The untimely exaggerations and absolute pretensions of Boniface VIII., which, though Papal, may almost be termed _Ghibelline_ (in the same sense that we have applied that term to the acts of preceding emperors), must have proved very welcome to Philip the Fair. He found in the conduct of the Pope, a pretext for enticing him into France, in order, on the first vacancy in the Holy See, to promote the election of a Pope favourable to his views, and fix him at Avignon. It was a deep-laid plan of policy on his part, to fix the residence of the Popes for ever within his territories, in order more easily to extort their consent to all his selfish projects, as in the case of the Templars; a policy by which the Popes, during seventy years, were kept in a state of absolute dependance on the court of France. And when at last one of the Popes succeeded in rescuing the chair of Peter from this Babylonish captivity, and placing it again at Rome, Popes were elected one against the other at Rome and Avignon; and a schism broke out in the church which lasted for forty years, till it was finally quelled by the general council of Constance. A deeper wound could not have been inflicted on Christianity than this division in the church, which led minds astray, and introduced an indescribable confusion in all the relations of public and private life. As, without the all-protecting and all-connecting authority of the first Christian Emperors, Europe in general, and Germany in particular, would much sooner have been split and dismembered, and been deprived of all power of permanent resistance against foreign aggression, and barbarian inroads; so, without the Papal power, which was founded on, and adapted for, unity, and which held together the fabric of the church, Christianity would very soon have been lost and extinguished in a multitude of particular sects, petty congregations, and opposite parties, even where totally dissimilar systems of religion did not spring up. The maintenance of orthodoxy in the Greek church, where the Patriarch does not possess the same spiritual power, nor the same extensive influence on society, as the Pope during the middle ages, cannot be fairly adduced as an objection to the truth of this observation. For it would be absurd to expect from the active, stirring, restless, and animated spirit of the Western nations, moving on as they did through a series of rapid, incessant, and progressive changes, that innate monotony of thought even in faith, which was natural to the dead, torpid Byzantine mind. When the Western church had been weakened and convulsed by the conflict with the secular power, the prejudicial and fatal effects of this contest became apparent in religion itself and the internal region of faith. At first, indeed, there arose a mighty moral power of resistance against the growing corruption and the impending evil--a great spiritual remedy, which sprang out of religion, and was perfectly conformable to its spirit.