“We,” says Charles VI., “supported by “the princes of our blood, and by many others, and “with us the church of our kingdom, as well the “clergy as the people, we, altogether withdraw from “obedience to Pope Benedict XIII. as from that of “his adversary. We desire that henceforth no “person pay to Benedict, his collectors, or other “officers, any ecclesiastical revenues or emoluments: “and we strictly forbid all our subjects from obeying “him or his officers in any matter whatever.”
Villaret²⁷³ adds, that Benedict having caused a report to be spread, that the French were desirous to withdraw from obedience to him in order to substitute a pope of their own nation, the king to do away such suspicions, declared, in his letters, that any pope would be agreeable to him, whether African, Arab or Indian, provided he did not dishonour by his passions the chair of St. Peter.
The French profited by these events to repress the exactions of the pontifical court. The churches were restored the right of freely electing their prelates, and collators the disposal of other benefices. Boniface IX. had perfected the art of enriching the Holy See; he had, as Fleury observed,²⁷⁴ doubly need of money, for himself, and, to support Ladislaus at Naples against the house of Anjou. We may read in Fleury,²⁷⁵ how the clergy, who possessed benefices at Rome, paid for the favour of being examined; how Boniface in the second and third year of his pontificate, dated as of the first the bulls for benefices; how he exacted compensation for this antedate; how he extended to prelacies the right of first fruits, that is, the reservation of the revenue of each benefice for the first year; how he kept couriers throughout Italy, to be apprised, without delay, of the sickness or death of prelates or other dignitaries, and in order to sell twice, or thrice, the same abbey or church; how, by clauses of preference, he revoked the reservation, and the survivorship, the price of which he had received: how he would even annul the preferences which paid a higher price; how in fine, this traffick, combining with the plague, and the consequent rapid mortality of the incumbents, brought into the treasury of the apostolic see, the innumerable contributions of all those who obtained, hoped for, or coveted, a rich or a poor ecclesiastical benefice.