Anagni Lazio Italy

Frederick quickly sends envoys to Pope Alexander III at Anagni, asking for an end to the schism between him and Frederick's antipope, Callixtus III.

After a preliminary agreement is reached, a conference is scheduled for July 1177.

Frederick spends some time in the interim interfering in Venetian rivalries in hopes of securing a pro-Imperial group in power at the time of the confrontation.

Pope Boniface VIII, who has backed the Angevin claim to Sicily, proposes a treaty seeking to bring peace between the house of Anjou and Sicily, in vain.

Under the Treaty of Anagni, signed on June 20, 1295, King James II of Aragon relinquishes control of Sicily and is compensated the Pope with the kingship of Sardinia and CorsicaAnd by the arrangement of marriage with Charles' daughter Bianca.

This ends French claims in Aragon.

Boniface can only respond by denouncing the charges; but it is already too late for him: Philip has planned the abduction of the pope to France.

On September 7, 1303, the king's advisor Guillaume de Nogaret, denouncing Boniface as a heretical criminal to the French clergy, leads a band of two thousand mercenaries on horse and foot.

They join locals, notably Sciarra Colonna of the Colonna family, in an attack on the palaces of the pope and his nephew at the papal residence, later notorious as the Outrage of Anagni.

The Pope's attendants and his beloved nephew Francesco all soon flee; only the Spaniard Pedro Rodríguez, Cardinal of Santa Sabina, remains at his side to the end.

The King and the Colonnas demand that the pope resign, to which Boniface responds that he would "sooner die".

The palace is plundered and Boniface is nearly killed (Nogaret prevents his troops from murdering the pope).

Still, the aged pope is subjected to harassment and held prisoner for three days during which no one brings him food or drink.

Eventually, the townsfolk expel the marauders and Boniface pardons those who had been captured.

He returns to Rome on September 13.

The French cardinals, mortally offended by the new pontiff’s behavior, meet at Anagni five months after Urban’s election and invite Urban, who realizes that he will be seized and perhaps slain.

In his absence they issue a manifesto of grievances on August 9 that declares his election invalid because, they allege, under pressure and fear for their lives, they had been cowed by the mob into electing an Italian.