that both powers, the temporal and the spiritual, be ordained of God. Who can believe that such fatuity can have entered into our mind? But who can also deny that the king is subject unto us on the score of sin? … We be disposed to grant unto him every grace. … So long as I was cardinal, I was French in heart; since then, we have testified how we do love the king. … Without us, he would not have even one foot on the throne. We do know all the secrets of the kingdom. We do know how the Germans, the Burgundians, and the folks who speak the Oc tongue do love the king. If he mend not, we shall know how to chastise him, and treat him as a little boy (sicut unum garcionem), though greatly against our will.” On the 13th of April, Boniface declared Philip excommunicate if he persisted in preventing the prelates from attending at Rome. Philip, being warned, effected the arrest at Troyes of the priest who was bringing the pope’s letter to his legate in France. The legate took to flight. Boniface, on his side, being warned that the king was appealing against him to an approaching council, declared by a bull, on the 15th of August, that it appertained to him alone to summon a council. After this bull, there was full expectation that another would be launched, which would pronounce the deposition of the king. And a new bull was actually prepared at Rome on the 5th of September, and was to be published on the 8th. It did not expressly depose the king; it merely announced that measures would be taken more serious even than excommunication. Philip had taken his precautions. He had demanded and obtained from the great towns, churches, and universities more than seven hundred declarations of support in his appeal to the future council, and an engagement to take no notice of the decree which might be issued by the pope to release the king’s subjects from their oath of allegiance. Only a few, and amongst them the Abbot of Citeaux, gave him a refusal. The order of the Templars gave only a qualified support. At the approaching advent of the new bull which was being anticipated, the king resolved to act still more roughly and speedily. Notification must be sent to the pope of the king’s appeal to the future council. Philip could no longer confide this awkward business to his chancellor, Peter Flotte; for he had fallen at Courtrai, in the battle against the Flemings. William of Nogaret undertook it, at the same time obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission authorizing and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances, he might consider it advisable to do. Notification of the appeal had to be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had gone for refuge, and the people of which, being zealous in his favor, had already dragged in the mud the lilies and the banner of France. Nogaret was bold, ruffianly, and clever. He repaired in haste to Florence, to the king’s banker, got a plentiful supply of money, established communications in Anagni, and secured, above all, the co-operation of Sciarra Colonna, who was passionately hostile to the pope, had been formerly proscribed by him, and, having fallen into the hands of corsairs, had worked at the oar for them during many a year rather than reveal his name and be sold to Boniface Gaetani. On the 7th of September, 1303, Colonna and his associates introduced Nogaret and his following into Anagni, with shouts of “Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!” The populace, dumbfounded, remained motionless. The pope, deserted by all, even by his own nephew, tried to touch the heart of Colonna himself, whose only answer was a summons to abdicate, and to surrender at discretion. “Those be hard words,” said Boniface, and burst into tears. But this old man, seventy-five years of age, had a proud spirit, and a dignity worthy of his rank. “Betrayed, like Jesus,” said he, “shall I die; but I will die pope.” He donned the cloak of St. Peter, put the crown of Constantine upon his head, took in his hands the keys and the cross, and, as his enemies drew nigh, he said to them, “Here is my neck, and here is my head.” There is a tradition, of considerable trustworthiness, that Sciarra Colonna would have killed him, and did with his mailed hand strike him in the face. Nogaret, however, prevented the murder, and confined himself to saying, “Thou caitiff pope, confess, and behold the goodness of my lord, the King of France, who, though so far away from thee in his own kingdom, both watcheth over and defendeth thee by my hand.” “Thou art of heretic family,” answered the pope: “at thy hands I look for martyrdom.”
The captivity of Boniface VIII., however, lasted only three days; for the people of Anagni, having recovered themselves, and seeing the scanty numbers of the foreigners, rose and delivered the pope. The old man was conducted to the public square, crying like a child. “Good folks,” said he to the crowd around him, “ye have seen that mine enemies have robbed me of all my goods and those of the Church. Behold me here as poor as Job. Nought have I either to eat or drink. If there be any good woman who would give me an alms of wine and bread, I would bestow upon her God’s blessing and mine.” All the people began to shout, “Long live the Holy Father!” He was reconducted into his palace: “and women thronged together thither, bringing him bread, wine, and water. Finding no proper vessels, they poured them into a chest. … Any one who liked went in, and talked with the pope, as with any other beggar.” So soon as the agitation was somewhat abated, Boniface set out for Rome, with a great crowd following him; but he was broken down in spirit and body. Scarcely had he arrived when he fell into a burning fever, which traditions, probably invented and spread by his enemies, have represented as a fit of mad rage. He died on the 11th of October, 1303, without having recovered his reason. It is reported that his predecessor, Celestine V., had said of him, “Thou risest like a fox; thou wilt rule like a lion, and die like a dog.” The last expression was unjustified. Boniface VIII. was a fanatic, ambitious, proud, violent, and crafty, but with sincerity at the bottom of his prejudiced ideas, and stubborn and blind in his fits of temper: his death was that of an old lion at bay.
We were bound to get a good idea and understanding of this violent struggle between the two sovereigns of France and Rome, not only because of its dramatic interest, but because it marks an important period in the history of the papacy and its relations with foreign governments. From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface had not the wit to recognize the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century we find no second Gregory VII., or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandizement of itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how far the situation of the papacy was altered, and how deep had been the penetration of the stab which, in this conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power, Philip the Handsome had inflicted on his rival.
On the 22d of October, 1303, eleven days after the death of Boniface VIII., Benedict XI., son of a simple shepherd, was elected at Rome to succeed him. Philip the Handsome at once sent his congratulations, but by William of Plasian, who had lately been the accuser of Boniface, and who was charged to hand to the new pope, on the king’s behalf, a very bitter memorandum touching his predecessor. Philip at the same time caused an address to be presented to himself in his own kingdom and in the vulgar tongue, called a supplication from the people of France to the King against Boniface. Benedict XI. exerted himself to give satisfaction to the conqueror; he declared the Colonnas absolved; he released the barons and prelates of France from the excommunications pronounced against them; and he himself wrote to the king to say that he would behave towards him as the good shepherd in the parable, who leaves ninety and nine sheep to go after one that is lost. Nogaret and the direct authors of the assault at Anagni were alone excepted from this amnesty. The pope reserved for a future occasion the announcement of their absolution, when he should consider it expedient. But on the 7th of June, 1304, instead of absolving them, he launched a fresh bull of excommunication against “certain wicked men who had dared to commit a hateful crime against a person of good memory, Pope Boniface.”
