BOOK VII.

FROM THE ELECTION OF INNOCENT III TO THE DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII, A.D. 1198-1303.

 

CHAPTER V.

CELESTINE V AND BONIFACE VIII. A.D. 1292-1303.

 

 

AT the death of Nicolas IV, the college of cardinals consisted of twelve members, who were divided into two parties—the French or Neapolitan and the Italian. These met in a palace which the late pope had built on the Esquiline; but the heats of June compelled them to separate without coming to any agreement in the choice of a successor. The attempt at an election was vainly renewed in one place after another; and in the meantime the factions of the Colonnas and Orsinis fought in the streets for the senatorship, until at length it was arranged that each party should nominate a senator of its own.

The papacy had been vacant two years and three months, when the cardinals met at Perugia in the beginning of July 1294. The most eminent among them were Latino Malebranca, bishop of Ostia, a member of the Dominican order, who stood in high repute for piety, and Benedict Gaetani, cardinal of SS. Sylvester and Martin. Gaetani was a native of Anagni, which within a century had given to the papal chair Innocent III, Gregory IX, and Alexander IV, and he was great-nephew of the last of these. He had probably studied in youth at the university of Paris, and is described as very learned in the Scriptures; he was regarded as unequalled in the knowledge of ecclesiastical law and in experience of affairs, and had been employed on important missions to England, France, Germany, and Portugal. It is said that the consciousness of his abilities and acquirements affected his manners and bearing—that he was arrogant, assuming, and scornful; and to these faults of character it is added that he was very rapacious as to money, “making no conscience of gain.” His labours in the service of successive popes had been rewarded with valuable preferments, and Martin IV had promoted him to the dignity of cardinal. When Charles II of Naples ventured to intrude on the deliberations of the cardinals at Perugia, and to exhort them to a speedy choice, Gaetani boldly rebuked him for interfering with the office of the Holy Spirit.

One day, as the cardinals were assembled, Latino spoke to his brethren of a hermit named Peter of Murrone, whose sanctity was the object of unbounded popular reverence. It was believed that he had been born in a monastic frock, and that every night he was roused for prayer by a celestial bell in tones of incomparable sweetness. Peter had formerly been a Benedictine monk, but had adopted the life of a hermit, and had founded an austere brotherhood of hermits, for which he obtained the sanction of Gregory X, after having travelled on foot from Apulia to Lyons in order to solicit it at the general council of 1274. His dwelling was a narrow cell on the rock of Murrone, near Sulmona, in the Abruzzi. He kept six Lents in the year, and imposed the same observance on his hermits, although to them he allowed mitigations as to diet which he denied himself. A few days later, Latino announced to the cardinals that a holy man had had a vision, threatening heavy judgments unless a pope were elected within a certain time. “I suppose” said Gaetani, “that this is some vision of your Peter of Murrone.” Latino answered that it was even so; the idea of choosing the hermit himself was suddenly suggested, was caught up as offering an escape from the difficulties occasioned by the party connexions of other candidates, and was acted on as if proceeding from inspiration.

The cardinals, however, appear to have soon felt some misgivings as to their choice; for they devolved the duty of announcing it to the new pope on some prelates who were not members of the sacred college. These, as they toiled up the rock of Fumone, were joined by cardinal Peter Colonna, who had undertaken the journey on his own account; and they found the elect pope, an old man of seventy-two, roughly dressed, with a long white beard, and emaciated by austerities. When they produced the act of election, and threw themselves at his feet, the astonished hermit knelt to them in return; he said that, before answering, he must consult God by prayer; but, as the result of this was favourable, he accepted the dignity which was offered to him.

Almost from the moment of his acceptance, it was clear that the new pope was utterly unfit for his office. He knew nothing of men or of affairs; he could speak no language but the vulgar tongue; his only qualification was an ascetic piety, if indeed a piety of so very narrow a character were not rather to be regarded as disqualifying him. Charles of Naples speedily discovered that, by professing humble obedience to the successor of St. Peter, he might be able to use him as a tool. When requested by the cardinals to join them at Perugia, Peter wrote to them, under the influence of Charles, excusing himself on account of his age and of the heat, and summoned them to Aquila, within the Neapolitan territory. There a vast multitude—it is said 200,000 persons—assembled to witness the consecration and coronation of the famous hermit, who took the name of Celestine V. He entered the town riding on an ass, whose reins were held by the king of Naples and his son, Charles, titular king of Hungary; and it is said that, after he had dismounted from the animal, a lame boy was healed by being placed on it. The king’s influence soon became visible in many ways. Celestine released him from an oath which the cardinals had exacted at Perugia, that, if the pope should die in the Neapolitan territory, Charles would not force them to hold their conclave for a fresh election within his dominions. At his instance, thirteen new cardinals were created—a number sufficient to overpower the older members of the college; and of these seven were Frenchmen, while all were devoted to Charles with the exception of John Gaetani, whose promotion was intended to conciliate his uncle, cardinal Benedict. And, when the cardinals urged Celestine to take up his abode at Rome, he preferred to comply with the king’s suggestion by settling at Naples, which under the Angevine sovereigns had superseded Palermo as the capital of the Sicilian kingdom.

But Celestine was also subject to other mischievous influences. He listened to the hermits of the brotherhood which he had founded, and, not content with bestowing privileges on their order, he preferred some of them to offices for which their rudeness and ignorance made them altogether unfit. He was a passive tool of the curialists and canonists. His patronage was badly bestowed, and his secretaries took advantage of his weakness to practise shameless tricks, so that he was induced to put his name to blank bulls, and in some cases to sign several presentations to the same benefice, while these officials pocketed the fees. He endeavoured to keep up his old manner of life by causing a cell like that on the rock of Murrone to be built in his palace; and into this he sometimes withdrew for days, leaving all business in the hands of some cardinals who had gained his confidence. He wished to make the cardinals imitate his own fashion of sanctity by riding on asses, and to force the peculiar garb of the Celestines on the whole Benedictine order. The pope longed for his old seclusion, while it daily became more and more evident that his tenure of the papacy was likely to produce serious disasters.

Cardinal Benedict Gaetani was supposed to have withstood the election of Celestine, and remained behind the other cardinals at Perugia. But after a time he waited on the pope at Aquila, and speedily established a sway over his feeble mind. It is said that he even practised on Celestine’s credulity by counterfeiting through a pipe a heavenly voice, which charged the pope to resign his office on peril of losing his soul; and, although this tale seems incredible, there can be little doubt that Gaetani was active and subtle in recommending the idea of a resignation. Urged by him and by others, the pope eagerly listened to counsels which opened the hope of a return to his hermitage. He found, from a collection of canons which was placed in his way, that an ecclesiastic might resign with the permission of his superior; but how could this principle be applied to the head of Christendom? The question was proposed to Gaetani, who replied that there was a precedent for resignation in the case of the apostolical father St. Clement; for Clement, he said, after having been appointed to the papacy by St. Peter, resigned it, lest it might seem that a pope might nominate his successor. Suspicions of the pope’s intention began to circulate, and a mob of Neapolitans, stirred up by the fanatical Celestine hermits, appeared under the windows of his palace, loudly clamouring that he should retain his office. For the time he pacified them with equivocal promises; but preparations were made for carrying out his intention, and, at the suggestion of the cardinals, prayers were put up for the discovery of the will of heaven in the matter.

On the 13th of December, the pope, attired in his robes of office, appeared before the consistory of cardinals, and produced an act of resignation, which he read aloud, professing himself unequal to the burden of his office from age and weakness, and desirous to return to the contemplative life to which he had been accustomed. At the suggestion of a cardinal, a decree sanctioning the resignation of popes was drawn up, which Celestine confirmed by his authority. The pope then put off his robes, resumed the rough attire which he had worn as a hermit, and withdrew, while the cardinals entreated his prayers for the church which his act had left without a shepherd. Those who were devoted to Celestine—the members of his hermit brotherhood, and the Franciscan “fraticelli” with whom they had become connected—while they strongly regretted the resignation, viewed it as an act of transcendent humility, which enhanced the glory of his saintly character. But the more general opinion of his time is probably expressed in the terrible scorn of Dante, who places Celestine immediately within the portals of hell, among those who had lived without either praise or infamy, and whom the poet’s guide desires him to pass without bestowing on them the notice of a word.

Ten days after the vacancy of the see, the cardinals held their conclave in the “New Castle” of Naples, and on the same day their choice fell on cardinal Benedict Gaetani, who took the name of Boniface VIII. By what means this result was brought about is not known; but rumour charged the new pope with having made use of much artifice for the purpose. It is said that he secured Charles’ influence over the cardinals of the French party by going to him at night, and telling him that Celestine had been unable to serve him in the Sicilian war for want of knowledge; but that he himself, if the king would help him to the papacy, would serve him with understanding, and to the uttermost of his power.

