French Lessons I have not read Valentin Rasputin’s story “French Lessons”; I have only seen a film based on the story about the highest level of humanity in unbearable conditions. But there are lessons in the most ordinary, in the educational everyday

Counterfeiting is one of the oldest criminal professions - as soon as money appeared, people immediately appeared who began to counterfeit it. The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes is widely known Sinopsky, who, according to legend, lived in a barrel, but few people know that in his youth he was a counterfeiter...

There is a story that has come down to us about his father, who was engaged in the fabrication of counterfeit money. According to legend, Diogenes’ father was a moneylender and money changer in Sinope, and he involved his son in the production of “light” coins. Diogenes took part in his father’s scam, was exposed with him, caught and expelled from his hometown.

The first counterfeiter in history is considered to be the tyrant ruler of the island of Samos named Polycrates, who seized power in 538. He paid off the Spartans besieging the island and surrounded Samos with lead coins coated with a thin layer of gold, and thereby lifted the blockade of the city.

In the XII-XIV centuries, representatives of all classes, but most often the clergy, were engaged in counterfeiting. History has preserved the name of Abbot Messendro, who, during the reign of the English king Edward III (1312-1377), almost openly produced and distributed counterfeit coins. He was strung on a rack and then hanged.

In the 15th century in France, Countess Jeanne de Bologne-et-Auvergne made counterfeit coins in her family castle in Toulouse for seven years. The “mint” was set up in the basement of the castle; coins were minted by two especially trusted persons. In 1422, they were finally exposed and arrested.

Counterfeiting of paper money probably began a long time ago, soon after its origin. I was attracted by the apparent simplicity of the process. In fact, paper money is not like coins, the counterfeiting of which requires quite complex equipment, appropriate alloys and chemicals, and certain qualifications. And here’s something simpler: copy the drawing on a paper rectangle - and you’re rich...

However, this apparent simplicity attracted not only ordinary scammers, but also the powers that be. They didn’t bother themselves with drawing individual pictures by hand, but took things on a grand scale...

Easy money is the worst punishment

But, observing the historical sequence, it would still be logical to start with counterfeiting coins as an older means of payment. For centuries, coins were minted only from gold and silver. The state that issued the money was responsible for the accuracy of the weight and sample. The denomination of a coin was always slightly higher than the actual value of the metal from which it was made. This difference provided the so-called coin revenue for the treasury. And some rulers sought to increase this income. They simply engaged in falsification - they reduced the weight of the coins, added a ligature (low-value impurities) to the metal.

The French monarch Philip IV, who went down in history as the “counterfeiter king,” became especially famous in this field. The court alchemist of the English king Henry VI once discovered that copper rubbed with mercury turns silver. With his discovery, he hurried to the king, and he, without thinking twice, ordered the release of a huge number of such false silver coins.

Coin of Philip IV the Fair, 1306

And the German princes of the 17th century completely lost their conscience. They issued counterfeit coins without any restrictions. And when it came time to collect taxes, the princes refused to accept counterfeits, demanding only coins from earlier issues. Apparently, it was then that the sad saying was born: “Easy money is a worse punishment for a country than hard wars.”

The minting of counterfeit money was also used as a weapon of foreign policy. The Czech king Louis II in 1517 issued coins similar to Polish half-gross, but containing a very small amount of silver. This “currency” brought down the Polish market. At the beginning of the 17th century, Poland and Sweden were at war with Russia - and both of them minted counterfeit Russian coins.

In the middle of the 18th century, during the war with Saxony, King Frederick II of Prussia released coins with a reduced silver content into circulation in the occupied territory, marking them with pre-war release dates. This is how the august counterfeiter ensured the maintenance of his army.

Russia itself did not lag behind in this ignoble craft. On December 18, 1812, Arakcheev, in a letter to the Minister of Finance Guryev, conveyed the highest order: upon the army’s departure abroad, to assign maintenance “one and a half rubles in silver, counting a Dutch chervonets as three rubles in silver.” Why were salaries converted into Dutch chervonets?

The answer is simple. For a century and a half now, Russia itself has been minting these same Dutch chervonets, with which it made foreign payments. In official papers there was an evasive name for them “famous coin”. Obviously, Dutch chervonets were very popular in those days, because England counterfeited exactly the same coins.

