RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Boniface
offended by the pope's above-mentioned interference with his designs against England. When in
1296 the clergy of both France and France. England complained to Boniface of the
taxes laid upon them by their sovereigns for warlike purposes, he answered by the bull C lericis laicos (Feb. 25, 1296). It opened with the offensive assertion that the laity had always been and still were hostile to the clergy, and proceeded to forbid all princes to tax the clergy of their dominions without papal sanction, under pain of excommunication. Edward, though at first protesting, declared in 1297 that no further tax should be laid upon the clergy without their consent; but Philip responded by forbidding all exportation of gold and silver, coined or uncoined, from France (Aug., 1296). This cut off so large a portion of the papal revenue that Boniface modified his attitude in the bull Ineffabilis amoris (Sept. 25), and yielded more completely in three briefs (Feb. and July, 1297) extremely conciliatory in tone; in the same spirit he completed the canonization of Louis IX in August, and the discord seemed in a fair way to be removed. But it was not long in breaking out again. Philip had welcomed to his court some of the exiled Colonna family, and had lent a willing ear to their unmeasured abuse of the pope, which did not spare his moral character. The king's misuse of the droit de regale (see Regale), on the other hand, had been giving increasing provocation to the pope since 1299. An open rupture came in 1301; end by that time both contestants had increased their pretensions and were ready to wage a more bitter war than ever. Boniface chose to send as legate to Paiis a Frenchman, Bernard de Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, who was for several reasons -persona non grata at the French court, and his haughty tone at this time made him no better liked. Philip refused to see him; and, then, when he had returned to Pamiers, brought him back to Paris, and had him tried and condemned on a charge of treason and lese-majesty. On Dec. 5, 1301, Boniface demanded that his ambassador should immediately be set free to come to Rome; and at the same time he summoned the principal French churchmen and jurists to assemble in Rome Nov. 1, 1302, to take counsel with him in the difficulties of the French question. Notifying Philip of this, amid the most passionate reproaches, in the bull Ausculta fill, he commanded him also to appear in person or by proxy at this assembly; the assertions were repeated that God had set the vicar of Christ over princes and kingdoms, thus giving him charge to ordain what might be needed for the removal of scandals and for the welfare of the kingdom of France. To meet this, Philip summoned his estates to Paris for Apr. 10, 1302, and laid before them not the bull Ausculta fill, but a document purporting to be the pope's utterance, which far surpassed even the real one in matter of offense. The estates, stirred up by this, voted to stand by the king. Toward the end of the year, Philip notified the pope that he would have none of his arbitration in the struggle with England; and Boniface now urged Edward to war instead of peace. Peace, however, was made in 1303. I II.— 15
Meantime, as a result of the synod which the pope opened on Oct. 30, 1302, at which not a few French prelates were present in spite of Philip, the bull Unam sanctam was drawn up, asserting in the most definite terms the theory of " the two swords," and the necessity to salvation of submission to the pope. Some futile attempts at conciliation took place in the early part of 1303, but Philip was declared on Apr. 13 to have rendered himself liable to excommunication. Two months later, the king assembled his nobles, prelates, and jurists, and his answer came in the form of a definite accusation against Boniface under twenty-four separate heads of the most appalling nature. Impressed by this, the assembly resolved to appeal to a general council against him; but since he would have to be forced to attend it, the collection of funds for this purpose was begun. William of Nogaret, the king's vicechancellor, went to Italy and struck up an alliance with Sciarra Colonna, who had the wrongs of his family to avenge. They enlisted a number of the nobles of the Campagna, and used money freely, winning adherents even among Boniface's fellow townsmen of Anagni, where he was then holding his court. He had resolved to make formal publication of the anathema against Philip on Sept. 8; but early on the morning of the 7th, William and his adherents, a few hundred strong, gained an entrance into the town, penetrated even into the sleeping apartments of Boniface, and when he refused all concessions made him a prisoner in his own palace. On the 9th the citizens rose and liberated him; Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna were forced to flee, while Boniface returned to Rome Sept. 25. But, worn out by the long strife, he died Oct. 11.
His defeat is to be seen not in the circumstances of his captivity and his death, but in the fact that the spiritual weapons he wielded proved utterly unequal to the conquest of the aroused national Character feeling of France. The national spirit and showed itself more powerful than the Achieve- ecclesiastical. This defeat inflicted ments of a staggering blow upon the authority Boniface, of the papacy. Yet Boniface was no ordinary man. Though he was between seventy and eighty when he became pope, he showed no trace of the weakness of age; his will was unbending, his mind clear and logical. But his whole heart was set on power. In some ways he reminds of Gregory VII, and he could no more hope to escape conflicts than could the unflinching Hildebrand. But he did not in the conflict show the moral loftiness of Hildebrand— to say nothing of that of such men as Nicholas I and Innocent III. Nor is his personality without moral flaws. He had no scruple in using the funds he had raised for the recovery of the Holy Land in his own wars; nor is the reproach unfounded that he used the privileges of his position to surround his own family with princely splendor. When he strove for peace, as between England and France, his determining motive was plainly the desire to show himself the supreme arbiter of nations; when he had nothing to gain, he was ready enough to set them against each other, as he set Albert I and
Boniface