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when not to punishments of more concrete order. The call of a Crusade to safeguard the
Catholic Religion convoked the most fervent adherences, put in movement thousands of
faithfuls; and it was only about a papal mandate, of an order obeyed for the respect to the Holy
Investiture of his transmitter. Would not be, then, the right moment to apply such prestige
over that insurgent kinglet, who dared to intervene in the centennial plans of the Golem
Church? But Boniface VIII had not warned, when he evaluated the force of such prestige, the
recent loss of Holy Land, neither the frustrated Crusade against Aragon, nor the aragonese
presence in Sicily, nor the extreme weakness that the war against Swabia had produced in the
German Kingdom, nor the almost inexistence of the Empire, except for the title that was still
conferred to the German Kingdoms, etc. None of these things he warned and he decided to
compete with Philip IV through the bull Clericis laicos of February 24 of 1296.
On it was prohibited, under excommunication penalty, to all the secular Princes to
demand or receive extraordinary subsides of the clergy; clerics for their part, had prohibited to
pay them, unless under authorization in contradiction of the Holy See, under the same
excommunication penalty. Until such point to the absurd that a Bishop ran the risk to be
excommunicated, not only for falling in heresy, but also for paying a tax. You won’t miss, Dr.
Siegnagel, the Judaic connotations that are behind such greedy and avaricious mentality.
The reaction of Philip IV was consequent. He gathered in France an assembly of Bishops
to debate the bull Clericis laicos, in which he accused who obeyed to not contribute in the
defense of the Kingdom and being, therefore, liable under the charges of treason: the Roman
Law was opposed, already, against the Canon Law. He sent some loyal Bishops and ministers to
Rome to treat the issue with the Pope, while in secrecy, animated the Colonna to strengthen
the Ghibelline party. But, apart from these measures, he made something much more effective:
in august 17, he promulgated an edict in which he prohibited the exportation of gold and silver
of the Kingdom of France; other royal edict prohibited to the Italian bankers who operated in
France to accept founds destined to the Pope.
In this manner the Pope remained deprived to receive the ecclesiastical rents from the
Church of France, included his own feuds.
Boniface VIII, of course, not expected such strike from the French King. Philip IV had
exposed the new situation to the people through sides, libels and assemblies convoked to the
effect; and he had skillfully exposed it, in such way that the Church of Rome appeared as
indifferent before the necessity of the French Nation, as interested only egoistically on its
rents: while the nation had to mobilize all its resources to face an exterior war, was pretended
to make the accept passively, «under excommunication penalty», that the clergy directed
important rents to Rome. These arguments justified before the people and the estates the royal
edict, and predisposed to everyone against the papal bull: unanimously was requested to Philip
IV to disobey the Clericis laicos, which content, according to the secular legists, was manifestly
perverse due to it obeyed the King to miss the laws of his Kingdom. To Boniface VIII, whose
love for the gold was hand in hand with his fanaticism for the Golem cause, the deprivation for
such rents meant little less than a physical mutilation, especially when he had news that the
English King Edward I was imitating the measures of Philip concerning to the exaction of
ecclesiastics tithes, and now was preparing to disobey also the Clericis laicos and to
commandeer the totality of the rents of the Church. The pain of Boniface VIII will be better
understood if we observe the amounts of the in question: Italy contributed with 500.000

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