Ducats 1818, 1829 and 1841 coinage of the St. Petersburg Mint.

All this, as they say, is just flowers. Berries began with the widespread use of paper money, although they existed as such before.

His Majesty's Engraver

At the end of the 18th century, a revolution broke out in France. And the emigrants, faithful to the idea of ​​the monarchy, did not forge the notes of the Convention out of good fortune. They did this at specially equipped enterprises in Switzerland and England. After only one battle on the Quiberon Peninsula, revolutionary troops captured 10 million counterfeit livres!

Later, this French experience was of great service to the most famous Frenchman in history - Napoleon. From 1806 to 1809, he ordered the counterfeiting of Austrian and Prussian money, seeking the collapse of the enemy’s economy, in 1810 - English, and then it came to the Russians. Joseph Lal, an engraver of the main military administration of France, who was approached by the Special Directorate of the Emperor's Secret Cabinet, tells how it was in his memoirs.

Lal writes that at the beginning of 1810 an unfamiliar customer came to him and asked him to accurately copy the text printed in London. The work was completed on time and so well that the customer was delighted. There was no point in encrypting further. Revealing his incognito identity, the customer invited Lal to the Ministry of Police, where he was asked to make a cliche of an English bank. Lal did not disappoint and soon received a similar order for Russian fakes.

In just a month, Lal and his employees made about 700 cliches - the production of counterfeits was planned on a large scale. The printing house was equipped in Montparnasse, and was supervised by the brother of Napoleon's secretary, Jean-Jacques Fein. There was also, Lal reports, a special room where the floor was covered with a thick layer of dust. The finished banknotes were thrown into this dust, after which they were mixed with a leather whisk. This was necessary (we quote Lal) “so that they would become soft, take on an ashen tint and look as if they had already passed through many hands.”

We don’t know what the quality of the English “money” produced by Lal and Company was, but they couldn’t achieve decent quality with the Russians. It turned out to be easy to recognize counterfeits. The French printed notes on paper of better quality than the Russians; on the fakes, images of medallions, which are almost invisible on the originals, stood out quite clearly. The letters on the fakes were engraved more clearly than on the originals, and in some batches direct mistakes were made - for example, the letter “l” instead of “d” in the word “state”.

Detector scale for detecting counterfeit coins, USA, 1882.

However, one way or another, Napoleon’s scam gained momentum as the French approached the capital of Russia - printing houses were opened in Dresden, Warsaw, and finally, in Moscow itself, at the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery. When, after the war, our Senate replaced banknotes, among the 830 million in circulation, more than 70 million Napoleonic counterfeits were identified.

There are no gentlemen in war

Where there is war, there is, as a rule, economic sabotage using counterfeit money. During the American Civil War, southerners counterfeited northerners' money. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Land of the Rising Sun printed counterfeit rubles.

And on the eve of the First World War, the money of the coming enemy was made in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov reported in a letter to the director of the Police Department Dzhunkovsky that in Russia “state credit cards of 500-ruble denominations, printed on specially prepared paper with a watermark, have become widespread, in the same way that was used exclusively by the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers and was considered up to still unconditionally ensuring state credit cards against counterfeiting.”

A protocol of the interrogation of Austrian prisoner of war Josef Hetl was discovered in the archives of the Special Department of the Russian Police Department. The prisoner said that his school friend Alexander Erdeli works at the Vienna Military Geographical Institute, where they print fake Russian banknotes in denominations of 10, 25, 50 and 100 rubles. His testimony was confirmed by repeated seizures of such papers in the Volga region, the Caucasus, Irkutsk, Kursk and other cities.

The minister's plan fails

Adventures with counterfeit money continued after the war. Germany, Austria and Hungary could not and did not want to overcome the temptation. On Austrian territory, for example, Czech banknotes were printed. Although their quality was high, the agent was arrested during an attempt to sell them - the operation became known to Czech intelligence in advance.

And the famous politician Gustav Stresemann, who was German Foreign Minister from 1923 to 1929, developed a plan to counterfeit francs, with a further aim at pounds sterling.