In so far as regarded Sicily, this promise was amply fulfilled; for to Boniface it was due that the struggle there was kept up when Charles must, but for the pope’s support, have yielded. But in other things Boniface was determined to be his own master, and in opposition to the king’s wishes he set out for Rome. His progress was a triumph, and the most remarkable scene in it was at his native Anagni, where he was received with enthusiasm. On the 23rd of January, his coronation was celebrated with a magnificence beyond all examples To the crown with which Alexander III is supposed to have enriched the tiara, a second crown was now added, in token of the union of secular with spiritual power; and the kings of Naples and of Hungary held the reins of the pope’s white horse, and stood behind his chair at the coronation banquets.

Boniface, although five years older than the effete pope whom he had superseded, was in full possession of his mental vigour. He was strong of will, crafty, rapacious, and filled with the highest ideas of hierarchical domination—with a resolution to recover for the papacy all that it had lost under any of his predecessors, and to exalt it more than ever. But in thinking to renew the triumphs of Gregory VII and Innocent III, he over­looked the adverse circumstances which had arisen since their time—the increase of the royal power in France, the English impatience of Roman rule and aspirations after civil and spiritual liberty, the growth of independent thought in the universities; above all, the great influence of the civil lawyers, who had been trained in the principles of the old imperial jurisprudence of Rome, and opposed to the pretensions of the hierarchy a rival system, supported by a rival learning, and grounded on a rival authority.

Boniface began his pontificate by revoking the privileges—provisions, dispensations, commendams, and the like—which Celestine had granted, “not in the plenitude of power,” says a contemporary, “but in the plenitude of simplicity.” But as to Celestine himself there was a difficulty. Men were shocked that a choice which was supposed to have been specially directed by the Holy Spirit should be unceremoniously set aside as mistaken. There were many who questioned the validity of his resignation—the fraticelli, the Celestines, and others who, although free from the fanaticism of these, might be disposed, from whatever motives, to set up the hermit afresh as a claimant of the papal chair; and it was very possible that he might be weak enough to become the tool of such malcontents. Boniface at first committed him to the care of the abbot of Monte Cassino; but Peter soon contrived to escape from the abbot’s custody, and made for his old abode on the Majella. The pope heard with uneasiness that at Sulmona he had been received as a worker of miracles, and that a general enthusiasm in his favour was aroused among the multitudes An order was therefore issued for his arrest; and Peter, after having attempted to escape by embarking on the Adriatic, was seized by some Neapolitan soldiers, and was carried into the presence of his successor. Boniface received him sternly, and ordered him to be conveyed to a castle on the rock of Fumone, where the antipope Burdinus had once been imprisoned; and there a cell was constructed for him like that which he had occupied in earlier days. The treatment which he received in this place is variously reported, according to the prepossessions of the narrators; by some it is said to have been respectful, by others, harsh and strict. The tales which were circulated of his sufferings and of his voluntary mortifications increased the reputation for sanctity which he already possessed, while Boniface was regarded as his oppressor; and when, after ten months of seclusion, Peter died, it was popularly believed that the pope had caused a nail to be driven into his head. Immediately after the hermit’s death, a disciple saw his soul borne up to heaven His body was carried off by the people of Aquila from its burial-place at Ferentino; and it was only by the assurance that his heart was still among them that the men of Ferentino could be restrained from entering into a deadly feud with their neighbours.

Now that Boniface had gained possession of the highest dignity in Christendom, his imperious pride appeared to get the mastery over the prudence and address for which he had before been noted, and his measures were carried on with a violence which could not fail to exasperate those with whom he was brought into collision. Like most of his family, he had hitherto been a Ghibelline; but he now espoused the Guelf interest as being bound up with that of the papacy. He mixed in the envenomed feuds of the Italian cities with the design of crushing the Ghibellines; and by calling in Charles of Valois as pacificator of Tuscany he has earned the denunciation of the great Florentine poet, whose exile, with that of his party, was among the results of the French prince’s intervention.

Boniface required Charles of Naples to renew the oath of homage to the papal see which his father had taken for Sicily, and he devised a plan by which he hoped to secure that kingdom for the Anjou family. According to this scheme, Charles of Valois was to withdraw the pretension to Aragon and Valencia which was founded on the grant of pope Martin; the pope, assuming a right to dispose of these territories, was to regrant them to the hereditary sovereign, James; and in consideration of this favour, the princes of Aragon were to give up all claim to Sicily. But, although James was willing to agree to the arrangement, his brother Frederick, who was the actual governor of Sicily, was implored by the people to save them from a renewal of the French tyranny, and, in company with John of Procida and Roger de Loria, he waited on the pope at Velletri, in order to represent the wishes of the Sicilians. “Art thou” said Boniface to Roger, “that enemy of the church who has made such slaughter of my people?”. “Father,” answered the admiral sternly, “the popes would have me so”. Frederick was tempted with brilliant but shadowy offers, such as a marriage with a daughter of the dispossessed emperor of Constantinople, which would give him a title to the throne of the East. But his companions persuaded him to defer his answer until after he should have returned to Sicily; and, finding that the islanders were determined not to submit to French rule, he was crowned king at Palermo on Easter-day 1296. It was in vain that the pope denounced him, and aided his rival with money. Frederick’s fleets, under Roger de Loria, were victorious over the naval forces of Charles, and part of the mainland was wrested from the French. In 1299, however, the fortune of war was changed. James of Aragon had been appointed standard-bearer of the church and admiral of the papal fleets, and had been invested in Corsica and Sardinia, on undertaking to reduce his former subjects. Roger de Loria, provoked by an unjust suspicion of treason, turned against Frederick, and for a time the Sicilian king had great difficulty in holding his ground. But it would seem that James at length became ashamed of the part which he had taken; and on his leaving Sicily, Frederick’s fortunes began to recover. In 1302, Charles of Valois, leaving the Florentine factions more embittered against each other than when he had undertaken to appease them, passed into Sicily; but Frederick wore him out in an irregular warfare, and compelled him to sue for peace. The misfortunes which had attended the French arms in Flanders induced Charles to submit to terms which he might otherwise have refused, and in 1303 the pope was obliged to agree to a treaty by which Frederick was to be released from all ecclesiastical censures to marry a daughter of his rival, and to hold the kingdom ot “Trinacria” for life, with the provision that at his death it should fall, not to Naples, but to Aragon.

A contest which touched Boniface more nearly than the affairs of Sicily, was his feud with the Colonnas. This family, which was connected with the ancient counts of Tusculum, appears for the first time in history about the beginning of the twelfth century, when one of them was master of Columna among the Alban hills, with other places in the neighbourhood. On the extinction of the Tusculan family, the Colonnas had succeeded to a part of its possessions, and they now held many fortresses in the neighbourhood of Rome, and exercised a powerful influence in public affairs. The devotion of Nicolas IV to this family has been already mentioned, and it may well be supposed that they were not disposed to acquiesce in changes which tended to destroy their influence. Two of the Colonnas, James and his nephew Peter, were cardinals; they had opposed the resignation of Celestine, and, although they had been tricked into consenting to the election of Boniface, it is said that they had opposed his coronation. Various petty causes occurred to increase the differences between the pope and this powerful family, but it is hardly necessary to look for such motives. To Boniface’s new politics the Ghibellinism of the Colonnas made them obnoxious; and it was perhaps the apprehension of consequences from his political conversion that led them to ally themselves with the Aragonese party in Sicily. Boniface, in great exasperation on this account, summoned them to answer, and six days later launched against them a bull in which the whole family were denounced with extraordinary vehemence as enemies of the holy church. The two cardinals were declared to be deposed and excommunicated. Their benefices were taken from them; any ecclesiastic who should acknowledge them in their dignity was to be deprived of all his preferments; any castles or towns which should admit them were to be interdicted; and their nephews to the fourth generation were to be excluded from holy orders.

