Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) is the last great representative of the Papal ideal in its earlier and more austere mediæval form. His Bull _Clericis laicos_ (1296) which declared all clerical and monastic property in the world to be under his protection and sternly bade secular rulers respect it, was one of the last Olympic fulminations; and it was defeated by England and France. Then, in 1300, he declared the Jubilee; and some historians see in that prostration of Christendom at the feet of the Papacy the last notable expression of its world-power. Men said at the time--I am not pressing it as fact--that Boniface was so exalted by the spectacle that he put on the imperial crown and sandals. No one questions that the Papacy decayed from that year. Under the banner of Papal absolutism Boniface made war on the great Ghibelline family of the Colonnas, and on Philip the Fair and his lawyers, and he ignominiously fell. The blameless and gentle Dominican, Benedict XI., who succeeded him, could not sustain for more than a few months the struggle he had inherited, and the Gascon Clement V. then inaugurated what has been too forcibly called "the Babylonian Captivity." After a secret compact with Philip, after a complete sacrifice of his ideals, and after the distribution of much French gold among the cardinals, he obtained the tiara (1305). In 1309 he settled at Avignon, basely surrendered the Templars (after an appalling travesty of justice) to the cupidity of the King, and settled down, in the company of his sister and niece and dear friend the Countess of Talleyrand-Périgord, to a life of sensuous luxury and the accumulation of wealth. He died on March 12, 1314, leaving 1,078,800 florins (about £500,000) nearly the whole of which went to his family and friends, and the cardinals gathered anxiously to choose his successor.