Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/574

 490 Outlines of European History 2 . How far might the king venture to tax the lands and other property of the Church ? Was this vast amount of wealth to go on increasing and yet make no contribution to the support of the government ? The churchmen usually maintained that they needed all their money to carry on the church services, keep up the churches and monasteries, take care of the schools, and aid the poor, for the State left them to bear all these necessary burdens. The law of the Church permitted the churchmen to make voluntary gifts to the king when there was urgent necessity. 3. Then there was trouble over the cases to be tried in the church courts and the claim of churchmen to be tried only by clergymen. Worst of all was the habit of appealing cases to Rome, for the Pope would often decide the matter in exactly the opposite way from which the king's court had decided it. 4. Lastly there was the question of how far the Pope as head of the Christian Church had a right to interfere with the govern- ment of a particular state, when he did not approve of the way in which a king was acting. The powers of the Pope were very great, every one admitted, but even the most devout Catholics differed somewhat as to just how great they were. We have seen some illustrations of these troubles in the chapter on the Popes and Emperors. A famous conflict between the king of France, Philip the Fair, and Pope Boniface VIII, about the year 1300, had important results. Philip and Edward I of England, who were reigning at the same time, had got into the habit of taxing the churchmen as they did their other subjects. It was natural after a monarch had squeezed all that he could out of the Jews and the towns, and had exacted every possible feudal due, that he should turn to the rich estates of the clergy, in spite of their claim that their property was dedicated to God and owed the king nothing. The extensive enterprises of Edward I (see above, pp. 422 ff.) led him in 1296 to demand one fifth of the personal property of the clergy. Philip the Fair exacted one hundredth and then one fiftieth of the possessions of clergy and laity alike.