The Age of Reason - D. J. Medley (free novels .txt) 📗

bull, Clericis Laicos (February, 1296), by which he forbade, under pain of excommunication, that any prelate or ecclesiastical body should pay or laymen should exact from the clergy any taxes under any pretext without papal leave. Edward I met this manifesto by confiscating the lay fees of all ecclesiastics; while Philip forbade the export of all money from France, thus depriving the Pope and all Italian ecclesiastics endowed with French benefices, of the usual sources of income from France. The English clergy, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made their own arrangements with the King. But in order to avoid a rupture with France Boniface issued another bull, Ineffabilis, in which he explained that ecclesiastics were not forbidden to contribute to the needs of the State; and by subsequent letters he allowed that they might pay taxes of their own free will, and even that in cases of necessity the King might take taxes without waiting for the papal leave. He certainly told his legates to excommunicate the King and his officials if they should prevent money coming from France; but in order to gain Philip's favour he granted him the tithe of the French clergy for three years, he placed Louis IX among the recognised saints of the Church, and he promised that Philip's brother, Charles of Valois, should be made German King and Emperor.

Good relations having been established Philip and Edward now agreed to submit their differences to Boniface. Philip, however, stipulated that Boniface should act in the matter not as Pope but in a personal capacity, and the Pope issued his award "as a private person and Master Benedict Gaetani" (June 30,1298). But the judgment was in the form of a bull, and ordered that the lands to be surrendered on either side should be placed in the custody of the papal officers. Philip could not reject the award; but he determined to prepare for a conflict which was clearly inevitable. He gave refuge to some members of the Colonna family, and he made an alliance with Albert of Austria (1299).

[Sidenote: Second quarrel with England.]

Meanwhile Boniface began a second quarrel with England. Edward I had refused the papal offers of mediation on behalf of Scotland. But after the battle of Falkirk the national representatives of Scotland appealed to Boniface as suzerain of the kingdom. The Pope wrote to Edward claiming that from ancient times the kingdom of Scotland had belonged by full right to the Roman Church, and demanding that Edward should submit all causes of difference between himself and the Scots to the Papacy. The English answer was given in a Parliament called for the purpose to Lincoln (1301), by which a document addressed to the Pope asserted for the English Kings a right over Scotland from the first institution of the English kingdom, and denied that Scotland had ever depended in temporal matters on the Roman Pontiff. Any further action was prevented by the beginning of the final quarrel between Boniface and Philip.

[Sidenote: With France.]

The Pope found it necessary to complain frequently of Philip's misuse of the royal right of regale, and in 1301 relations became so strained that he sent a legate, Bernard of Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers in the south of France. But Bernard was arrogant, and on being claimed by Philip as a subject, he exclaimed that he owned no lord but the Pope. Since Boniface administered no reproof Philip procured the condemnation of the Bishop for treason. The Pope in fury issued four bulls in one day, the most important addressed to Philip and beginning Ausculta fili, in which he asserted that God had set up the Pope over Kings and kingdoms in order to destroy, to scatter, to build and to plant in His name and doctrine. Philip caused the bull to be publicly burnt—"the first flame which consumed a papal bull"—and called an Assembly of the Estates of the Realm, in which for the first time the commons were included. The Cardinals, in answering the remonstrances sent by the nobles and commons, denied that the Pope had ever told the King that he should be subject in temporal matters to Rome; and Boniface assured the French clergy that he merely claimed that the King was subject to him "in respect of sin."

[Sidenote: The final struggle.]

But in July, 1302, the burghers of Flanders inflicted a severe defeat on the French forces in the battle of Courtray; and the Pope, taking advantage of Philip's humiliation before Europe, immediately assumed a more defiant attitude. In a Council at Rome and before the French envoys, he declared that his predecessors had deposed three Kings of France and, if necessary, he would depose the King "like a groom" (garcio). He followed this up by issuing the most famous of his bulls, Unam Sanctam, in which he roundly asserted that the submission of every human creature to Rome was a condition of salvation. Finally, while on the one side he excommunicated Philip (April 13, 1303), he hastened to recognise Albert as King of Germany, and ratified the peace made between Frederick of Sicily and Charles of Valois. Philip on his side abandoned his Scots allies in order to make peace with England (May 20, 1303), and called for a second time an Assembly of the Estates. Before its members the aged Pope was accused of heresy, murder, and even lust; and the appeal to a General Council was now adopted by the representatives of the whole French nation. But it was certain that the excommunication of Philip would be followed by his deposition; and Philip and his councillors determined to forestall this. Urged on by the Colonnas the French King conceived the plan of seizing the person of the Pope and bringing him before a council to be held at Lyons. Boniface was at his native Anagni, and Philip's emissaries, in conjunction with many Italian enemies of the Pope, forced their way into the town and seized the old man (September 3, 1303). He was rescued and taken back to Rome; but the shock of the attack unhinged his reason and hastened his end. He died on October 11 at the age of eighty-six. His foes described his last days in lurid colours; but the violent behaviour of his enemies caused strong disgust throughout Christendom.

To a contemporary, Boniface was "magnanimus peccator," the great-hearted sinner; while a modern historian describes him as "devoid of every spiritual virtue." If Canossa was the humiliation for the Empire which the ecclesiastical annalists describe, in the pettiness of the stage and the insignificance of the actors Anagni was an ample revenge of the lay spirit. The Papacy which had worn down the Empire had dashed itself in vain against the new phenomenon of a strong national spirit.

