tagonists
replied that even He condescended to make use of money, the malignant
fanatics maintained their doctrines, amid the applause of a jeering
populace, by answering that it was not St. Peter, but Judas, who was
intrusted with the purse, and that the pope stood in need of the bitter
rebuke which Jesus had of old administered to his prototype Peter,
saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savourest not of the things
that be of God, but of the things that be of men" (Mark viii. 33). Under
that authority they affirmed that they might stigmatize the great
culprit without guilt. So the king ventured to put forth his hand and
touch what the Church had, and she cursed him to his face. At first a
literary war ensued: the pope published his bull, the king his reply.
[Sidenote: and ably sustained by the lawyers.] Already the policy which
Philip was following, and the ability he was displaying, manifested that
he had attached to himself that new power of which the King of England
had taken advantage--a power soon to become the mortal enemy of the
ecclesiastic--the lawyers. [Sidenote: Device of the jubilee.] In the
meantime, money must be had in Rome; when, by the singularly felicitous
device of the proclamation of a year of jubilee, A.D. 1300, large sums
were again brought into Italy.

[Sidenote: The four enemies of Boniface.] Boniface had thus four
antagonists on his hands--the King of France, the Colonnas, the lawyers,
and the mendicants. By the latter, both high and low, he was cordially
hated. Thus the higher English Franciscans were enraged against him
because he refused to let them hold lands. They attempted to bribe him
with 40,000 ducats; but he seized the money at the banker's, under the
pretence that it had no owners, as the mendicants were vowed to poverty,
and then denied the privilege. As to the lower Franciscans, heresy was
fast spreading among them. They were not only infected with the
doctrines of "The Everlasting Gospel," but had even descended into the
abyss of irreligion one step more by placing St. Francis in the stead of
our Saviour. They were incessantly repeating in the ears of the laity
that the pope was Anti-Christ, "The Man of Sin." [Sidenote: Collision
between the French king and the pope.] The quarrel between Philip and
Boniface was every moment increasing in bitterness. The former seized
and imprisoned a papal nuncio, who had been selected because he was
known to be personally offensive; the