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Boniface remained every inch a man. They could take his life now that he had been betrayed, but not his dignity. He was seized and placed under strict arrest. He refused food and drink for fear of being poisoned. Meanwhile citizens and mercenaries plundered the treasury, the cathedral, and the houses of his favourites. On the loth of September, a Gaetani approached from the Campagna in order to help free the Pope with the aid of other burghers of the city. Nogaret was wounded but he and Sciarra escaped. Boniface stood on the steps of the Palace, addressed the people, and forgave his enemies. A week later he proceeded to Rome under an armed guard. The Orsini with four hundred horsemen rode out to meet him, thus as- suring the safety of his person. The journey lasted three days. The people received him reverently; but once he had entered the Vatican, which residence he had substituted for the Lateran, he was soon made to understand that he was the prisoner of the Orsini. He lived still another month and had time to repent especially his ardent love for money. Then he died ex tremore cordu imagining that every- one who approached sought to make him a prisoner. The date was October n, 1303. He had ordered a magnificent funeral for himself, but this was ruined by a fearful storm which visited Rome.
One of his loyal cardinals then reigned for a little less than a year as Benedict XL He went to Perugia, city of the Guelphs, and there hurled anathemas at those who had carried out the attack upon the Pope. But the danger of a schism was so great that he was compelled to treat with consideration Philippe and the Roman enemies of the Gaetani.
There followed a long, difficult Conclave, the outcome of which was a victory for the French party in the College. A Gascon, the Arch- bishop of Bordeaux, was elected but did not go to Italy. He permitted himself to be crowned as Clement V at Lyons in die presence of his King. After frequently changing his See, he took up residence at Avignon in 1309. The city was a fief of the King of Naples. There- with began the Babylonian exile of the Papacy. This sad chapter of its history lasted seventy years. After the Papacy had failed in its effort to reconstruct the Church in Europe as a hierocratic universal state, it now carried out in close alliance with France an attack upon
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