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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part IX}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book VII: History Of Ecclesiastical Power During The Middle Ages
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part IX

     The constitutions of Clarendon, however, produced some effect, and in the
reign of Henry III. more unremitted and successful efforts began to be made to
maintain the independence of temporal government.  The judges of the king's
court had until that time been themselves principally ecclesiastics, and
consequently tender of spiritual privileges. ^u But now, abstaining from the
exercise of temporal jurisdiction, in obedience to the strict injunctions of
their canons, ^v the clergy gave place to common lawyers, professors of a
system very discordant from their own. These soon began to assert the
supremacy of their jurisdiction by issuing writs of prohibition whenever the
ecclesiastical tribunals passed the boundaries which approved use had
established. ^w Little accustomed to such control, the proud hierarchy chafed
under the bit; several provincial synods protest against the pretensions of
laymen to judge the anointed ministers whom they were bound to obey; ^x the
cognizance of rights of patronage and breaches of contract is boldly asserted;
^y but firm and cautious, favored by the nobility, though not much by the
king, the judges receded not a step, and ultimately fixed a barrier which the
church was forced to respect. ^z In the ensuing reign of Edward I., an
archbishop acknowledges the abstract right of the king's bench to issue
prohibitions; ^a and the statute entitled Circumspecte agatis, in the
thirteenth year of that prince, while by its mode of expression it seems
designed to guarantee the actual privileges of spiritual jurisdiction, had a
tendency, especially with the disposition of the judges, to preclude the
assertion of some which are not therein mentioned.  Neither the right of
advowson nor any temporal contract is specified in this act as pertaining to
the church; and accordingly the temporal courts have ever since maintained an
undisputed jurisdiction over them. ^b They succeeded also partially in
preventing the impunity of crimes perpetrated by clerks. It was enacted by the
statute of Westminster, in 1275, or rather a construction was put upon that
act, which is obscurely worded, that clerks indicated for felony should not be
delivered to their ordinary until an inquest had been taken of the matter of
accusation, and, if they were found guilty, that their real and personal
estate should be forfeited to the crown.  In later times the clerical
privilege was not allowed till the party had pleaded to the indictment, and
being duly convicted, as in the practice at present. ^c

[Footnote u: Dugdale's Origines Juridicales, c. 8.]

[Footnote v: Decretal. l. i. tit. xxxvii. c. i.  Wilkins, Concilia, t. ii. p.
4.]

[Footnote w: Prynne has produced several extracts from the pipe-rolls of Henry
II., where a person has been fined quia placitavit de laico feodo in curia
christianitatis.  And a bishop of Durham is fined five hundred marks quia
tenuit placitum de advocatione cujusdam ecclesiae in curia christianitatis.
Epistle dedicatory to Prynne's Records, vol iii. Glanvil gives the form of a
writ of prohibition to the spiritual court for inquiring de feodo laico; for
it had jurisdiction over lands in frankalmoign.  This is conformable to the
constitutions of Clarendon, and shows that they were still in force.  See also
Lyttelton's Henry II., vol. iii. p. 97.]

[Footnote x: Cum judicandi Christos domini nulla sit laicis attributa
potestas, apud quos manet necessitas obsequendi.  Wilkins, Concilia, t. i. p.
747.]

[Footnote y: Id. ibid.; et t. ii. p. 90.]

[Footnote z: Vide Wilkins, Concilia, t. ii. passim.]

[Footnote a: Licet prohibitiones hujusmodi a curia christianissimi regis
nostri juste proculdubio, ut diximus, concedantur.  Id. t. ii. p. 100 and p.
115.]

