1.) What was the significance of the conflict between Philip IV and Boniface VIII?
Usually the popes would gain the authority in deciding certain things such as ‘is this emperor a good emperor?’ ‘should we or should we not excommunicate this king?’ and etc. I’ll get to why this statement is important for this question after I explain the situation between king Philip IV and pope Boniface VIII.
In general, pope Boniface didn’t want to get into conflicts with king philip or at the very least get on his bad side. In fact, he simple wanted to become allies with him. Unfortunately there were some incidents to which becoming allies was out of the question. Incidents such as when Boniface created a law that states, “whoever’s in contact with so and so people and send money to them, will be excommunicated.” King Philip was ok with this at first, but the crowd got upset and he decided to strike back. Boniface took a hint and stayed back respecting Philip’s wishes.
Later on another conflict happens whenever king Philip imprisons bishop of Pamiers, while on the other hand Boniface wants him set free. This argument of theirs lasted pretty long to the point where both of them called each other heretics. The situation got out of hand to the point where king Philip gathered all the Frenchmen and other enemies of Boniface to come and confront him. One of the men strike Boniface and after a month he dies from that strike shock. Philip then wanted to dig up Boniface’s dead body and put him to trail getting away with his idea.
Recall when I mentioned that popes were to be in charge of making final decisions. At the end of the conflict between Philip and Boniface it was clear that Philip as king not pope made rational decisions this whole time and got away with it whenever it wasn’t in his place to say such things in the first place.
2.) Based on the video and on your reading, what were the effects on Europe of the Black Death?
Black Death was the deadliest of all the disasters that occured in the 4th century. 1/3 of the european population were wiped out, especially in crowded place like in the Urban areas where people are close to each other. Most of the deaths happened in Urban areas. The Black Death consisted of 2 types of plagues, the Bubonic Plague and the Pneumonic Plague. The plague started from the rats that came to the country from italian ships infecting the fleas. The fleas would then jump onto the people biting into their skin transmitting the disease. This plague would have affected the Asians as well, but since they had resistance against the plague they were unharmed. The Europeans, however, didn’t have resistance so that’s how the nation got wiped out.
The Europeans managed to get back on their feet and make marriages to create a new generation that would continue to help grow the population that got wiped out.
Thanks for reading this essay. I hope you enjoyed reading it or learned something new from it. I’ll be posting more soon and have a great rest of your day.
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