On the same day when this bull was issued, the cardinals caused a document to be posted on the doors of churches and laid on the high altar of St. Peter’s, denying the validity of Celestine’s resignation, arguing that, even if that resignation were valid, the election of Boniface was irregular, and appealing against the pope to a general council. This daring protest drew forth from Boniface a bull even more violent than the former. The penalties denounced against the cardinals were extended to the whole Colonna family. Their palace at Rome was demolished; all their property was confiscated; they were required to give up all their fortresses, and, on their refusal to do so, a papal army, under the command of cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta, took the field against them with the character of crusaders and the promise of the indulgences granted for a holy war. One after another their castles were reduced, until Palestrina alone held out. As its strength seemed likely to defy all assault, the pope summoned to his counsel count Guy of Montefeltro, who, after a long life of warfare as a Ghibelline commander, during which he had often incurred and defied the heaviest censures of the church, had lately made his peace with it, and had withdrawn into a Franciscan cloister at Ancona. The old warrior, after having surveyed the walls of Palestrina, declared that he could not suggest any means of taking it save by the commission of a great sin. The pope eagerly promised absolution for any sin that he might commit by giving his advice; whereupon Guy told him to “promise much, but perform little.” Boniface, it is said, acted without scruple on this hint. The Colonnas were deluded by a promise that mercy should be shown to them if they would submit. The two cardinals, with two of their kinsmen, Agapetus and James, commonly called Sciarra, waited on the pope at Rieti, arrayed in penitential garb, threw themselves at his feet, implored his pardon, and received an assurance of forgiveness; but when the impregnable fortress had been surrendered into his hands, Boniface ordered that it should be razed to the ground, that the site should be ploughed up and sown with salt, and that, in order to maintain unimpaired the number of the cardinal-bishopricks, a new “papal city” should be built in the neighbourhood. And, while the pope thus gratified his love of vengeance, the spoils of the dispossessed Colonnas enabled him to carry out his plans for the aggrandizement of his family by establishing his nephews as princes, and endowing them largely with territories.

The Colonnas dispersed, some to Sicily, some to France, where king Philip was already embroiled with Boniface, and had entered into communication with them. The two cardinals of the family found a refuge at Genoa; and it is said that, when the archbishop of that city appeared at Rome during the solemnities of Ash Wednesday, the pope expressed his indignation on account of the shelter given to them by throwing ashes into his eyes, and by addressing him in words altered from the form of the church—“Remember, Ghibelline, that thou art ashes, and that with the other Ghibellines to ashes thou shalt return!”.

Towards princes beyond the Alps Boniface displayed the same imperious temper which had been shown in the affairs of Italy and Sicily. When Adolphus of Nassau, king of the Romans, in consequence of wrongs done to him by Philip of France with regard to the imperial kingdom of Arles, had allied himself with England against France, and had received a subsidy of English money, the pope reproved him for having degraded the imperial dignity by lightly engaging in war. Adolphus had never been able to make good his position. The ecclesiastical electors, headed by Gerard of Mainz, were dissatisfied with him for having failed to fulfill the promises extorted at his election; and in June 1297, when a great number of princes were assembled at Prague for the coronation of Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Albert of Austria, the son of Rudolf, was able by large promises to win over Gerard and other electors to his interest. A meeting of electors was held at Mainz on the eve of St. John the Baptist 1298, when Adolphus was declared to be deposed for various misdeeds, and Albert was chosen in his stead. Adolphus, after having disregarded three citations to appear before this assembly, was pronounced contumacious; and on the 2nd of July he lost his life at the battle of Gellheim. A more formal election of Albert was then carried at Frankfort, in a more numerous July 27, assembly of princes; and on the 24th of 1298. August he received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle from the hands of the archbishop of Cologne. Both the secular and the ecclesiastical electors took the opportunity to make the new king pay for their support, by grants of lands, privileges, and royalties, in diminution of the rights of the crown. The archbishops of Mainz and Cologne got for their own vassals and for the clergy exemptions from the secular courts, similar to those exemptions which Becket had asserted in England and St. Lewis had denied in France; and Albert was afterwards involved in a quarrel with these archbishops on account of the tolls of the Rhine, which had been granted to them, but were so exacted as to be an intolerable burden to the people.

The electors, in notifying their choice to the pope, stated that Albert had been chosen to the vacancy caused by the death of Adolphus. But although the precedent of deposing a king of Germany had been sanctioned, and even suggested, by Gregory VII, this was the first time that the German princes had taken it upon themselves to act in such a matter without the papal authority; and Boniface, who had already denounced Albert, and was especially bitter against him for having connected himself by marriage with the detested Hohenstaufens, now rejected all his overtures, styled him usurper of the kingdom and murderer of his sovereign, and required him to send envoys to clear his innocence, if they could, before the papal tribunal. But, as we shall see here­after, a more violent enmity in another quarter soon produced a change of tone towards the king of the Romans.

England and France were now matched against each other under able, vigorous, and ambitious sovereigns—Edward I and Philip IV, who, on account of his personal beauty, is distinguished by the epithet of “the Fair.” But Edward, although often involved in continental wars, gradually concentrated his ambition more and more on the object of making all Britain his own by the acquisition of Wales and Scotland. The English clergy were disposed to second their king in this enterprise, and did not remonstrate against any acts either of injustice or of cruelty which he committed in order to accomplish it. But whereas in the late reign the clergy had incessantly complained of the oppressions which they suffered from the Roman court, while the king had usually endeavoured to use the influence of Rome as a counterbalance to the power and pretensions of his own ecclesiastical subjects, the position of things was now changed. The rapid succession of popes had told unfavourably for Rome; and, now that the papacy was less formidable, the English clergy were reconciled with it, so that in any struggle they were likely to take part with the pope against the king.

In France, on the other hand, an antipapal spirit had been growing, even among the clergy. While the influence of the English crown had been sinking throughout the reigns of John and Henry III.—a period of more than seventy years—the royalty of France, under Philip Augustus and St. Lewis, had greatly increased in strength. And Philip the Fair—a man singularly hard, cold, unscrupulous and selfish, thoroughly imbued with the principles of the civil lawyers as to the absolute rights of sovereignty, although without any wider or more generous feeling of care for the general good of his people—was determined to carry the power of the crown yet further, by asserting its claims both over the great feudatories who interfered with the completeness of his despotism at home, and against any pretensions of the hierarchy which might conflict with it. His hostility to the clergy had, indeed, been mani­fested early in his reign by an ordinance which excluded them from all share in the administration of the laws, and forbade them to appear in courts as advocates, except for chapters and convents. Although many canons of the church might have been produced to the same effect, it was an alarming circumstance that the prohibition now came from the side of the secular power.

Both Edward and Philip were reduced to great difficulties for the means of paying the expenses of their wars. Edward had appropriated to his own use the tenths collected for a crusade. In 1290 he had expelled all Jews from England, and, in consideration of this harshness against a detested people, had got a large subsidy from both laity and clergy. In the following year, when a new levy of a tenth for the Holy Land had been sanctioned by Nicolas IV, the king had taken the opportunity of making a fresh assessment of property at a higher rate than before; and he seized the money collected in cathedrals and monasteries, under pretence of a loan, although much of it was never restored. After this, he demanded of the clergy one-half of their income. It was in vain that they offered a double tenth, or that, in yielding to his full demand, they begged for a repeal of the statute which had been passed early in the reign for the purpose of checking bequests to the church; the king replied that he could not repeal a law which had been enacted by the consent of his parliament, and the clergy were obliged to be content with a redress of some minor grievances. Moreover, to the great annoyance of the Roman court, he had always disowned the obligation to pay the ignominious tribute which had been exacted from his grandfather, John.

In matters of finance Philip relied greatly on two Florentine bankers who were settled in France, Musciatto and Biccio dei Francesi, and by their advice he had recourse to various arts for raising money. He tampered with the coinage; he got the plate belonging to his nobles into his hands under colour of a sumptuary law. In 1291 he imprisoned all foreign traders, and compelled them to pay for ransom. He expelled the Jews in 1301; but in five years they had returned, and had become so wealthy as to draw on themselves a fresh confiscation and expulsion. But more money was still wanted, and Philip resolved to lay heavy taxes on the clergy, whose wealth had long been increasing in proportion to the increased security of property which had been a result of the late reigns. In requiring the clergy to pay taxes, Philip could plead the example of popes, who had always taxed them for their own purposes, and had often allowed princes engaging in crusades to levy ecclesiastical tenths. But the impost required by Philip, which bore the name of maltôte, was new in form, as well as excessive in amount —at first a hundredth, and then a fiftieth, part of the whole property.

By these exactions of the French and English kings Boniface was roused to issue, on the 25th of February 1296, a bull which from its first words is known by the name of Clericis laicos— not naming the sovereigns against whom it was directed, but indicating them in a manner which could not be mistaken. In this document—which was indeed founded on a canon of the fourth Lateran council, but in which Boniface carried his prohibitions out more rigidly than Innocent III had ventured to attempt—it is complained that the laity are apt to encroach on the church, and that some prelates pusillanimously acquiesce in their encroachments without having obtained the license of the apostolic see. The pope, therefore, decrees that all who without such license shall have paid or promised any portion of their revenues to laymen, under whatever name or pretext, and all sovereigns who shall have imposed or received such payments, or shall have seized the money deposited in churches, shall ipso facto incur excommunication, from which they shall not be released except on their death-beds without the special authority and license of the apostolic see.