[Footnote b: The statute Circumspecte agatis, for it is acknowledged as a
statute, though not drawn up in the form of one, is founded upon an answer of
Edward I. to the prelates who had petitioned for some modification of
prohibitions.  Collier, always prone to exaggerate church authority,
insinuates that the jurisdiction of the spiritual court over breaches of
contract, even without oath, is preserved by this statute; but the express
words of the king show that none whatever was intended, and the archbishop
complains bitterly of it afterwards.  Wilkins, Concilia, t. ii. p. 118.
Collier's Ecclesiast.  History, vol. i. p. 487.  So far from having any
cognizance of civil contracts not confirmed by oath, to which I am not certain
that the church ever pretended in any country, the spiritual court had no
jurisdiction at all, even where an oath had intervened, unless there was a
deficiency of proof by writing or witnesses.  Glanvil, l. x. c. 12; Constitut.
Clarendon, art. 15.]

[Footnote c: 2 Inst. p. 163.  This is not likely to mislead a well-informed
reader, but it ought, perhaps, to be mentioned that by the "clerical
privilege" we are only to understand what is called benefit of clergy, which
in fact is, or rather was till recent alterations of the law since the first
edition of this work, no more than the remission of capital punishment for the
first conviction of felony, and that not for the clergy alone, but for all
culprits alike.  They were not called upon at any time, I believe, to prove
their claim as clergy, except by reading the "neck-verse" after trial and
conviction in the king's court.  They were then in strictness to be committed
to the ordinary or ecclesiastical superior, which probably was not often
done.]

     The civil magistrates of France did not by any means exert themselves so
vigorously for their emancipation.  The same or rather worse usurpations
existed, and the same complaints were made, under Philip Augustus, St. Louis,
and Philip the Bold; but the laws of those sovereigns tend much more to
confirm than to restrain ecclesiastical encroachments. ^d Some limitations
were attempted by the secular courts; and an historian gives us the terms of a
confederacy among the French nobles in 1246, binding themselves by oath not to
permit the spiritual judges to take cognizance of any matter, except heresy,
marriage, and usury. ^e Unfortunately Louis IX. was almost as little disposed
as Henry III. to shake off the yoke of ecclesiastical dominion.  But other
sovereigns in the same period, from various motives, were equally submissive.
Frederic II. explicitly adopts the exemption of clerks from criminal as well
as civil jurisdiction of seculars. ^f And Alfonso X. introduced the same
system in Castile; a kingdom where neither the papal authority nor the
independence of the church had obtained any legal recognition until the
promulgation of his code, which teems with all the principles of the canon
law. ^g It is almost needless to mention that all ecclesiastical powers and
privileges were incorporated with the jurisprudence of the kingdom of Naples,
which, especially after the accession of the Angevin line, stood in a peculiar
relation of dependence upon the Hole See. ^h

[Footnote d: It seems deducible from a law of Philip Augustus, Ordonnances des
Rois, t. i. p. 39, that a clerk convicted of some heinous offences might be
capitally punished after degradation; yet a subsequent ordinance, p. 43,
renders this doubtful; and the theory of clerical immunity became afterwards
more fully established.]

[Footnote e: Matt. Paris, p. 629.]

[Footnote f: Statuimus, ut nullus ecclesiasticam personam, in criminali
quaestione vel civili, trahere ad judicium saeculare praesumat. Ordonnances
des Rois de France, t. i. p. 611, where this edict is recited and approved by
Louis Hutin.  Philip the Bold had obtained leave from the pope to arrest
clerks accused of heinous crimes, on condition of remitting them to the
bishop's court for trial.  Hist. du Droit Eccl. Franc., t. i. 426.  A council
at Bourges, held in 1276, had so absolutely condemned all interference of the
secular power with clerks that the king was obliged to solicit this moderate
favor.  P. 421.]

[Footnote g: Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico sobre las Siete Partidas, c.
320, &c. Hist. du Droits Eccles. Franc., t. i. p. 442.]

[Footnote h: Giannone, l. xix. c. v.; l. xx. c. 8. One provision of Robert
King of Naples is remarkable: it extends the immunity of clerks to their
concubines.  Ibid.

     Villani strongly censures a law made at Florence in 1345, taking away the
personal immunity of clerks in criminal cases.  Though the state could make
such a law, he says, it had no right to do so against the liberties of holy
church. l. xii. c. 43.]

