me. But, at bottom, the situation of affairs
remained the same; indeed, it did not stop where it was. On the 11th of
February, 1302, the bull, Hearken, most dear Son, was solemnly burned at
Paris in presence of the king and a numerous multitude. Philip convoked,
for the 8th of April following, an assembly of the barons, bishops, and
chief ecclesiastics, and of deputies from the communes to the number of
two or three for each city, all being summoned "to deliberate on certain
affairs which in the highest degree concern the king, the kingdom, the
churches, and all and sundry." This assembly, which really met on the
10th of April, at Paris, in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in
French history as the first "states-general." The three estates wrote
separately to Rome; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the
deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protesting
against the pope's pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic orders
writing in a rough and threatening tone, the clergy making an appeal "to
the wisdom and paternal clemency of the Holy Father, with tearful
accents, and sobs mingled with their tears." The king evidently had on
his side the general feeling of the nation: and the news from Rome was
not of a kind to pacify him. In spite of the king's formal prohibition,
forty-five French bishops had repaired to the council summoned by the
pope for All Saints' day, 1302, and, after this meeting, a papal decree
of November 18 had declared, "There be two swords, the temporal and the
spiritual; both are in the power of the Church, but one is held by the
Church herself, the other by kings only with the assent and by sufferance
of the sovereign pontiff. Every human being is subject to the Roman
pontiff; and to believe this is necessary to salvation." Philip made a
seizure of the temporalities of such bishops as had been present at that
council, and renewed his prohibition forbidding them to leave the
kingdom. Boniface ordered those who had not been to Rome to attend there
within three months; and the cardinal of St. Marcellinus, legate of the
Holy See, called a fresh council in France itself, without the king's
knowledge. On both sides, there were at one time words of conciliation
and attempts to keep up appearances of respect, at another new explosions
of complaints and threats; but, amidst all these changes of language, the
struggle was day by day becoming more violent, and prepara