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.