Pragmatic Sanction
a rescript or answer of the sovereign delivered by advice of his council to some college, order, or body of people, on any case of their community. By the French the term was appropriated to certain statutes limiting the jurisdiction of the Pope, as in A. D. 1268 and 1438. Pope Leo X., in 1545, persuaded Francis I. to exchange them for a concordat. Generally it is applied to an ordinance fixing the succession to a throne in a certain line.
Thus, by the Pragmatic Sanction of Germany in 1439, the succession of the empire was made hereditary in the house of Austria, and in 1724 the Emperor Charles VI., being without male issue, published another, settling the succession upon his daughter, Maria Teresa and her issue.