Wholly novel and distinctive it is not, for the rulers of Catholic countries, like Spain and France, and of England (before the publication of the Act of Supremacy) could and did limit the pope's claims to unlimited jurisdiction, patronage and taxation, and they introduced the placet forbidding the publication within their realms_ of papal edicts, decisions and orders, without the express sanction of the government - in short, in many ways tended to approach the conditions in Protestant lands.
The German diet of Regensburg (1439) ratified in the main the decrees of the council of Basel, which clearly gratified the electors, princes and prelates; and Germany for the first time joined the ranks of the countries which subjected the decrees of the highest ecclesiastical instance to the placet or approval of the civil authorities.
The placet had long prevailed, so that the king had few of the reasons, so important in Germany and England, for quarrelling with the existing system, unless it were on religious grounds.
He also received the right to appoint bishops, who - except in Rome and the suburbicarian districts - were to be Italian subjects; and, with a significant exception, the exequatur, placet regium, and every form of government permission for the publication and execution of acts of ecclesiastical authority were abolished.
The proposed form, first elaborated in the conciliary commission de fide, was the object of long public discussions from the 50th general congregation (May 13th, 1870) to the 85th (July 13th); the constitution as a whole was adopted at a public session, on the r 8th, of the 535 bishops present, two only replied " Non placet "; but about 50 had preferred not to be present.