The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with

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History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Our Power is Real, the Clash of Church and State.

At the turn of the 14th century, Giles of Rome found himself on the wrong side of history.

He was a steadfast supporter of Boniface the 8th, the Pope who fought a losing political battle

with the French King Philip the fourth known as Philip the fair.

It's safe to say that it wasn't Boniface who gave him that nickname.

Reacting to the taxes levied on church property by Philip and also the English crown, Boniface issued what

I can't resist calling an angry papal bull, or even a whole herd of bulls, a series of documents

commanding secular kings to bend to the authority of the papacy.

In 1301, he wrote that as Pope he was placed above kings and kingdoms, with the responsibility and right to uproot and destroy,

to disperse and scatter, to build, and to plant.

Invoking a biblical metaphor, familiar to us from an earlier episode, Boniface argued that the church is given two swords of spiritual and temporal power.

If kings wield temporal power, it is on behalf of the Church and at the command and by the permission of the priest, as Boniface put it.

But Philip was not cowed.

As one of his representatives put it, when speaking to the Pope,

your power is verbal, ours however is real. The King showed this power by having Boniface arrested leading to the Pope's death in 1303.

It was commented that Boniface took the papacy like a fox, ruled like a lion, but died

like a dog.

It may surprise you to hear that medieval kings were standing up to the pope like this

and coming out as victors into the bargain in the deeply religious medieval age.

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