favor of
the national Church, but to the advantage of the foreign head of the
universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better
estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by
such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind;
they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined
themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions
and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to
this question, they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen,
nobles, and commoners, but the greater part of the French ecclesiastics
themselves, who were no strangers to the feeling of national patriotism,
and to whom the pope's absolute power in the body politic was scarcely
more agreeable than the king's. In order to make a strong impression
upon the public mind, there was published at Paris, as the actual text of
the pope's bull, a very short summary of his long bull, "Hearken, most
dear Son," in the following terms: "Boniface, bishop, servant of the
servants of God, to Philip, King of the French. Fear thou God, and keep
His commandments. We would have thee to know that thou art subject unto
us in things spiritual and temporal. The presentation to benefices and
prebends appertaineth to thee in no wise. If thou have the keeping of
certain vacancies, thou art bound to reserve the revenues of them for the
successors to them. If thou have made any presentations, we declare them
void, and revoke them. We consider as heretics all those who believe
otherwise." Together with this document there was put in circulation the
king's answer to the pope, in the following terms: "Philip, by the grace
of God, King of the French, to Boniface, who giveth himself out for
sovereign pontiff, little or no greeting. Let thy Extreme Fatuity know
that we be subject to none in things temporal, that the presentation to
churches and prebends that be vacant belongeth to us of kingly right,
that the revenues therefrom be ours, that presentations already made or
to be made be valid both now and hereafter, that we will firmly support
the possessors of them to thy face and in thy teeth, and that we do hold
as senseless and insolent those who think otherwise." The pope
disavowed, as a falsification, the summary of his long bull; and there is
nothing to prove that the unseemly and insulting letter of Philip the
Handsome was sent to Ro