Inaugural Address. XXXUI 
to the year 1417,(1) the Christian world saw, with astonish- 
ment and disgust, two co-existent Popes, each claiming an 
equal right tothe Papal Throne, and supporting their respec~ 
tive pretensions by the full exercise of the papal power, 
the Gallican Church rejected all foreign authority, and go- 
verned herself, principally, by those parts of the Canon 
Law which had been observed previous to the publication of 
the new Decretals. In the great Assembly of the Church, 
which was afterwards held at Constance, in the year 1414,(2) 
the superiority of the Gcumenick Councils over the Pope 
was acknowledzed and formally deciared, and, in conse- 
quence of this declaration, and of an agreement which took 
place between the Council held at Basle in the year 1437, 
and the Sovereign and States General of France convened 
at Bourges, in the same year, the Pragmatic Sanction was 
enacted.(3) But as this Edict materially affected the Papal 
Jurisdiction, it necessarily created many differences between 
the Courts of France and Rome, which, becoming subjects 
of negotiation, were terminated in the year 1516,(4) by the 
Concordat, a treaty concluded between Francis the First 
and Pope Leo the Tenth, at Boulogne, and enregistered in 
the Parliament of Paris, but enregistered in opposition to 
the opinion of that respectable body, and in their own ex- 
pression “ duirés expres commandement du Roi, réiteré 
plusieurs fois.”(5) 
The encroachments of the See of Rome have, in fact, ever 
been opposed by France,(6) and the liberties of the Gallican 
Church, in opposition to the exorbitant pretensions of the 
Holy Pontiff, have, at all times, been asserted, and at all 
times, supported by the King, the Clergy and the People.(7) 
These tiberties, which compreheod not only the pees 
an 
I 
(1) Millot’s History of France, part 2d, p. 163 & 217. 
(2) Dict. Canon. verbo “ Constance.” 
(3) Fleury’s Inst. au Droit Canon, cap. 1. vol. 1. p. 20. 
(4) Fleury’s lustit, aa Droit Canon, vol. 1, p. 22, 
(5) Hericourt, Loix Evclesiastique, introduction, p. 9,10 & 11. 
(6) Fleury’s Inatit, au Droit Canon, vol. 2. p, 220, 
(7] Vide the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682, and the 
Royal Edict thereon in Neron, vol. % p, 172, 
