Page 301 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Pope Boniface VIII. The conflict between church and state in the Middle Ages reached its height in the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France. This fourteenth-century manuscript miniature depicts Boniface VIII promoting his decrees.
decided to act on his principles by excommunicating Philip IV of France, the king sent a small contingent of French forces to capture Boniface and bring him back to France for trial. The pope was captured in Anagni, although Italian nobles from the surrounding countryside soon rescued him. The shock of this experience, however, soon led to the pope’s death. Philip’s strong-arm tac- tics had produced a clear victory for the national monarchy over the papacy—no later pope has dared renew the extrava- gant claims of Boniface VIII.
To ensure his position and avoid any future papal threat, Philip IV brought enough pressure on the college of cardi- nals to achieve the election of a French- man, Clement V (1305–1314), as pope. Using the excuse of turbulence in the city of Rome, the new pope took up residence in Avignon (ah-veen-YOHN), on the east bank of the Rhone River. Although Avi- gnon was located in the Holy Roman Empire and was not a French possession,
(1285–1314) of France. Looking for a source of new revenues, Philip expressed the right to tax the French clergy. Boniface VIII claimed that the clergy of any state could not pay taxes to their secular ruler without the pope’s consent. Underlying this issue, however, was a basic conflict between the claims of the papacy to universal authority over both church and state, which necessitated complete control over
it lay just across the river from the possessions of King Philip IV and was French in culture.
The Papacy at Avignon (1305–1378)
the clergy, and the claims of the king that all subjects, including the clergy, were under the jurisdiction of the crown and subject to the king’s authority on matters of taxation and justice. In short, the fundamental issue was the universal sovereignty of the papacy versus the royal sover- eignty of the monarch.
The residency of the popes in Avignon for most of the fourteenth century led to a decline in papal prestige and growing antipapal sentiment. The city of Rome was the traditional capital of the universal church. The pope was the bishop of Rome, and his position was based on being the successor to the apostle Peter, the first bishop of Rome. It was unseemly that the head of the Catholic Church should reside outside of Rome. In the 1330s, the popes began to construct a stately palace in Avignon, a clear indication that they intended to stay for some
time.
Other factors also contributed to
the decline in papal prestige during the Avignonese res- idency. It was widely believed that the popes at Avi- gnon were captives of the French monarchy. Although questionable, since Avignon did not belong to the
The Decline of the Church 263
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Boniface VIII asserted his position
in a series of papal bulls or letters,
the most important of which was
Unam Sanctam (OO-nam SAHNK-
tahm), issued in 1302. It was the strongest statement ever made by a pope on the supremacy of the spiritual authority over the temporal authority (see the box on p. 264). When it became apparent that the pope had
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