But, at bottom, the situation of affairs remained the same; indeed, it did not stop where it was.

On the 11th of February, 1302, the bull, Hearken, most dear Son, was solemnly burned at Paris in presence of the king and a numerous multitude.

Philip convoked, for the 8th of April following, an assembly of the barons, bishops, and chief ecclesiastics, and of deputies from the communes to the number of two or three for each city, all being summoned "to deliberate on certain affairs which in the highest degree concern the king, the kingdom, the churches, and all and sundry." This assembly, which really met on the 10th of April, at Paris, in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in French history as the first "states-general." The three estates wrote separately to Rome; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protesting against the pope's pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic orders writing in a rough and threatening tone, the clergy making an appeal "to the wisdom and paternal clemency of the Holy Father, with tearful accents, and sobs mingled with their tears." The king evidently had on his side the general feeling of the nation: and the news from Rome was not of a kind to pacify him.

In spite of the king's formal prohibition, forty-five French bishops had repaired to the council summoned by the pope for All Saints' day, 1302, and, after this meeting, a papal decree of November 18 had declared, "There be two swords, the temporal and the spiritual; both are in the power of the Church, but one is held by the Church herself, the other by kings only with the assent and by sufferance of the sovereign pontiff.

Every human being is subject to the Roman pontiff; and to believe this is necessary to salvation." Philip made a seizure of the temporalities of such bishops as had been present at that council, and renewed his prohibition forbidding them to leave the kingdom.