The Medieval Church at its Height 493 At Philip's command he reluctantly undertook a sort of trial of the deceased Boniface VIII, who was accused by the king's lawyers of all sorts of abominable crimes. Then, to please the king, Clement brought the Templars to trial ; ^ the order was abolished, and its possessions in France, for which the king had longed, were confiscated. Obviously it proved very advanta- geous to the king to have a Pope within his realm. Clement V died in 13 14. His successors took up their residence in the town of The popes Avignon, just outside the French frontier of those days. There residence at they built a sumptuous palace in which successive popes lived Avignon in great splendor for sixty years. The prolonged exile of the popes from Rome, lasting from The Babylo- 1305 to 1377, is commonly called the Babylonian Captivity^ of ity of the the Church, on account of the woes attributed to it. The popes Church of this period were for the most part good and earnest men ; but they were all Frenchmen, and the proximity of their court to France led to the natural suspicion that they were controlled by the PYench kings. This, together with their luxurious court, brought them into discredit with the other nations.^ At Avignon the popes were naturally deprived of some of the The papal revenue which they had enjoyed from their Italian possessions when they lived at Rome. This deficiency had to be made up by increased taxation, especially as the expenses of the splendid papal court were very heavy. The papacy was, consequently, rendered unpopular by the methods employed to raise money. The papal exactions met with the greatest opposition in statute of England because the popes were thought to favor France, with ^J^g^^^'^^' which country the English were at war. A law was passed by Parliament in 1352, ordering that all who procured a church oflhce from the Pope should be outlawed, since they were ene- mies of the king and his realm. This and similar laws failed, 1 See above, p. 469. 2 The name recalled, of course, the long exile of the Jews from their land, 8 See Readings^ chap, xxi.
