Part 13 (1/2)
”The intolerable exactions, by which the court of ”Rome has impoverished to such a wretched de- ”gree the kingdom, shall cease, save in cases of ”urgent necessity, and by consent of the king, and ”of the Gallican church.
”The liberties, franchises, immunities, rights and ”privileges, granted by the sovereigns to churches ”and monasteries are confirmed.”
5 ”Nothing proves better,” says a modern author, ”the influence of superst.i.tion......than the number of crusades preached by order of Clement IV. A crusade into Spain against the Moors, whom they wished to exterminate; a crusade into Hungary, Bohemia and elsewhere, against the Tartars, whose incursions they dreaded; a crusade in favor of the Teutonic knights, against the Pagans of Livonia, of Prussia and of Courland, over whom they Wished to reign; a crusade into England against the barons, whom Henry III.
could not subject; a crusade into France and into Italy, to deprive the house of Swabia of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily; a general crusade for the conquest of the Holy Land. The crusaders were often opposed; they were loosed from the obligation to the one, when pressed to the execution of another; indulgences were distributed at the will of the pope; the expenses of the war exhausted kingdoms, and the pope's bulls kindled flames throughout Europe.” - Millot's Elements of General History.-Mod. Hist. vol.
ii. p. 184, 186.
This act is so important, and does so much honour to Louis IX. that the Jesuit Griffet5 disputes its authenticity. We may oppose to Griffet, the authority of his brethren Labbe and Cossart;5 of Bouchel, of Tillet, Fontanon, Pinson, Girard, Lauriere, Ega.s.se du Boulay, in fine, that of all the jurisconsults, historians, and even theologians, who have had occasion to speak of the pragmatic sanction of St. Louis. But further, we see it cited in 1491, by the University of Paris; in 1483, in the states held at Tours; in 1461 by the parliament Charles VII. on the occasion of the pragmatic published by this king, expresses himself in these words: in 1440, by John Juvenal des Ursins,:
”You are not the first who has done ”such things; thus did St. Louis, who is sainted and ”canonized, and we must acknowledge he did well, ”your father and others have approved it.”
5 Note upon P. Daniel's History of France, vol. iv. p. 563
5 Concilior. vol. ii. Proofs of the liberties of the Gall. Church, vol. i. pt. 2. p. 28, 60, 66, 76,-pt. 3, p. 41, and, Real's Science of Government, vol. vii. p. 72.
There is, then, no room to doubt, that the most pious of the French kings was the most zealous defender of the liberties of the Gallican church; and this glorious resistance, which he made in 1268 to Clement IV. expiates the unfortunate consent that he gave to the treaty concluded between this pope and Charles of Anjou.
Thirty months elapsed from the death of Clement, to the election of his successor, Gregory X. Charles of Anjou profited of this interregnum to acquire a great authority in Italy; he aspired even to govern it altogether. Gregory X. who, perceived this, endeavoured to oppose four obstacles to it: a new crusade; the reconciliation of the Eastern church; the restoration of the Western empire, and the extinction of the factions of Guelph and Ghibeline. Since the death of Conradine, the discord of these factions was almost without object: it survived from habit and personal animosities, rather than from opposition of political interests. The Guelphs more powerful from day to day, were about re-establis.h.i.+ng the independence of the Italian cities, and perhaps reuniting under a head who was not to be a pope.-To provide against this danger, and to keep in check Charles of Anjou, Gregory X. confirmed the election of a new German emperor: this was Rodolph of Hapsburg, head of the house of Austria. This Rodolph renounced, in favour of the Roman church, the heritage of Matilda, and was nevertheless excommunicated, for having supported his sovereign rights over the Italian cities, and for having neglected to a.s.sume the cross. They at length became tired of these expeditions into Palestine, where the Christians, driven from the pettiest hamlets, scarcely preserved a single asylum. The Greek church, apparently reconciled to the second general council of Lyons, was not actually so for a long period. The most complete result of the pontificate of Gregory X. was the acquisition of the Comtat Venaissin, in which, however, the king of France, Philip the Hardy, reserved to himself the city of Avignon.
Nicholas III. annulled the oath taken to the emperor by the cities of Romagna; he obliged Charles of Anjou to renounce the vicars.h.i.+p of the empire, and the dignity of senator of Rome; he even incited Peter of Arragon to recover the kingdom of Sicily, which belonged by right of inheritance to his wife Constance. On which we must observe, that Charles had refused to marry one of his granddaughters to a nephew of Nicholas, and that this pontiff sprung from the house of the Ursini, had conceived the idea of dividing among his nephews the crowns of Sicily, of Tuscany, and of Lombardy, These projects did not succeed.
