Captivity of Babylon to the condition of the Church of Rome which was
then in exile. No longer on the banks of the Tiber she held her seat,
but on the banks of the Rhone; and Avignon not Rome was the assumed
mistress of the world. Petrarch did not live to see the end, but in
one respect the appellation was a prophecy: the Captivity lasted
seventy-two years; and the name is often applied to that period,
especially by Roman Catholic historians.
I shall endeavor to trace some of the causes of that singular
revolution, and some of its results.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, a poor hermit named Pietro
da Morrone who had starved himself into the highest state of sanctity,
was raised to the Apostolic throne with the title of Celestin V.
One of the qualities which at that time recommended a candidate for
the papacy, was that he should be moribund, that his days should be
numbered; and this explains the rapidity with which the popes succeeded
one another. During one year of that century, the year 1276, four
successive pontiffs reigned.
Celestin V. knew nothing of the world nor of business; and it was
thought that the cares of his high office, would soon finish him.
But his anchorite life had agreed with his constitution; his diet of
parched peas and pure water had left him with a sound digestion; and
he showed no readiness to depart this life so that somebody else might
be pope. It was necessary to hasten matters. How this was done is
uncertain; but it is said that one of his cardinals scared the poor
old hermit off his throne by telling him of imaginary plots for his
assassination. Celestin abdicated, and the scaring cardinal, Benedetto
Gaetano usurped his seat as Boniface VIII.; and when this lofty prelate
rode to the Lateran, mother of churches, to celebrate his accession,
two kings, James of Sicily and Andrew of Hungary walked like grooms
at his horse’s head, and then waited on him at the table like common
domestics. A pope in those days was a demi-god.
The Church at that time interfered with all the affairs of life. If
a man had to sustain the validity of his father’s will or of his own
marriage, he had to do it before ecclesiastical tribunals. If he died
intestate the Church administered on his property. Even the calendar
was ecclesiastical, and the year began not on the first of January or
the first of any other month, but at Easter; so that portions of March
and April belonged now to the old year and now to the new. In fine,
canon, that is church law was the only law.
In contrast to this, was the trifling physical force the pontiffs
could exercise. The States of the Church were small in extent; the
battallions they could put in the field were few in number; and from
time to time some impious prince instigated by the devil, would snap
his fingers at this ghostly puissance; and then the world would be
startled at the disparity between the real and the pretended power of
Rome. But it was like a glimpse of the landscape a dark night by a
flash of lightning: it hardly served as a land-mark; pope and prince
would come to an understanding, and the spell remain unbroken.
Boniface who was perhaps the haughtiest of the successors of Saint
Peter, was soon made to feel this instability. Albert son of Rudolph
of Hapsburg, was elected to succeed his father on the imperial
throne. Boniface was not satisfied. What did he know about these
Hapsburgs? They were new, parvenu, and one was enough. He put forth a
bull commanding Albert on pain of excommunication, to deliver up the
imperial crown to Adolfus of Nassau.
A papal bull is a roll of parchment on which are inscribed in latin
the behests of the pontiff, and to which is suspended by a ribbon, a
globular leaden seal. It is this seal which gives it the name of bull,
from the latin _bulla_, whence is also derived our word _bowl_.
Albert of Hapsburg had a priest read to him the document, for he
could not read it himself, and after pondering, resolved to do
differently--that is differently from what the bull required. He tied
the parchment to his horse’s tail, and in that guise rode into the
battle of Spires where he slew with his own right hand, his rival
Adolfus of Nassau.
Boniface after some bitter moments of reflection, did the wisest thing
possible. He rescinded the bull and received Albert back into the bosom
of the church. Indeed the return of the prodigal son was so welcome
that some years later Boniface issued another bull giving to Albert the
kingdom of France, without however showing him how he was to get it.
The power of the papacy had culminated in the hundred years between
Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., and was now on the decline. To this
downward tendency Boniface shut his eyes; but we can assure ourselves
of that tendency by considering the different success of those two
pontiffs Innocent at the beginning of the thirteenth century and
Boniface at the end, in dealing with two able kings of France.
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.
The clergy alone hesitated to stand by the king. They asked time to
deliberate. Philip would allow them not an hour. You are Frenchmen,
cried he; from whom do you hold your benefices, from me your king,
or from the Neapolitan Benedetto. They answered: from the king. They
then begged leave to send a deputation to Rome to explain matters; and
Philip refused. As for the excommunication and interdict, the king
ordered them burnt by the common hangman; and woe to the priest who
dared shut his church, or tie up his bell-rope, or stop marrying or
confessing or saying mass! The days of Philip-the-handsome were not the
days of Philip-the-august.
This triumph at home might well have satisfied Philip; but he still
followed up Boniface in his own domain with pitiless energy. He accused
him not only of having defrauded Celestin of his throne, but of having
poisoned him, and what was still worse, of heresy; and he sent orders
to his agent in Italy, William of Nogaret, to seize his sacred person.
