in 1298, by the Kings of France and England in a war which pressed heavily on both, the decree of arbitration which he pronounced, favorable rather to Philip than to Edward I., had been accepted by both of them; and the pope, on laying his injunctions upon them with some severity of language, had exhibited authority in a manner salutary for both kingdoms.  Everything seemed at that time to smile on Boniface, and to invite him to believe himself the real sovereign of Christendom.

An opportunity for a splendid confirmation of his universal supremacy in the Christian world came to tempt him.  A quarrel had arisen between Philip and the Archbishop of Narbonne on the subject of certain dues claimed by both in that great diocese.  Boniface was loud in his advocacy of the archbishop against the officers of the king:  “If, my son, thou tolerate such enterprises against the Churches of thy kingdom,” he wrote to Philip (on the 18th of July, 1300), “thou mayest thereafter have reasonable fear lest God, the author of judgments and the King of kings, exact vengeance for it; and assuredly His vicar will not, in the long run, keep silence.  Though he wait a while patiently, in order not to close the door to compassion, there will be full need at last that he rouse himself for the punishment of the wicked and the glory of the good.”  Nor did Boniface content himself with writing:  he sent to Paris, to support his words, Bernard de Saisset, whom he, on his own authority, had just appointed Bishop of Pamiers.  The choice of bishops was not yet, at that time, subject to any fixed and generally recognized rule:  most often it was the chapter of the diocese that elected its bishop, with a subsequent application for the approbation of the king and the pope; sometimes the king and also the pope made such appointments directly and independently.  Boniface VIII. had quite recently created a new bishopric at Pamiers in order to immediately appoint to it Bernard de Saisset, hitherto simple Abbot of St. Antonine in that city.  Bernard, who was devoted to his patron, was, further, a passionate Languedocian and a foe to the dominion of the French kings of the North over Southern France; and he gave himself out as a personal descendant of the last Counts of Toulouse.  On arriving in Paris as the pope’s legate, he made use there of violent and inconsiderate language; he even affirmed, it was said, that St. Louis had predicted the disappearance of his line in the third generation, and that King Philip was only an illegitimate descendant of Charlemagne.  He was accused of having incessantly labored to excite revolts against the king in the south, at one time for the advantage of the local lords, at another in favor of foreign enemies of the kingdom.  Being summoned before the king and his council at Senlis (October 14, 1301), he denied, but with an air of arrogance and aggression, the accusations against him.  Philip had, at that time, as his chief councillors, lay-lawyers,