THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY (1303)
We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era
grows more and more apparent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn
theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so
far as it embodies the mediaeval idea of a theocratic supremacy, is
tottering, and it, too, will soon fall before the unsympathetic forces
of a new age. So long as the Papacy stood untouched, it looked as potent
and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of
Innocent; but a hundred years had wrought great changes, and at a push
it tumbled and fell.
Hints had already been dropped that the dread thunderbolt, the curse of
Rome, which had helped win the proud position of lordship over Europe,
had become mere _brutum fulmen_. Excommunication had been so prodigally
used for political purposes that educated men no longer believed that it
was really the curse of heaven. Moreover, Europe had not been standing
still. The vigorous, compact kingdom of France had come into being, and
flushed with a sense of power and importance, determined to take that
part in European politics which it regarded as its due. In angry
self-confidence the young kingdom confronted the overweening Papacy,
savagely tore off its giant's robe, and laid bare its real weakness.
Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was the pontiff under whom the papal empire
came to its end. He was a vigorous, energetic, arrogant, eloquent,
handsome man, with a wide knowledge of law, diplomacy, and politics. In
the cathedral at Florence there is a large statue of him, calm and
dignified, almost heroic. He sits with his rochet and tiara on, his
right hand raised with two fingers extended as if blessing,--an unusual
occupation,--and looks far more of this world than of the other. His
contemporary, the Florentine historian, Villani, a Guelf, says: "He was
great-minded and lordly, and coveted much honour, ... and was much
respected and feared for his learning and power. He was very grasping
for money in order to aggrandize the Church and his own relations,
making no shame of gain, for he said that he might do anything with what
belonged to the Church.... He was very learned in books, very wary and
capable, and had great common sense; he had wide knowledge and a good
memory, but was extremely cruel and haughty with his enemies and
adversaries, ... more worldly than befitted his exalted station, and he
did many things displeasing to God." Dante, passionately Ghibelline,
calls Boniface "prince of the new Pharisees" and sends him to hell.
Boniface's chief enemies, as was usual in the case of a Pope who had
enemies, were Romans. If the Papacy had been able to reduce Rome to real
obedience, its history would have been different. The rebellious
commune and the rebellious barons were constantly on the watch for
favourable opportunities to revolt, or, as they regarded it, to assert
their rights and liberties, and Boniface's first struggle came with the
great House of Colonna. The Colonnas were haughty; he was imperious.
They hinted that he was not legally Pope; he excommunicated them,
proclaimed a crusade, captured and destroyed their fortresses in the
Campagna, and made them deadly enemies. This victory was achieved at a
price thereafter to be paid in full. But for the time Boniface was
triumphant, and seemed, to himself at least, to sit as high as the great
Innocent a hundred years before.
In the year 1300 he originated the custom, ever since observed, of a
papal jubilee to celebrate the centennial year. For centuries Palestine
had been the destination of pilgrims, and the holy character of Rome had
been passed by, but, now that Palestine was completely lost, Rome
reasserted herself as the pilgrims' city, and crowds again visited the
Roman basilicas. Eager to encourage a practice which he saw would
increase the prestige and the income of the Holy See, Boniface issued
his Bull of Jubilee which promised remission of sins to all pilgrims who
should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year.
Pious folk came from everywhere; on an average there were two hundred
thousand at a time. They gave their offerings so generously that, as an
eyewitness says, "Day and night two priests stood beside the altar in
St. Paul's, holding rakes in their hands, raking in the money." It was
noticed, however, that there were no kings or princes in the throng.
That year was the summit of Boniface's prosperity.
In the mean time the quarrel with France had already begun. The French
king, Philip the Fair, who was the personification of the new lay
spirit, enacted a series of laws against the clergy, and, going counter
to the accepted doctrine of clerical immunity from secular taxation,
levied taxes upon them. This step was portentous. Boniface answered by
absolutely forbidding both taxation and payment of taxes. The King of
France not only persisted in taxation, but also forbade the exportation
of any money from his kingdom, and so deprived the Pope of all his
French revenues. Other angry words and acts followed, and a papal bull
was publicly burnt in Paris.
