THE court of Philip III., pitiful scion of a noble king, is associated with a dramatic judicial murder at Paris. Among the late-repentant souls temporarily exiled from purification who crowd around Dante at the foot of the Mont of Purgatory is that of Pierre de la Brosse, “severed from its body through hatred and envy and not for any sin committed.” Unhappy Pierre was St. Louis’ chamberlain and had been present at his death. He filled the same high office under his son, became his favourite minister and all-powerful at court. In 1276 the king’s eldest son by his first queen died under suspicion of poison. The second queen, sister of the Duke of Brabant, being envious of Pierre’s ascendency, began insidiously to abuse the king’s ear. Pierre met the queen’s move by clandestinely spreading a report that the prince was sacrificed to secure the succession to her own offspring. The king was then persuaded by the queen’s friends to consult a famous prophetess, who declared her innocent, and Pierre’s death was plotted by the queen, her brother of Brabant, and some discontented and jealous nobles. One morning Paris was startled by the arrest of the omnipotent minister, who was tried before a commission packed by his enemies, and hanged on 30th June 1278, by the common hangman, at the gibbet on Montfaucon, in the presence of the Duke of Brabant and others of his enemies. The popular belief was that he had been accused of an attempt on the queen’s chastity: actually his destruction had been compassed by a charge of treason, based on some forged letters. The tragic end of Pierre de la Brosse excited universal interest and discussion. Benvenuto da Imola says that Dante, when in Paris, diligently sought out the truth and convinced himself of the great minister’s innocence.
A prince of far different calibre was the Fourth Philip, surnamed the Fair, who grappled with and humiliated the great pontiff, Boniface VIII.—the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to universal secular supremacy—and thus achieved a task which had baffled the mighty emperors themselves; a prince who, in Dante’s grim metaphor, scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her to do his will in France.
Philip’s reign is remarkable for the establishment of the Parlement and the first convocation of the States-General in Paris. From earliest times of the Monarchy, the kings had dispensed justice, surrounded by the chief Churchmen and nobles of the land, thus constituting an ambulatory tribunal, which was held wherever the sovereign might happen to be. In 1302 Philip fixed the tribunal at Paris, restricted it to judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cité, which, in 1431, when the kings ceased to dwell there, became the Palais de Justice. The palace was rebuilt by Philip. A vast hall, divided by a row of columns adorned with statues of the kings of France, and said to have been the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in France, with other courts and offices, accommodated the Parlement. The tribunal was at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of whom thirteen were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor. It sat twice yearly for periods of two months, and consisted of three chambers or courts.[73] The nobles who at first sat among the lay members gradually ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal inefficiency, and the Parlement became at length a purely legal body. During the imprisonment of the French king, John the Good, in England, the Parlement[74] sat en permanence, and henceforth became the cour souveraine et capitale of the kingdom. The purity of its members was maintained by severest penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was convicted of receiving bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the falsification of some depositions was punished with the same severity, and in 1545 a corrupt chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded, and imprisoned for five years. The chief executive officer of the Parlement, known as the Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court and had extensive local jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and craftsmen, whose goods he could burn. His official residence, known as the Conciergerie, subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this day. The entrance flanked by the two ancient tours de César et d’Argent, is one of the most familiar objects in Paris. There the Count of Armagnac was assassinated and the cells are still shown where Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, Danton, Robespierre, and many of the chief victims of the Terror were lodged before their execution.
The same year (1302) saw the ripening of Philip’s long quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. and the first meeting of the States-General. The king knew he had embarked on a struggle in which the mightiest potentates had been worsted: he determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular opinion as then existed. The meeting of the States-General after the burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302, made an epoch in French history. For the first time members of the Tiers Etat (the Third Estate, or Commons), sat beside the two privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as one of the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to meet in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope to be supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as well as in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice the assembled members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent usurpation of the pope. Excommunication followed, but the king had ordered all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or messenger should enter France. “Boniface, who,” says Villani, the Florentine chronicler, “was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt every great deed, magnanimous and puissant, replied by announcing the publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing his subjects from their allegiance.” Philip, at an assembly in the garden of the palace in the Cité, and in presence of the chief ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future Council of the Church.
The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On 7th September, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, bearing the royal banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni, crying—“Death to Pope Boniface.” The papal palace was unguarded; at the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, “Great-souled and valiant as he was, he said, ‘Since like Jesus Christ I must be taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.’ He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in his hands.” He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume, Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand, uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons dropped and none durst lay a hand upon him. They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace. For three days the grand old pontiff—he was eighty-six years of age—remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were passed his successor in Peter’s chair, Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and censures, expunged them from the papal register, solemnly condemned his memory and restored the Colonna family to all their honours. Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the “new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves.” But the “new Pilate was not yet sated.” The business at Anagni had only been effected spendendo molta moneta; the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the inglorious Flemish wars had exhausted the royal treasury; the debasement of the coinage had availed nought, and Philip turned his lustful eyes on a once powerful lay order, whose wealth and pride were the talk of Christendom.