A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

university of Paris that its teachings were trivial and poisonous, and that they were all forbidden to
discuss such inflammatory subjects as the mendicant orders (like the Franciscans) in public or in
private. To us it seems absurd to forbid anyone to discuss something in private; to the future
Boniface VIII it came naturally.
It was power that interested Boniface. After the downfall of the Staufers, he saw no reason why he
should not realise the dream of Gregory VII and become the true ruler of all Europe’s kings and
emperors. Innocent III, we may recall - guardian of the young Frederick II - had persuaded the
‘wonder of the world’ to remit all taxes on the clergy; but Frederick went back on his word when
he became emperor. Now Boniface decided it was time to try again, and in the year he became
pope made the matter the subject of a bull. This was a papal edict (so called because of its ball-like
seal - Latin word was preferred because to refer to papal balls would obviously give rise to
misunderstanding), and it was regarded as un-contradictable. No priest, said Clericis Laicos, could
be taxed without direct permission of the pope.
In France, this notion caused rage and dismay. The king, Philip the Fair, was in character not unlike
the pope - vain, aggressive and inclined to display and extravagance. As a result, he was
permanently in need of money, and to cut off his church revenues caused him acute distress. He
reacted promptly by cutting off all the pope’s revenues from France - that is, by issuing an edict
forbidding money to leave the country. At the same time, the English king Edward I outlawed the
clergy. Within a year, Boniface was practically compelled to withdraw Clericis Laicos. He tried to
placate Philip by canonising his ancestor Louis IX.
Once again dreaming of power and grandeur, the pope proclaimed the year 1300 a ‘Jubilee Year’, a
year for rejoicing, when anyone who came to Rome would receive automatic remission of sins.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flocked to Rome; hundreds of thousands of pounds flowed into
the papal treasury. It was, says Frederick Heer in The Medieval World, 1150-1300, ‘the first
example of the manipulation of the masses for a political end’. The great procession itself was like
a combination of a Roman triumph and a Nuremberg Rally. The pope was preceded by two swords,
symbolising his spiritual and earthly dominion, and heralds went ahead crying: ‘I am caesar, I am
emperor!’ Gold coins were showered on the tomb of St Peter at such a pace that two croupiers had
to pull them in with rakes. All this money was intended by the pope for the subjection of Sicily -
that old quarrel still dragged on - and to press his claim as the real emperor of Europe.
The quarrels between Boniface and Philip the Fair began to blow up again. A haughty papal legate
gave great offence to Philip with his insolent manners, but since he was the pope’s ambassador,
there was nothing the king could do about it. However, the legate happened to be a French bishop,
and as soon as his term as ambassador expired, Philip had him arrested, tried for blasphemy and
disrespect for royalty, and thrown into prison. The pope was outraged - and began to be alarmed
when Philip spoke about appointing future bishops himself instead of leaving it to Rome. In 1302
he issued a bull called Unam sanctum that went farther than anything before in asserting the pope’s
superiority to kings and emperors. (It has since become something of an embarrassment to the
Church, which has been obliged to declare that nothing in it is ‘divinely inspired’ except its last line
- about there being no salvation outside the Church). He went on to threaten to depose Philip and
excommunicate him.
Philip’s response was to call a meeting of the French equivalent of parliament, the Estates General,
which denounced the pope as a heretic and said many other harsh things about him. (Modern
research has shown that the heresy charge was not unfounded - it seems probable that Boniface did