Principles of western civilisation

276 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

were an incident in English history, scarcely to be conceived of apart from the weakness of the king or the special circumstances of his reign. The deeper student of history sees how local this view is. The character of John inflamed the conditions of the dispute and produced the full measure of his humiliation. But it is the conflict from which the incident itself proceeds which constitutes at the time the largest and deepest issue in the unfolding of our civilisation. And the power in that civilisation which had already broken the Emperor Henry IV. and humbled the Emperor Frederick I., was not likely to be lightly resisted by any sovereign of England who would have confronted it upon a like issue.

On the threshold of the fourteenth century we have reached the Bull “ Clericis Laicos” of Boniface VIII., to which a greater sovereign of England than John found it convenient to render a qualified obedience. In this document there has been reached almost the last stage of the definition of the problem outlined at the outset. It is declared by the Bull to be forbidden and illegal for laymen of whatever degree or estate, whether claiming as ‘“ emperors, kings, or princes, dukes, counts or barons, podestas, captains, or officials, or rectors—by whatever name they are called,” to submit representatives of the spiritual authority to secular jurisdiction. In the uncompromising words of the Bull: “ All jurisdiction is denied them over the clergy—over both the persons and the goods of ecclesiastics.” * The custom of appealing to Rome begun in England

1 Henderson’s Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, iy. Vi. 2 [bid.