270 A Short History of The World COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDTAN NOBILITV : FLEMISH WORK OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY In 1294 Eoniface VIII l)ecamc Pope. He was an Italian, hostile to the French, and full of a sense of the great traditions and mission of Ilonic. For a time he carried things with a high liand. In 1300 he held a jubilee, and a vast midtitude of pilgrims assembled in Rome. " So great was the influx of money into the papal treasury, that two assistants were kept Ijusy with the rakes colleeting the offerings that were deposited at the tomb of St Peter." ^ But this festival was a delusive triumph. Boniface came into conflict with the Frencli king in 1302, and in 1303, as he was about to pronounce sentence of excomnmnication against that monarch, he was surprised and arrested in his own ancestral palace at Anagni, by Guillaume de Nogaret. This agent from the French King forced an entrance into the palace, made his way into the bedroom of the frightened Pope — he was lying in ))cd with a cross in his hands — and heaped threats and insults upon him. The Pope was liberated a day or so later by the townspeople, and rctiuTicd to Rome ; but there he was seized upon and again made prisoner b' tlic Orsini family, and in a few weeks' time the shocked and disillusioned old man died a prisoner in their hands. 1 J. H. Pxobinson.
