[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.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST
[Sidenote: The Eastern Church.]
A history of the Church Universal must needs take some notice of those Christian communities which never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Chief among these stands the Church of the Eastern Empire where the Patriarch of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the equal of the Bishop of Rome. This mutual jealousy of the old and the new Rome was only one of the causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel which was fanned from time to time by the appeal of a defeated party in some ecclesiastical dispute at Constantinople to the Pope. The most famous of these disputes was that begun by the deposition of the aristocratic Ignatius from the patriarchate in favour of the learned Photius. Both Emperor and Patriarch appealed from Constantinople to Pope Nicholas I; but when that masterful bishop decided against the new patriarch, Photius used his learning to summarise in eight articles the differences between east and west. Of these, two concerned such important matters as the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost and the practice of clerical celibacy.
[Sidenote: Breach between East and West.]