²⁵³ Bossuet Def. Cler. Gall. 1. iii. c. 33, 24, 35.
By the bull ‘Clericis Laïcos,’ Boniface had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, every member of the secular and regular clergy from paying, without the pope’s permission, any tax to their sovereigns, even under the title of a gratuitous gift: Philip answered this bull by prohibiting the transportation of any sum of money out of the kingdom, without permission from under his hand. This measure at first seemed to intimidate the pontiff who, modifying his bull, authorised, in cases of pressing necessity, the contributions of the Clergy; but a legate soon arrived to brave Philip, and summon him to alter his behaviour, if he did not desire to expose his kingdom to a general interdict. This seditious priest was arrested; his detention set the pope in a rage.:
“God has appointed me over empires, to pluck up, “to destroy, to undo, to scatter, to build up and to “plant.”
Thus does Boniface express himself in one of his bulls against Philip IV. That which is known by the name of ‘Unatn sanctam,’ contains these expressions:
“The temporal sword ought to “be employed by kings and warriors for the church, “according to the order or permission of the pope: “the temporal power is subject to the spiritual, which “institutes and judges it, but which can be judged “of God alone; to resist the spiritual power, is “to resist God, unless they admit the two principles “of the Manicheans.”
An archdeacon, the bearer of these bulls, enjoined the king to acknowledge, that he held from the pope his temporal sovereignty. Finally, Bonifice excommunicated Philip: he ordered this monarch’s confessor to appear at Rome, to render an account of the conduct of his penitent; he destined the crown of France to this same emperor, Albert, before treated as a criminal, but who now acknowledged by a written document.:
“that the “Apostolic See had transferred from the Greeks to “the Germans the Roman empire, in the person of “Charlemagne; that certain secular and ecclesiasti− “cal princes, hold from the pope the right of electing “the king of the Romans, the destined successor to “the empire; and that the pope grants to kings and “to emperors the power of the sword.”