Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

FALL OF BONIFACE VIII. 269
offerings
at the shrine of St. Peter. The ambassadors of
the leading States of Christendom brought their homage, and
Boniface, as he looked round on that vast and glittering
throneO
mio-ht Q well believe himself the one overlord and
master of the world. Indeed he is said to have seized a
sword, and to have crowned himself with the imperial
crown, shouting, ( It is I who am Ca3sar ;
it is I who will
defend the rights of the Empire.
Innocent had wielded the two swords, Boniface must
display them, and flourish them before the eyes of men.
The boast was a sign that the swords no longer rested
firmly in his grasp. There were keen observers there who
were noting everything John Yillani, and Dirio Compagni,
the founders of that intellectual school of historians and
critics which was rising to power in Florence, and was
destined to play such a part in the coming age. Compagni
says that he conceived the first idea of his history at that
Jubilee
;
one must read a good deal to understand how
fatal honest history has been and is to liome. A few
months later Dante was in Eome
;
Dante, who in that
transcendent poem which rounds the Middle Age and opens
the Modern, pictures, with his terribly graphic pen, that
very Boniface writhing and shrieking
of the Inferno.
Soon after that Jubilee the Papal power
amidst the torments
bent to its
fall. Philip le Bel of France was the bitter enemy of
Boniface, as his ancestor had been of Innocent, and in 1300
Philip le Bel was already master. Three years
after that
splendid triumph, the Pontiff, who had seen the civilised
world at his feet, was struck from his throne by the brutal
hand of the emissary of the French King. Philip had
assembled the States General to prepare
himself for the
conflict, and Michelet calls that the baptismal register of
the nation. The most furious diatribes against Boniface