Clericis laicos
The bull of Boniface VIII that forbade clergy to pay taxes to lay rulers, and rulers to levy them, without the pope’s permission, on pain of excommunication.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗The same translation in the printed book (Henderson, pp. 432–434) ↗
The bull is dated at Saint Peter’s on the sixth day before the kalends of March in the second year of Boniface VIII, 25 February 1296. It begins from the complaint that laymen have always been hostile to the clergy, declares that lay rulers have no jurisdiction over churchmen or their goods, and attaches automatic excommunication both to clergy who pay and to rulers who exact any levy on church revenues without leave of the apostolic see.
It is a legal text and states the pope’s claim at its widest. It names no ruler.
Cited in
- 18 November 1302, firm date