The Church and the Empire, D. J. Medley [librera reader TXT] 📗

with the other members of the family; they withdrew from the papal Court, and having already turned from Ghibelline to Guelf, they once more became Ghibelline and made an alliance with Frederick of Sicily. They published a manifesto in which they refused to recognise Boniface on the ground that Pope Celestine’s abdication had been unlawful. But Celestine was dead and the Colonnas had voted for his successor. Boniface deposed the Cardinals and excommunicated them, even declaring a crusade against them! The struggle centred round Palestrina, and it is said that the Pope fetched from a Franciscan cloister a once famous Ghibelline general, Guy of Montefeltro, by whose advice he decoyed the Colonnas out of their fortress by promises which he did not intend to keep. Palestrina was levelled to the ground and the Colonnas fled (1298), finding refuge among the enemies of Boniface and preparing the way for the final catastrophe.

[Sidenote: Papal Jubilee.]

Boniface, however, had become his own master at home to an extent attained by none of his predecessors since Innocent III. His reign reached what may be termed its high-water mark in the Papal Jubilee of 1300. The cessation of the Crusades had largely increased the crowds of pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an expectation of special spiritual privileges in connection with the end of the century. Indulgences had been so freely scattered in attempts to promote the Crusades that a craving for them had been created.

Boniface recognised the importance of exploiting the popular feeling, and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull promising generous indulgences to all who should visit the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul during the year for so many successive days, and directing that a similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hundredth year. Pilgrims flocked to Rome; 30,000 are reckoned to have entered and left daily, while 200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The amount of the offerings must have been enormous, and the Ghibellines naturally declared that the Jubilee had its origin in the papal need for money.

But most of the pilgrims were poor; and even if the size of the crowds were a just measure of the continued hold of the Roman Church upon the people of Western Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except Charles Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant. Indeed, Boniface had already experienced a foretaste of the independent attitude of the secular princes, which eventually proved fatal to him.

Rudolf of Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes, rejecting the claims of his son Albert, elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had hoped to find him.

He was deposed and fell in battle, and Albert was chosen and crowned without any reference to the Pope—the first occasion on which the German princes had acted without papal authority. Boniface had already barred Albert’s claims. He now refused to recognise him, declaring that the Empire owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour.

Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to accept Albert, especially since Albert was willing in return to confirm all that his father Rudolf had granted to the Papacy.

[Sidenote: First quarrel with France and England.]

But this quarrel with Germany sinks into insignificance before the great contest of Boniface with France, with which his English dispute was also closely connected. The Hohenstaufen had fallen before the Papacy because their German kingdom and the “German” Empire rested on no solid foundation. But in his attempts to coerce France and England into obedience the Pope found himself face to face with two strong national monarchies. Boniface failed to grasp the position. Edward I of England and Philip IV of France were engaged in war. Each resorted to every available method of raising money for the conduct of the war, and among other ways laid heavy taxes on the clergy. Boniface having failed to make the Kings submit their quarrels to his judgment, issued a bull, Clericis Laicos (February, 1296), by which he forbade, under pain of excommunication, that any prelate or ecclesiastical body should pay or laymen should exact from the clergy any taxes under any pretext without papal leave. Edward I met this manifesto by confiscating the lay fees of all ecclesiastics; while Philip forbade the export of all money from France, thus depriving the Pope and all Italian ecclesiastics endowed with French benefices, of the usual sources of income from France. The English clergy, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made their own arrangements with the King. But in order to avoid a rupture with France Boniface issued another bull, Ineffabilis, in which he explained that ecclesiastics were not forbidden to contribute to the needs of the State; and by subsequent letters he allowed that they might pay taxes of their own free will, and even that in cases of necessity the King might take taxes without waiting for the papal leave. He certainly told his legates to excommunicate the King and his officials if they should prevent money coming from France; but in order to gain Philip’s favour he granted him the tithe of the French clergy for three years, he placed Louis IX among the recognised saints of the Church, and he promised that Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois, should be made German King and Emperor.

