Historic Bubbles

by Frederic Leake

Philip II. called Philip Augustus, the rival of the English Richard-the-lion-hearted, was the cotemporary of Innocent III. Philip had married a Danish princess named Ingerburge. The chronicles say she was young and handsome; but Philip fell none the less in love with Agnes de Méranie the daughter of a Flemish nobleman.

He applied to the pope for a divorce so that he might marry Agnes. Innocent refused. Philip then took the matter into his own hands and decreed his own divorce. Innocent excommunicated him and laid his kingdom under interdict.

A dreadful word that of Interdict! No churches open, no bells rung, no mass, no confession, no marriages, no funerals, no religious rites whatever except baptism and extreme unction—the ushering in and the ushering out of life.

This deprivation settled down like a pall upon that ignorant and superstitious age, and the people would not endure it. They revolted and Philip succumbed: he sent away the beloved Agnes and took back the hated Ingerburge. Such was the fortune of Philip Augustus in measuring himself against the Church. We shall now see how his descendant another Philip, sped, a century later, in a contest with the same power. Philip IV. called Philip-the-fair, Philip-the-handsome, was grandson of Louis IX., Saint Louis, the Marcus Aurelius of the middle ages. Philip had inherited all the talents and none of the virtues of his grandfather: he was true to no obligation and troubled with no scruples. Boniface had become aware of the dangerous character of the French king, and he sought to propitiate him by canonising his grandfather who thus escaped from purgatory and became a saint in Heaven; and no king ever deserved the promotion better. But Philip was not to be bought by so unsubstantial a favor: he was much less sentimental than rapacious and he seized the papal revenues. The clergy from time immemorial had paid to the Holy See tithes and first fruits. Philip being in need of money, ordered that those stipends be paid to him, promising to account for them to Boniface. The pope rejected the arrangement with just indignation. High words followed, and he issued the bull Clericos laicos, forbidding the clergy in France and elsewhere to pay any taxes to the State, and commanding them to pour all their contributions directly into the Apostolic treasury. Philip resisted. Edward I. of England did the same; but Boniface did not take the same measures against Edward, that he did against Philip. Perhaps he feared the vigor and capacity of the English king, unconscious that the man he was defying was at least as able, and was the less scrupulous of the two.

Philip not only forbade his clergy to pay tithes and other taxes to the pope, but he prohibited the export of money from the kingdom for any purpose whatsoever. Boniface retaliated by excommunicating Philip and laying France under interdict. At the same time he declared that the kings of the earth were subject to him in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. None of his predecessors had gone so far: not Gregory VII., not Innocent III. had risked so dangerous a piece of arrogance; and it proved the ruin of Boniface. Philip was too sagacious not to see the advantage this false step gave him. His kingdom under the ban of the Church, himself excommunicate, he resolved to make common cause with that people who, in a more benighted age, had fallen away from his ancestor. He convoked the States-General; and this is the first time that famous assembly was called together.

The States-General were the general estates, that is all the estates of the nation. They consisted of four elements: the crown, the nobility, the clergy and the common people. It is customary however to name only the last three. To Philip is also due the reorganisation of the French parliaments into the form they retained down to the revolution. The parliaments were at first the occasional conferences of the sovereign with his nobles; then they grew into some degree of permanence, and combined judicial functions with political. When Philip introduced the States-General, he deprived the parliaments of their legislative functions, and constituted them courts of law civil and criminal. To them however, and especially to the parliament of Paris, was left the prerogative of registering the royal edicts. This registry at first was solely to publish them; but it grew into a usage indispensable to their validity, and thus became a check upon the executive; so that the monarchy of the old régime was not quite an absolute one.

These first States-General met in the Church of Notre Dame; and the third estate, that is the common people, filled nearly half the building. The towns only were represented: they had become too wealthy to be longer overlooked. The country people came in at a later day.

Philip laid before this assembly two documents: one that the pope had discharged at him; the other a copy of the one he had flung back at the pope. They are so short and spirited that I venture to insert them: “Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Philip king of the Franks. Fear God and keep his commandments. Know that thou art subject to us as well in the temporal as in the spiritual; that the collation of benefices and prebends belongs not to thee; that if thou guardest the vacant benefices, it is to reserve the fruits for the successors; that if thou conferrest them upon any body, we declare the collation void; and we revoke it if executed, pronouncing all those who think otherwise heretics.”

To him the King:—“Philip by the grace of God, king of the French, to Boniface who calls himself Pope, little or no salutation. May thy great fatuity know that we are subject to nobody for the temporal; that the collation of churches and prebends belongs to us by our royal right; that the fruits thereof are ours; that the collations made by us are valid; that we will maintain their possessors with all our power; and that we pronounce those who think otherwise fools and madmen.”

It is just to say that the authenticity of the missive of Boniface, is disputed, though Hallam considers it genuine. It set forth nothing more than the pope had already avowed. At all events it put the case clearly before the assembly. A committee of the Third Estate, after much pondering, came and knelt before the throne in the middle of the church, and rendered the following verdict in which you will observe they had caught the tone of their master:—“It is an abomination that Boniface like the blackguard that he is should interpret so ill the words of Scripture: what thou shall bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven; as if it meant that if he put a man in prison in this world, God would put him in prison in the next.” Philip had this profound state paper turned into latin, and sent to the pope; and this document as well as Philip’s missive, is still in the archives of the Vatican.