The practical implementation of the project was entrusted to the Hungarian prince Windischgrätz. The distinguished swindler studied falsification techniques at the German intelligence factory in Cologne. One of Windischgrätz’s assistants, Colonel of the General Staff Yankovic, went to Paris, where he became familiar with the peculiarities of packaging money by the French Bank.

The banknotes were ready in 1925; they were kept in Hungarian embassies in a number of countries. Yankovic went to Holland and presented a thousand-franc note at the bank in The Hague. He was unlucky: the attentive cashier immediately recognized the counterfeit and called the police.

Yankovic was arrested. The Hungarian ambassador notified the government about what had happened, and at a given signal, the agents destroyed the evidence - doused it with gasoline and burned the entire supply of fakes. But the French Bank saw serious danger in the Yankovic case. He sent detectives to Budapest, and they managed to unearth a lot. A major international scandal was brewing. To deflect the blow from the government, Windischgrätz and Jankovic took full blame and were sentenced to prison in 1926.

A thief stole a thief's club

In these notes we deliberately did not touch upon the activities of Hitler’s counterfeiters who printed pounds sterling and dollars as part of Operation Bernhard. Books have been written about this operation, documentaries and feature films have been made. Let us mention only one curiosity associated with it.

A paid agent worked for the Third Reich at the British embassy in Turkey under the pseudonym Cicero. He transmitted information of operational importance, but the Germans were unable to use it due to the rapidly changing military situation.

After the war, Cicero found out that the pounds with which German intelligence paid him were counterfeit. And so it turned out that the Germans paid for information that was useless to them with counterfeit money.

Andrey BYSTROV

Philip also had a second nickname: counterfeiter. It remained with Philip IV to this day, although many rulers later surpassed him in this craft. The king earned his nickname because he was a “political blacksmith from Reims,” as the king’s brother Charles of Valois used to say. This “Reims blacksmith” also attracted the attention of Dante Alighieri, who, having fired many sarcastic arrows against the Capetians in the “Divine Comedy,” devoted several lines to Philip’s monetary manipulations and connected Philip’s death from the tusks of a boar with the royal counterfeit of coins. (Philip died on November 29, 1314 as a result of several blows, the first of which overtook him on November 4 while hunting. The legend that he fell from his horse and was attacked by a boar was widespread at one time.)

Already in 1292, the first sin of the French king began. He introduces universal taxation of his subjects, which also applies to the clergy. The worldly nobility is taxed in the amount of one hundredth of their property (in some parts of the country the tax rises to 1/50), cities pay a turnover tax in the amount of one denier for each livre, the church is obliged to pay tithes to the royal treasury not only in times of war and in other emergency situations, but also in normal times. Here is also the “hearth tax” - six soles from each household, as well as the “Lombard tax”, which applies to Italian merchants and money changers in France, and the “Jewish tax”.

The “Lombard tax” alone brought the treasury in 1292-1293 about 150,000 livres.

Without a doubt, this taxation was caused not only by the deplorable state of the court's finances. Philip armed himself for the war for Aquitaine and Flanders.

In 1294, Philip's troops invaded Aquitaine, and Edward I sent troops from England to defend his duchy. It was a “quiet” war, and already in 1296 the opponents agreed to end hostilities. The agreement was reinforced by the intentions of the royal families to become related. Dynastic marriages often protected peoples from bloody conflicts, but they were never a guarantee of peace.

Nevertheless, the Gascon War, as this campaign came to be called, was very expensive for France. Before the final peace treaty concluded at Chartres in 1303, French troops were stationed in Aquitaine, which cost the treasury 2 million livres.

Today, millions, billions of dollars in transactions of the state budget, property of corporations, enterprises and even individuals do not surprise us. But at the end of the 13th century, a million livres was an overwhelming, unimaginable amount. Calculations were made in livres, soles and deniers. 12 deniers (d) were equal to 1 sole (s), and 20 soles were equal to 1 livre (l). The livre was only a unit of account, there were no coins in denominations of 1 livre, the most popular coins were denier and noon.

At the time of Philip IV, there were two currency systems in France: the old, Parisian (p) and the new (n). Four old livres were equal to five new ones.

