prevailed, and
though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice, the assembled
members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice
the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent
usurpation of Rome. Excommunication followed, but Philip had ordered
all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or
messenger should enter France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the
Florentine chronicler, "was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt
every great deed, magnanimous and puissant," replied by announcing the
publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing
his subjects from their allegiance. Philip at an assembly in the
garden of the palace in the Cite, and in presence of the chief
ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case
before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future
Council of the Church.

The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On the
7th, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of
Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's minister, bearing the royal
banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian
nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni,
crying--"Death to Pope Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded: at
the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a
few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope
believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled
and valiant as he was, he said, 'Since like Jesus Christ I must be
taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.'
He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to
place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in
his hands." He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume,
Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand,
uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable
old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons
dropped as though their hands were palsied and none durst offend him.
They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace.
For three days the grand old pope--he was eighty-six years of
age--remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and
rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated
Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were