Nogaret in conjunction with Sciarra Colonna the chief of the Ghibbeline
faction, gathered together a few soldiers and surprised Boniface at his
residence at Agnani. The pontiff supposed they intended to kill him. He
put the dalmatica on his shoulders and the crown on his head, and sat
like Papirius awaiting the blow. Colonna cried out to him to abdicate,
as he had driven Celestin to abdicate. Betrayed like Jesus Christ,
replied the old man, I will die his vicar![3]
But it was not their purpose to put him to death: no such merciful
end was to be his. They held him three days a prisoner, treating him
with a mockery of respect; and then the populace of Agnani, perceiving
that the Ghibbelines were but a handful, rose and delivered him from
his captors. But the unexampled outrage had overthrown his reason, and
he died a maniac. The terrible Philip had hounded his enemy into his
grave; but even there he did not leave him in peace, as we shall see.
The bishop of Ostia was chosen pope with the name of Benedict XI.
Philip demanded that the bull of excommunication be annulled, and
himself restored to full communion with the Church. Benedict complied;
and thus was completed this first triumph of the temporal over the
spiritual. Philip still claimed to be a true son of the Church; but he
had shaken off her authority and he now proceeded to put his foot on
her neck. It is to this degenerate grandson of a sainted king, that the
Church of Rome owes that day of humiliation which forms the title of
this paper.
Benedict XI. was as moribund as usage required; and in less than a
year he laid down his pontificate and his life together. There now
dawned upon Philip a scheme no less bold and sacriligious than that of
owning and possessing both pope and papacy. He interfered to prevent
an election till his own man could come to the fore; and for more
than a year the Church was without a head. Then having by bribery and
intimidation, obtained control of the sacred college, he made them
choose Bertrand de Goth, bishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of
Clement V. Popes, you observe, change their names when they put on the
tiara. This custom though ancient has not always existed: Saint Peter
for example did not change his.[4]
There was a secret bargain between Clement and Philip by which the
former was to pay the price of his elevation. There is discussion
whether it related to the removal of the Holy See or to the destruction
of the Templars. As Philip needed the pope’s aid in both these
enormities which have cast such a lurid glory or glare on his reign,
perhaps he bargained for both.
Clement V. after having been crowned at Lyons, established his seat at
Avignon on the left bank of the Rhone, and thus began the CAPTIVITY.
As it was followed by the _Great Schism_ or _Schism of the West_, more
than a century was to pass before the Church, always called Catholic,
Apostolic and _Roman_, was to be wholly reinstated in the Eternal City.
Philip’s old enemy had died demented, and in that collapse of
intellect, the last rites of the Church either had not been
administered or had proved fruitless. He had gone where Hamlet’s father
went, unhouseled unaneled, till his sins could be burned and purged
away; and a smart anathema in due form from that Church which rules
the dead and the living, might send him prone to the pit. Boniface
had canonised Philip’s grandfather, and that soul in purgatory had
thus become a saint in Heaven; and now Philip was invoking a rescript
of different import, to despatch his grandfather’s benefactor in the
other direction. Such are the possible vicissitudes of another life.
Philip instituted regular proceedings against the dead pope, accusing
him of every manner of impiety and wickedness, and Clement was forced
to give ear to it, but though Philip’s creature, he remembered the
throne he sat upon, and was loath to dishonor it by blasting the memory
of one of his predecessors; so he gained time: he heard testimony and
took counsel; and then he heard more testimony and took more counsel.
He whispered to Philip that if Boniface was the unhallowed wretch they
supposed, he was already damned, and they were losing their time; and
Philip finally let the matter drop.
It were well for the memory of these two potentates if the attempt
to dislodge Boniface from purgatory, were the greatest wrong they
undertook. We now come to one of the foulest crimes in history: one in
which the king was principal and the pope accessory.
In Paris, but in a quarter no longer fashionable and which therefore
you have not visited, is a congeries of shops where everything is sold
by the penny worth. It is called the Temple from the building that once
stood there. In the last century it served as a prison. Louis XVI. was
kept there before his execution. In London there is a Temple church;
and we hear of lawyers of the middle and inner temple. All these
sites take their name from having been occupied by the commanderies
or convents of the Knights-Templar an order of fighting monks founded
in the twelfth century at Jerusalem, to guard the Holy Sepulchre. As
monks they made vows of chastity and poverty; as soldiers, never to
decline combat at whatever odds. But as years rolled on they forgot one
of their vows: they became rich and riches made them haughty without
however letting down at all their soldierly discipline and valour. They
were respected and feared throughout Europe. The head of the order
called the Grand-master was, according to Voltaire, equal in dignity to
a king. Their chief commandery was the one in Paris on the spot where
needles are now sold by the paper, and thread by the skein; and it
formed a kind of imperium in imperio little to the taste of Philip IV.
