Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/64

 the aids of the clergy and the contributions of the faithful. Placed thus between two injunctions, the clergy ended by paying to the nearest creditor; the Kings obtained their subsidies, and the Pope was left to starve.

The quarrel continued with varying fortunes. An award delivered by Boniface in an arbitration between Philip and his enemies, being regarded in Paris as manifestly unjust and prejudiced, was torn up by the Count d'Artois in the King's presence. The "little bull" of 1300, in which Boniface wrote—"We desire you to know that you are subject to us in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs," was ordered to be publicly burned. The Pope stormed and threatened. Philip threw himself on the support of the States-General, which was apparently the first assembly of its kind in France, summoned within forty years of the first English Parliament; and the three orders of nobles, clergy, and commons addressed three distinct memorials to the Pope, even the clergy refusing to admit the temporal supremacy of Rome. Nevertheless some of the bishops obeyed the summons of Boniface to a council which was to consider and determine upon the offences of their King; whereupon Philip promptly confiscated their property, and took occasion at the same time to throw upon the absentees the growing scandal and odium of the Inquisition.

By openly claiming the temporal supremacy, Boniface had gone too far to retreat. Backed by his most uncompromising supporters, and impelled by the complaints of the French bishops, he drew up