tions were
being made by both parties for something other than threats.

On the 12th of March and the 13th of June, 1303, at two assemblies of
barons, prelates, and legists held at the Louvre, in presence of the
king, which several historians have considered to have been states-
general, one of the crown's most intimate advisers, William of Plasian,
proposed, against Boniface, a form of accusation which imputed to him,
beyond his ambition and his claims to absolutism, crimes as improbable as
they were hateful. It was demanded that the Church should be governed by
a lawful pope, and the king, as defender of the faith, was pressed to
appeal to the convocation of a general council. On the 24th of June, in
the palace-garden, a great crowd of people assembled; and, after a sermon
preached in French, the form of accusation against Boniface, and the
appeal to the future council, were solemnly made public. The pope
meanwhile did not remain idle; he protested against the imputations of
which he was the subject. "Forty years ago," he said, "we were admitted
a doctor of laws, and learned that both powers, the temporal and the
spiritual, be ordained of God. Who can believe that such fatuity can
have entered into our mind? But who can also deny that the king is
subject unto us on the score of sin? . . . We be disposed to grant
unto him every grace. . . . So long as I was cardinal, I was French
in heart; since then, we have testified how we do love the king. . . .
Without us, he would not have even one foot on the throne. We do know
all the secrets of the kingdom. We do know how the Germans, the
Burgundians, and the folks who speak the Oc tongue do love the king. If
he mend not, we shall know how to chastise him, and treat him as a little
boy (_sicut unum garcionem_), though greatly against our will." On the
13th of April, Boniface declared Philip excommunicate if he persisted in
preventing the prelates from attending at Rome. Philip, being warned,
effected the arrest at Troyes of the priest who was bringing the pope's
letter to his legate in France. The legate took to flight. Boniface,
on his side, being warned that the king was appealing against him to an
approaching council, declared by a bull, on the 15th of August, that it
appertained to him alone to summon a council. After this bull, there was
full expectation that another would be launched, which would pronounce
the deposition of the king. And a new bu