At the same time, furious disputes broke out in the church, between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but here the subject of the dispute was not ideal good, not science and free research, but purely dominion, power and mammon. There was war to the knife between the chiefs of the two parties. The king accused the pope of heresy, simony, covetousness, perjury, and impurity. And the pope released the subjects from their oath to their hereditary king, and gave away his empire. The Jewish hostilities had neither the same wide range, nor yet the same bottomless wickedness. Ben Adret and several who had signed the decree of excommunication, Moses Iskafat Meles and Solomon Gracian, were so unpleasantly affected by Bedaresi's letter, and feared its effect so much, that they hastened to offer the explanation that they had in no wise animadverted upon Maimuni's writings, whom they revered in the highest degree. They even exhorted Abba-Mari's party to make peace with their opponents, to vindicate their dignity before their common enemy. But the controversy was now at a stage when it could no longer be settled peaceably. The mutual bitterness was too violent, and had become too personal. Each party claimed to be in the right from its own standpoint; neither could consent to a compromise nor make concessions. Each adhered to its own principles; the one sought to enforce the freedom of science, the other protested that Jewish youth, before maturity, must be guarded from the deleterious poison of knowledge. Whilst the adherents of Abba-Mari were seeking legal decisions to prove the ban of their opponents unauthorized, a sad event happened, which, like a whirlwind, tore friends asunder, and dashed enemies against each other. CHAPTER II. THE FIRST EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Philip le Bel--The Jews of France plundered and banished-- Estori Parchi; Aaron Cohen; Laments of Bedaresi--Eleazar of Chinon, the Martyr--Return of the Jews to France; their Precarious Position--Progress of the Controversy regarding the Study of Philosophy--Abba-Mari and Asheri--Death of Ben Adret--Rabbinical Revival in Spain--Isaac Israeli II-- Samuel and the Queen Maria Molina--Don Juan Emanuel and Judah Ibn-Wakar--The Jews of Rome--Robert of Naples and the Jews--Peril of the Jews in Rome--Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, his Satires--Immanuel and Dante--The Poet Judah Siciliano-- Leone Romano and King Robert--Shemarya Ikriti--Position of Karaism--Aaron the Elder and the Prayer-Book of the Karaites. 1306-1328 C.E.