A skilled artisan received at best 18 new deniers (ND) per day, or 27 new livres (NL) per year. The salary of a royal employee of non-noble origin (with the exception of senior officials) was 2-5 soles per day, a knight - 10 soles.

The income of senior officials was calculated on an annual basis. The salary of the chief judge or the highest official of the royal court ranged from 365 to 700 nl. The master of the royal mint, at the same time the king's advisor on coinage affairs, Baten Cocinel, received only 250 nl. The highest paid person in the royal service, Enguerrand de Marigny, received 900 nl per year.

A document drawn up around 1296 gives an idea of ​​the sources from which funds were supposed to be raised to finance the Gascon War:

200,000 nl - solid income from royal possessions

249,000 Nl - tithe withheld from church income

315,000 nl tax on barons (1/100 of property)

35,000 nl - tax on barons in Champagne (1/50)

65,000 nl - tax on pawnshops

60,000 nl - tax on the trade turnover of cities (in most cases in the form of a “hearth tax”)

16,000 nl - taxes on transactions between pawnbrokers in France

225,000 nl - tax on Jews, including withheld fines

200,000 nl - loans from pawnshops

630,000 nl - loans from wealthy citizens

50,000 nl - loans from prelates and royal servants

50,000 nl - income from “lightening coins”

Total: 2,105,000 nl

Some positions (for example, taxation of Jews) are certainly overstated. Some are not fully disclosed: the list of cities from which the treasury receives tax revenues is clearly not complete.

We do not know whether this money was received, nor do we know for what period these receipts were calculated. Only church tithes corresponded to the annual amount. Of the loans in 1295, 632,000 nl were received, and not always and not everywhere by non-violent means. Overall, the royal call to help the treasury in the “defensive struggle” was a great success. Naturally, the people did not know that it was planned to start the war in 1292 at the latest.

But it was almost impossible to repeat what was possible in 1295. The peculiarity of loans is that they must be repaid, also paying interest. Some cities, having learned the hard way about the financial morality of the crown, were able to get the amounts of loans placed by royal officials to be reduced, while refusing to repay them later. Thus, in 1295, 44,910 nl came from the city of Sainton-Poitou as gifts and only 5,666 nl as loans.

Philip IV later turned to internal loans, but with less success than in 1295. From this year, the tax pressure began to tighten so tightly that wealthy subjects preferred to refrain from voluntary donations. The French kings never took the payment terms for the loans received seriously. When it came to war loans, lenders one way or another had to take note that it was pointless to expect to receive their money while the war was going on.

In the document cited, no doubt, an interesting position is the income from “lightening the coins”. Already in 1293, the king had a confidential conversation with the Lombardian Muschiatto Guidi, experienced in monetary matters, about the advantages and disadvantages of manipulating coins. Muschiatto did not advise the king to embark on this risky undertaking, because the consequences of such actions for the economy are negative, the income of the crown ultimately turns into losses. But Philip did not really understand the needs of the country's economy. His chief adviser on monetary matters, Batain Cocinel, who was the head of the Paris Mint, was also not an expert in this matter. He could only calculate the direct immediate benefit to the crown from the reduction in the content of precious metals in the coins. Unlike Muschiatto, he was, moreover, a devoted servant of his master. He had every reason to be useful to his king. In many courts it was customary to “save” precious metal when making coins. In any case, Cocinel undertook to carry out the king's instructions to mint a new, largest French coin (sol) with a face value significantly higher than the previous one in circulation, while simultaneously significantly reducing the content of precious metal in it. Jacques Diemer, auditor of the Paris Mint, submitted to “higher powers.”

The largest coin in circulation at the peak of the scam, in 1305, had a face value of 36 deniers (instead of 12), which would ultimately cause a corresponding rise in prices. True, this could not happen overnight. The economy in the Middle Ages responded to changes in the monetary economy much more slowly than it does today. The king was thus able to quickly free himself from a third of his debts by issuing counterfeit coins that were inflated compared to the real value. The barons and townspeople had it much worse. They received only a third of the rent that they expected to receive from the loans provided to the king.