Martin IV. elected by the influence of Charles of Anjou, laid an interdict on the city of Viterbo, excommunicated the Forlivians, confiscated whatever they possessed in Rome, excommunicated Peter III.
king of Arragon, and excommunicated Michael Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople. A league of the Venetians, of Charles of Anjou, and the pope, had little success. Another crusade was undertaken against Peter of Arragon, who beat the crusaders: the Sicilian vespers, not without some appearance of justice, were attributed to this prince; a horrible ma.s.sacre, in which the French were the victims, in the year 1282, and which Martin IV. and Charles of Anjou might have prevented by a more prudent conduct.
When Celestine V. yielding to the advice of the cardinal Benedict Cajetan, had abdicated the papacy, this cardinal succeeded him, imprisoned him, and under the name of Boniface VIII., disgraced the chair of St. Peter, from the year 1294 to 1303. He excommunicated the family of the Colonnas, confiscated their estates, and preached a crusade against them. They were Ghibelines; Boniface, who had belonged to this faction, detested them for it the more. The pope answered in plain terms, that the Roman pontiff, established by providence, over kings and kingdoms, held the first rank on earth, dissipated every evil by his sublime regards, and from the height of his throne, tranquilly judged the affairs of men. You know, he writes, to Edward I. that Scotland belongs to the Holy See of full right. He treated Albert of Austria, elected emperor in 1298, as a usurper, summoned him to appear at Rome, and dispensed his subjects from their allegiance; but he menaced especially Philip the Fair, king of France.5
5 Bossuet Def. Cler. Gall. 1. iii. c. 33, 24, 35.
By the bull 'Clericis Lacos,' Boniface had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, every member of the secular and regular clergy from paying, without the pope's permission, any tax to their sovereigns, even under the t.i.tle of a gratuitous gift: Philip answered this bull by prohibiting the transportation of any sum of money out of the kingdom, without permission from under his hand. This measure at first seemed to intimidate the pontiff who, modifying his bull, authorised, in cases of pressing necessity, the contributions of the Clergy; but a legate soon arrived to brave Philip, and summon him to alter his behaviour, if he did not desire to expose his kingdom to a general interdict. This seditious priest was arrested; his detention set the pope in a rage.:
”G.o.d has appointed me over empires, to pluck up, ”to destroy, to undo, to scatter, to build up and to ”plant.”
Thus does Boniface express himself in one of his bulls against Philip IV. That which is known by the name of 'Unatn sanctam,' contains these expressions:
”The temporal sword ought to ”be employed by kings and warriors for the church, ”according to the order or permission of the pope: ”the temporal power is subject to the spiritual, which ”inst.i.tutes and judges it, but which can be judged ”of G.o.d alone; to resist the spiritual power, is ”to resist G.o.d, unless they admit the two principles ”of the Manicheans.”
An archdeacon, the bearer of these bulls, enjoined the king to acknowledge, that he held from the pope his temporal sovereignty.
Finally, Bonifice excommunicated Philip: he ordered this monarch's confessor to appear at Rome, to render an account of the conduct of his penitent; he destined the crown of France to this same emperor, Albert, before treated as a criminal, but who now acknowledged by a written doc.u.ment.:
”that the ”Apostolic See had transferred from the Greeks to ”the Germans the Roman empire, in the person of ”Charlemagne; that certain secular and ecclesiasti- ”cal princes, hold from the pope the right of electing ”the king of the Romans, the destined successor to ”the empire; and that the pope grants to kings and ”to emperors the power of the sword.”
An euloguim is due to the victorious firmness of Philip, in opposition to these extravagancies: the commoners and the n.o.bles of France supported him; the clergy, though already imbued with ultramontane maxims, was led away by the ascendancy of the two former orders. The prelates at all times adhered to the king with a reservation in favour of 'the faith due to the pope', and thirty-four of them proceeded to Rome in defiance of Philip.
A letter of this prince to Boniface, VIII. commences with these words:
”Philip, by the grace of G.o.d, ”king of the French, to Boniface pretended pope, ”little or no greeting. Let your very great Fatuity ”take notice, &c.”
These insulting expressions, but little worthy of him who employed them, would have very badly succeeded, addressed to any pope who had at all less merited them than Boniface; but his pretensions really bordered on delirium, and he was altogether dest.i.tute of the political address requisite for their success. Three men, in the course of the thirteenth century, have checked the menacing progress of the pontifical power.