An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

The difficulty which the Church experienced in maintaining its power against the kings is excellently shown by the famous struggle between Philip the Fair, the grandson of St. Louis, and Boniface VIII, an old man of boundless ambition and inexhaustible energy who came to the papal throne in 1294. The first serious trouble arose over the habit into which the kings of England and France had fallen, of taxing the property of the churchmen like that of other subjects. It was natural after a monarch had squeezed all that he could out of the Jews and the towns, and had exacted every possible feudal due, that he should turn to the rich estates of the clergy, in spite of their claim that their property was dedicated to God and owed the king nothing. The extensive enterprises of Edward I led him in 1296 to demand one fifth of the personal property of the clergy. Philip the Fair exacted one hundredth and then one fiftieth of the possessions of clergy and laity alike.

The bull Clericis laicos of Boniface VIII, 1296.

Against this impartial system Boniface protested in the famous bull Clericis laicos (1296). He claimed that the laity had always been exceedingly hostile to the clergy, and that the rulers were now exhibiting this hostility by imposing heavy burdens upon the Church, forgetting that they had no control over the clergy and their possessions. The pope, therefore, forbade all churchmen, including the monks, to pay, without his consent, to a king or ruler any part of the Church's revenue or possessions upon any pretext whatsoever. He likewise forbade the kings and princes under pain of excommunication to presume to exact any such payments.

Boniface concedes a limited right to tax churchmen.

It happened that just as the pope was prohibiting the clergy from contributing to the taxes, Philip the Fair had forbidden the exportation of all gold and silver from the country. In that way he cut off an important source of the pope's revenue, for the church of France could obviously no longer send anything to Rome. The pope was forced to give up his extreme claims. He explained the following year that he had not meant to interfere with the payment on the clergy's part of customary feudal dues nor with their loans of money to the king.[199]

The jubilee of 1300.

In spite of this setback, the pope never seemed more completely the recognized head of the western world than during the first great jubilee, in the year 1300, when Boniface called together all Christendom to celebrate the opening of the new century by a great religious festival at Rome. It is reported that two millions of people, coming from all parts of Europe, visited the churches of Rome, and that in spite of widening the streets many were crushed in the crowd. So great was the influx of money into the papal treasury that two assistants were kept busy with rakes collecting the offerings which were deposited at the tomb of St. Peter.

Boniface was, however, very soon to realize that even if Christendom regarded Rome as its religious center, the nations would not accept him as their political head. When he dispatched an obnoxious prelate to Philip the Fair, ordering him to free the count of Flanders whom he was holding prisoner, the king declared the harsh language of the papal envoy to be high treason and sent one of his lawyers to the pope to demand that the messenger be degraded and punished.

The Estates General of 1302.

Philip was surrounded by a body of lawyers, and it would seem that they, rather than the king, were the real rulers of France. They had, through their study of Roman law, learned to admire the absolute power exercised by the Roman emperor. To them the civil government was supreme, and they urged the king to punish what they regarded as the insolent conduct of the pope. Before taking any action against the head of the Church, Philip called together the representatives of his people, including not only the clergy and the nobility but the people of the towns as well. The Estates General, after hearing a statement of the case from one of Philip's lawyers, agreed to support their monarch.