     The vast acquisitions of landed wealth made for many ages by bishops,
chapters, and monasteries, began at length to excite the jealousy of
sovereigns.  They perceived that, although the prelates might send their
stipulated proportion of vassals into the field, yet there could not be that
active co-operation which the spirit of feudal tenures required, and that the
national arm was palsied by the diminution of military nobles. Again the
reliefs upon succession, and similar dues upon alienation, incidental to
fiefs, were entirely lost when they came into the hands of these undying
corporations, to the serious injury of the feudal superior. Nor could it
escape reflecting men, during the contest about investitures, that, if the
church peremptorily denied the supremacy of the state over her temporal
wealth, it was but a just measure of retaliation, or rather self-defence, that
the state should restrain her further acquisitions. Prohibitions of gifts in
mortmain, though unknown to the lavish devotion of the new kingdoms, had been
established by some of the Roman emperors to check the overgrown wealth of the
hierarchy. ^i The first attempt at a limitation of this description in modern
times was made by Frederic Barbarossa, who, in 1158, enacted that no fief
should be transferred, either to the church or otherwise, without the
permission of the superior lord.  Louis IX. inserted a provision of the same
kind in his Establishments. ^j Castile had also laws of a similar tendency. ^k
A license from the crown is said to have been necessary in England before the
conquest for alienations in mortmain; but however that may be, there seems no
reason to imagine that any restraint was put upon them by the common law
before Magna Charta; a clause of which statute was construed to prohibit all
gifts to religious houses without the consent of the lord of the fee.  And by
the 7th Edward I. alienations in mortmain are absolutely taken away; though
the king might always exercise his prerogative of granting a license, which
was not supposed to be affected by the statute. ^l

[Footnote i: Giannone, l. iii.]

[Footnote j: Ordonnances des Rois, p. 213.  See, too, p. 303 and alibi. Du
Cange, v. Manus morta.  Amortissiment, in Denisart and other French law-books.
Fleury, Instit. au Droit, t. i. p. 350.]

[Footnote k: Marina, Ensayo sobre las Siete Partidas, c. 235.]

[Footnote l: 2 Inst. p. 74.  Blackstone, vol. ii. c. 18.]

     It must appear, I think, to every careful inquirer that the papal
authority, though manifesting outwardly more show of strength every year, had
been secretly undermined, and lost a great deal of its hold upon public
opinion, before the accession of Boniface VIII., in 1294, to the pontifical
throne.  The clergy were rendered sullen by demands of money, invasions of the
legal right of patronage, and unreasonable partiality to the mendicant orders;
a part of the mendicants themselves had begun to declaim against the
corruptions of the papal court; while the laity, subjects alike and
sovereigns, looked upon both the head and the members of the hierarchy with
jealousy and dislike.  Boniface, full of inordinate arrogance and ambition,
and not sufficiently sensible of this gradual change in human opinion,
endeavored to strain to a higher pitch the despotic pretensions of former
pontiffs.  As Gregory VII. appears the most usurping of mankind till we read
the history of Innocent III., so Innocent III. is thrown into shade by the
superior audacity of Boniface VIII.  But independently of the less favorable
dispositions of the public, he wanted the most essential quality for an
ambitious pope, reputation for integrity.  He was suspected of having procured
through fraud the resignation of his predecessor Celestine V., and his harsh
treatment of that worthy man afterwards seems to justify the reproach.  His
actions, however, display the intoxication of extreme self-confidence.  If we
may credit some historians, he appeared at the Jubilee in 1300, a festival
successfully instituted by himself to throw lustre around his court and fill
his treasury, ^m dressed in imperial habits, with the two swords borne before
him, emblems of his temporal as well as spiritual dominion over the earth. ^n

[Footnote m: The jubilee was a centenary commemoration in honor of St. Peter
and St. Paul, established by Boniface VIII. on the faith of an imaginary
precedent a century before.  The period was soon reduced to fifty years, and
from thence to twenty-five, as it still continues.  The court of Rome, at the
next jubilee, will however read with a sigh the description given of that in
1300.  Papa innumerabilem pecuniam ab iisdem recepit, quia die et nocte duo
clerici stabant ad altare sancti Pauli, tenentes in eorum manibus rastellos,
rastellantes pecuniam infinitam. Auctor apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia.
Plenary indulgences were granted by Boniface to all who should keep their
jubilee at Rome, and I suppose are still to be had on the same terms.  Matteo
Villani gives a curious account of the throng at Rome in 1350.]

