Boniface, disregarding the wishes of the French…

Boniface, disregarding the wishes of the French king, instead orders Philip in December 1301 to free the bishop to go to Rome to justify himself.

In the Bull, Ausculta Fili ("Give ear, my son") he accuses Philip of sinfully subverting the Church in France, and not in terms that are conciliatory: "Let no one persuade you that you have no superior or that you are not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, for he is a fool who so thinks."

At the same time, Boniface sends out a more general bull, Salvator mundi, that strongly reiterates some of the same ground of Clericis laicos.

Then, at the end of the year, Boniface, with his customary tactlessness having criticized Philip for his personal behavior and the unscrupulousness of his ministry (that being an assessment with which many modern historians would agree), summons a Roman council of French bishops for November 1302, intended to reform Church matters in France.