unscrupulous prince,
whose contempt for divine law was evidenced by his shameless practice of
injustice, whose coffers were filled indifferently by the confiscation
of the rich spoils of the commanderies of the Templars, and by
recklessly debasing the national currency, did not hesitate to engage in
a contest with the most presumptuous of Popes. He appealed to the States
General, and all three orders indignantly repudiated the suggestion that
their country had ever stood to the Papacy in the relation of a fief.
The disastrous example of the English John Lackland had found no
imitator on the southern side of the channel. The Pope was declared a
heretic. Emissaries of Louis seized him in his native city of Anagni,
within the very bounds of the "Patrimony of St. Peter," and the rough
usage to which he was then subjected hastened his death. His successors
on the pontifical throne proved somewhat more tractable.

[Sidenote: The Popes at Avignon.]

During his short and unimportant pontificate, Benedict the Eleventh
restored to the chapters of cathedrals the right of electing their own
bishops. Upon his death, Philip secured the elevation to the pontifical
dignity of an ecclesiastic wholly devoted to French interests, the
facile Clement the Fifth, who, in return for the honor conferred upon
him, removed the seat of the Papacy to Avignon. Here for the seventy
years of the so-called "Babylonish Captivity," the Popes continued to
reside, too completely subject to the influence of the French monarchs
to dream of resuming their tone of defiance, but scarcely less exacting
than before of homage from other rulers. In fact, the burden of the
pecuniary exactions of the Popes rather grew than diminished with the
change from Rome to Avignon, and with the institution of rival claimants
to the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his
court, but recognized as legitimate by only a portion of Christendom.
The devices for drawing tribute from all quarters were multiplied to an
almost insupportable extent. So effectual did they prove, that no
pontiff, perhaps, ever left at his death a more enormous accumulation of
treasure than one of the Popes of Avignon, John the Twenty-second. Much
of this wealth was derived from the rich provinces of France.

[Sidenote: The Schism.]

Close upon the "Captivity" followed the "Schism," during which the
generally acknowledged Popes, who had returned to Rome, were opposed by
pretenders