The captivity of Boniface VIII., however, lasted only three days; for the people of Anagni, having recovered themselves, and seeing the scanty numbers of the foreigners, rose and delivered the pope.  The old man was conducted to the public square, crying like a child.  “Good folks,” said he to the crowd around him, “ye have seen that mine enemies have robbed me of all my goods and those of the Church.  Behold me here as poor as Job.  Nought have I either to eat or drink.  If there be any good woman who would give me an alms of wine and bread, I would bestow upon her God’s blessing and mine.”  All the people began to shout, “Long live the Holy Father!” He was reconducted into his palace:  “and women thronged together thither, bringing him bread, wine, and water.  Finding no proper vessels, they poured them into a chest. . . .  Any one who liked went in, and talked with the pope, as with any other beggar.”  So soon as the agitation was somewhat abated, Boniface set out for Rome, with a great crowd following him; but he was broken down in spirit and body.  Scarcely had he arrived when he fell into a burning fever, which traditions, probably invented and spread by his enemies, have represented as a fit of mad rage.  He died on the 11th of October, 1303, without having recovered his reason.  It is reported that his predecessor, Celestine V., had said of him, “Thou risest like a fox; thou wilt rule like a lion, and die like a dog.”  The last expression was unjustified.  Boniface VIII. was a fanatic, ambitious, proud, violent, and crafty, but with sincerity at the bottom of his prejudiced ideas, and stubborn and blind in his fits of temper:  his death was that of an old lion at bay.

We were bound to get a good idea and understanding of this violent struggle between the two sovereigns of France and Rome, not only because of its dramatic interest, but because it marks an important period in the history of the papacy and its relations with foreign governments.  From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs.  Under Innocent III. it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune.  At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop.  Boniface had not the wit to recognize the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers.  He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise.  He was beaten in his enterprise; and the papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him.  Starting from the fourteenth century we find no second Gregory VII., or Innocent III.  Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandizement