THE VERNACULAR LITERATURE. 35 Wickliffite. Chaucer, in the picture of social life which he has drawn in the "Canterbury Tales," shows himself in full accord with Wickliffe in the hostility to the mendicant friars. Chaucer reserves his admiration for the simple and faithful parish priest, "rich in holy thought and work;" the higher clergy he handles in a genuine anti-sacerdotal spirit. In the "Pardoner," laden with his relics, and with his wallet "Brimful of pardons, come from Rome all hot," he depicts a character who even then excited scorn and reprobation. It is curious to observe in many of the early writers who have been referred to, how reverence for religion and for the Church is blended with bitter censure of the arrogance and wealth of ecclesiastics; how the spiritual office of the Pope is distinguished from his temporal power. In the one character he is revered, in the other he is denounced. The fiction of Constantine's donation of his western dominions to Pope Silvester, which was current in the Middle Ages, accounted for all the evils of the Church, in the judgment of the enemies of the temporal power. There was the source of the pride and wealth of the popes. Dante adverts to it in the lines: "Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was mother, And in another place, he refers to Constantine, who "Became a Greek by ceding to the Pastor," and says of him in Paradise, "Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced From his good action is not harmful to him, 1 Inf. xix. 115. "Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, 2 Parad. xx. 58. Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote "Ora conosce come 'l mal, dedutto Dal suo bene operar, non gli è nocivo, We find a like lament respecting the fatal gift to Silvester, in the Waldensian poem, "The Noble Lesson.” Walter von der Vogelweide makes the angels, when Constantine endowed Silvester with worldly power, cry out with grief; and justly, he adds, since the popes were to use that power to ruin the emperors and to stir up the princes against them. These bitter lamentations continue to be heard from advocates of reform, until the tale of the alleged donation was discovered to be destitute of truth.2 The anti-hierarchical spirit was powerfully reinforced by the legists. From the middle of the thirteenth century the University of Bologna rose in importance as the great seat of the revived study of Roman jurisprudence. As Paris was the seminary of theology, Bologna was the nursery of law. Law was cultivated, however, at other universities. That a class of laymen should arise who were devoted to the study and exposition of the ancient law was in itself a significant event. The legists were the natural defenders of the state, the powerful auxiliaries of the kings. Their influence was in opposition to feudalism and on the side of monarchy, and placed bulwarks round the civil authority in its contest against the encroachments of the Church. The hierarchy were confronted by a body of learned men, the guardians of a venerable code, who claimed for the kings the rights of Cæsar, and could bring forward in opposition to the canons of the Church canons of an earlier date.5 The effectual reaction against the Papacy dates from the reign of Boniface VIII., who cherished to the full 1 Kurtz, Gsch. d. deutsch. Lit., i. 50. The sonnet is given by Kurtz, p. 56. "Der Pfaffen wahl " 2 The first public and formal exposure of the fiction was made by Laurentius Valla in the fifteenth century. 8 Savigny, Geschichte des röm. Recht., iii. 152 seq. 4 Laurent, Féodalité et l'Église, p. 630. 5 Milman, vi. 241. CONFLICT OF PHILIP VI. AND BONIFACE VIII. 37 extent the theories of Hildebrand and Innocent III., but was destitute of their sagacity and practical wisdom.1 The resistance that he provoked sprang from the spirit which we have termed nationalism. The contest in which the Hohenstaufen had perished, was taken up by the King of France, the country which throughout the Middle Ages had been the most faithful protector of the Papacy, and whose royal house had been established by the popes on an Italian throne as a bulwark against the Empire. It was ordained that their protectors should become their conquerors.2 The conflict of Boniface with Philip the Fair is of remarkable interest for many reasons. One source of Boniface's anger was the levying by Philip of extraordinary taxes on the clergy and his prohibiting of the exportation of gold and silver from his kingdom. Another point, in the highest degree interesting, is the manner in which the rights of the laity in relation to the clergy come up for discussion. One defining characteristic of the Protestant Reformation was the release of the laity from subserviency to clerical control. There is something ominous in the opening words which give its title to one of the famous bulls of this pontiff: Clericis laicos. It begins with reminding Philip that long tradition exhibits laymen as hostile and mischievous to clergymen. Not less significant, in the light of subsequent history, is one of the responses of Philip to the Pope's indignant complaints, in which the king affirms that "Holy Mother Church, the Spouse of Christ, is composed not only of clergymen, but also of laymen ; that clergymen are guilty of an abuse when they try to appropriate exclusively to themselves the ecclesiastical 1 Drumann, Gsch. Bonifacius des Achten (1852.) An apologetic biographer of Boniface is Tosti, Storia di Bonifacio VIII. e de' suoi tempi (1846). In the same vein is the article of Wiseman (in review of Sismondi), Essays on Various Subjects, iii. 161 seq. Schwab, in the (Roman Catholic) Quartalschrift (1846, No. 1), considers that Tosti and Wiseman are unduly biased in favor of Boniface. His reign was from 1294 to 1303. 2 Gregorovius, Geschichte d. Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, v. 560. liberty with which the grace of Christ has made us free; that Christ himself commanded to render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. More remarkable still is the fact that Philip twice summoned to his support the estates of his realm, and that the nation stood firmly by its excommunicated sovereign. The pontifical assertions in regard to the two swords, the supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power, and the subjection of every creature to the Pope, who judges all and is judged by none, were met by a determined resistance on the part of the French nation. When Boniface summoned the French clergy to Rome to sit in judgment on the king, the act aroused a tempest of indignation. The Papal Bull, snatched from the hand of the Legate, was publicly burned in Notre Dame, on the 11th of February, 1302. The clergy of France addressed to the incensed pontiff a denial of his proposition that in secular matters the Pope stands above the King. Finally all France united in an appeal to a general council. It was by two laymen, William of Nogaret, keeper of the king's seal, and Sciarra Colonna, that the personal attack was made on Boniface at Anagni, which resulted shortly afterwards in his death (1303). We have now reached the point when the prestige of the Papacy began to wane as rapidly as, in the preceding centuries, it had grown. This fall was due to the expansion of intelligence, to the general change in society to which reference has been made. But it was accelerated by influences which were subject, to a considerable extent, to the control of the popes themselves. It is the period of the Babylonian captivity, or the long residence of the popes at Avignon, and of the great schism. During a great part of this period the Papacy was enslaved to France, and administered in the interest of the French court. This situation impelled the popes to unjust and aggressive measures toward Germany, Eng land, and other Catholic countries, measures which could not fail to provoke earnest resentment. France was willing, as long as the Papacy remained her tool, to indulge the popes in extravagant assertions of authority, which could only have the effect to aggravate the opposition on the part of other nations. The revenues of the court at Avignon were supplied by means of extortions and usurpations which had been hitherto without example. The multiplied reservations of ecclesiastical offices, even of bishoprics and parishes, which were bestowed by the popes upon unworthy persons, or given in commendam to persons already possessed of lucrative places; the claim of the first fruits or annates - a tribute from new holders of benefices—and the levying of burdensome taxes upon all ranks of the clergy, especially those of the lower grades, were among the methods resorted to for replenishing the papal treasury. The effect of these various forms of ecclesiastical oppression upon public opinion was the greater, when it was known that the wealth thus gained went to support at Avignon an extremely luxurious and profligate court, the boundless immorality of which has been vividly depicted by Petrarch, an eye-witness. The attempt of John XXII. to maintain the absolute supremacy of the Pope over the Empire and to deprive Louis of Bavaria of his crown, that he might place it on the head of the King of France, had an effect in Germany analogous to that produced in France by the conflict of Boniface and Philip. The imperial rights found the boldest defenders. At length, in 1338, the electoral princes solemnly declared that the Roman king receives his appointment and authority solely from the electoral college. In England, from the Constitutions of Clarendon under Henry II., in 1164, there had been manifest a disposition to limit the jurisdiction and set bounds to the encroach |