An imperial or royal ordinance issued as a fundamental law. The term was employed to denote an arrangement defining the limits of the sovereign power of a prince, especially in matters of the royal succession. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, issued by the French clergy in July 1438, upheld the rights of the French church to administer its temporal property independently of the papacy and disallowed papal nominations to vacant benefices and church livings. In April 1713 the Habsburg emperor Charles VI promulgated a Pragmatic Sanction in an attempt to ensure that all his territories should pass undivided to his children. By 1720 it was clear that his daughter Maria Theresa would be the heiress and Charles spent his last years in obtaining guarantees of support from his own territories and the major powers of Europe. On his death in 1740 the failure of most of these powers to keep their promises led to the War of the Austrian Succession.