty. ³⁰⁰ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. xxiii. p. 161, &c.—Gaillard’s Hist, of Francis I. vol. vi. p. 1—120. Such as it was concluded, in 1516, the concordat could not be pleasing to a people who had received with enthusiasm the pragmatic of 1439. Under Francis I., under his successors Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., the universities and the parliaments seized every opportunity of remonstrating against this alteration of the fundamental laws of the Gallican church. The states of Orleans under Charles IX., those of Blois under Henry III. expressed the same regret: the clergy themselves have often demanded the restoration of the ‘pragmatic;’ they said in their remonstrance of 1585, that the king Francis I., when near death, had declared to his son, that there was nothing which weighed so heavily on his conscience as the concordat.³⁰¹ ³⁰¹ This mode of thinking on the pragmatic and concordat was so national, so constant, that in 1789 even the petitions prepared for the sessions of the States general unanimously demanded the abolition of the concordat and restoration of the pragmatic sanction.. Summary of the Petitions, vol. i. p. 33; vol. ii. p. 277; vol. iii. p. 409, 410.