Boniface, who had a marked predilection for vehement language, issued a
bull, which deserves to be quoted as it sums up the extreme papal
doctrine and also incidentally reveals how completely he misunderstood
the drift of public opinion. "We are compelled, our faith urging us, to
believe and hold--we do firmly believe and simply confess--that there is
one holy and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither
salvation nor remission of sins.... In this Church there is one Lord,
one faith, one baptism.... Of this one and only Church there is one body
and one head,--not two heads as if it were a monster,--Christ, namely,
and the Vicar of Christ, St. Peter, and the successor of St. Peter....
We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are
two swords,--namely, a spiritual and a temporal.... Both swords ... are
in the power of the Church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the
Church, the other by the Church; the one by the hand of the priest, the
other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance
of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the
temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual.... That the
spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and nobility we ought the
more plainly to confess the more spiritual things excel temporal
ones.... A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by
no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man, and
exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by
divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors
through Christ Himself; the Lord Himself saying to Peter: 'Whatsoever
thou shalt bind,' etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus
ordained by God, resists the ordination of God. Indeed, we declare,
announce, and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for
every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
In retort the king, knowing that the country was behind him, convoked
the States-General of the kingdom; which upheld him, charged Boniface
with all sorts of misbehaviour, and called for a general council of the
Church to judge the matters in dispute.
The crafty king, however, had determined on other means of revenge than
decrees, accusations, and burning bulls; he devised a plot to kidnap
Boniface and fetch him prisoner to France. One William Nogaret, once a
professor of law in a French university, now deep in the king's
counsels, went to Italy, met a vindictive member of the Colonna family,
Sciarra Colonna, and the two arranged the details of the plot. There
were many conspirators, for not only the Colonnas were eager to revenge
themselves, but numerous nobles, dispossessed to make room for the
Pope's relations, were ready to lend a hand. The unsuspecting Boniface,
now an old man of eighty-six years, was at Anagni (a little fortified
town not far from Rome), his native place, but nevertheless honeycombed
with treason; here, from the pulpit of the cathedral where Emperors had
been excommunicated, he proposed to excommunicate the King of France.
Two days before the day set for the excommunication, Nogaret and Sciarra
Colonna, with a troop of soldiers, entered the city which had been
opened by traitors; many of the townsmen ranged themselves under the
French banner. The conspirators broke into the episcopal palace, where
they found the valiant old man seated on a throne, in his pontifical
garments, with the tiara on his head, and a cross in his hand. Sciarra
Colonna dragged him down and would have stabbed him with his dagger but
that Nogaret withheld him by main force. The Pope was made prisoner and
the palace sacked; but in a few days sympathy turned, papal partisans
stormed the palace, rescued Boniface, and carried him to Rome. Here the
Orsini, pretending to befriend him, kept him shut up in the Vatican,
half crazed by fright and fury, till death happily released him (October
11, 1303). Then men remembered an old prophecy uttered concerning him:
"He shall enter like a fox, reign like a lion, and die like a dog." Thus
dramatically the hollowness of papal power was revealed.
France did not rest content with this insolent act. A year or two later,
a Frenchman of Gascony, the archbishop of Bordeaux, was made Pope by the
French king's influence. This Pope, Clement V (1305-14), never went to
Rome, but took up his abode at Avignon, a little city on the Rhone, not
very far from its mouth. The place was under the overlordship of the
Angevin kings of Naples, but really under the influence of the kings of
France. Here the Papacy stayed for nearly seventy years, practically a
dependency of France. A series of French Popes succeeded one another.
They built on the bank of the Rhone a gigantic fortress, regarded Rome,
the source of their greatness, as a dismal and dangerous out-of-the-way
place, and believed that they had transferred the seat of the Papacy
permanently. This period of exile was regarded by the Italians as a
Babylonish captivity.
Political degradation was not all. The Roman Curia became a collection
of men of pleasure. The ambitious Popes, even Boniface, had had a touch
of the heroic in them, and erred through pride, arrogance, and hate; but
these Avignonese Popes, though some of them were good men, suffered the
papal court to become a place of amusement, banqueting, and
dissipation.