[Footnote n: Giannone, l. xxi. c. 3.  Velly, t. vii. p. 149.  I have not
observed any good authority referred to for this fact, which is, however, in
the character of Boniface.]

     It was not long after his elevation to the pontificate before Boniface
displayed his temper.  The two most powerful sovereigns of Europe, Philip the
Fair and Edward I., began at the same moment to attack in a very arbitrary
manner the revenues of the church.  The English clergy had, by their own
voluntary grants, or at least those of the prelates in their name, paid
frequent subsidies to the crown from the beginning of the reign of Henry III.
They had nearly in effect waived the ancient exemption, and retained only the
common privilege of English freemen to tax themselves in a constitutional
manner.  But Edward I. came upon them with demands so frequent and exorbitant,
that they were compelled to take advantage of a bull issued by Boniface,
forbidding them to pay any contribution to the state.  The king disregarded
every pretext, and, seizing their goods into his hands, with other tyrannical
proceedings, ultimately forced them to acquiesce in his extortion.  It is
remarkable that the pope appears to have been passive throughout this contest
of Edward I. with his clergy.  But it was far otherwise in France.  Philip the
Fair had imposed a tax on the ecclesiastical order without their consent, a
measure perhaps unprecedented, yet not more odious than the similar exactions
of the King of England.  Irritated by some previous differences, the pope
issued his bull known by the initial words Clericis laicos, absolutely
forbidding the clergy of every kingdom to pay, under whatever pretext of
voluntary grant, gift, or loan, any sort of tribute to their government
without his special permission.  Though France was not particularly named, the
king understood himself to be intended, and took his revenge by a prohibition
to export money from the kingdom.  This produced angry remonstrances on the
part of Boniface; but the Gallican church adhered so faithfully to the crown,
and showed indeed so much willingness to be spoiled of their money, that he
could not insist upon the most unreasonable propositions of his bull, and
ultimately allowed that the French clergy might assist their sovereign by
voluntary contributions, though not by way of tax.

     For a very few years after these circumstances the pope and King of
France appeared reconciled to each other; and the latter even referred his
disputes with Edward I. to the arbitration of Boniface, "as a private person,
Benedict of Gaeta (his proper name), and not as pontiff;" an almost nugatory
precaution against his encroachment upon temporal authority. ^o But a terrible
storm broke out in the first year of the fourteenth century.  A Bishop of
Pamiers, who had been sent as legate from Boniface with some complaint,
displayed so much insolence and such disrespect towards the king, that Philip,
considering him as his own subject, was provoked to put him under arrest, with
a view to institute a criminal process.  Boniface, incensed beyond measure at
this violation of ecclesiastical and legatine privileges, published several
bulls addressed to the king and clergy of France, charging the former with a
variety of offences, some of them not at all concerning the church, and
commanding the latter to attend a council which he had summoned to meet at
Rome.  In one of these instruments, the genuineness of which does not seem
liable to much exception, he declares in concise and clear terms that the king
was subject to him in temporal as well as spiritual matters.  This proposition
had not hitherto been explicitly advanced, and it was now too late to advance
it.  Philip replied by a short letter in the rudest language, and ordered his
bulls to be publicly burned at Paris.  Determined, however, to show the real
strength of his opposition, he summoned representatives from the three orders
of his kingdom.  This is commonly reckoned the first assembly of the States
General.  The nobility and commons disclaimed with firmness the temporal
authority of the pope, and conveyed their sentiments to Rome through letters
addressed to the college of cardinals.  The clergy endeavored to steer a
middle course, and were reluctant to enter into an engagement not to obey the
pope's summons; yet they did not hesitate unequivocally to deny his temporal
jurisdiction.

