Editing Avignon Papacy (section)

===Curia===
After the arrest of the [[bishop of Pamiers]] by [[Philip IV of France]] in 1301, [[Pope Boniface VIII]] issued the bull ''Salvator Mundi'', retracting all privileges granted to the French king by previous popes, and a few weeks later ''Ausculta fili'' with charges against the king, summoning him before a council to Rome. In a bold assertion of papal sovereignty, Boniface declared that "God has placed us over the Kings and Kingdoms."

In response, Philip wrote "Your venerable conceitedness may know, that we are nobody's vassal in temporal matters," and called for a meeting of the [[Estates General (France)|Estates General]], a council of the lords of France, who had supported his position. The king of France issued charges of [[sodomy]], [[simony]], sorcery, and heresy against the pope and summoned him before the council. The pope's response was the strongest affirmation to date of papal sovereignty. In ''[[Unam sanctam]]'' (18 November 1302), he decreed that "it is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff."

He was preparing a bull that would excommunicate the king of France and put the interdict over France when in September 1303, [[Guillaume de Nogaret|William Nogaret]], the strongest critic of the papacy in the French inner circle, led a delegation to Rome, with intentionally loose orders by the king to bring the pope, if necessary by force, before a council to rule on the charges brought against him. Nogaret coordinated with the cardinals of the Colonna family, long-standing rivals against whom the pope had even preached a crusade earlier in his papacy. In 1303, French and Italian troops attacked the pope in [[Anagni]], his home town, and arrested him. He was freed three days later by the population of Anagni. Boniface VIII, then 68 years of age, was deeply shattered by this attack on his own person and died a few weeks later.