We have been at some pains to present to our readers, as fully as our space would admit, the quarrel between Boniface and Philip, as it is one of the great epochs in the papal history. From this moment it sank rapidly and never rose again to the same commanding height. But the degradation of the papal chair was not yet complete according to the hard and unrelenting spirit of Philip. His next object was to have the pope under his own eye, and as his abject slave. This he accomplished in Clement V., who was raised to the chair in the year 1305. His election led to the most debasing period in the history of the Romish church. Clement, who was a native of France, and the king's obedient servant, immediately transferred the papal residence from Rome to Avignon. The pope was now a French prelate, Rome was no longer the metropolis of Christendom. This period of banishment lasted about seventy years, and is spoken of in history as the Babylonian captivity of the popes in Avignon. The great line of mediaeval pontiffs, the Gregorys, the Alexanders, and the Innocents, expired with Boniface VIII. After seventy years of exile they emerged from their state of slavery to the kings of France, but only to resume a modified supremacy.
Philip survived his adversary eleven years; he died A.D. 1314. History speaks of him as one of the most unprincipled, evil-hearted kings that ever reigned. But nothing so blackens his memory as his cruel assault on the order of the Templars. His avarice was excited by their wealth, and he resolved on the dissolution of the order, the destruction of the leaders, and the appropriation of their wealth. He knew that thousands of the best manors in France belonged to the institution, and that the spoils of such a company would make him the richest king in Christendom. In order to lay his hand on such treasures, he first sought to discredit the knights because of their defeat at Courtrai—the battle of the Spurs; then he exacted the consent of his creature, Pope Clement V., and summoned a council of the realm to sanction the suppression of the order. Having now these authorities to support him—the sacred and the civil—his covetous and cruel ends were gained. Numbers of these gallant Christian knights—for such they were, though they had greatly degenerated from their original vows—were seized and thrown into prison, on a charge of having dishonored the cross, and trampled on the sign of salvation. The severest tortures were applied to crush out confessions of guilt, numbers were condemned and burned alive, sixty-eight were burned alive at Paris in 1310. The grand master, James de Molay, was also burned at Paris in 1314. Letters were sent to all other kings and princes, under the sanction of the pope and Philip, to pursue the same course; but the European sovereigns in general were satisfied with the spoils, and adopted gentler methods in dissolving the order.
The reader may here note for further examination what we may call a new division in the history of Europe. The papacy, feudalism, and knighthood, which had risen and flourished together since about the time of Charlemagne, fell together during the reign of Philip the Fair.
But a heavy cloud was gathering over the house of the cruellest and worst of kings. The darkest shades of immorality covered with shame and disgrace his whole family. The deep dishonor of the royal house of France through the infidelity of his queen and his three daughters-in-law sank into his heart, and hastened his end. The people now said, it is the vengeance of heaven for the outrage on Boniface; others said, it is for the iniquitous persecution and extinction of the Templars. But he was now before a tribunal without the shelter of a pope, or the sanction of a national assembly, and must answer to God for every deed done in the body, and for every word uttered by his lips; for even the thoughts and counsels of the heart must be brought into judgment. And neither the people nor the ermine can shelter a sinner there; nothing but the blood of Christ, sprinkled as it were on the door-posts of the heart before we leave this world, can be of any avail in the waters of death. Those who neglect to apply the blood of Christ by faith now, must be engulfed forever in the cold, deep, dark waters of eternal judgment. But the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us who believe from all sin.
We now leave this fresh division of our history, and take up the line of witnesses, and the forerunners of the Reformation.
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