Q: What was the significance of the conflict between Philip IV and Boniface VIII?
A: After Philip IV of France, or Philip the Fair, had been at war with England for a while, he eventually came to the point of being in desperate need of money. In a cruel move against the Jews, he sent them away and claimed their possessions. He also started taxing the clergy without the pope’s permission, which was not to be done. Pope Boniface VIII did not like this at all. When he threatened to excommunicate anyone that didn’t stand against this tax, Philip simply threatened to cut off the supply of money from Frankish churches to Rome, where the pope resided. Defeated, the pope had consent to the tax.
But when Philip imprisoned a bishop without a proper church trial, the pope decided to do something more. He wrote a private letter to Philip in the attempt to convince him to abide by the customs of the church. However, this letter was not private for long, as some of Philip’s men changed the contents of the letter and spread it across all of France. The pope tried to defend himself, but at this point, everyone thought the pope was mad. To make matters worse, Pope Boniface VIII had not been very popular prior to this either.
The pope then attempted to excommunicate Philip, but it was too late. People were already saying that Boniface wasn’t even a legitimate pope. Most likely due to the trauma of this conflict, Pope Boniface VIII died a month later. For 70 years after that, the papacy was dominated by France, which had become more centralized than ever.
Q: What makes Defensor Pacis by Marsilius of Padua a significant part of the story of Western civilization?
A: Marsilius of Padua was a political thinker who helped introduce many modern political ideas into the political system of the 14th century. He proposed that governments should be independent of the church, and furthermore, unless a law was clearly contradictory to christian teachings, people should obey the law of the state rather than the law of the church. He also denied the authority of the pope, saying that Peter had no more authority than the other apostles. This ran quite contrary to the general consensus of the time, and yet his ideas were well taken by the monarchs. They began to be implemented more and more, until the church lost all power over the state.
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