Good relations having been established Philip and Edward now agreed to submit their differences to Boniface. Philip, however, stipulated that Boniface should act in the matter not as Pope but in a personal capacity, and the Pope issued his award “as a private person and Master Benedict Gaetani” (June 30,1298). But the judgment was in the form of a bull, and ordered that the lands to be surrendered on either side should be placed in the custody of the papal officers. Philip could not reject the award; but he determined to prepare for a conflict which was clearly inevitable. He gave refuge to some members of the Colonna family, and he made an alliance with Albert of Austria (1299).

[Sidenote: Second quarrel with England.]

Meanwhile Boniface began a second quarrel with England. Edward I had refused the papal offers of mediation on behalf of Scotland. But after the battle of Falkirk the national representatives of Scotland appealed to Boniface as suzerain of the kingdom. The Pope wrote to Edward claiming that from ancient times the kingdom of Scotland had belonged by full right to the Roman Church, and demanding that Edward should submit all causes of difference between himself and the Scots to the Papacy. The English answer was given in a Parliament called for the purpose to Lincoln (1301), by which a document addressed to the Pope asserted for the English Kings a right over Scotland from the first institution of the English kingdom, and denied that Scotland had ever depended in temporal matters on the Roman Pontiff. Any further action was prevented by the beginning of the final quarrel between Boniface and Philip.

[Sidenote: With France.]

The Pope found it necessary to complain frequently of Philip’s misuse of the royal right of regale, and in 1301 relations became so strained that he sent a legate, Bernard of Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers in the south of France. But Bernard was arrogant, and on being claimed by Philip as a subject, he exclaimed that he owned no lord but the Pope.

Since Boniface administered no reproof Philip procured the condemnation of the Bishop for treason. The Pope in fury issued four bulls in one day, the most important addressed to Philip and beginning Ausculta fili, in which he asserted that God had set up the Pope over Kings and kingdoms in order to destroy, to scatter, to build and to plant in His name and doctrine. Philip caused the bull to be publicly burnt—“the first flame which consumed a papal bull”—and called an Assembly of the Estates of the Realm, in which for the first time the commons were included. The Cardinals, in answering the remonstrances sent by the nobles and commons, denied that the Pope had ever told the King that he should be subject in temporal matters to Rome; and Boniface assured the French clergy that he merely claimed that the King was subject to him “in respect of sin.”

[Sidenote: The final struggle.]

But in July, 1302, the burghers of Flanders inflicted a severe defeat on the French forces in the battle of Courtray; and the Pope, taking advantage of Philip’s humiliation before Europe, immediately assumed a more defiant attitude. In a Council at Rome and before the French envoys, he declared that his predecessors had deposed three Kings of France and, if necessary, he would depose the King “like a groom”

(_garcio_). He followed this up by issuing the most famous of his bulls, Unam Sanctam, in which he roundly asserted that the submission of every human creature to Rome was a condition of salvation. Finally, while on the one side he excommunicated Philip (April 13, 1303), he hastened to recognise Albert as King of Germany, and ratified the peace made between Frederick of Sicily and Charles of Valois. Philip on his side abandoned his Scots allies in order to make peace with England (May 20, 1303), and called for a second time an Assembly of the Estates. Before its members the aged Pope was accused of heresy, murder, and even lust; and the appeal to a General Council was now adopted by the representatives of the whole French nation. But it was certain that the excommunication of Philip would be followed by his deposition; and Philip and his councillors determined to forestall this. Urged on by the Colonnas the French King conceived the plan of seizing the person of the Pope and bringing him before a council to be held at Lyons. Boniface was at his native Anagni, and Philip’s emissaries, in conjunction with many Italian enemies of the Pope, forced their way into the town and seized the old man (September 3, 1303). He was rescued and taken back to Rome; but the shock of the attack unhinged his reason and hastened his end. He died on October 11

at the age of eighty-six. His foes described his last days in lurid colours; but the violent behaviour of his enemies caused strong disgust throughout Christendom.

To a contemporary, Boniface was “magnanimus peccator,” the great-hearted sinner; while a modern historian describes him as “devoid of every spiritual virtue.” If Canossa was the humiliation for the Empire which the ecclesiastical annalists describe, in the pettiness of the stage and the insignificance of the actors Anagni was an ample revenge of the lay spirit. The Papacy which had worn down the Empire had dashed itself in vain against the new phenomenon of a strong national spirit.