To prevent unrest, the king already in 1295 instructed his officials to explain to the people the monetary policy being pursued as a kind of war loan: as soon as the state of war ceased, the deteriorated and inflated coin compared to its real value would be fully exchanged for new money.

Philip fulfilled this promise in his own way. Before 1306, he removed coins from circulation five times in order to replace them with new, improved ones, and restore their previous condition. Decrees, according to which all full-weight coins in circulation in the country and outside it, as well as products made of gold and silver, were subject to exchange for bad royal coins, complemented these measures of the crown, which, in addition, appropriated income from war spoils.

The scale of fraud with silver coins can be seen from the following data. Under Saint Louis (1226), coins were minted from a certain weight of silver, the value of which was more than three times lower than the declared record value of coins minted in April 1305 from the same weight of silver.

The income of the royal treasury from monetary fraud in 1296 was indicated by a modest figure of 101,435 nl. Just two years later, between June 24, 1298 and June 24, 1299, it already amounted to 1.2 million nl. The idea that in such a situation it would be necessary to increase the monetary income of their subjects was absolutely alien to Philip and his advisers. On the contrary, in their view, each soldier had to work three times as hard for his previous salary, and this could not continue for long.

In 1297, Philip's troops marched against Flanders. The northern county, thanks to the industriousness of its people, was considered the richest of the vassal possessions of the French king. And not only the ruler of Flanders, Guy de Dampierre, but also the rich cities of Ghent, Bruges, Lille, which supplied the whole of Europe with their linen, considered themselves completely independent. Philip made other plans. The attacks on Aquitaine (1294) were primarily intended to force England, the traditional ally of Flanders, to abandon the defense of the county. And the English king Edward I, whose hands were tied by internal affairs, the suppression of the Scottish rebels, gave Philip this pleasure. In 1300, Flanders was “pacified”; its peace and order were to be ensured by the French occupying troops.

The looting of the poorly paid French occupiers and the taxes Philip imposed on the cities led to a general uprising in May 1302. Philip sent 7 thousand horsemen and 20 thousand infantry to suppress it. In the bloody Battle of Kortrijk, the French troops were completely defeated. This is Philip's most crushing defeat during his entire reign.

The Parisian court was experiencing depression and disappointment these days. A search is underway for the reasons for what happened, and they carefully try to make the indignant king understand that the outcome of the battle may have been influenced by the low pay of well-armed soldiers. Philip does not accept any explanations: the defeat from the rebellious mob cannot be excused in any way. Besides, he has no money:

“Tax collectors deceive us at every turn; they collect much more than they hand over to the treasury.”

This is the first and only time when the king accuses those in his service of uncleanliness. He knows that his accusations are not based on anything. Treasury revenues from taxes and mint manipulations for the most part do not go towards paying the troops. Enormous sums are spent on the expansion of the royal palace, palace festivities, and generous gifts to foreign rulers to ensure non-interference in the king's military enterprises.

Minting counterfeit coins, or better said, manipulating coins, is the second major sin of Philip the Fair with which history accuses him. The third sin of the Capetian king will never be forgiven in Rome.

In 1296, Philip demands that the French Church double its tithes to the treasury to support the defense of the kingdom. Until now, Philip had never refused “reciprocal gifts” to the church, primarily in the form of expanding its land holdings, given that church tithes in difficult years accounted for from a quarter to a third of all state revenues. However, this time the church is demanding greater privileges from France. Unexpectedly, even before the start of negotiations, the Roman holy father, Pope Boniface VIII, intervenes in this matter, prohibiting in his bull any indemnities from the church in favor of worldly rulers.

The Holy See in those days was by no means an all-Christian institution. For centuries he fought with the royal houses for power even in this world. His true weapon so far has been refusal of blessing, threat or actual excommunication. This meant that the “excommunicated” person found himself outside of any temporal and spiritual laws. Henry IV (1056-1106) and Frederick II (1212-1250) experienced the power of the papal curse.

Boniface VIII, the 199th pope in church history, a power-hungry and hot-tempered man, was elected pope in 1294. This year he turned 76 years old, a biblical age at that time.

Philip IV responded to the papal bull by banning any export of gold and precious metals from France. After an exchange of letters in which each side defended its point of view, the pope finally relented and declared that his bull did not apply to France. And then something happened that temporarily stopped the constant, now smoldering, now flaring up like a volcano, struggle of the sacred throne for worldly power.

