Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/65

 the famous bull, Unam sanctam (June, 1302), which brought to a point the infatuated and fatal claim of universal temporal dominion. The Church, he declared, is one holy and undivided body, having but a single head. "The spiritual and the temporal sword are alike under the control of the Church; the latter must be employed by those who wear it on behalf of the Church, and the former by the Church itself—the former wielded by a priestly hand, the latter by the hand of monarchs and soldiers, though only at the summons and under the sanction of the priest. Moreover, the one sword ought to be subject to the other, and the temporal to the spiritual authority. . . . Furthermore" [or perhaps "from henceforth," porro] "we declare, state, lay down and pronounce, that it is an indispensable article of faith for every human being that he is a subject of the Roman pontiff."

No words could be more precise or definite than these. Their chief effect was to seal the doom of Boniface, and to explode the claim of Rome to any kind of temporal sovereignty outside the States of the Church. In the course of a few months Philip was excommunicated, Boniface was arraigned before the French Estates, the legitimacy of his election was solemnly impugned, his heresies were denounced, appeal was made from him to a new and legitimate Pope, and this appeal was endorsed by the States-General, by a majority of the secular clergy, by the religious Orders, and by the University of Paris. Philip was determined to lose nothing for want of audacity. He sent his avocat-royal, with the two