The bearer of the bull was arrested, the property of the bishops who had attended the council sequestered, and Philip prepared to seize Boniface in his own palace. Boniface, too, felt the decisive hour at hand. He tried to reconcile himself with his enemies, drew the bull of deposition, and prepared to affix it to the church door at Anagni on September 8, 1303. Before the day came he was a prisoner, and face to face with death.
Flotte had been killed at Courtray, and had been succeeded by the redoubtable Nogaret, whose grandfather was believed to have been burned as a heretic. With Nogaret Philip joined Sciarra Colonna, the bloodiest of the Italian nobles, and sent them together to Italy to deal with his foe. Boniface had made war upon the Colonnas, and Sciarra had been hunted like a wild beast. Flying disguised, he had been taken by pirates, and had preferred to toil four years as a galley-slave, rather than run the risk of ecclesiastical mercy by surrendering himself to the vicar of Christ. At last Philip heard of his misfortunes, bought him, and, at the crisis, let him slip like a mad dog at the old man’s throat. Nogaret and Colonna succeeded in corrupting the governor of Anagni, and entered the town at dead of night; but the pope’s nephews had time to barricade the streets, and it was not until the church, which communicated with the papal apartments, had been fired, that the palace was forced. There, it was said, they found the proud old priest sitting upon his throne, with his crown upon his head, and men whispered that, as he sat there, Colonna struck him in the face with his gauntlet.
Probably the story was false, but it reflected truly enough the spirit of the pope’s captors. He himself believed them capable of poisoning him, for from Saturday night till Monday morning he lay without food or drink, and when liberated was exhausted. Boniface was eighty-six, and the shock killed him. He was taken to Rome, and died there of fever, according to the rumour, blaspheming, and gnawing his hands in frenzy.[174]
The death of Boniface was decisive. Benedict XI., who succeeded him, did not attempt to prolong the contest; but peace without surrender was impossible. The economic classes held the emotionalists by the throat, and strangled them till they disgorged.
Vainly Benedict revoked the acts of his predecessor. Philip demanded that Boniface should be branded as a heretic, and sent Nogaret to Rome as his ambassador. The insult was more than the priesthood could yet endure. Summoning his courage, Benedict excommunicated Nogaret, Colonna, and thirteen others, whom he had seen break into the palace at Anagni. Within a month he was dead. Poison was whispered, and, for the first time since the monks captured the papacy, the hierarchy was paralyzed by fear. No complaint was made, or pursuit of the criminal attempted; the consistory met, but failed to unite on a successor.
According to the legend, when the cardinals were unable to agree, the faction opposed to Philip consented to name three candidates, from whom the king should select the pope. The prelate he chose was Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux. Boniface had been his patron, but Philip, who knew men, knew that this man had his price. The tale goes that the king visited the bishop at an abbey near Saint-Jean-d’Angély, and began the conversation as follows: “My lord Archbishop, I have that in my hand will make you pope if I like, and it is for that I am come.” Bertrand fell on his knees, and the king imposed five conditions, reserving a sixth, to exact thereafter. The last condition was the condemnation of the Templars.[175]
Doubtless the picturesque old tale is as false in detail as it is true in spirit. Probably no such interview took place, and yet there seems little doubt that Clement owed his election to Philip, and gave pledges which bound him from the day of his coronation. Certainly he surrendered all liberty of action, for he established himself at Avignon, whence the battlements of Ville-Neuve can still be seen, built by Philip to overawe the town. Within an hour he could have filled the streets with his mercenaries. The victory was complete. The Church was prostrate, and spoliation began.
Clement was crowned in 1305, and after two years of slavery he began to find his compact heavy upon him. He yielded up the patronage, he consented to the taxation of the clergy, and he ordered the grand-masters of the crusading orders to return to Europe, all at Philip’s bidding. But when he was commanded to condemn Boniface as a heretic, he recoiled in terror. Indeed, to have rejected Boniface as an impostor, and a false pope, would have precipitated chaos. His bishops and cardinals would have been set aside, Clement’s own election would have been invalidated; none could foresee where the disorganization would end. To gain time, Clement pleaded for a general council, which the king morosely conceded, but only on the condition that the excommunications against his agents, even against Nogaret, should be withdrawn. Clement assented, for he was practically a prisoner at Poitiers, a council at Vienne was agreed to, and the Crown seized the Templars without opposition from the Church.
Criticism has long ago dispelled the mystery which once shrouded this bloody process. No historian now suggests that the knights were really guilty of the fantastic enormities charged against them, and which they confessed under torture. Scepticism doubtless was rife among them, as it was among the cardinals, but there is nothing to show that the worst differed materially from the population about them, and the superb fortitude with which they perished, demonstrates that lack of religious enthusiasm was not the crime for which they died.
When Philip conceived the idea of first murdering and then plundering the crusaders, is uncertain. Some have thought it was in 1306, while sheltered in the Temple, when, he having suddenly raised his debased money to the standard of Saint Louis, the mob destroyed the house of his master of the mint. Probably it was much earlier, and was but the necessary result of the sharpening of economic competition, which began with the accelerated movement accompanying the crusades.