Medieval Sourcebook:
Boniface VIII, Clericis Laicos, 1296
THE BULL CLERICIS LAICOS, 1296
Bishop Boniface, servant of the servants of God , in perpetual memory of this matter.
Antiquity teaches us that laymen are in a high degree hostile to the clergy, a fact which
is also made clear by the experiences of the present times; in as much as, not content
within their own bounds, they strive after what is forbidden and loose the reins in
pursuit of what is unlawful. Nor have they the prudence to consider that all jurisdiction
is denied to them over the clergy - over both the persons and goods of ecclesiastics. On the
prelates of the churches and on ecclesiastical persons, monastic and secular, they impose
heavy burdens, tax them and declare levies upon them. They exact and extort from them the
half, the tenth or twentieth or some other portion or quota of their revenues or of their
goods; and they attempt in many ways to subject them to slavery and reduce them to their
goods; and they attempt in many ways to subject them to slavery and reduce them to their
sway. And with grief do we mention it, some prelates of the churches and ecclesiastical
persons, fearing where they ought not to fear, seeking a transitory peace, dreading more
to offend the temporal than the eternal majesty, without obtaining the authority or
permission the Apostolic chair, do acquiesce, not so much rashly as improvidently, in the
abuses of such persons. We, therefore, wishing to put a stop to such iniquitous acts, by
the counsel of our brothers, of the apostolic authority, have decreed: that whatever
prelates, or ecclesiastical persons, monastic or secular, of whatever grade, condition or
standing, shall pay, or promise, or agree to pay as levies or talliages to laymen the
tenth, twentieth or hundredth part of their own and their churches' revenues or goods - or
any other quantity, portion or quota of those same revenues or goods, of their estimated
or of their real value-under the name of an aid, loan, subvention, subsidy or gift, or
under any other name, manner or clever pretense, without the authority of that same chair.
Likewise emperors, kings, or princes, dukes, counts or barons, podestas, captains or
officials or rectors - by whatever name they are called, whether of cities, castles, or
any places whatever, wherever situated; and any other persons, of whatever pre-eminence,
condition or standing who shall impose, exact or receive such payments, or shall any where
arrest, seize or presume to take possession of the belongings of churches or
ecclesiastical persons which are deposited in the sacred buildings, oi shall order them to
be arrested, seized or taken possession of, or shall receive them when taken possession
of, seized or arrested-also all who shall knowingly give aid, counsel or favour in the
aforesaid things, whether publicly or secretly:-shall incur, by the act itself the
sentence of excommunication. Corporations, moreover, which shall be guilty in these
matters, we place under the ecclesiastical interdict.
The prelates and above. mentioned ecclesiastical persons we strictly command, by virtue
of their obedience and under penalty of deposition, that they by no means acquiesce in
such demands, with. out express permission of the aforesaid chair; and that they pay
nothing under pretext of any obligation, promise and confession made hitherto, or to be
made hereafter before such constitution, notice or decree shall come to their notice; nor
shall the aforesaid secular persons in any way receive anything. And if they shall-pay, or
if the aforesaid persons shall receive, they shall be, by the act itself, under sentence
of excommunication. From the aforesaid sentences of excommunication and interdict.
moreover, no one shall be able to be absolved, except in the throes of death, without the
authority and special permission of the apostolic chair; since it is our intention by no
means to pass over with dissimulation so horrid an abuse of the secular powers.
Notwithstanding any privileges whatever - under whatever tenor, form, or manner or
conception of wordsthat have been granted to emperors, kings, and other persons mentioned
above; as to which privileges we will that, against what we have here laid down, they in
no wise avail any person or persons. Let no man at all, then, infringe this page of our
constitution, prohibition or decree, or, with rash daring, act counter to it; but if any
one shall presume to act shall know that he is about to incur the indignation of Almighty
God and of His blessed apostles Peter and Paul.
Given at Rome at St. Peter's on the sixth day before the Calends of March (Feb 25), in
the second year of our pontificate.
from Rymer's "Foedera", ed. 1816, Vol. i. Pt. ii. p. 836., translated in
Ernest F. Henderson, , Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages , (London:
George Bell, 1910), pp. 432-434
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© Paul Halsall Jan 1996 [updated 11/23/1996, 9/22/1999]
halsall@fordham.edu
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