[Footnote o: Walt. Hemingford, p. 150.  The award of Boniface, which he
expresses himself to make both as pope and Benedict of Gaeta, is published in
Rymer, t. ii. p. 819, and is very equitable.  Nevertheless, the French
historians agreed to charge him with partiality towards Edward, and mention
several proofs of it, which do not appear in the bull itself. Previous to its
publication it was allowable enough to follow common fame; but Velly has
repeated mere falsehoods from Mezeray and Baillet, while he refers to the
instrument itself in Rymer, which disproves them.  Hist. de France, t. vii. p.
139.  M. Gaillard, one of the most candid critics in history that France ever
produced, pointed out the error of her common historians in the Mem. de
l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xxxix. p. 642; and the editors of L'Art de
verifier les Dates have also rectified it.]

     The council, however, opened at Rome; and notwithstanding the king's
absolute prohibition, many French prelates held themselves bound to be
present.  In this assembly Boniface promulgated his famous constitution,
denominated Unam sanctam.  The church is one body, he therein declares, and
has one head.  Under its command are two swords, the one spiritual, and the
other temporal; that to be used by the supreme pontiff himself; this by kings
and knights, by his license and at his will.  But the lesser sword must be
subject to the greater, and the temporal to the spiritual authority.  He
concludes by declaring the subjection of every human being to the see of Rome
to be an article of necessary faith. ^p Another bull pronounces all persons of
whatever rank obliged to appear when personally cited before the audience or
apostolical tribunal at Rome; "since such is our pleasure, who, by divine
permission, rule the world." Finally, as the rupture with Philip grew more
evidently irreconcilable, and the measures pursued by that monarch more
hostile, he not only excommunicated him, but offered the crown of France to
the Emperor Albert I.  This arbitrary transference of kingdoms was, like many
other pretensions of that age, an improvement upon the right of deposing
excommunicated sovereigns.  Gregory VII. would not have denied that a nation,
released by his authority from its allegiance, must re-enter upon its original
right of electing a new sovereign.  But Martin IV. had assigned the crown of
Aragon to Charles of Valois; the first instance, I think, of such a usurpation
of power, but which was defended by the homage of Peter II., who had rendered
his kingdom feudally dependent, like Naples, upon the Holy See. ^q Albert felt
no eagerness to realize the liberal promises of Boniface; who was on the point
of issuing a bull absolving the subjects of Philip from their allegiance, and
declaring his forfeiture, when a very unexpected circumstance interrupted all
his projects.

[Footnote p: Uterque est in potestate ecclesiae spiritalis scilicet gladius et
materialis.  Sed is quidem pro ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia exercendus:
ille sacerdotis, is manu regum ac militum, sed ad nutum et patientiam
sacerdotis.  Oportet autem gladium esse sub gladio, et temporalem auctoritatem
spiritali subjici potestati.  Porro subesse Romano pontifici omni humanae
creaturae declaramus, dicimus, definimus et pronuciamus omnino esse de
necessitate fidei.  Extravagant. l. i. tit. viii. c. 1.]

[Footnote q: Innocent IV. had, however, in 1245, appointed one Bolon, brother
to Sancho II., King of Portugal, to be a sort of coadjutor in the government
of that kingdom, enjoining the barons to honor him as their sovereign, at the
same time declaring that he did not intend to deprive the king or his lawful
issue, if he should have any, of the kingdom.  But this was founded on the
request of the Portugese nobility themselves, who were dissatisfied with
Sancho's administration.  Sext. Decretal. l. i. tit. viii. c. 2.  Art de
verifier les Dates, t. i. p. 778.

     Boniface invested James II. of Aragon with the crown of Sardinia, over
which, however, the see of Rome had always pretended to a superiority by
virtue of the concession (probably spurious) of Louis the Debonair.  He
promised Frederic King of Sicily the empire of Constantinople, which, I
suppose, was not a fief of the Holy See.  Giannone, l. xxi. c. 3.]

