Though the signs of strife with the pope were fewer in the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that the national feeling persisted.
[Sidenote: The Gallican Church] France manifested a spirit of liberty hardly less fierce than that of England.

It was the French King Philip the Fair who humiliated Boniface VIII so severely that he died of chagrin.

During almost the whole of the fourteenth century the residence of a pope subservient to France at Avignon prevented any difficulties, but no sooner had the Council of Constance restored the head of the unified church to Rome than the old conflict again burst forth.

[Sidenote: 1438] The extreme claims of the Gallican church were asserted in the law known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, by which the pope was left hardly any right of appointment, of jurisdiction, or of raising revenue in France.
The supremacy of a council over the pope was explicitly asserted, as was the right of the civil magistrate to order ecclesiastical affairs in his dominions.

When the pontiffs refused to recognize this almost schismatical position taken by France, the Pragmatic Sanction was further fortified by a law sentencing to death any person who should bring into the country a bull repugnant to it.