Bishop of Parma

Bernard Sasse, Bishop of Parma, a loyal supporter of the pope, repeatedly spoke out against the despotism and autocracy of Philip, thereby winning applause not only in Rome. He spoke about Philip’s coins like this:

“This money is cheaper than dirt. They are unclean and false; the one by whose will they are minted acts unrighteously and dishonestly. In the entire Roman Curia, I don’t know anyone who would give even a handful of dirt for this money.”

These speeches evoked a lively response from his flock. But they reacted differently in the palace. Philip did not tolerate any opponents, he was only waiting for a convenient reason to silence his opponent. Sasse himself soon provided the king with such an opportunity when he compared the king, endowed with the rank of God's viceroy in France, to an owl, “the most beautiful of birds, which is good for nothing... Such is our king, the most handsome man in the world, who, however , cannot do anything other than contemplate those around him.” This was an open insult to the royal majesty, high treason. At the end of October 1301, Bernard Sasse was taken into custody and brought to trial. It was a peculiar process. There was no shortage of witnesses confirming the seditious statements of the accused. He was even deprived of a defender. And yet Sasse was the pope's envoy. In any case, the court's decision was very lenient. There were also witnesses who urged not to take everything seriously. The bishop is an elderly man with a bad character, who, after taking a sip from a bottle, sometimes blurts out too much. Others said, not without irony, that he was simple “to the point of holiness.” The sentence took into account “mitigating circumstances.” Philip actually limited himself to depriving Sasse of the episcopal rank and property worth 40,000 nl, which “with the consent” of Sasse was transferred to one of the monasteries. Sasse never saw his money again, although seven years later his episcopal rank was returned to him.

The Chronicle reports that Philip was not happy with the process, and with good reason. He needed church tithes.

The reaction of the Holy See was not long in coming. Already on December 5, 1301 (the verdict dated back to the end of November), the papal ambassadors brought Boniface's bull (this message under the eloquent title “Hark, son” was prepared before the start of the trial against Sasse), in which he called himself the supreme judge. Boniface notified the “King of the French” about the liquidation of all privileges that the French court had in relations with the Holy Church. The most painful thing for Philip was the annulment of the right to impose a decimal tax on the French church without the consent of the pope, negotiated in 1297 from Rome. Philip was also irritated by the attacks on his policies contained in the very voluminous bull. They also discussed his export bans, the selection of royal advisers, royal decrees, financial policies and manipulation of coins. Boniface, however, refrained from directly calling Philip IV a counterfeiter.

Later sources devoted to this historical combat invariably report that Philip in February 1302 ordered the public burning of the papal bull. However, no convincing evidence is provided, and this is generally unlikely. Philip entrusted his first minister, Pierre Flote, to look into this matter, who informed only a narrow circle of advisers about the contents of the bull. It remained unknown primarily to the pope’s most faithful associates from the royal entourage. Instead of a detailed notice, Flote summed up the Roman reproaches in one sentence: “Know that you are our subject in both temporal and spiritual matters.” Boniface did not write this way, but it followed from the content of his message. And it was precisely by this phrase that the papal bull was to be judged at the meeting of the Estates General on April 10, 1302.

This April day is a very curious date in French history. For the first time, representatives of not only the nobility and clergy, but also the third estate in the person of the townspeople were invited. This move ensured victory for the king, and Fleet, as a sign of gratitude, was awarded the title of Keeper of the Great Royal Seal.

The old man who sat on the Holy Throne, having learned about the decision taken at the meeting of the three estates in Paris, was beside himself. He convenes a church council, to which only half of the French bishops (39 out of 79) arrive, and curses Flotet, “whom God has already punished with partial physical blindness and complete spiritual blindness.” Flote is called the second Ahithophel, and it is said that he will share the fate of the latter. The pope's prediction was very soon confirmed: Pierre Floete died on July 11 of the same year in the Battle of Kortrijk. We do not know what impression his death made on the French bishops.

