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192 shortly after his abdication. Boniface did not improve his position by quarreling with the powerful Roman family of the Colonna. The Colonna were probably to blame for beginning the fight, but Boniface reacted so violently that his opponents gained a good deal of sympathy. The two Colonna cardinals were deprived of their offices; a Crusade was preached against the family; their castles were destroyed and their lands devastated. But the Colonna in exile were more dangerous than the Colonna in Rome; they spread propaganda against the pope throughout Europe and encouraged secular leaders to oppose his authority.

Meanwhile, the powerful monarchies of England and France had drifted into war with each other. These countries were ruled by men who were very different from Henry III or St. Louis. Edward I and Philip IV were ambitious and determined to consolidate their power; they put the interests of their own kingdoms far ahead of those of the pope or of Christendom. Both kings had participated in unsuccessful Crusades which left them with poor opinions of papal policy. Both kings believed that no subject could be exempt from their authority and that they were justified in ignoring the privileges of the Church in order to defend their realms. Therefore, both Edward and Philip began to levy war taxes on their clergy in exactly the same way in which thirteenth-century popes had levied Crusade taxes.

The clergy of France and England made no serious protest over this action, since Crusade taxes had frequently been relinquished to secular rulers in order to aid papal policies. They were accustomed to giving money to their kings, and the Franco-English war seemed little more secular than the Crusades against Aragon or Sicily. Boniface, however, was indignant. Clerical taxation without papal consent deprived him of one of the main levers of political control and increased the independence of action of the Western kings. He therefore issued the bull Clericis laicos, forbidding any taxation of the clergy by lay rulers without his consent.