the dictum of the Pope; the clergy were forbidden to appeal to Rome on any point affecting the secular
condition of the nation; and the Roman pontiff was forbidden to appropriate a vacant benefice, or to appoint
either bishop or parish priest.
Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, 1268, forbade the court of Rome to levy
taxes or collect subsciptions in France without the express sanction of the king. It also gave plaintiffs in
the ecclesiastical courts the right to appeal to the civil courts. "The Constitutions of Clarendon were to
England what the Pragmatic Sanction was to France.
Pragmatic Sanction of Germany, 1713. Whereby
the succession of the empire was made hereditary in the female line, in order to transmit the crown to
Maria Theresa, the daughter of Charles VI.
This is emphatically the Pragmatic Sanction, unless some
qualifying word or date is added, to restrict it to some other instrument.
Pragmatic Sanction of Naples,
1759, whereby Carlos II. of Spain ceded the succession to his third son in perpetuity.