The Mistery of Belicena Villca Italian bankers operating in France accept funds earmarked for the Pope . In this way the Pope was deprived of receiving ecclesiastical revenues coming from the Church of France , including his own fiefdoms .
Boniface VIII , of course , did not expect such a blow from the French King . Philip IV had exposed the new situation to the people through proclamations , libels and assemblies called for this purpose ; and he had skillfully exposed it , so that the Church of Rome appeared indifferent to the need of the French Nation , as only selfishly interested in its income : while the Nation had to mobilize all its resources to face a foreign war , it was intended to passively accept , " under penalty of excommunication ", that the clergy derived important income towards Rome . These arguments justified before the people and the estates the royal edict , and predisposed everyone against the papal bull : Philip IV was unanimously requested to disobey the Clericis laicos , whose content , according to secular lawyers , was manifestly perverse since it forced the King to break the laws of his Kingdom . For Boniface VIII , whose love for gold went hand in hand with his fanaticism for the Golen cause , the deprivation of those rents meant little less than physical mutilation , especially when they were news that the English King Edward I was imitating the measures of Philip regarding the exaction of ecclesiastical tithes , and now he was preparing to disobey also the Clericis laicos and seize all of the Church income . Boniface VIII ' s pain will be better understood if we observe the amounts of the rents in question : Italy contributed 500,000 gold guilders in papal tithes ; England 600,000 ; and France , which had been retaining a part destined for the Crusade against Aragon , 200,000 . It was a lode which could not be given up for anything in the world .
Why did Boniface VIII need such amounts ? Partly for financing the war with which he planned to break the Ghibelline siege that was developing in Italy , where the Sicilian issue was still pending ; and in part to enrich himself and his family , since Benedetto Gaetani was gifted to perfection with the features of the boundless ambitious , of the unscrupulous climber , of the corrupt tyrant ; to cite these examples : when he became Pope he immediately annulled the laws and decrees of Nicholas IV and Celestine V that benefited the Colonna , transferring the titles in favor of his own relatives ; King Charles II obtained for his nephew the title of Count of Caserta and several fiefdoms ; for his sons , those of Count of Palazzo and Count of Fondà ; for himself , he took over the old palace of Emperor Octavian , converted then in the military Fortress of Rome , which he restored and rebuilt magnificently , using Church money for it ; same procedure he followed with other castles and fortresses in Campania and Maremma , all of which became part of his personal patrimony ; he owned palaces , of great beauty , in Rome , Rieti and Orvieto , his usual residences , although the most beautiful and luxurious was undoubtedly the one in his hometown of Anagni , where he spent most of the year ; he lived , then , in an environment of luxury and splendor that in no way condescended with his headship of a Church that exalts the salvation of the Soul by the practice of humility and poverty ; he lacked the scruples to award charges and favors in exchange for money , that is , he was simoniac ; he placed the money , his own or that of the Church , indistinctly , in the hands of the Lombard bankers or the Templars to be loaned at usurious interest ; he lacked all mercy when achieving his goals , a quality that he first demonstrated by making assassinate Celestine V , and later confirmed with the bloody persecutions of Ghibellines that he unleashed in Italy ; and to complete this picture of his sinister personality , perhaps one last example will suffice : like all Golen , Boniface VIII was fond of ritual sodomy .
Of course , just as the Golen had not had a King of the stature of Philip IV to oppose him , they did not have a Saint Bernard to sit on the pontifical throne : Benedetto Gaetani was the best they had and they entrusted the execution of the Strategy to him . And the best strategy seemed to be , facing the toughness and bravery of Philip IV , to take a step back and prepare to advance two . In other words , an attempt would be made to calm the King by tempering the sense of the bull Clericis laicos , which he would try with another bull ,
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