Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, there were found face to face two systems, one laic and the other ecclesiastical, of absolute power.  But the teachers of the doctrine of the right divine do not expunge from human affairs the passions, errors, and vices of the individuals who put their systems in practice; and absolute power, which is the greatest of all demoralizers, entails before long upon communities, whether civil or religious, the disorders, abuses, faults, and evils which it is the special province of governments to prevent or keep under.  The French kingship and the papacy, the representatives of which had but lately been great and glorious princes, such as Philip Augustus and St. Louis, Gregory VII. and Innocent III., were, at the end of the thirteenth century, vested in the persons of men of far less moral worth and less political wisdom, Philip the Handsome and Boniface VIII.  We have already had glimpses of Philip the Handsome’s greedy, ruggedly obstinate, haughty and tyrannical character; and Boniface VIII. had the same defects, with more hastiness and less ability.  The two great poets of Italy in that century, Dante and Petrarch, who were both very much opposed to Philip the Handsome, paint Boniface VIII. in similar colors.  “He was,” says Petrarch (Epistoloe Ramiliares, bk. ii. letter 3), “an inexorable sovereign, whom it was very hard to break by force, and impossible to bend by humility and caresses; “and Dante (Inferno, canto xix. v. 45 57) makes Pope Nicholas III. say, “Already art thou here and proudly upstanding, O Boniface?  Hast thou so soon been sated with that wealth for which thou didst not fear to deceive that fair dame (the Church) whom afterwards thou didst so disastrously govern?  “Two men so deeply imbued with evil and selfish passions could not possibly meet without clashing; and it was not long before facts combined to produce between them an outburst of hatred and strife which revealed the latent vices and fatal results of the two systems of absolute power of which they were the representatives.

Philip the Handsome had been nine years king when Boniface VIII. became pope.  On his accession to the throne he had testified an intention of curtailing the privileges and power of the Church.  He had removed the clergy from judicial functions, in the domains of the lords as well as in the domain of the king, and he had everywhere been putting into the hands of laymen the administration of civil justice.  He had considerably increased the percentage to be paid on real property acquired by the Church (called possessions in mortmain), by way of compensation for the mutation-dues which their fixity caused the State to lose.  At the time of the crusades the property of the clergy had been subjected to a special tax of a tenth of the revenues, and this tax had been several times renewed for reasons other than the crusades.  The Church recognized her duty of contributing towards