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the curse and disinheritance if they should ever recognize any other overlords in France save him and God alone. A national assembly in Notre-Dame then burned the counterfeit bull after it had been read, endorsed the actions taken by the King to establish the freedom of his domain, and forbade the prelates to participate in the next Roman Council. Nevertheless half of the higher clergy went to the Eternal City; and Philippe stripped these disobedient ones of their worldly possessions and sent an embassy to forbid the "suspect" Pope to inter- fere in the affairs of France.
The Council decided to issue that classical definition of the Papal system which is known as the bull Unam Sanctam, of November 18, 1302. It was drawn up on the basis of a tract concerning ecclesiastical politics written by ^Egidius Romanus (Colonna), a disciple of St. Thomas from whose teachings he differed widely in many respects. The meaning of the bull is contained in these sentences: the spiritual power has authority to establish the worldly power, and to judge it when it is not good; and it is necessary to salvation to believe that all human creatures are subjects of the Pope. There was no new stone in this all too daring structure, the inner law of which was pure logic and the outer development of which was steel-like deduction. Au- thority, in so far as it is based at all upon eternal verities and not upon the whims of rulers or the accidents of power, presupposes the unity and inviolability of an order valid beyond the limits of time. If the Church was already the form of Christianity, and was recognized by Christianity as such, Boniface was right. This Church must either have a single head or remain a two-headed monster, reposing upon two fundaments like the Manichean world of the Albigensians.
King Philippe won over to his side the French cardinal who had delivered the Papal demands, gathered his Councillors of State in the Louvre, and directed against Boniface all the weapons which his jurists and the active Colonna at his court had long since gathered and sharpened. Nogaret made the address in which the attack was de- livered and it was a diabolic masterpiece. Taking for his text II Peter 2, 1-3, he stressed like a pulpit orator the convincing reasons for "throwing this scandalous Pope into prison." Philippe listened and declared himself in agreement. He gave the appearance of acting only according to the urgent demands of his Councillors, a practice to which
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