PRAGMATIC SANCTION. - I. Pragmatica sanctio is the name applied in the late Roman Empire to a type of imperial constitution, whose nature is disputed and not reducible to a single concept. Sometimes the p. s. contains provisions of a general character, at other times particular norms; it is commonly held to be something intermediate between the lex generalis and the rescriptum; recently it has been likened to an ordinance of necessity.
In certain cases it serves to transmit legislative documents, such as the p. s. which, according to the provisions of Theodosius II, was to accompany the constitutions issued by the emperor of one of the partes imperii so that those constitutions might have force in the territory subject to the power of his colleague. A famous p. s. is the one called pro petitione Vigilii of 14 August 554, with which Justinian sent to the West, at the request precisely of Pope Vigilius, a group of his constitutions and confirmed the force of the parts of his codification previously promulgated, in Italy.
Bibliography4 works
Rodolfo Danieli
PRAXEDES, saint - St. P. wringing out the sponge with which she has gathered the blood of the martyrs. Painting by B. Luini (early 16th cent.). Naples, Museo Filangieri.
II. THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION OF BOURGES
A constitution promulgated by Charles VII, King of France, to regulate the relations of the French Church, at the most acute moment of the conflicts between the Council of Basel and Eugene IV. The King convoked at Bourges in June 1438 an assembly of the clergy, at which laymen were also present; he refused to take sides between the two opposing parties, though he was disposed to promote union. He promulgated the Pragmatic Sanction on 7 July, imposing observance throughout the kingdom of the disciplinary canons decreed up to that time at Basel and revised by the Assembly. The Council approved the Pragmatic Sanction on 17 Oct. 1439. In it the superiority of the Council over the Pope was proclaimed and its periodicity sanctioned; the intervention of the Pontiff in ecclesiastical appointments, in the collation of benefices, in judgments and in appeals was limited; annates were regulated; and useful prescriptions were also given concerning divine worship, the morality of the clergy, and the observance of censures. It gave to Gallicanism (v.) its most perfect expression and constituted the substance of the Gallican liberties in the claim to temper the papal authority within the limits of the canons. It was therefore not accepted by the pontiffs, who attempted to obtain its abrogation; it ceased to have force with the Concordat of 1516, but in the following centuries the Parliament of Paris claimed to restore it to vigor, without resigning itself to its decline.
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III. PRAGMATIC SANCTION OF CHARLES VI
A solemn act issued by this emperor of Germany at Vienna on 19 April 1713, for the purpose of regulating the succession in the other Habsburg states in default of male descendants, admitting females as well, in order to preserve their indivisibility and unity. It gave rise to the wars of succession down to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748.
Bibliography
Pio Paschini