Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/208

 CATASTROPHE

was made a sacrifice to the ruler; but the ruler was in the end sacrificed to his throne!

The objective o this Pope was to bring to fulfilment the policy of Gregory and Innocent III. The whole earth was to be subject to the Roman Church; all princes were to hold their land in fief to the Roman See. A Christendom unified and living in peace under the dominion of the Papacy was to conquer Islam. But literally every- thing failed: the peoples had grown different, and the human mind had changed. It was in vain that Boniface backed the Valois King in Naples against the power of Aragon in Sicily. The Island King- dom remained Spanish. He tried to end the war between France and England for possession of the rich province of Flanders, since this war constantly consumed the taxes collected from Church property. Then in 1296 he issued an edict which was to bring home anew to European governments the validity of canon law. Unless the Pope gave his assent, priests were forbidden to pay taxes to laymen or make gifts to them under penalty of the ban; and under the same penalty princes and officials were forbidden either to collect or to receive such moneys. The bull began "CUricis laicos" and averred chat all history proved that the layman is the mortal enemy of the priest. The truth of this doctrine of the irreconcilable opposition between Church and State, as well as the truth of the curse that lies on a State-Church which seeks to escape that necessary fruitful struggle, the Pope was to ex- perience personally. England and especially France resisted him.

France, for decades the greatest power in Europe, had not grown strong without the help of the Papacy and its moneys. Now it began to look upon itself as the natural daughter of the Imperium Romanum. The German Charlemagne lived on in imagination as a romantic hero, the protector of a kingdom animated by an imperialistic urge which had been obvious since the Crusades of St. Louis had established a definite French Mediterranean policy, and since Charles of Anjou had triumphed over the Hohenstaufens in the South. When feudal resistance at home grew weaker, and a middle class participating in the life of the state grew stronger, the universalistic ambitions of Philippe le Beau also came into conflict with the Papacy, which claimed to be heir to the Empire. Two ambitions for world dominion thus clashed. There was no lack of legal justification, in the philosophk

THE