§ 110.1. =Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI., A.D. 1294-1304.=--=Boniface VIII.=, A.D. 1294-1303 (§ 96, 22), was not inferior to his great predecessor in political talents and strength of will, but was destitute of all spiritual qualities and without any appreciation of the spiritual functions of the papal chair, while passionately maintaining the most extravagant claims of the hierarchy. The opposition to the pope was headed by two cardinals of the powerful Colonna family, who maintained that the abdication of Cœlestine V. was invalid. In A.D. 1297 Boniface stripped them of all their dignities, and then they appealed to an œcumenical council as a court of higher jurisdiction. The pope now threatened them and their supporters with the ban, fitted out a crusade against them, and destroyed their castles. At last after a sore struggle Palæstrina, the old residence of their family, capitulated. Also the Colonnas themselves submitted. Nevertheless in A.D. 1299 he had the famous old city and all its churches and palaces levelled to the ground, and refused to restore to the outlawed family its confiscated estates. Then again the Colonnas took up arms, but were defeated and obliged to fly the country, while the pope forbade under threat of the ban any city or realm to give refuge or shelter to the fugitives. But neither his anathema nor his army was able to keep the rebellious Sicilians under papal dominion. Even in his first contest with the French king, =Philip IV. the Fair=, A.D. 1285-1314, he had the worst of it. The pope had vainly sought to mediate between Philip and Edward I. of England, when both were using church property in carrying on war with one another, and in A.D. 1295 he issued the bull _Clericis laicos_, releasing subjects from their allegiance and anathematizing all laymen who should appropriate ecclesiastical revenues and all priests who should put them to uses not sanctioned by the pope. Philip then forbade all payment of church dues, and the pope finding his revenues from France withheld, made important concessions in A.D. 1297 and canonized Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. His hierarchical assumptions in Germany gave promise of greater success. After the first Hapsburger’s death in A.D. 1291, his son Albert was set aside, and Adolf, Count of Nassau, elected king; but he again was overthrown and Albert I. crowned in A.D. 1298. Boniface summoned Albert to his tribunal as a traitor and murderer of the king, and released the German princes from their oaths of allegiance to him. Meanwhile, during A.D. 1301, Boniface and Philip were quarrelling over vacant benefices in France. The king haughtily repudiated the pretensions of the papal legate and imprisoned him as a traitor. Boniface demanded his immediate liberation, summoned the French bishops to a council at Rome, and in the bull _Ausculta fili_ showed the king how foolish, sinful, and