     It is not surprising, when we consider how unaccustomed men were in those
ages to disentangle the artful sophisms, and detect the falsehoods in point of
fact, whereon the papal supremacy had been established, that the King of
France should not have altogether pursued the course most becoming his dignity
and the goodness of his cause.  He gave too much the air of a personal quarrel
with Boniface to what should have been a resolute opposition to the despotism
of Rome.  Accordingly, in an assembly of his states at Paris, he preferred
virulent charges against the pope, denying him to have been legitimately
elected, imputing to him various heresies, and ultimately appealing to a
general council and a lawful head of the church.  These measures were not very
happily planned; and experience had always shown that Europe would not submit
to change the common chief of her religion for the purposes of a single
sovereign.  But Philip succeeded in an attempt apparently more bold and
singular. Nogaret, a minister who had taken an active share in all the
proceedings against Boniface, was secretly despatched into Italy, and, joining
with some of the Colonna family, proscribed as Ghibelins, and rancorously
persecuted by the pope, arrested him at Anagnia, a town in the neighborhood of
Rome, to which he had gone without guards.  This violent action was not, one
would imagine, calculated to place the king in an advantageous light; yet it
led accidentally to a favorable termination of his dispute.  Boniface was soon
rescued by the inhabitants of Anagnia; but rage brought on a fever which ended
in his death; and the first act of his successor, Benedict XI., was to
reconcile the King of France to the Holy See. ^r

[Footnote r: Velly, Hist. de France, t. vii. pp. 109-258; Crevier, Hist. de
l'Universite de Paris, t. ii. p. 170, &c.]

     The sensible decline of the papacy is to be dated from the pontificate of
Boniface VIII., who had strained its authority to a higher pitch than any of
his predecessors.  There is a spell wrought by uninterrupted good fortune,
which captivates men's understanding, and persuades them, against reasoning
and analogy, that violent power is immortal and irresistible.  The spell is
broken by the first change of success.  We have seen the working and the
dissipation of this charm with a rapidity to which the events of former times
bear as remote a relation as the gradual processes of nature to her deluges
and her volcanoes.  In tracing the papal empire over mankind we have no such
marked and definite crisis of revolution.  But slowly, like the retreat of
waters, or the stealthy pace of old age, that extraordinary power over human
opinion has been subsiding for five centuries.  I have already observed that
the symptoms of internal decay may be traced further back.  But as the
retrocession of the Roman terminus under Adrian gave the first overt proof of
decline in the ambitious energies of that empire, so the tacit submission of
the successors of Boniface VIII. to the King of France might have been hailed
by Europe as a token that their influence was beginning to abate.  Imprisoned,
insulted, deprived eventually of life by the violence of Philip, a prince
excommunicated, and who had gone all lengths in defying and despising the
papal jurisdiction, Boniface had every claim to be avenged by the inheritors
of the same spiritual dominion.  When Benedict XI. rescinded the bulls of his
predecessor, and admitted Philip the Fair to communion, without insisting on
any concessions, he acted perhaps prudently, but gave a fatal blow to the
temporal authority of Rome.

     Benedict XI. lived but a few months, and his successor Clement V., at the
instigation, as is commonly supposed, of the King of France, by whose
influence he had been elected, took the extraordinary step of removing the
papal chair to Avignon.  [A.D. 1305.] In this city it remained for more than
seventy years; a period which Petrarch and other writers of Italy compare to
that of the Babylonish captivity.  The majority of the cardinals was always
French, and the popes were uniformly of the same nation.  Timidly dependent
upon the court of France, they neglected the interests and lost the affections
of Italy.  Rome, forsaken by her sovereign, nearly forgot her allegiance; what
remained of papal authority in the ecclesiastical territories was exercised by
cardinal legates, little to the honor or advantage of the Holy See.  Yet the
series of Avignon pontiffs were far from insensible to Italian politics.
These occupied, on the contrary, the greater part of their attention.  But
engaging in them from motives too manifestly selfish, and being regarded as a
sort of foreigners from birth and residence, they aggravated that unpopularity
and bad reputation which from various other causes attached itself to their
court.

