re that the
conflict of the international, ecclesiastical state, and of the secular
governments became keenest. Both kings and people wished to control
their own spiritual affairs as well as their temporalities.

[Sidenote: The ecclesia Anglicana]

England traveled farthest on the road towards a national church. For
three centuries she had been asserting the rights of her government to
direct spiritual as well as temporal matters. The Statute of Mortmain
[Sidenote: 1279] forbade the alienation of land from the jurisdiction
of the civil power by appropriating it to religious persons. The
withdrawing of land from the obligation to pay taxes and feudal dues
was thus checked. The encroachment of the civil power, both in England
and France, was bitterly felt by the popes. Boniface VIII endeavored
to stem the flood by the bull _Clericis laicos_ [Sidenote: 1296]
forbidding the taxation of clergy by any secular government, and the
bull _Unam Sanctam_ [Sidenote: 1302] asserting the universal monarchy
of the Roman pontiff in the strongest possible terms. But these
exorbitant claims were without effect. The Statute of Provisors
[Sidenote: 1351 and 1390] forbade the appointment to English benefices
by the pope, and the Statute of Praemunire [Sidenote: 1353 and 1393]
took away the right of {42} English subjects to appeal from the courts
of their own country to Rome. The success of Wyclif's movement was
largely due to his patriotism. Though the signs of strife with the
pope were fewer in the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that the
national feeling persisted.

[Sidenote: The Gallican Church]

France manifested a spirit of liberty hardly less fierce than that of
England. It was the French King Philip the Fair who humiliated
Boniface VIII so severely that he died of chagrin. During almost the
whole of the fourteenth century the residence of a pope subservient to
France at Avignon prevented any difficulties, but no sooner had the
Council of Constance restored the head of the unified church to Rome
than the old conflict again burst forth. [Sidenote: 1438] The extreme
claims of the Gallican church were asserted in the law known as the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, by which the pope was left hardly any
right of appointment, of jurisdiction, or of raising revenue in France.
The supremacy of a council over the pope was explicitly asserted, as
was the right of the civil magistrate to order ecclesiastical affairs
in hi