Martin IV. elected by the influence of Charles of Anjou, laid an interdict on the city of Viterbo, excommunicated the Forlivians, confiscated whatever they possessed in Rome, excommunicated Peter III. king of Arragon, and excommunicated Michael Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople. A league of the Venetians, of Charles of Anjou, and the pope, had little success. Another crusade was undertaken against Peter of Arragon, who beat the crusaders: the Sicilian vespers, not without some appearance of justice, were attributed to this prince; a horrible massacre, in which the French were the victims, in the year 1282, and which Martin IV. and Charles of Anjou might have prevented by a more prudent conduct. When Celestine V. yielding to the advice of the cardinal Benedict Cajetan, had abdicated the papacy, this cardinal succeeded him, imprisoned him, and under the name of Boniface VIII., disgraced the chair of St. Peter, from the year 1294 to 1303. He excommunicated the family of the Colonnas, confiscated their estates, and preached a crusade against them. They were Ghibelines; Boniface, who had belonged to this faction, detested them for it the more. The pope answered in plain terms, that the Roman pontiff, established by providence, over kings and kingdoms, held the first rank on earth, dissipated every evil by his sublime regards, and from the height of his throne, tranquilly judged the affairs of men. You know, he writes, to Edward I. that Scotland belongs to the Holy See of full right. He treated Albert of Austria, elected emperor in 1298, as a usurper, summoned him to appear at Rome, and dispensed his subjects from their allegiance; but he menaced especially Philip the Fair, king of France.²⁵² ²⁵³ Bossuet Def. Cler. Gall. 1. iii. c. 33, 24, 35. By the bull ‘Clericis Laïcos,’ Boniface had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, every member of the secular and regular clergy from paying, without the pope’s permission, any tax to their sovereigns, even under the title of a gratuitous gift: Philip answered this bull by prohibiting the transportation of any sum of money out of the kingdom, without permission from under his hand. This measure at first seemed to intimidate the pontiff who, modifying his bull, authorised, in cases of pressing necessity, the contributions of the Clergy; but a legate soon arrived to brave Philip, and summon him to alter his behaviour, if he did not desire to expose his kingdom to a general interdict. This seditious priest was arrested; his detention set the pope in a rage.: “God has appointed me over empires, to pluck up, “to destroy, to undo, to scatter, to build up and to “plant.” Thus does Boniface express himself in one of his bulls against Philip IV. That which is known by the name of ‘Unatn sanctam,’ contains these expressions: