Gold was the soil converted into money, the soil mobilized, exchangeable, transportable, divisible, subtilized, spiritualized, as it were.
So long as the soil was not represented by gold, man, like the god Thermes, that landmark of the fields, had his feet imprisoned by the earth.

Formerly the earth bore man, to-day man bears the earth.
But this gold had to be abstracted from its hiding-place, and it was hidden far otherwise than in the mines of Chile or Mexico.

All the gold was in the possession of the churches and the Jews.

To extract it from this double mine it needed more than a king; it required a pope.
And that is why Philippe le Bel, that great exploiter of gold, resolved to have a pope of his own.

Benedict XI.