Neither in England nor in France was the sovereign disposed to submit tamely to this. Edward held a parliament at Bury St. Edmund’s in the end of November, when the laity contributed a subsidy of a twelfth towards the Scottish war, but the clergy, on being asked for a tenth, pleaded that they were exhausted by the taxation of the preceding year, and produced the pope’s late bull as exempting them. In this they were headed by the primate, Robert Winchelsey, a man of high ecclesiastical reputation, of strong hierarchical principles, and of very resolute character, who had been on his journey to Rome for the pall when the exaction of one-half was enforced in the preceding year. The parliament was adjourned until the middle of January, when the clergy met in St. Paul’s, London. There the tenth was again demanded, with the addition of a fine for the late contumacy; and when the bull Clericis laicos was produced on the part of the clergy, it was met by a letter from the king, charging them to refrain from doing anything to the prejudice of the crown. The primate proposed to refer the question to Rome; and Edward, on being informed of this, burst into fury. The chief justice, Roger le Brabazon, told the clergy that, by refusing to contribute towards the expenses of the government, they excluded themselves from its protection and from civil privileges. After some further but useless negotiation, all lay fees of ecclesiastics were ordered to be confiscated. The property of Christchurch, Canterbury, and even the archbishop’s riding-horses, were seized; and the monks of the cathedral were reduced to submission by want of the necessaries of life. At this crisis two lawyers and two Dominicans excited some attention by offering, at a council held in St. Paul’s, to maintain that the clergy were entitled to aid the crown with money in time of war notwithstanding the pope’s prohibition. The archbishop of York and others offered to compound by paying a fourth of their income, in order to pacify the king; most of the clergy followed the example, and the bishop of Lincoln, although he refused to pay, acquiesced in allowing some of his friends to pay for him. The primate Winchelsey alone continued to hold out; he declared his brethren excommunicate, and withdrew to the parish of Chartham, near Canterbury, where he lived in the simplest fashion with the attendance of a single chaplain.

But at this time the Scots not only repelled the English invaders of their country, but in their turn carried fire and sword into the northern counties of England, while the king was obliged by the threatening aspect of France to resolve on going in person to the war in Flanders. By these common dangers all orders of the English were drawn together, and the stubborn spirit of the primate was brought to accept a compromise. He attended a parliament at Westminster, where a reconciliation was effected between Edward and the various orders of his subjects. But in consideration of this, the king had to make important concessions; the Magna Charta and the Forest charter were confirmed with new securities; and the privilege was secured both for the clergy and for the laity that they should not be taxed except with their own consent. In the following year the archbishop denounced an excommunication against all who should invade ecclesiastical property, infringe the great charter, lay violent hands on clerks or imprison them, and against the Scots who should invade England, or commit acts of waste and violence, with all who should abet them.

In France the king met the papal bull by publishing an ordinance (August 17, 1296) which forbade the exportation of all gold and silver, jewels, arms, horses, or other munitions of war from the realm. By this ordinance, not only were many Italian ecclesiastics deprived of their revenues from benefices which they held in France, but the pope himself was cut off from the sources of income which he had enjoyed in that country. Boniface replied to this measure by a bull (Sep. 21) known by the title of Ineffabilis, in which the full assertion of papal and priestly authority is remarkably blended with professions of meekness, and of fatherly care for the king. Blandishments and threats, arguments from spiritual and from temporal considerations, are mixed in a style which, if it may strike us as incongruous, faithfully reflects the various influences of Boniface’s position and of his personal character, of the secular and the spiritual pretensions which were now combined in the papacy. He affects to doubt the reports which had reached him as to the king’s late edict and the intention of it; if it aimed at an invasion of the church’s rights, it was to be described as nothing less than insane, and as having brought the author within the sentence of excommunication. He attributes it to the influence of evil counsellors. He tells Philip that by his oppressive taxation he has chilled the affection of his subjects; that by his aggressions he has provoked the hostility of his neighbours the kings of the Romans, of England, and of Spain; what, then, could be expected, if, when already beset by such perils, he should make the apostolic see also his enemy? The pope dwells pathetically on his long, anxious, watchful care for Philip—his arduous labours before he had attained the papacy, the sleepless nights which he had spent in thinking for the king's good; he speaks of the process which was then going on for the canonization of Lewis IX, and of the melancholy degeneracy of that saintly prince’s grandson. If the ordinance was meant as a retaliation for the Clericis laicos, that document had been quite misunderstood. It was only a re-enactment of former canons, with the specification of a penalty; it did not forbid ecclesiastics to con­tribute towards the public service, but merely ordered that this should not be done without the pope’s special permission—a provision justified by the late exorbitant taxation of France. To say that the clergy were not now at liberty to give anything to the king was a quibbling misinterpretation of it. The pope declares that he and his brethren were prepared to suffer any extremities for the cause of the church; but that, rather than see the kingdom of France, so dear (yea, so exceedingly dear) to the holy see, in danger, he would not only allow the king to raise money from the clergy, but would give up the crucifixes and sacred vessels of churches. And he concludes by saying that he sends the bishop of Viviers to treat with Philip as his representative.

The king replied in a document which strongly betrays the hand of his legist advisers, and enunciates doctrines which clash violently against those laid down by Boniface as to the relations of the spiritual and the secular powers. Before there were any clergy, he ventures to assert, the kings of France possessed the guardianship of their kingdom and the right of legislation. The church consists, not of clergy alone, but of laity also; and all those whom the Saviour by his death has freed are alike entitled to liberty. The pontiffs of Rome enjoy many special liberties; but this is through the grant of secular princes, and such liberties cannot do away with the rights of sovereigns, forasmuch as the things which are Caesar’s are by Divine command to be rendered unto Caesar. No member of a commonwealth may refuse to contribute its share for the government and defence of the whole; and since the property of the clergy is liable to be attacked, it is astounding that the vicar of Christ should contradict the Saviour’s words by forbidding clerks, under pain of anathema, to give their fair proportion, while they are freely allowed to spend their money on luxury and revelry. The justice of the national cause is asserted as against the sovereigns whom the pope had spoken of; and the explanation which Boniface had given of his prohibition to pay taxes is retorted on him by a similar explanation of the prohibition to export money and other valuable things from France.

The pope was now in the heat of his struggle with the Colonnas, and was therefore not disposed to provoke the French king. In February 1297 he wrote both to Philip and to the clergy of France, declaring afresh that his bull had been perverted by malicious misinterpretation, and that he allowed the clergy to help their king by their contributions. And in another letter to the king, after laying down the principle that the legislator is the best interpreter of his own law, he declares that ecclesiastics may pay taxes, if they do so without compulsion; that a requisition on the part of the government does not interfere with the freedom of the payment, and that in case of necessity the king may at once levy taxes without asking the papal permission; nor did the pope pretend to interfere with the feudal obligations of the clergy. But at the same time he ordered his legates to denounce the king’s officials, or even the king himself, as excommunicate, if he or they should interfere with the transmission of the papal revenue from France. The pope became aware that he could not reckon on the French clergy as his allies; for the archbishop of Reims and his suffragans addressed to him a supplication that he would not continue an interference which disturbed the peace between them and their sovereign. A good understanding appeared to be again established. The pope felt the importance of retaining as his ally that power which had always been the chief supporter of the papacy. He granted Philip the ecclesiastical tenth for three years; he promised to help the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, to the throne of Germany and to the imperial crown; and he published a bull for the canonization of the king’s grandfather, Lewis IX, which the kings of France had for twenty years been endeavouring to obtain, but which had been hitherto prevented by the frequent vacancies in the papacy. It is remarkable that Boniface, in his later references to this canonization, always speaks of it as if it were not so much a tribute due to the merits of Lewis, as a favour by which the holy see had entitled itself to the gratitude of the saintly king’s descendants.

Boniface, in the beginning of his pontificate, had assumed the power of arbitrating between the kings of France and England by sending two cardinals, who were authorized to treat with them, and to release them from any oaths or engagements. But the kings had not been willing to admit such a claim—more especially Philip, who, before the papal letters were read, required the legates to acknowledge his exclusive sovereignty over France; and the legation was without any effect. The pope now again urged his mediation on the kings through the generals of the two great mendicant orders; but although Edward, hard pressed in the Flemish war, welcomed, and even solicited, his interference, Philip would only admit it on condition that the arbiter should not act as pope, but as a private person. Boniface accepted the condition, and on the 30th of June 1298 he issued his award—“as a private person, and Master Benedict Gaetani.” But notwithstanding this profession, the document was in the form of a bull, which was promulgated in a public consistory, and it ordered that the territories which were to be given up on either side should be committed to the keeping of the pope’s officers. Philip was very indignant, both because the substance of the judgment was in his opinion too favourable to Edward, and because Boniface had foisted into it that official character which had been expressly excluded by the terms of the arbitration. When the bull was read by a bishop before the king and his council, Count Robert of Artois, Philip’s brother, snatched it from the reader’s hand, and threw it into the fire, swearing that he would not allow the pope to treat the king and the kingdom so ill; and such was the general feeling of the French nobles.