     Though none of the supreme pontiffs after Boniface VIII. ventured upon
such explicit assumptions of a general jurisdiction over sovereigns by divine
right as he had made in his controversy with Philip, they maintained one
memorable struggle for temporal power against the Emperor Louis of Bavaria.
Maxims long boldly repeated without contradiction, and engrafted upon the
canon law, passed almost for articles of faith among the clergy and those who
trusted in them; and in despite of all ancient authorities, Clement V. laid it
down that the popes, having transferred the Roman empire from the Greeks to
the Germans, and delegated the right of nominating an emperor to certain
electors, still reserved the prerogative of approving the choice, and of
receiving from its subject upon his coronation an oath of fealty and
obedience. ^s This had a regard to Henry VII., who denied that his oath bore
any such interpretation, and whose measures, much to the alarm of the court of
Avignon, were directed towards the restoration of his imperial rights in
Italy.  Among other things, he conferred the rank of vicar of the empire upon
Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan.  The popes had for some time pretended to
possess that vicariate, during a vacancy of the empire; and after Henry's
death insisted upon Visconti's surrender of the title.  Several circumstances,
for which I refer to the political historians of Italy, produced a war between
the pope's legate and the Visconti family.  The Emperor Louis sent assistance
to the latter, as heads of the Ghibelin or imperial party. This interference
cost him above twenty years of trouble.  John XXII., a man as passionate and
ambitious as Boniface himself, immediately published a bull in which he
asserted the right of administering the empire during its vacancy (even in
Germany, as it seems from the generality of his expression), as well as of
deciding in a doubtful choice of the electors, to appertain to the Holy See;
and commanded Louis to lay down his pretended authority until the supreme
jurisdiction should determine upon his election.  Louis' election had indeed
been questionable; but that controversy was already settled in the field of
Muhldorf, where he had obtained a victory over his competitor the Duke of
Austria; nor had the pope ever interfered to appease a civil war during
several years that Germany had been internally distracted by the dispute.  The
emperor, not yielding to this peremptory order, was excommunicated; his
vassals were absolved from their oath of fealty, and all treaties of alliance
between him and foreign princes annulled.  [A.D. 1323.] Germany, however,
remained firm; and if Louis himself had manifested more decision of mind and
uniformity in his conduct, the court of Avignon must have signally failed in a
contest from which it did not in fact come out very successful.  But while at
one time he went intemperate lengths against John XXII., publishing scandalous
accusations in an assembly of the citizens of Rome, and causing a Franciscan
friar to be chosen in his room, after an irregular sentence of deposition, he
was always anxious to negotiate terms of accommodation, to give up his own
active partisans, and to make concessions the most derogatory to his
independence and dignity.  From John indeed he had nothing to expect; but
Benedict XII. would gladly have been reconciled, if he had not feared the
kings of France and Naples, political adversaries of the emperor, who kept the
Avignon popes in a sort of servitude.  His successor, Clement VI., inherited
the implacable animosity of John XXII. towards Louis, who died without
obtaining the absolution he had long abjectly solicited. ^t

[Footnote s: Romani principes, &c. . . . . Romano pontifici, a quo
approbationem personae ad imperialis celsitudinis apicem assumendae, necnon
unctionem, consecrationem et imperii coronam accipiunt, sua submittere capita
non reputarunt indignum, seque illi et eidem ecclesiae, quae a Graecis
imperium transtulit in Germanos, et a qua ad certos eorum principes just et
potestas eligendi regem, in imperatorem postmodum promovendum, pertinet,
adstringere vinculo juramenti, &c.  Clement. l. ii. t. ix.  The terms of the
oath, as recited in this constitution, do not warrant the pope's
interpretation, but imply only that the emperor shall be the advocate or
defender of the church.]

[Footnote t: Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. iv. pp. 446-536, seems the best
modern authority for this contest between the empire and papacy.  See also
Struvius, Corp. Hist. German. p. 591.]