338

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

THE NEMESIS OF POWER 339
were confiscated, and he was charged with speaking and prophesying against the King, a crime in every medieval
state. Bishop Saisset's appeal to the Pope was ignored, and William of Nogaret drew up charges against him,
many based on no evidence at all.l27
Though Bishop Saisset had evidently been indiscreet and some of the charges against him were probably
true, the Pope could not ignore a challenge of this magnitude. He responded in November 1301 with a demand
that Philip IV release Bishop Saisset at once and return his confiscated estates, threatening the King with
excommunication if he did not do so. He followed this a day later with the bull Ausculta fili ("Listen, son!")
suspending the exemptions from Clericis laicos' restrictions on financial levies on the Church which he had
previously granted to Philip, and condemning Philip for misgovernment and disrespect for the Church and its
bishops.t2' The introductory sentence of Ausculta fili again displayed Boniface VIII's unfortunate tendency to
word his directives and offer his counsel in very provocative fashion: "Listen, son, to the words of thy father and
to the teachings of thy master who, on this earth, holds the place of Him Who is the sole Master and Lord." t29 The
doctrine was sound, but for the Pope to refer to himself as the king's "master" was not the most tactful way to
state it. Boniface VIII followed this with another bull, Salvator mundi, in December, explicitly revoking the
exemptions from Clericis laicos which he had given to Philip IV and forbidding the payment of any Church
revenues to Philip without specific Papal authorization. 130
Ausculta fili was received at the French court in February 1302 and was promptly burned. 131 Pierre Flotte,
Philip's chief minister, then forged a Papal bull (Scire te volumus) which explicitly claimed temporal authority for
the Pope in France, denied the King the income even of vacant sees and benefices, and condemned as heretics all
who disagreed. In April Philip called the first known meeting of the Estates-General (the French parliament, not
to be confused with the special courts known as parlements) at which the forged bull was presented as the
document Boniface VIII had actually sent to Philip. The king declared that all who opposed him in this matter and
supported the Pope would be treated as his personal enemies. The papal emissary who had brought Ausculta fili
to Paris was expelled from France along with Bishop Saisset, and Bishop
Peter de Mornay of Auxerre was sent to Rome bearing letters from the EstatesGeneral condemning the Pope's
action.l3z
The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Pope Boniface VIII did not hesitate to pick it up. He received
Bishop Peter de Mornay in consistory with his cardinals, all of whom gave him full support. Cardinal
Acquasparta opened the meeting with a lengthy explanation of the distinction among spiritual authority,
temporal authority, and the Pope's right and duty to act as the moral judge of kings. Boniface denounced the
forgery of the bull Scire te volumus, saying that of course he had never claimed and would never claim
temporal authority over France, and reproving the French bishops for appearing to believe that he had; but, he
went on, "our predecessors have deposed three kings of France; and, we say it with sorrow, we are ready to
depose one like a groom."133 Whether the Pope could, strictly speaking, depose a king was debatable, for
absolving a king's subjects from their duty of allegiance and obedience was not quite that; but did he really need
to add "like a groom"?
That spring the people of Flanders had risen against Philip IV's autocratic rule much as the people of
Palermo had risen against Charles I of Naples in the "Sicilian Vespers," and in July 1302 the Flemish army
defeated the French at the Battle of Courtrai. Pierre Flotte and Count Robert of Artois, who had done much to stir
up the conflict between Philip IV and the Pope, were killed in the battle. There was briefly some hope that their
elimination might reduce the tension between king and Pope; but the appointment of the able and utterly
unscrupulous William of Nogaret as "first lawyer of the realm" suggested otherwise." Boniface VIII, perhaps
hoping for support from Edward I of England, abandoned the cause of the Scots in August, rebuking the patriotic
Scots bishops as "sowers of discord" and urging them to accept Edward's authority. t3s But he saw no grounds for
compromise with Philip IV, and on November 18, 1302 issued the bull Unam sanctam proclaiming, in the
strongest terms in papal history, the superiority of the Pope's authority over all other authority, and his right and
duty to be the moral judge of kings. It did not specifically claim the exercise of universal temporal authority for
the Pope, but its language was open to the interpretation that it made such a claim. The imprudence of its
language has caused trouble for the Church from its own time
127 Mann, Popes in the Middle Ages, XIX, 324-328; Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 298-300; Strayer, Philip the Fair, pp.
262, 265-266; Curley, Conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV, pp. 90-94.
 128
Strayer, Philip the Fair, pp. 267-268; Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 301-303, 310-311; Mann, Popes in the Middle
Ages, XIX, 319-323; Curley, Conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV, pp. 94-96.
129
Mann, Popes in the Middle Ages, XIX, 321. 13°Boase, Boniface VIII, p. 301.
13t
lbid., p. 304. Strayer, Philip the Fair, p. 270, doubts that the bull was burned, but Digard, Philippe le bel, II,
95n-96n, provides solid evidence that it was.
Mann, Popes in the Middle Ages, XIX, 331-334, 337-340; Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 305-307; Curley, Conflict
between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV pp. 99-105; Strayer, Phil* the Fair, pp. 271-272.
1% Mann, Popes in the Middle Ages, XIX, 340-345 (quotation on p. 343); Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 308-311;
Curley, Conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV, pp. 105-111.
13°
Strayer, Philip the Fair, pp. 333-335; Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 312, 316-317; Curley, Conflict between Pope
Boniface VIII and Philip IV, p. 112; Pegues, Lawyers of the Last Capetians, p. 46.
13s
Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 327-328; Powicke, Thirteenth Century, pp. 709-710.