Philip saw that a severe contest with Boniface was at hand, and began to make preparations for it. He entered into close relations with the banished Colonnas, and entertained in his court two members of the family—Stephen, a nephew of the elder cardinal, and James, who was known by the name of Sciarra—a man who carried to an extreme the rude lawlessness for which the race was noted, and whom it is said that Philip had redeemed from captivity among pirates. The king also concluded a formal alliance with Albert of Austria, whom the pope had steadily refused to acknowledge as king of the Romans. This alliance was “against every man”—a phrase which clearly included the pope, if it was not even intended expressly to point at him; and the announcement of it which Philip sent to Boniface—stating that the treaty set him at liberty for a crusade (which Boniface well knew that he did not seriously intend to undertake)—was rather alarming than assuring.

But at this time Boniface was engaged in a celebration which in great measure diverted his thoughts from other affairs, and which displayed the papacy in its greatest splendour. In the beginning of the year 1299, expectations began to be vaguely current at Rome that the last year of the century would be distinguished by extraordinary spiritual privileges; and on Christmas-day St. Peter’s was filled by crowds, all eagerly expecting something, although not knowing what this was to be. How these expectations were suggested, does not appear; for the assertion on which they rested, that every previous centenary year had been distinguished in like manner, was utterly fabulous. But the craving for indulgences, which had been excited by the crusades, was as strong as ever, although the crusades were at an end; and it turned not unnaturally towards Rome for that satisfaction which was no longer to be sought in the Holy Land. At length, it is said, the report of the general agitation reached the ears of the pope, who thereupon caused an inquiry to be made; and, although the written documents did not give such testimony as was desired, the defect was readily accounted for by ascribing it to the supposed loss of records, and to the troubles of former times. Boniface, easily satisfied on this point, took up the matter with an energetic zeal which has led some writers to suppose that the first suggestion of the jubilee was his own; and after a time living evidence was produced in favour of the general belief. One very aged man declared that, as a boy of seven, he had attended the jubilee a hundred years before, and gave testimony as to the indulgences then bestowed. Another old impostor, a Savoyard of respectable station, appeared at Rome carried by his two sons, and told a similar story; and it was said that other survivors of the last jubilee were still to be found in France.

On the 22nd of February a bull was issued, promising indulgences of extraordinary fullness to all who, within the current year, should with due penitence and devotion visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul—Romans for thirty successive days, and strangers for fifteen—and directing that the jubilee should in future be celebrated every hundredth year. But from the benefits of this indulgence the enemies of the church were to be excluded; and among these were expressly named Frederick of Sicily, the Colonnas, and those who should receive them—a description which included Philip of France. From every part of Latin Christendom crowds of persons of all ranks began to pour towards Rome. The chronicler John Villani, who was present, says that there were always 200,000 strangers in the city; another chronicler tells us that it seemed as if an army were marching each way at all hours along a certain street; and a more illustrious eye-witness, Dante, who visited Rome at this time as an envoy from the republic of Florence, draws a simile from the multitudes who passed to and from St. Peter’s along the bridge of St. Angelo, which, in order to avoid confusion, was divided by a partition. The poet was not conciliated either towards the papacy or towards the pope by the scenes which he witnessed at the jubilee.

The measures taken for the sustenance of the vast multitude were so successful that Boniface’s eulogists find in them a parallel to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the Gospel story. Rents were indeed high, and, in consequence of the great number of horses which were brought together, the price of fodder was increased; but by taking timely advantage of an unusually copious harvest, the pope was able to provide such stores of food that the pilgrims found it both plentiful and cheap. At Christmas, when the year of jubilee naturally ended, the time of indulgence was extended by a papal letter to the following Easter, and a share of its privileges was declared to be bestowed on such pilgrims as died on their journey. The wealth which flowed into the papal coffers from the jubilee was enormous. Offerings were heaped up on the altars of the basilicas which contained the tombs of St„ Peter and St. Paul. A chronicler tells us that at St. Paul’s he saw two of the clergy with rakes in their hands, employed day and night in “raking together infinite money”; and, although Boniface bestowed a portion of the receipts in adding to the property of two great churches, there can be no reasonable doubt that much remained in his own hands.

It is said that Boniface, after having appeared in pontifical robes at the opening of the jubilee, showed himself next day in the attire of an emperor, with a sword in his hand, quoting the text “Behold here are two swords”; and that when ambassadors from Albert appeared for the purpose of entreating that he would relent towards their master, and bestow on him the imperial crown, he received them sitting on his throne with a sword at his side, and the “crown of Constantine” on his head, and, laying his hand on the hilt of the sword, answered that he himself was Caesar and emperor, as well as successor of St Peter. The pope was now at the height of his greatness. Although some of his pretensions had not passed without question, he had never yet been foiled in any considerable matter; and, while the enthusiasm of the jubilee filled his treasury, the veneration of the congregated multitudes waited on him as uniting the highest spiritual and temporal dominion.

 

AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND

 

It would be out of place to relate here in detail the course of affairs in Scotland after the death of Alexander III;—how Edward, acting as arbiter between the rival claimants of the crown, had set up the weak John Balliol, who, at his coronation, did homage to the king of England as his suzerain; how Balliol, on displaying some feeling of the independent rights of his kingdom, was ignominiously compelled by his patron to resign, and, while Edward proceeded to treat Scotland as a fief which had become vacant, and so was at the disposal of the over-lord, a national resistance was organized under William Wallace, a private gentleman, who, although the great nobles of the country in general stood aloof from him, for a time heroically made head against the English, and even carried the war into the enemy’s land. But the overthrow of the Scots at the battle of Falkirk had compelled Wallace to seek a refuge in France, and Edward required the Scots to do homage to him as suzerain. On this, the Scottish regency, acting in Balliol’s name, appealed to Boniface, claiming the pope as the immediate suzerain of the kingdom—a connection of which traces had not been wanting in earlier times, and which may indeed have naturally arisen out of a wish to provide against the encroachments of a powerful neighbour, by admitting a subjection which other nations also acknowledged, and in which there was not necessarily anything degrading. To such an appeal Boniface was not likely to turn a deaf ear; and, having been in England with cardinal Ottobuoni in his legation, thirty years before, he was able to discuss the matter with some knowledge of the circumstances. wrote to Edward that Scotland, as an ancient catholic country, had always been immediately subject to the holy see; that her kings had owned no feudal subjection to the English crown except for such lands as they held within the English border; that the independence of Scotland appeared from the fact that a legate commissioned to England could not without a fresh commission enter the more northern kingdom. The king was desired to release the Scottish bishops and ecclesiastics whom he held in prison, and, if he still supposed himself to have any title to Scotland, he was required to send representatives, with evidence in behalf of his claim, within six months to the papal court, to which Boniface professed to reserve all such questions.

This document was entrusted to the archbishop of Canterbury, who, not without some serious peril, conveyed it to Edward, whom he found besieging Caerlaverock castle. On hearing the contents of the bull, with some words of the archbishop about Jerusalem and Sion protecting their people, the king is said to have burst out, “By God’s blood, for Sion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, so long as breath is in my nostrils, from defending with all my might what all the world knows to be my right!”. He deferred his formal answer; but he practically showed his regard for the papal mandate by proceeding to require the homage of a new bishop of Glasgow, and he took measures for putting his pretensions into the most imposing shape. Letters were addressed to abbots and deans, desiring them to search the archives of their churches for evidence on the subject, and to send it to a parliament which was to be held at Lincoln; and with a like object each of the universities was desired to send some of its learned men to the same parliaments. The parliament met accordingly; five representatives from Oxford and five from Cambridge asserted the legality of the king’s claims over Scotland, a hundred and four nobles, headed by Bigod earl of Norfolk and Bohun earl of Hereford (usually opponents of the crown), subscribed a document in which it was declared that the pope’s claim was a novelty; that England had always held the superiority over Scotland, without being responsible to any one; that, even if the king were disposed to argue the question before the pope, they would not allow him to stoop so low; and they beg the pope to leave him undisturbed in the enjoyment of his rights. Edward himself wrote to request that Boniface would not be misled by false information; and (in order, as he professed, to explain the truth of the case, not as acknowledging the pope’s jurisdiction) he entered into a statement of his claims, in which the suzerainty of England was deduced from the fabulous history of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Boniface was too deeply engaged in his quarrel with France to reply to these representations. But he put the English case into the hands of the Scottish ambassador, Baldred Bisset, and in due time the English claim, derived from Brute the Trojan and other such legendary worthies, was confronted by one which rested on the equally authentic history of the princess Scota, daughter of king Pharaoh of Egypt, while the papal suzerainty was deduced from Constantine’s donation, which bestowed all islands on pope Sylvester and his successors.

