[Sidenote: Boniface VIII (1294-1303).]

Boniface VIII—such was the name of the new Pope—returned to Rome escorted by Charles II and his son, Charles Martel of Hungary; and his coronation surpassed that of all previous Popes in magnificence. The late Pope was soon secured and placed in a tower on the top of a mountain, where he died in 1296. It was not so easy for Boniface to fulfil his part of the compact with regard to Sicily. James, the son of Peter of Aragon, agreed to surrender Sicily on the understanding that the new Pope would withdraw the award of Aragon made by Martin IV to a French prince, and confirm it him. But the Sicilians refused to return to their French ruler and found a champion in James' younger brother Frederick, who was their Governor. He was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo in 1296. Charles II was too feeble to make any real headway against Frederick, and even the title of Standard-bearer of the Church conferred by the Pope on James of Aragon, did not keep Frederick's brother permanently on the papal side. In 1301 Boniface fell back upon the French prince Charles of Valois, to whom Pope Martin had given Aragon, and sent for him to attack "the new Manfred" in Sicily. Charles having first failed in an attempt to appease the Florentine factions, passed on to the south, and here Frederick ultimately forced him to peace and a recognition of his title as King of Sicily (1302). At first Boniface would not ratify a peace from which all reference to Pope or Church had been omitted; but in 1303 circumstances caused him to accept it, though he exacted as a condition that Frederick should acknowledge himself a papal vassal. Frederick, however, never paid any tribute.

[Sidenote: Quarrel with Colonnas.]

Boniface held views of the papal power of the most exalted kind. It was in accordance with these that he once more made Rome the headquarters of the papacy. But he soon found himself involved in a quarrel which, purely local in origin, assumed an European importance. The family of Colonna by favour of Pope Nicholas IV had become one of the most powerful in Rome and the neighbourhood. The centre of the family property was the city of Palestrina. Cardinal Jacopo Colonna, who as the eldest brother administered it, did not distribute it fairly to his brothers, but rather favoured his nephews, the sons of his dead brother John who had been Senator of Rome. One of these was the Cardinal Peter. Uncle and nephew were the most influential members of the Roman Curia, and as Roman nobles they resented Boniface's design of humbling the Roman aristocracy. They refused the papal admonitions to deal justly with the other members of the family; they withdrew from the papal Court, and having already turned from Ghibelline to Guelf, they once more became Ghibelline and made an alliance with Frederick of Sicily. They published a manifesto in which they refused to recognise Boniface on the ground that Pope Celestine's abdication had been unlawful. But Celestine was dead and the Colonnas had voted for his successor. Boniface deposed the Cardinals and excommunicated them, even declaring a crusade against them! The struggle centred round Palestrina, and it is said that the Pope fetched from a Franciscan cloister a once famous Ghibelline general, Guy of Montefeltro, by whose advice he decoyed the Colonnas out of their fortress by promises which he did not intend to keep. Palestrina was levelled to the ground and the Colonnas fled (1298), finding refuge among the enemies of Boniface and preparing the way for the final catastrophe.

[Sidenote: Papal Jubilee.]

Boniface, however, had become his own master at home to an extent attained by none of his predecessors since Innocent III. His reign reached what may be termed its high-water mark in the Papal Jubilee of 1300. The cessation of the Crusades had largely increased the crowds of pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an expectation of special spiritual privileges in connection with the end of the century. Indulgences had been so freely scattered in attempts to promote the Crusades that a craving for them had been created. Boniface recognised the importance of exploiting the popular feeling, and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull promising generous indulgences to all who should visit the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul during the year for so many successive days, and directing that a similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hundredth year. Pilgrims flocked to Rome; 30,000 are reckoned to have entered and left daily, while 200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The amount of the offerings must have been enormous, and the Ghibellines naturally declared that the Jubilee had its origin in the papal need for money. But most of the pilgrims were poor; and even if the size of the crowds were a just measure of the continued hold of the Roman Church upon the people of Western Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except Charles Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant. Indeed, Boniface had already experienced a foretaste of the independent attitude of the secular princes, which eventually proved fatal to him. Rudolf of Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes, rejecting the claims of his son Albert, elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had hoped to find him. He was deposed and fell in battle, and Albert was chosen and crowned without any reference to the Pope—the first occasion on which the German princes had acted without papal authority. Boniface had already barred Albert's claims. He now refused to recognise him, declaring that the Empire owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour. Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to accept Albert, especially since Albert was willing in return to confirm all that his father Rudolf had granted to the Papacy.

[Sidenote: First quarrel with France and England.]

But this quarrel with Germany sinks into insignificance before the great contest of Boniface with France, with which his English dispute was also closely connected. The Hohenstaufen had fallen before the Papacy because their German kingdom and the "German" Empire rested on no solid foundation. But in his attempts to coerce France and England into obedience the Pope found himself face to face with two strong national monarchies. Boniface failed to grasp the position. Edward I of England and Philip IV of France were engaged in war. Each resorted to every available method of raising money for the conduct of the war, and among other ways laid heavy taxes on the clergy. Boniface having failed to make the Kings submit their quarrels to his judgment, issued a 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 it seemed as if the prospect of a peaceful reunion of the Churches alone might remove the pretext now given to the princes of the West for a new crusade directed against Constantinople. This was no imaginary danger; for Charles of Anjou and Naples had made himself the champion of the dispossessed Latin Emperor and was preparing to attack. So Michael Palaeologus who had rewon Constantinople for the Greeks and himself, made overtures to Pope Urban IV; and negotiations were thus begun which ended in the appearance of Greek delegates at the second Council of Lyons in 1274. These accepted, on behalf of the Greek Church and empire, the primacy of Rome and the Latin Creed. In return, the Bulgarian Church was once more restored to its own Metropolitan at Achrida. But all Michael's coercive efforts failed to make the union acceptable to his own clergy and people. It was so difficult to carry out the promised assimilation of the Greek to the Latin forms that the Popes became impatient; and when Nicholas III, the opponent of Charles of Sicily, was succeeded by Martin IV, the tool of that ambitious monarch, the excommunication launched by the new Pope against the Eastern Emperor was merely a preliminary step to the general attack on the empire planned by Charles. Michael's son and successor Andronicus entirely repudiated the agreement made at Lyons; but the misfortunes of Charles in Sicily removed the serious danger of invasion from the West. Overtures for ecclesiastical union were not renewed until the conquests of the Turks in the Balkan peninsula forced the Greeks to seek external aid.

[Sidenote: Internal condition of Church.]

The internal condition of the Eastern Church during these centuries does not call for much detailed treatment. The end of the iconoclastic quarrel had been followed by the development of great elaboration of ceremonial in the services. It is true that learning was not dead and that the Emperors of the Comnenan house distinctly encouraged it. But the literature of ancient Greece and the theological works of the Fathers of the early Church appeared to the writers of these centuries to have exhausted all earthly possibilities in their respective spheres. The writings of learned Christians did not rescue their religion from pure formalism; while the study of the classics led them to the ancient philosophers and landed many of the students in paganism. Under the circumstances it is not perhaps wonderful that there arose a sect called Gnosimachi who deprecated any attempt after knowledge of the Scriptures on the ground that God demands good deeds done in all simplicity. It is, however, among the monks, if anywhere, that personal piety should have been retained. But such as existed, was inclined to take fantastic forms; and we are told of those who wrapped themselves round with the odour of sanctity by self-inflicted tortures of a useless and meaningless kind. There was no foundation of new monastic Orders in the East such as during these centuries led to the maintenance of the missionary spirit in the West. But it was from the monastic bodies alone that any opposition was offered to the actions of the Emperor. The most noteworthy case was that of the Abbot Nicephorus Blemmydes whose attempts to promote an understanding between the Eastern and Western Churches (1245) were foiled, because he had the temerity to deal harshly with the mistress of the Emperor John Dukas. Indeed the imperial authority was an influence stronger than any other, with the possible exception of hatred of the Latin Church. Such dogmatic discussions as occasionally arose, were concerned with unimportant points: but the participation of the Emperor did not necessarily tend to either truth or peace. Manuel I not only intervened in such disputes, but even started them himself and enforced his view by punishing those who took the opposite side.

[Sidenote: Heresies.]

The Eastern Church, like that of the West, had to deal with heretical sects. The Paulicians who in the ninth century had formed a politico-religious community on the confines of the empire, were deprived of their political power by Basil I in 872; while in 969 John Tzimisces transferred a portion of them from their settlements in Asia Minor to the district of Philippopolis in Thrace. Here they throve, until their desertion of the Emperor Alexius in his war against Robert Guiscard and the Normans ended the toleration hitherto extended to the exercise of their religion, and the "thirteenth apostle," as his literary daughter Anna Comnena styles him, entered on a plan of forcible conversion. Alexius also dealt severely with another body of heretics. The Bogomiles were perhaps a revival of the earlier sect of the Euchites or Messalians who are mentioned by writers of the fourth century. The origin of the name is obscure, but it is said to mean "Friends of God." Their tenets resembled those of the Cathari with whom they were most probably connected. Alexius by pretending sympathy got from their leader an avowal of his doctrines and then had him burnt (1116). But in neither of these cases did violent suppression achieve its purpose. Despite the foundation of the orthodox city of Alexiopolis in the neighbourhood, the Paulicians still continued about Philippopolis, where they were secretly strengthened in their particularist attitude by the continued presence of the remnants of the Bogomiles. Even a century later the Patriarch Germanus (1230) attacks the latter on the plea that they are still secretly making converts.

[Sidenote: Other Eastern Churches.]

Of the other Christian Churches of the East we have seen that the Nestorians were very active among the Tartars throughout Asia. They and their Syrian neighbours but dogmatic opponents, the Jacobites, a monophysite body, adopted a conciliatory disposition towards the crusaders. In 1237 the prior of the Dominicans in Jerusalem reported to Gregory IX that the Maphrian of the Jacobites, a kind of lesser patriarch, had acknowledged the supremacy of Rome; but a submission given from stress of circumstances carried no permanent weight; and subsequent correspondence between Innocent IV and officials of both churches seems to have been wilfully misunderstood at Rome. There were two other Christian churches whose conduct was guided by proximity to the Mohammedans. The small body of the Maronites on Mount Lebanon kept their ancient customs but attached themselves to the Roman Church in 1182 and remained faithful to her. The more important Armenian Church wavered between Rome and Constantinople. Manuel Comnenus made overtures to the Patriarch or Catholicos, which were prevented from coming to any result by the emperor's death. Shortly afterwards Leo the Great of Armenia was recognised as King by the Emperor Henry VI and was crowned by the Archbishop of Mainz; and in return he and his Catholicos recognised the supremacy of Rome. In 1240 the Greek patriarch tried to win over the Catholicos to the Eastern Church. In 1292 the Armenian King Haiton II, who became a Franciscan friar, persuaded his church to accept the Roman customs: but despite this nominal subjection to Rome, the obstinacy of the people prevented any real change in either doctrine or organisation.

THE END