A temporary pacification of Western Christendom was the work of Gregory X.; his aim was a great crusade. At last an emperor was elected, Rudolph of Hapsburg. But Gregory died. Popes followed each other and died in swift succession. Presently, on the abdication of the hermit Celestine, Boniface VIII. was chosen pope. His bull, "Clericis laicos," forbidding taxation of the clergy by the temporal authority, brought him into direct hostility with Philip the Fair of France, and though the quarrel was temporarily adjusted, the strife soon broke out again. The bulls, "Unam Sanctam" and "Ausculta fili," were answered by a formal arraignment of Boniface in the States-General of France, followed by the seizure of the pope's own person by Philip's Italian partisans. _IV.--Captivity, Seclusion, and Revival_ The successor of Boniface was Benedict IX. He acted with dignity and restraint, but he lived only two years. After long delays, the cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, a subject of the King of England. But before he became Clement V. he had made his pact with the King of France. He was crowned, not in Italy, but at Lyons, and took up his residence at Avignon, a papal fief in Provence, on the French borders. For seventy years the popes at Avignon were practically the servants of the King of France. At the very outset, Clement was compelled to lend his countenance to the suppression of the Knights Templars by the temporal power. Philip forced the pope and the Consistory to listen to an appalling and incredible arraignment of the dead Boniface; then he was rewarded for abandoning the persecution of his enemy's memory by abject adulation: the pope had been spared from publicly condemning his predecessor. John XXII. was not, in the same sense, a tool of the last monarchs of the old House of Capet, of which, during his rule, a younger branch succeeded in the person of Philip of Valois. John was at constant feud with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and also, within the ecclesiastical pale, with the Franciscan Order. Louis of Bavaria died during the pontificate of Clement VI., and Charles of Bohemia, already emperor in the eyes of the pope, was accepted by Germany. He virtually abdicated the imperial claim to rule in Italy; but by his "Golden Bull" he terminated the old source of quarrel, the question of the authority by which emperors were elected. The "Babylonish captivity" ended when Gregory XI. left Avignon to die in Italy; it was to be replaced by the Great Schism. For thirty-eight years rival popes, French and Italian, claimed the supremacy of the Church. The schism was ended by the Council of Constance; Latin Christianity may be said to have reached its culminating point under Nicholas V., during whose pontificate the Turks captured Constantinople. * * * * * LEOPOLD VON RANKE History of the Popes