After an interregnum of nearly a year, the election of Bertrand de Gotte, or Clement V. was the work of Philip the Fair, who had reason to complain of him: the monarch wished to select, from among his personal enemies, a pope who would be altogether indebted to him for the tiara, and who would pledge himself to pay dearly for a benefit so little merited beforehand. Gotte made six promises to Philip, all of which were not redeemed by Clement V. For instance, this pontiff excused himself from condemning the memory of Boniface VIII.; and, when the empire became vacant by the decease of Albert I., the king of France, who canvassed for this place for a French prince, vainly counted on the services of the holy father: whilst seconding by a public letter the claims of this candidate, Clement transmitted to the electors a secret brief, in order to exclude him²⁵⁶ It is certain that there needed only this accession to assure to the house of France, already established at Naples, a universal preponderance, especially when Clement, despairing to reduce the Romans to a tranquil obedience, consented to fix at Avignon the pontifical court. Yet he served the king but too faithfully in the affair of the templars: inasmuch as sound policy required the suppression of this order, insomuch it was accordant, as it ever must be with justice and humanity, to dissuade from so many judicial assassinations. ²⁵⁷ J. Villani. 1. 8, c. 101—Pfeffel. abr. chr. Hist, of Germany, ann. 1308.—Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 7, p. 393, 395 When Clement V. cancelled a decision of Henry VII. against Robert, King of Naples; when he decreed to the same Robert the title of Vicar of the empire, he erected himself expressly into a sovereign, and placed the emperor in the number of his vassals.²⁵⁷ “Thus we do, he says, as well in virtue of the indu− “bitable supremacy which we hold over the Roman “empire, as of the full power that Jesus Christ has “given us, to provide for the sovereign’s place dur− “ing the vacancy of the imperial throne.” He maintained also that Ferrara belonged to the Holy See; and the Venetians having taken this place from the house of Este, he excommunicated them; declared the doge and all the citizens infamous, deprived of every right, incapable, they and their children, to the fourth generation, of all secular or ecclesiastical dignity²⁵⁸ But these anathemas were no longer formidable.²⁵⁹ “The Italians,” as a cardinal then observed, “no “longer dreaded excommunications; the Floren− “tines treated with contempt those of the cardinal “bishop of Ostia, the Bolognese those of Cardinal “Orsini, the Milanese those of the Cardinal “Pellagrue: the spiritual sword terrifies them not, “if the temporal one does not strike them.” ²⁵⁸ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 92, n. 8. ²⁵⁹ Baluz. Vit. Avenion. vol. 1, p. 69,—Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 91, n. 33.