IV.] EXTENSION TO THE SOUTH. 43 and also over Roussillon, to the north of them, thus fixing the boundary of the French kingdom towards Aragon for a long while. James of Aragon, on the other hand, gave up his northern fiefs. Lewis also in 1259 gave back to Henry III. the lands of Perigord, the Limousin, Angoumois, and part of Saintonge, as belonging to the duchy of Aquitaine; while Henry gave up all claim to Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou, which had been formally forfeited by John. Almost the only mistaken judgment made by Lewis was when, in 1263, Henry and his barons appealed to him to judge between them, and decree whether the king were bound by the oaths ex- torted from him at the Parliament of Oxford. Lewis, misled by the state of his own kingdom, did not see that the barons were not the transgressors of the law, but its maintainers, and gave sentence that they had no right to constrain their sovereign, and that Henry was free of his oaths. 16. Lewis and the Church. — Pious as he was, Lewis never let the popes drive him into unjust acts, and he re sisted their monstrous usurpations of money and patronage. The French clergy were exempt from dues to the crown, save by free gift, but the demands of Rome devoured the means of bishoprics and abbeys ; and the issue of what was called a mandate enabled the popes to appoint their own nominees to benefices, so that the churches of France were being used to swell the incomes of the Italian attendants of the Court of Rome. In 1269, Lewis is said to have put forth what was called the Pragmatic Sanction, which hindered the popes from meddling with patronage, and prevented levies of money without consent of the king and clergy. It is doubtful whether the formal document is genuine ; but it is certain that Lews practi- cally maintained the rights of the French Church and nation against the Popes. But he did all this without a quarrel with the Church, whose champion he was so much re- garded that when the Pope professed to depose Manfred, king of Sicily, the son of the Emperor Frederick, the kingdom was offered to one of the French king's sons, as a fief of the Church. Lewis however had too much regard for the rights of the House of Hohenstaufen to accept it. It was then offered to his brother, Charles of Anjou, y.-ho, through his wife's county of Provence, was independent of him, and while appearing eqaally devout, was the very ma-n to do those services to the
