vation. There have been many attempts to explain away this sentence or to attribute a milder meaning to it, but if one remembers that the bull "ausculta filii" of the same year had contained expressions not dissimilar, and that Boniface had been forced then to claim a milder interpretation, it is not likely but that he knew the effect that his words would produce.
It was in answer to "unam sanctam" that Philip, supported by all classes of the population, by the university and bv the monasteries, appealed from the pope to a future general council.
No. VIII., the law "licet juris" of 1338, was issued by the electors during the conflict between Louis the Bavarian and Pope Benedict XII. This was the last of the great mediaeval struggles between the papacy and the empire. Louis had been on the point of a reconciliation with his old enemy when the war between France and England broke out. Louis held to Edward of England, the pope to Philip of France. Benedict declared the emperor not really repentant, and demanded a renunciation of his royal and imperial rights. It was clear to the electors that, if the pope could claim the right of deposing an emperor, their own position as the persons who had chosen that emperor would be equivocal to say the least. Hence this energetic protest.
It seemed for a moment—strange spectacle—as if all elements in Germany were to go hand in hand in supporting the dignity of the empire. But the internal dissensions, which were to be the curse of the land for centuries, soon regained the upper hand. "The good odour of the emperor began to stink in the nostrils of the princes," as we are told by a contemporary, and in 1346 Charles of Bohemia was chosen as rival king.