Flotet's successor was Guillaume Nogaret, who was equally energetic and even more scrupulous in carrying out the will of the king, and was soon granted nobility by the king. Maurice Druon in his book “Curse from the Fire” characterizes this lean, dark-haired man with restless eyes as a merciless and “inevitable as the scythe of death” servant of the king, who looked like a devil and was devilishly persistent in carrying out his master’s policies.

On November 18, 1302, a new bull by Boniface follows, in which he develops the postulate that every creature between heaven and earth is subject to the Holy See: “We declare, proclaim and determine that every person is necessarily a subject of the Roman pontificate if he values the immortality of his soul."

Boniface overestimated his strength in delivering this message, although it was expressed in a much more peaceful tone compared to the previous bull. Philip also had influential allies in Italy. These are primarily representatives of the family of the Counts of Colonna, whose property was sequestered by Boniface in favor of members of his family, greedy for power and wealth. In turn, Guillaume Nogaret knew from Colonne about the accusations brought against Boniface during the unusual abdication of his predecessor Celestine V. The content of the accusations was that Boniface was allegedly subject to heresy, sexual perversion and other sins. Hardly any of this list corresponded to reality. However, Philip’s lawyers were sophisticatedly experienced in scholastic-hook-making battles, and Boniface’s phrase, which he could actually utter in a passion: “I’d rather be a dog than a Frenchman,” was turned against him: “A dog has no soul, but the very last Frenchman has it. In other words, Boniface does not believe in the immortality of the soul. He's a heretic."

On June 13, 1303, at a meeting of representatives of the nobility and clergy in the Louvre, many similar finds were announced, which gave rise to a proposal to convene a church council at which Boniface’s heresy was to be discussed. The question of where and when to convene the council remained open.

Boniface, meanwhile, writes another bull, which on September 8 is delivered to Paris and published. The content of the bull is as follows: Philip of France is excommunicated from the church, because he forbade the French prelates to go to Rome, gave refuge to the apostate Stefano Colonna and lost the confidence of his subjects.

On the same day, the king confidentially talks with the keeper of his seal: “Nogare, no one should know about this message. We do not limit you in anything, but the pope must appear before the church council.” Guillaume Nogaret did not need many words, and the handshake with which the king honored him meant that the fate of the king was now in his hands. Nogaret wastes no time, he chooses the most reliable and bravest knights and, together with them, goes to Anagni, the personal possession of the pope. There, with the support of the Colonna family, he actually takes the 86-year-old dad captive. Apparently, Boniface was subjected to very harsh treatment. In any case, four weeks after the inhabitants of Anagna free him, he dies in the Vatican. But Boniface’s fading strength is enough to excommunicate Guillaume de Nogaret.

Dante finds bitter words to describe the attack in Anagni, qualifying it as murder, although Boniface does not evoke much sympathy from him.

In the struggle for power with Rome, Philip IV turns out to be the winner. But at what cost? In 1301-1303, his treasury did not receive church tithes, and this was a loss of almost 800,000 nl. Benedict XI, the newly elected pope, is peace-loving and ready to agree to the collection of church tithes by the French king, provided that Philip takes an oath in holy scripture of non-involvement in the assassination attempt in Anagni. Philip swears, but it is a false oath.

The 200th pope, Benedict XI, was destined to remain on the Holy See for only a year. His successor was Philip's protege, Archbishop of Bordeaux Bertrand de Gault, who was elected pope in 1305 thanks to the efforts of the French crown and took the name Clement V. Four years later, he moved his residence to Avignon, where the popes spent the so-called “Babylonian exile” [similar to captivity of the people of Israel in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar (597-538 BC)] until 1377.

December 23, 1305 Clement V frees Philip from Boniface's curse and grants him absolution for numerous extortions of church money and manipulation of coins. He extols by the grace of God the King of France as "the brightest star among all the Catholic Monarchs." Philip, by no means deaf to flattery, responds by declaring himself the protector of those bishops and abbeys towards whom Clement V was too cruel, but he himself begins to collect taxes and forced loans from them. The King easily distributes reciprocal gifts - letters of grant privileges and freedoms - and just as easily forgets about them. His lawyers must take care of the loopholes, and they know their stuff.

The third sin - an attack on the Holy See - is immediately followed by the fourth.