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The principal promoter of the assault at Anagni, William of Nogaret, was the sole exception to the amnesty; and the pope imposed upon him, by way of penance, merely the obligation of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he never fulfilled.
Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves." But the "new Pilate was not yet sated."
The cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur that it was a compulsory, therefore invalid, election. The French cardinals were now at Anagni: they were joined by the Cardinal of Amiens, who had taken no part in the election, but who was burning under the insulting words of the Pope, perhaps not too eager to render an account of his legation.
But Frederick, although he at first made a pretence of continuing the war, was soon forced by the representations of his nobles to abandon the policy of twenty-four years, and to make peace on the best terms obtainable with Alexander III, and, through him, with the Lombard cities. The oath of Wuerzburg was broken, and the two treaties of Anagni and Venice put an end to the long war.
Lawrence Gabrini kept a wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems to have belonged to Anagni, he was therefore by birth a retainer of the Colonna, and his wife was a washer-woman. Between them, moreover, they made a business of selling water from the Tiber, through the city, at a time when there were no aqueducts.
He then sent a French knight named William de Nogaret, with Sciarra Colonna, a turbulent Roman, the hereditary enemy of Boniface, and a band of savage mercenary soldiers to Anagni, where the Pope then was, to force him to recall the sentence, apparently intending them to act like the murderers of Becket.
The reception of Otho was cold and repulsive; he returned in disgust. The Queen eagerly listened to suspicions, skilfully awakened, that Urban meditated the resumption of the fief of Naples, and its grant to the rival house of Hungary. She became the sworn ally of the cardinals at Anagni.
On the 7th of September, 1303, Colonna and his associates introduced Nogaret and his following into Anagni, with shouts of "Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!" The populace, dumbfounded, remained motionless. The pope, deserted by all, even by his own nephew, tried to touch the heart of Colonna himself, whose only answer was a summons to abdicate, and to surrender at discretion.
The French King, Philip the Fair, so called from his appearance, not his dealings, had bitter cause of quarrel with the same Pope Boniface VIII who had held the great jubilee of 1300. Philip's soldiers, forcing their way into the little town of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling.
He took no active measures; he only caused his castellanes in Normandy to swear that they would yield their keys up to no one but to Prince John, on whom he had concentrated his affections. He awaited the coming of the Cardinal of Anagni, who was sent by the Pope to pacify these Crusaders, and remind them of their vows.
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