Certainly the conduct of Philip IV showed plenty of independence in his relations with the Roman pontiff. When Boniface in 1301 asserted that Philip held his crown of him and summoned him to appear at a council about to be assembled at Rome, the papal bull was solemnly burnt in the French capital. The States-General was then convened to give national expression to a protest against the action of Boniface; and bishops and lesser clergy united with the people as a body, and most important with the lawyers, to address letters of remonstrance to Rome. The civil law directly challenged the canon law.
In England the national feeling against papal exactions and interference was extremely bitter and vociferous under Henry III. Edward I gave a blunt answer to the claims of _Clericis laicos_ in ruling that if the clergy were to be free of the law in respect of its duties they should be free of it also as regards its privileges and its protection, should be outlaws in fact. The stand taken by the French and English kings on the subject of clerical taxation was so firm that Boniface was forced to nullify the bull _Clericis laicos_ by the bull _Etsi de statu_. Not only the royal will, but popular feeling is evidenced under Edward III by the statutes of _Provisors_ and _Praemunire_.
While in Germany the imperial dignity had much sunk in credit since the days of the Hohenstaufen, on the other hand the importance of a national sentiment there was revealed in the general support given to Lewis of Bavaria. It is true that he failed in his expedition to Italy, whither the German king journeyed in order to establish his imperial dignity, despite his excommunication by John XXII, by coronation at Rome, but in Italy his forces were recruited by adherents more valuable than armies in the General of the Franciscan Order, Michael of Cesena, and a yet greater Franciscan, William of Ockham. The issue that had been joined was in reality one between papal and national sovereignty; but in the lengthy war of words that ensued upon Lewis's failure in Italy the controversy appeared to be concerned with the theological question of the poverty of Christ, so that the feud between Spiritual and Conventual became a European question. It now possessed a significance extraneous from, and much wider than, the original cause of quarrel: for in the doctrine of apostolic poverty could be focussed all the widespread anti-sacerdotal feeling which revolted at the secular preoccupations and ambitions of the clergy.