[Sidenote: Rupture between France and the Pope.]
During the reign of Philip IV. (A.D. 1285-A.D. 1314) a collision took place for the first time, between the Church and Kingdom of France and the authority of the Pope. Hitherto the disputes between the Popes and the French monarchs had been on personal rather than on political grounds, and had given no opportunity for defining the exact limits of papal authority in France. [Sidenote: Comparative independence of French Church.] But meanwhile the French Clergy had not lost their feeling of nationality, and the kings of France had been able to use much more independent action in the appointment of Bishops than was the case in other countries. Hence the Bishops and Clergy joined with the king in resisting the sentence of excommunication pronounced by the Pope on Philip and his kingdom. Neither King nor Pope appear to have been influenced by any religious feeling in their contest, and after the miserable death of Boniface VIII. (A.D. 1303), and the murder of his successor, Philip's unprincipled interference in the { 126} election of Clement V. was productive of great evils. [Sidenote: Evil results of the conduct of Philip IV.] The cruel massacre of the Knights Templars, the corruptions of the Papal Court in France, and more indirectly the Great Schism in which the Church of France espoused the cause of the anti-Popes, may all be traced to the conduct of Philip IV.
Section 3. _The Church of Spain and Portugal._
[Sidenote: Conquest of Spain by the Moors.]
Before the end of the sixth century, the Visigoths, who had settled in what is now Spain and Portugal, had been converted from Arianism to the Catholic Faith. In A.D. 711 the Mahometan Moors crossed over from Africa to the South of Spain, and in A.D. 713 all the Peninsula, except the small mountain district of Asturias, had fallen into their hands. The more independent and hardy amongst the Spanish Christians took refuge in this inaccessible portion of the country, whilst others dwelt amongst the Moors, and appear for a time to have been allowed the exercise of their religion unmolested by any systematic persecution. [Sidenote: Persecution of the Spanish Church.] About A.D. 830, however, the policy of the Moorish conquerors underwent a change, and during the next hundred years multitudes of Christians in Spain suffered martyrdom for their faith. [Sidenote: The re-conquest of Spain by the Spaniards.] After the death of Hachem, the last Caliph of Cordova (A.D. 1031), and the subdivision of his dominions, the Christians of Asturias succeeded in making head against their oppressors, and gradually won back from them district after district, until Ferdinand III. (A.D. 1214-A.D. 1252) succeeded in reducing the Moorish possessions to the single province { 127} of Grenada. This last remnant of Mahometan dominion was wrested from the Moors A.D. 1492, and Spain, as well as the separate kingdom of Portugal, was once more entirely Christian. [Sidenote: Effect of national circumstances on Spanish Christianity.] It is perhaps hardly to be wondered at, that the continual state of religious warfare in which Spain was so long plunged should have given a somewhat stern character to Spanish Christianity. The Inquisition, when introduced into Spain by the mistaken zeal of the good Queen Isabella towards the end of the fifteenth century, found a readier welcome than elsewhere, and gained an additional tinge of severity in a country which had been brought into such close contact with one of the deadliest forms of unbelief.