The differences with Philip had become more complicated and more serious. In 1299 the pope had suspended two bishops in the south of France, and Philip had attempted to exercise the regale by seizing the incomes of their sees as in a case of vacancy. But the pope objected on the ground that suspension did not vacate a see, and, with a view to this and other affairs, he sent as legate into France Bernard de Saisset, bishop of Pamiers. The see of Pamiers—a city which was formerly subject to the counts of Foix, and, in consequence of the Albigensian war, had passed first to the elder Simon de Montfort, and afterwards to the crown—had been created by Boniface in 1296, without asking the king’s consent; and it had been bestowed on Bernard, who was abbot of a monastery which became the cathedral, and who, as abbot, was lord of the city— an arrogant, violent, and turbulent man. The choice of such an envoy seems to indicate an intention to irritate the king; and when Bernard remonstrated as to the treatment of the count of Flanders, whom Philip had treacherously imprisoned, with his wife and daughter, the king reminded the legate that he was his subject. The legate replied that, although Pamiers was in France, he acknowledged no lord but the pope; whereupon the king in anger dismissed him, and sent him back to Rome. Boniface, however, took no other notice of his offence than by sending him home to his diocese.

Philip, provoked by this, caused information to be collected against Bernard—some of it, it is said, by torturing his servants—and the bishop was brought to trial before a parliament at Senlis, where Peter Flotte, one of the ablest of the king’s legal counsellors, brought forward a monstrous set of charges against him—that he had spoken in gross disparagement of the king, both as to his descent and as to his personal character; that he had abused the French nation as compared with the men of the South; that he had entered into treacherous correspondence with the king of England; that he had denied that Pamiers was in the kingdom of France, and had attempted to stir up the count of Foix and others to revolt; that he had declared, on the authority of a pretended prophecy of St. Lewis, that the kingdom of France was to come to an end under the reigning sovereign. Of these charges some are utterly incredible, and their character throws suspicion over the rest. But the bishop, notwithstanding his denials, was condemned, and the king made him over to his metropolitan, the arch­bishop of Narbonne, for degradation. The archbishop, however, who was under special obligations to the pope for having supported him against Philip on a former occasion, insisted that the bishop should not be treated as a prisoner, although he ordered him to be watched; and the pope required that he should be sent to Rome for judgment. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, was sent to urge the king’s suit against the bishop, and with him was William of Nogaret, a lawyer of acute mind and daring spirit, who is said to have been animated by the remembrance that his grandfather had been burnt at Toulouse as a heretic. These envoys were instructed to charge the bishop, among other things, with having spoken violently, not only against the king, but against the pope himself.

The mission served only to bring out more distinctly the irreconcilable difference between the parties. At the last interview, it is said that Boniface angrily declared that he possessed the temporal power as well as the spiritual; to which Peter Flotte replied, “Your power is only in words; but ours is real.”

The pope, greatly incensed, issued four documents which bear date on the same day. In one of these, he desired Philip to release the bishop of Pamiers, to allow him to go freely to Rome, and to give up his confiscated property. By another, he summoned the prelates and other representatives of the French clergy to a council which was to be held at Rome in the following November, with a view to the redress of the French church’s grievances—a daring and unprece­dented assumption of power over a prince’s ecclesiastical subjects. A third document, known by the title of Salvator mundi, suspended all privileges which had been granted to Philip or to his predecessors. But the most noted of the four was a long letter addressed to Philip, and beginning with the words Ausculta, fili. In this, affecting a tone of parental solicitude, Boniface solemnly reminds the king of his Christian profession. He lays down that God had set the pope over kings and kingdoms, “to pluck down, destroy, scatter, rebuild, and plant.” He reproves Philip for the faults of his government—that he had oppressed his people, falsified the coinage, invaded the patronage of ecclesiastical dignities, seized the income of vacant sees, prevented intercourse with the Roman court, interfered with the immunities of the clergy, both as to taxation and as to jurisdiction; and that, although already often admonished as to these faults, he had not corrected them. The pope contrasts Philip’s apathy as to the cause of the Holy Land with the zeal of his crusading ancestors; he warns him against the deceits of evil counsellors, who “like false prophets” lead him astray; and he invites him to appear in person or by proxy before the council which was about to assemble at Rome.

Philip, instead of allowing this manifesto to provoke him to any rash action, proceeded to meet it with a calculating coolness. After deep consideration with his counsellors, he resolved to drop the affair of the bishop of Pamiers, lest other bishops of his kingdom should be alienated from him, and to concentrate all his energies on a direct opposition to the pope. Bernard de Saisset was allowed to accompany the envoy who had brought the papal letters on his return to Rome. The bull Ausculta was read before a crowd of nobles and knights assembled in the royal court, when the king declared that he would not acknowledge his own sons for his heirs if they admitted any authority over the kingdom of France, save that of God alone; and a general feeling of indignation was aroused among the hearers.

About the same time another document was circulated, which is known by the name of the Short Letter or Lesser Bull. In substance, this contained nothing but what was in the Ausculta fili; but it is a question whether it really proceeded from the pope, or whether—with its peremptory shortness, its neglect of the usual greetings, its abrupt and rude manner of stating the most offensive Roman claims, its omission of those charges which, as stated in the Ausculta, might have excited Philip’s subjects against him—it ought not to be considered as an abridgment, drawn up by some of the king’s legal counsellors for the purpose of rendering the pope odious to the commonalty of France. And with this letter was circulated an answer, in the king’s name, of equal brevity, meeting the pope’s assertions with direct contradiction in a tone of coarse and even vulgar insolence. From these short documents the popular opinion as to the contents of the larger bull, and as to the merits of the quarrel between the pope and the king, was derived; and, trusting to the impression thus produced, Philip, a fortnight after the reading of the Ausculta before his nobles, caused it to be burnt in his own presence, and the burning to be proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet through the streets of Paris.

Philip had now assured himself that, notwithstanding all the reasons for dissatisfaction which he might have given his subjects, he could rely on them in a contest with the pope; and on the 10th of April 1302 an assembly of the estates of the realm met in the cathedral of Paris. It was the first time that the representatives of the towns—the third estate—had been summoned to sit with the clergy and nobles; and it has been remarked that, whereas in England the representation of the commons had been instituted by the barons in their contest with the crown, in France it was the most despotic of her mediaeval sovereigns that called them in as allies in a struggle for national independence against the pope. But Philip was safe in reckoning that, in their delight and surprise at finding themselves acknowledged as a part of the national legislature, the commons would be ready to lend themselves as passive instruments of his will.

The proceedings were opened by the chancellor, Peter Flotte, in a speech which was intended to conciliate all the orders by enlarging on the encroachments which each of them had suffered at the hands of the papacy. To the clergy he pointed out that the pope bestowed French churches on foreigners who did not reside on their preferments; that he deprived the bishops of their patronage, interfered with the exercise of their duties, preyed on them by making it necessary that they should continually offer presents, and taxed the church enormously by exactions of all sorts. He asked the assembled representatives of France whether the kingdom was to stand immediately under God, or to be subject to the pope. The impetuous count Robert of Artois declared that, if the king were disposed to submit to the pope, the nobles would not submit; and Peter du Bose, a Norman lawyer, brought a written charge of heresy against Boniface, for having attempted to deprive the king of that which he held from God. The clergy yielded to the general feeling—perhaps the more readily because the overwhelming force of the lay orders furnished an excuse which might be pleaded to the pope; but they asked leave to attend the proposed council at Rome, and met with a refusal. Each of the orders drew up a letter—that of the clergy addressed to the pope; the others, to the cardinals. The clergy, while they approach the pope with a tone of deep respect, are careful to inform him of the hard things which had been said against him by the king and the nobles; they speak clearly of the many late encroachments of Rome on France; and they explain that they had been driven by the difficulties of their position to declare themselves bound by feudal duty to the king. The barons and the third estate wrote in their native language. The nobles dwell on the violent and wrongful acts of the existing pope, which, they say, had disturbed the ancient friendship between the Roman church and the kingdom of France, and they declare that nothing could induce them to seek redress of any grievances which they might have from the pope, or from any other authority than their king. The letter of the third estate is unfortunately lost.