But a still graver fault was their wealth. Philip had begun the quarrel
with Boniface by pocketing his tithes, and he sought an issue of the
same character with the knights. But in order to get their money it was
necessary to destroy them, or at least to destroy their organisation:
they were the best soldiers in France; and desperately would they
defend their persons and their pockets if the chance were afforded
them. So Philip used craft, the only weapon he wielded better than
they. He invited the Grand-master, Jacques Molay, to be god-father
to one of his children, and treated him as an equal. Never did the
standing of the order seem higher.
Suddenly at the dead of night, a band of Philip’s ruffians in numbers
to defy resistance, burst into the Temple, captured the knights and
threw them into prison; and Clement issued a bull abolishing the order.
But he was not allowed to stop there: Philip obliged him to appoint
an ecclesiastical commission to try the Templars. He accused them of
spitting upon the Cross, which was blasphemy, and of a still darker
crime, one so dark that he could name it only in a whisper, namely
_baphometry_. And what, you ask, is baphometry? The word had a dreadful
sound. The people were horror-stricken when told that the knights were
guilty of baphometry, and cried out away with them! Philip when asked
to explain, crossed himself and said that baphometry was the worship
of graven images, of horrid idols sculptured by the devil’s own hand;
and he produced those idols in evidence; and those idols are still to
be seen in European museums. Whether the devil was really the artist
has not been ascertained; the idols themselves are hideous enough to
justify the worst; but to the mere lay understanding they seem to be
nothing more than odd and ugly bits of bric-a-brac which the knights
may have kept as curiosities. They denied having committed either
blasphemy or baphometry, and were put to torture. Some of them suffered
in obdurate silence; others among whom was the Grand Master himself, to
win a respite from torment, confessed having worshipped bric-a-brac.
But a short relief brought back their fortitude: they retracted their
confession and defied the tyrant. But it was all the same whether
they confessed or denied: the putting in of the idols themselves as
testimony was conclusive and the knights were condemned.
The Church of Rome has always professed great horror of shedding human
blood; so the Templars were sentenced not to the block and the axe, but
to the stake, and fifty-nine of them were burned alive near the gate of
Saint Antoine: the rest were banished.
It is said that as the flames gathered around the Grand Master he
summoned the pope to meet him at the bar of God in forty days, and the
king in one year. They both came to time.
There is a mystery about the death of Philip. Some say his horse ran
away with him hunting, and crushed him against a tree; others that when
the year had rolled round, the spirit of Jacques Molay beckoned to him,
and he came.
In point of talents, Philip-the-fair was one of the greatest of
monarchs: the reconstruction of the parliaments, the States-General,
the removal of the Holy See, the destruction of the Templars, were the
work, good or bad, of no common head or hand.
Edward II. of England married Philip’s daughter, and Philip’s ability
and rapacity seemed to descend less to his three sons who succeeded
him one after the other on the throne of France, than to his English
grandson Edward III.
Boniface in his last ravings, had cursed Philip and his progeny; and
the sceptre soon departed from them. But Boniface being crazy, had
failed to put the malediction in due canonical form; and Time took
advantage of the irregularity to reverse it as follows:--All three
of Philip’s sons left daughters only. The male line of Philip having
thus run out, the Salic law came in play, and gave the crown to the
son of Philip’s brother Charles of Valois. That son was Philip VI. But
Philip-the-fair had married Jane queen of Navarre; and their eldest son
Louis X. inherited both the crown of France and that of Navarre. After
the death of Louis’s posthumous son who lived and reigned just five
days, and won a niche in history as John the first, Navarre not being
subject to the Salic law, fell to Louis’s daughter Jane who married the
Count of Evreux. From that marriage was descended Jane d’Albret queen
of Navarre who married a riotous scamp, Antony of Bourbon, descended
in direct male line from the youngest son of Saint Louis. The son of
Antony and Jane was Henry of Navarre, and while he was still young,
the House of Valois having been extinguished by the assassination of
Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Henry IV. became king of France. Thus did
Time lay the curse of Boniface; but it took two centuries and a half to
accomplish it.
If you will pardon further digression, I will say a word about those
names Bourbon and Valois which you meet so often in history:--In spite
of our notions about womens’ rights, we common folks are reconciled to
see the wife take the name of the husband, even when we suspect that it
is not he who is master of the house. Royalty has sometimes departed
from this wholesome rule:--Robert of Clermont the youngest son of Louis
IX., Saint Louis, married the heiress of the house of Bourbon. Instead
of calling his wife Madame de Clermont, he called himself Monsieur de
Bourbon; and they were the progenitors of the family which came to the
throne in the person of Henry IV. Henry’s right to the crown of France,
was through his father the riotous Antony, and to the crown of Navarre,
through his mother Jane who was not riotous but pious.