From the beginning of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, political, social and spiritual dangers inundated the Papacy, which was still more imperilled when the Barque of Peter was given many a bad pilot, and compelled to witness many a scene of fighting for possession of the helm. All too seldom were the quarrellers dominated by the cry which Peter had directed to his sleeping Lord, "Help us Master, lest we perish."
The ancient order of things, which we who stand at a distance superficially term the Middle Ages, was caught in an eddy of forces. The European "nations" shook the Empire to its foundations. France demanded hegemony, brought the exiled Papacy under its control, and spread a new conception of the state among the peoples. Philosophy followed a course that led to pure secularism, and another course that led to the absolute self-sufficiency of the individual soul. Both estranged it from the Church. Apocalyptic feelings preyed on men's emotions, carrying them now to epidemics of despair concerning the world and its rulers, and now to the burning hope that an Emperor- Messiah, or a Pope like unto an angel, was to come. Monastic move- ments of uncompromising renouncement of the world joined with prophets of the absolute state in a struggle against the temporal power and rule of the Roman See. The government of the Church itself crumbled under the effort to serve both God and men.
Celestine, the hermit, had retreated from daemonic forces. Soon sorrow caused his death, thus releasing him from bondage in Castle Fumone in the Campagna. But in life and death he clung like an evil shadow to the heels of the Pope who supplanted him.
Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, formerly a canon of Lyons cathedral, called himself Pope Boniface VIII. He received the tiara at the age of sixty; and as a sign of his claim to the fullness of all power, he gave it the new form of the dual crown. Occasionally, the chroniclers say, he exchanged his Papal vestments for the mantle of the Caesars. He was a man of giant stature and unbounded energy, and retained his full forces until death. So strong a character was naturally feated
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