PLACETIIM REGICIDE, called also PLACET. EXEVIJATUR, LETTUES PATE) TES, is 1111 act or instrument executed in virtue of the privilege claimed by the government in certain kingdoms to exercise a supervision over the communications of the Roman pontiff with the clergy and people of those kingdoms, and to suspend or prevent the publication of any brief, bull, or other papal instrument which may appear to contravene the laws of the kingdom. or to compromise the public interest. The early Christian emperors, it is well known, freely stretched their legislation into the affairs of the church ; and one constant cause of conflict between church and state in the mediteval period was the attempt, on the part of the sovereigns, to control the free intercourse of the pope with the several douches. in the pragmatic sanction in France, and in the similar legislation of Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and the Low Countries during the 15th c.,thc claims of the state on the same heaii are more than once asserted; and among the so-called "liberties" of the later Galilean church was a certain though not a complete subjection to the state in this particular; but it was in the G aman states that this claim was most distinctly asserted, and most formally embodied in tae constitutional law. The principle upon which the peace of Westphalia, so far as regards its religious provisions, is based, is that the will of the sovereign of the state is supreme and final in all the concerns of religion. Cujus -regio iglus et rcligio (" Whose the territory, his also the religion") became the maxim of church government; and, of course, within certain limits, the Catholic sovereigns acted as freely upon it as the Protestant. Thig intermixture of the spiritual and the temporal prevailed especially in the mixed govern meats of the ecclesiastical sovereigns of Germany, the prince-bishops of the Rhine; but without the same foundation, the system was carried to its height in Austria under Joseph II. (see FEBRONEANISM, Pius VI.), the excessive minuteness of whose ecclesiastical ordi
nances procured for him the sobriquet of " The Sacristan." Under hint all pontifical bulls. triers, and constitutions, and all the ordinances of the local bishops. were made subject to the imperial censorship. and it was forbidden to publish any of them without its receiving, the placet of the emperor. The only exception, in the case of pontifical decrees, regarded those emanating from the Roman penitentiary (q.v.), which, as 'being of their nature secret, were not held subject to revision. In the same law was enforced, as also in Baden and Saxony, no less than in the Protestant governments of Wurtemberg, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Weimar, etc. These claims of the state had been the subject of protest on the part of the Roman see, but the church, nevertheless, had been compelled to acquiesce silently in the enforcement. In many cases, however. they have led to serious disputes, of which the mixed-marriage question in Prussia furnished a few years ago a very remarkable example. And since the ascendency obtained by Prussia in the German empire at the close of the Franco-German Nvar, the system of church legislation has undergone a complete change, the details of church government being largely taken into the control of the state, and obedience to the new t2n•le of church laws being exacted from the clergy under penalty of forfeiture of income, of deprivation of ollice, and in some cases of exile. • .