CHAPTER XVII THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST

[Sidenote: The Eastern Church.]

A history of the Church Universal must needs take some notice of those Christian communities which never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Chief among these stands the Church of the Eastern Empire where the Patriarch of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the equal of the Bishop of Rome. This mutual jealousy of the old and the new Rome was only one of the causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel which was fanned from time to time by the appeal of a defeated party in some ecclesiastical dispute at Constantinople to the Pope. The most famous of these disputes was that begun by the deposition of the aristocratic Ignatius from the patriarchate in favour of the learned Photius. Both Emperor and Patriarch appealed from Constantinople to Pope Nicholas I; but when that masterful bishop decided against the new patriarch, Photius used his learning to summarise in eight articles the differences between east and west. Of these, two concerned such important matters as the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost and the practice of clerical celibacy.

[Sidenote: Breach between East and West.]

The schism made by this quarrel was healed for the moment, but for the first time the points of difference between the two Churches had been crystallised. The Eastern Emperors, however, who still possessed lands in the Italian peninsula, felt it to their interest to remain friendly with the pope, and in 1024 an attempt on the part of Basil II to adjust the question of dignity by the suggestion that both the Patriarch and the Pope should assume the title of Universal bishop, was only defeated by the inextinguishable jealousy of the Western Church. The presence of the Normans in Southern Italy should have united Pope and Eastern Emperor against the intruders; but the Greek Church only saw in the Norman successes a danger lest Southern Italy should pass from the Greek to the Latin communion, and the Patriarch Michael Caerularius joined with the Bulgarian Archbishop of Achrida in publicly warning the inhabitants of Apulia against the errors of the Latin Church. The one especially noted was the use of unleavened bread at the Sacrament, with the addition of others of even less importance. The Emperor Constantine Monomachos strove hard in the interests of peace and even compelled a literary champion of the Greek Church, Nicetas Pectoratus, a monk of the monastery of Studium, to repudiate his own arguments. But the violence of the papal envoys and the obstinacy of the Patriarch made agreement impossible. Finally the legates laid upon the altar of St. Sophia's Church a document in which Michael and all his party were anathematised; and the Patriarch responded by summoning a Council, which in like manner banned the Western Church (1054). Not only was Michael's action supported by the clergy and people of Constantinople, but it was ratified by the approval of the Patriarchs of Bulgaria and Antioch.

[Sidenote: Attempts at reconciliation.]

Attempts to promote reunion between the Churches were made at intervals. The danger from the Mohammedans forced the Emperors of the East to seek help in the West and encouraged the theologians of the West in their maintenance of a perfectly rigid attitude. These approaches began with the forced intercourse of the First Crusade, and in 1098 Urban II held a Council at Bari among the Greeks of Southern Italy, at which Anselm of Canterbury, then in voluntary exile, was put forward to propound the Roman view. In 1112 Peter Grosolanus the defeated candidate for the archbishopric of Milan, as an emissary of Pope Pascal II discussed the points at issue before the Emperor Alexius Comnenus and was answered by Eustratius Archbishop of Nicaea. Again in 1135 Lothair III had sent as ambassador to John Comnenus a Premonstratensian Canon Anselm afterwards Bishop of Havelberg, who held a debate with Nicetas Archbishop of Nicomedia. According to the report which he subsequently drew up at the request of Eugenius III, the points discussed were the procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened bread and the claims of Rome. A generation later the Emperor Manuel Comnenus held a conference at Constantinople (1170) for the promotion of a union which he sincerely desired; while extant letters of Eugenius III and Hadrian IV to ecclesiastics of the Eastern Church show that the head of the Western Church did not ignore the question of Christian unity. But there were too many political causes of division. The success of the crusaders involved the establishment of the Latin Church in lands claimed by the Eastern Empire. And this affected not only the principalities of Syria, but also Cyprus which Richard Coeur de Lion conquered and handed over to Guy of Lusignan in compensation for his lost kingdom of Jerusalem; as a consequence of which the Greek clergy and monks there were cruelly persecuted. The aggression of the Latin Church was even more conspicuous when the Normans conquered Thessalonica in 1186 and treated the Greek churches and services with contumely, and when Innocent III took advantage of the fact that the Bulgarian monarch had repudiated the suzerainty of Constantinople, to reassert over the Bulgarian Church the supremacy of Rome. The Greeks did not suffer without protest and the massacre of the Latins of Constantinople under the usurper Andronicus (1183) showed the depth as well as the impotence of the Greek hatred. The climax of all previous acts of usurpation was reached in the capture of Constantinople and the organisation of a Latin Church beside the Latin empire. But the Greek Emperors who ruled at Nicaea found it politic to pretend a desire for union of the Churches, and in 1233 and again in 1234 negotiations were carried on between the Greek Patriarch Germanus and some Dominican and Franciscan emissaries of Gregory IX. But the bargaining was one-sided; for while with Rome Christian unity never rose above an object to be kept in view, to the Greeks of the East it presented itself as the only condition on which they could claim the help which might save them from gradual extinction. And this became even more apparent than hitherto after the reconquest of Constantinople by the Greeks; for