To the letters of the lay orders the cardinals replied by denying the truth of some charges which had been brought against the pope, and by justifying his proceedings as to other points. “We wish you”, they told the nobles, “to be assured that our lord, the chief pontiff, never wrote to the king that he was temporally subject to him in respect of his kingdom, and ought to hold it from him… Wherefore, the proposition which Peter Flotte has advanced, had a sandy and false foundation, and, therefore, the superstructure must of necessity fall.” The pope’s answer to the clergy (Verba delirantis) was in a more violent strain. The words of a daughter who is beside herself, he says, however monstrous they may be, cannot stain the purity of her mother, or change the mother’s love into hatred. Yet, while vehemently rebuking the French clergy for their weakness in yielding to secular force, and allowing themselves to be misled by “that Belial, Peter Flotte, half-seeing in body, and wholly blind in mind,” he, like the cardinals, declares that his former statement as to the relations of the papacy and the French kingdom had been misunderstood; that he had never claimed temporal suzerainty over France, as over some other kingdoms. But, he said, no one could deny that the king was subject to him “in respect of sin”; the temporal power must be under the spiritual; for to hold otherwise would be the error of believing in the existence of two independent principles.

Soon after the date of this letter, a consistory was held at Rome at which the same line was taken by the speakers. The cardinal of Porto, Matthew Acquasparta, denied that the pope had ever said that the king ought to consider himself as holding his crown under the church. There are, he said, two jurisdictions—the spiritual, which belongs to the pope as chief, and the temporal, which belongs to kings and emperors. The pope may take cognizance of all temporal matters, and may judge of them in respect of sin : and thus temporal jurisdiction belongs to him of right, as vicar of Christ and of St. Peter. But it does not belong to him as to use and actual execution; wherefore, it was said to St. Peter, “Put up thy sword into the sheath”.

The cardinal’s speech was followed by one from the pope, who began in a conciliatory tone—setting out with the text “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,” and professing an earnest regard for the welfare of the king of France. But by degrees Boniface’s passion broke out. He spoke vehemently of the king’s offences against the church; of his evil counsellors, especially Peter Flotte, “that Ahithophel, that man of the devil, whom God hath already punished in part—partly blind in body, wholly blind in mind—that man of vinegar and gall, a man to be accounted and condemned as an heretic,” who had falsified his letter, or had given the king a false idea of it. He disavowed, as before, all intention of encroaching on the king’s rights, and repeated the distinction as to a jurisdiction “in respect of sin”; he invidiously pointed out the dangers which threatened Philip from his neighbours, and applied to the French the words which St. Bernard had used of the Romans—“As you love no one, so no one loves you.” And he ended with a declaration that, as his predecessors had already deposed three kings of France, so now, in case of obstinacy, he would depose Philip “like a groom.” The ambassadors of France had been invited to the consistory, and heard the pope’s language against their sovereigns.

The difficulties to which the pope had referred as encompassing Philip were now very serious. At Bruges, which he had reduced to subjection, there had been an outbreak against the French; the spirit of insurrection spread rapidly among the Flemings, and at the battle of Courtray, on the 11th of July 1302, a great defeat was inflicted by the despised burghers on the army of France—Robert of Artois and Peter Flotte, two of the most conspicuous enemies of the papacy, being among the slain. The pope had encouraged the Flemings, and had even supplied them with money, while Philip had renewed, in more stringent terms than before, his order against the exportation of gold and silver from France.

Encouraged by the sight of Philip’s difficulties, forty-five prelates of various classes, and headed by the arch­bishop of Tours, defied the king’s authority by setting out for the council which had been summoned to meet at Rome in November. Philip, in great indignation, summoned them to return. At the council, excommunication was denounced against any one—even if he were a king or an emperor—who should hinder or molest persons going to or returning from the papal court and a constitution, known by the name of Unam sanctam, was issued, in which Boniface, while adhering to the limitations of his power which he had before laid down, declared very strongly its superiority over all temporal authority. When, he says, the apostles said, “Behold, here are two swords,” the Lord did not answer “It is too much,” but “It is enough”; therefore, the temporal as well as the spiritual power is in the church, and any one who denies that St. Peter has the temporal sword, misunderstands the words “Put up thy sword into the sheath.” The spiritual sword is to be exercised by the church, the material sword for the church; the one, by the hands of priests, the other, by the hands of kings and soldiers. The temporal must be subject to the spiritual power as the lower to the higher; the spiritual power has the right to judge the other, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah (I. 10)— “See, I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” Earthly power is accountable to the spiritual power; but no spiritual power is accountable, except to a higher power of the same kind, and the highest is accountable to God alone.

 

CARDINAL LE MOINE.

 

There was still on both sides an unwillingness to proceed to extremities. Philip declared himself ready to submit to the arbitration of the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, while the pope sent as legate John le Moine, cardinal of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, a Frenchman by birth, and highly regarded by the king. The legate was charged to restrain Philip from his evil courses, especially from his oppression of the church, and to summon him to appear by proxy before the court of Rome in order to answer for having burnt the papal bull; but there was reason to suspect that the real object of his mission was to obtain information for the pope, and to tamper with the clergy who adhered to the king. Philip’s answers were vague and unsatisfactory. He affected to suppose that the charge of having destroyed a bull referred to a document which concerned the church of Laon; and he declared that he had torn up that bull as being useless —not out of any disrespect to the pope. The mission of Cardinal le Moine, therefore, came to nothing; and Boniface complained of the manner in which his charge had been met, and of the treatment which his legate had experienced.

Each party now looked forward to a struggle for the sake of which all lesser differences must be sacrificed. Philip was fain to make peace with England, by ceding Aquitaine to Edward, and by abandoning his allies the Scots. Boniface, after all the indignation which he had expressed against Frederick of Sicily, and although he had lately refused to confirm a peace which Charles of Valois had made with his rival, acknowledged the Aragonese prince as king of Trinacria, and admitted him to fealty. And now the pope was even glad to overlook all the defects on which he had before insisted in Albert’s title as king of the Romans. He invited him to send ambassadors to the papal court; he dwelt on the merits of his father Rudolf towards the apostolic see; he annulled by a formal document all irregularities which might affect his claims; he extolled the imperial dignity as a sort of secular papacy, to which all other princes ought to be subject, and through the abeyance of which it was that the king of France had presumed, with the characteristic pride of his nation, to claim independence of any superior. The princes of the empire were charged to pay allegiance to Albert; and Albert, glad to obtain such countenance on any terms, subscribed to all that his father had conceded in favour of Rome. He acknowledged that Charlemagne had received the empire from the holy see, nay, that the electors derived their power from the papacy; and he promised to defend the pope against all injury.

On the 13th of April, Boniface, having received from the cardinal-legate a report of his unsatisfactory negotiations with Philip, sent forth a brief by which it was declared that the king had incurred the penalty of excommunication by preventing the attendance of bishops at the late Roman council. Any ecclesiastic who might minister in his presence was likewise to be excommunicate; and the sentence was to be proclaimed throughout the kingdom.

But a month before this Philip had held a great assembly of nobles, with two archbishops and three bishops, at the Louvre, where William of Nogaret, who had succeeded Peter Flotte in the chancellorship, stood forward to charge Boniface with invasion of the holy see, with being a heretic and a simoniac, “such as no one ever was from the beginning of the world”, and with other grievous crimes. For these he required that the pope should be tried before a general council, which he maintained that the king was entitled to summon; and that in the meantime Benedict Gaetani should be kept in safe custody, while a vicar should be appointed for the performance of the papal functions.

The messengers who conveyed the excommunication of Philip into France had probably allowed the nature of their errand to become known. They were seized and imprisoned. It was in vain that the legate desired that their papers should be given up to him; and he had to bear the insult of seeing on the door of his own lodging, in the convent of St. Martin at Tours, the proclamation by which the king summoned a second meeting of the national estates for the consideration of the pope’s offences. The property of the prelates who had attended the Roman council was confiscated. The Inquisition was denounced as inhuman by the king in a letter to the bishop of Toulouse. And, with a view to win all orders to his side, Philip set forth an ordinance of March 23, reformation, offering redress of grievances to every class of his subjects, and especially to the clergy, whose support he was desirous to secure in the struggle with Rome.

