Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/524

 CHAPTER XXI THE POPES AND THE COUNCILS I. QUESTION WHETHER THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT MIGHT TAX THE VAST POSSESSIONS OF THE CHURCH A struggle between the papacy and the temporal rulers over the proportion of the vast income of the Church which each should enjoy could hardly be avoided. When Philip the Fair of France and Edward I of England applied to the clergy for a part of the revenue necessary to meet the expenses of the state, Boniface VIII, who believed in claiming the most exalted prerogatives for the papacy, 1 met them with the following emphatic and unconditional denial of the right of the civil power to take any part of the ecclesiastical property or revenue. But two years later he consented to make certain excep- tions, admitting the propriety of the dons gratuits, or free gifts, on the part of the clergy to the king, and even of exceptional exactions which, in cases of urgent necessity, might be collected by the king without waiting for the papal sanction. Bishop Boniface, servant of the servants of God, in per- bull c/er/c/5 petual record of this matter. Antiquity shows that the laity Laicos issued have always been exceeding hostile to the clergy ; and this the byBoni- experience of the present time clearly demonstrates, since, (1296) deny- not con tent with their limitations, the laity strive for forbid- ing the den things and give free reign to the pursuit of illicit gain, right of the state to tax 1 See above, pp. 346 sqq., for bull Unam Sanctum, which he issued the clergy. in 1302.