On the 13th of June the second assembly of the estates-general met at the Louvre. William of Nogaret had set out for Italy two months before, but his place as accuser was taken by William of Plasian, a knight and counsellor of the parliament of Paris, with whom were associated the count of Evreux, brother of the king, and the counts of St. Pol and Dreux. Plasian professed that he was not moved by any malice against Boniface, but solely by anxiety for the church; and he brought forward twenty-nine articles of accusation, to the truth of which he swore. Of these charges some related to the alleged irregularity of Boniface’s promotion to the holy see; some, to faults of administration; some were imputations of the worst offences—heresy, unbelief, denial of the soul’s immortality, cruelty, lust of the most execrable kinds, sorcery, murder; while some were intended to exasperate the hearers by representing him as an enemy of the French nation. He was said to have declared, before his elevation, that, if he were pope, he would rather upset all Christendom and the world than refrain from destroying “the pride of France”; it was alleged that his political intrigues had been directed to this object, which he had avowed by allying himself with Albert of Germany, after having denounced him in unmeasured terms; and the king was requested, as champion of the church and defender of the faith, to procure the assembling of a general council. Philip, after professing that he would rather cover the faults of his spiritual father with his own mantle than display them, declared that he appealed against any sentence of excommunication and interdict to a general council and to a pope lawfully chosen; and he desired those who were present to join in this appeal. The bishops and abbots complied, although they expressed a hope that Boniface would be able to clear himself of the charges against him. The archbishop of Narbonne, however, distinguished himself from his brethren by bringing forward ten articles against the pope : among others, that he denied the immortality of the soul, that he had aided the king of England against France, had instigated the Saracens to invade Sicily, and had become the father of children by two of his own married nieces. It would appear that these and other charges had long been circulated in France, through the influence of cardinals, and even, in some cases, by Boniface’s own representatives. In consequence of the proceedings of the states-general, about seven hundred memorials were drawn up, all desiring a general council, but guarding their respect for the Roman see by joining with that object a lawfully-elected pope. Among the subscribers of these memorials were archbishops and bishops, nobles of all grades, the abbots of Cluny, Citeaux, Fontevraud, and Prémontré, representatives of universities, members of religious orders, and even nine cardinals. It is said, however, that among the signatures some were forged—among them, that of the abbot of Citeaux. The clergy also signed an agreement for mutual defence with the king and the barons, against whatsoever person might be disposed to attack them, and even against Boniface by name. William of Nogaret, who was already in Italy, was commissioned to present these documents to the pope, and all ecclesiastics were forbidden more strictly than before to leave the kingdom without permission.

Boniface, partly from fear of the heats of summer, partly, perhaps, from apprehension of some danger, had withdrawn from Rome to his native Anagni, where on the 15th of August he held a consistory. Passing over (as he probably was entitled to do) the personal charges against him, as unworthy of his notice, he purged himself by oath of the charge of heresy, and declared that he had provoked it only by endeavouring to heal the king’s sins. He spoke with indignation of Philip’s having received Stephen Colonna at his court. He asserted with his usual vehemence the superiority of the papacy over all earthly power, and he concluded his speech by announcing his intention of issuing a bull of deposition against Philip. Immediately after this, four bulls were despatched into France; by one of these the ecclesiastical bodies were forbidden to elect to any dignity or benefice, so long as the king should be at variance with the church; by another, the universities were suspended, during the continuance of the same circumstances, from teaching, and from conferring degrees in Divinity, canon law and civil law.

The bull of deposition was prepared. In this the pope began by declaring his authority, and setting forth his course of gentle dealing with Philip. The king had committed many offences, especially by hindering access to the apostolic see, by his proceedings as to the bishop of Pamiers, by seizing some papal envoys, by receiving the excommunicated Stephen Colonna and other members of the same family; and, as he had refused the pope’s messengers, and at last his son, the cardinal of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, there was reason to dread that the vineyard might be let out to others. The pope, therefore, declares him to be deposed, absolves his subjects from their allegiance, and forbids all communion with him. It was intended that this bull should be published at the cathedral of Anagni on Sunday the 8th of September, the Nativity of the blessed Virgin; but before that day the pope’s enemies took effectual means to prevent the execution of his design.

William of Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, both so deeply committed against Boniface that their only hope of safety lay in his ruin, had appeared in Italy, and had taken up their abode with the king’s Florentine banker, Musciatto dei Francesi, at Stoggia, a castle belonging to him, between Florence and Siena. They were authorized to draw money from Philip’s bankers at Florence, and by means of this they were able to secure to their interest many of the petty nobles of the Campagna, who were embittered against Boniface by the aggrandizement of his family at their expense, and to enlist a force of men who either were hostile to Boniface or were ready to serve in any cause for pay. On the morning of the 7th of September this force, three hundred horsemen, with a considerable number of infantry, suddenly appeared at Anagni. The citizens, roused by the sound of the alarm-bell, assembled, and chose a nobleman of the Campagna, Adenulf, as their captain; but Adenulf, who entertained an old enmity against the pope, proved treacherous, and aided the assailants. These soon forced an entrance into the town, and beset the pope’s palace, displaying French banners, and shouting “Death to Boniface! Long live the king of France!” with the national battle-cry of “Montjoie!”. A truce of some hours was agreed on, and the pope (who had neglected all warnings of the design against him) sent to ask the leaders of the party with what terms they would be satisfied. The reply was, that he should resign his office, restore the Colonnas to their property and dignities, and should place himself in the hands of Sciarra. This proposal was necessarily refused, and on the expiration of the truce the assault was renewed. The assailants set fire to the doors of a church which adjoined the palace, and made their way through the flames. They overpowered and seized Boniface’s nephew, the marquis Gaetani; and the doors which separated them from the pope himself were one after another forced. Boniface, hearing the successive crashes, and finding himself deserted, resolved to end his life with dignity,—to “die like a pope.” Putting on the papal mantle, and the imperial “crown of Constantine,” holding his pastoral cross in one hand and the symbolical keys of St. Peter in the other, he took his seat on the throne, and with stem resolution awaited the approach of his enemies. As they entered, they were awed for a moment at the sight of the high-hearted old man, whom religion had invested with so venerable a character; but speedily angry words were exchanged. Sciarra Colonna peremptorily required the pope to resign. “Behold,” he answered, “my neck and my head! If I have been betrayed like Christ, I am ready to die like Christ’s vicar”. Sciarra dragged him from his throne; according to some accounts, he struck him on the face with his gauntleted hand, so as to draw blood; and he would probably have killed him, had not Nogaret interposed. Nogaret, it is said, called the pope a most vile heretic, and told him that he must appear before a general council—that, if he would not go voluntarily, he should be carried by force to Lyons; whereupon Boniface, reckless of the effect, exclaimed that he was no heretic, but was content to suffer at the hands of a patarine, whose father and mother had been burnt as patarines.

Boniface was put under a guard, and, after having been paraded through the town on a vicious horse, with his face towards the tail, was committed to prison, while the captors plundered the palaces and churches of Anagni of immense wealth which was contained in them. But, whether from the want of a plan or from hesitation to carry it out, they took no further steps for the disposal of the prisoner until, on the morning of the second day, the people of Anagni with some of their neighbours, under cardinal Luke Fiesco, rose on them, surprised and killed the soldiers who had the care of the pope’s person, and drove the rest of the force from the town. Boniface was brought forth into the market-place, where a multitude crowded to see him. Since his capture, he had not tasted any food—perhaps he had refused it from fear of poison. After having thanked those around him, with a profusion of tears, he entreated that some good woman would charitably save him from dying of hunger, promising absolution from all sins to any one who should bring anything for his relief. The multitude responded by a shout of “Life to you, holy father!”. Women dispersed in all directions, to return with large supplies of bread, wine, and water; and, after having recruited himself with some refreshment, the pope talked familiarly with all who chose to approach him. He pronounced a general absolution of all but the plunderers of the church; he declared himself willing to restore the Colonnas; and he announced an intention of going to Rome and summoning a general council. The Romans, alarmed by the reports which had reached them, sent some soldiers, who served as an escort, and by them he was conducted to Rome, although not without encountering an attack by the Colonna party on the way.

On reaching the city, Boniface was placed under the care of the Orsini —the hereditary enemies of the Colonnas. But his late sufferings, both of body and of mind, had told strongly on a man of eighty-six; and he appears to have fallen into a frenzy fever, which made it necessary to place him under restraint. On the 11th of October the pope was found dead in his chamber. By some writers his death is attributed to grief; by some, to poison; while others tell the story with horrible details—that he refused food, and, like a mad dog, bit his own flesh that he was found lying in bed, as if he had suffocated himself with the bed-clothes,—his staff gnawed by him in his rage, his head wounded by having been dashed against the wall, and his white hair encrusted with blood.

“He entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, and went out like a dog.” Such was a description of Boniface’s career, uttered, no doubt, after the event, but soon popularly changed into the form of a prophecy, which Celestine was supposed to have spoken when visited in his confinement at Fumone by his supplanter and persecutor. The circumstances of his death produced a general horror, which was felt even by those who abhorred the man, while they revered the office which had been so atrociously outraged in him and tales of judgments denounced by him on his enemies, and of terrible fulfillments of his curses, were eagerly circulated and believed. But the end of Boniface involved far more than his own ruin. He had attempted to strain the papal power too far, and after his failure it never recovered the ascendency which he had rashly hazarded in the endeavour to gain a yet more absolute dominion.

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL.