Pope Boniface VIII

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The Italian prelate Benedetto Caetani (1235?-1303) reigned as Pone Boniface VIII from 1294 to 1303. During his pontificate he issued a new addition to canon law, participated in Italian political and dynastic struggles, and opposed King Philip IV of France.

The son of Roffredo and Emilia Caetani, Benedetto Caetani was born at Anagni. His family had important political and ecclesiastical connections, and during the 1250s Benedetto was sent to live with his uncle, the bishop of Todi. There he probably began the study of law, which he continued at Spoleto and, between 1263 and 1274, at Bologna, the center of legal studies in Christendom. In 1264 Benedetto received his first ecclesiastical appointment, a junior secretarial post in the legation of Cardinal Simon of Brie (later Pope Martin IV) to France. In 1265 Benedetto joined another legation, led by Cardinal Ottoboni Fieschi (later Pope Adrian V) to England, where he remained probably until 1268.

In 1276 Benedetto's old master Ottoboni, now pope, assigned him the duty of collecting crusade revenues in France. From this date on, Benedetto obtained steady and increasingly more responsible employment in the vast administrative and diplomatic bureaucracy of the late-13th-century papacy. In 1281, not yet a priest, Benedetto became cardinal deacon of St. Nicholas in Carcere Tulliano; in 1290 he became papal legate to France. In 1291 he was finally ordained a priest and in the same year became cardinal of St. Martin in Montibus.

Election as Pope

After the 6-month pontificate of the hermit-pope Celestine V ended with his resignation in December 1294, Benedetto Caetani was elected pope on December 24, and he took the name Boniface VIII. Celestine's brief pontificate and the unique circumstances of his resignation had created chaos in the world of ecclesiastical administration. Boniface first had to restore order in the papal system of government and justify the legality of his predecessor's resignation and, by implication, the legitimacy of his own election. As an administrator and legate, he was described by a contemporary as "a man of deep counsel, a man of trust, secret, industrious, circumspect."

Boniface had to defend himself against attacks within the Church from disaffected cardinals, particularly members of the powerful Colonna family, and from those ecclesiastical groups who had regarded Pope Celestine V as a saint and accused Boniface of having tricked the old pope into resigning. Boniface found supporters in his propaganda war with the Colonna cardinals, and in 1298 he promulgated his great law book, the Liber sextus, in which, among many other things, he recognized the legitimacy of papal resignation.

Conflict with Philip IV

In 1296, however, another problem had arisen, one which touched the very center of papal and temporal power: the question of taxation. The Church had long authorized, in certain cases, the collection of taxes on Church income and property by temporal authorities. The Church itself also collected taxes, and by the late 13th-century these early instances of taxation had become lucrative necessities to both the kings and the ecclesiastical powers who collected them. The taxes had begun as crusade subsidies, but they had become part of the financial transformation of 13th-century political and ecclesiastical organizations. The demand for a new tax on ecclesiastical revenues by King Philip IV of France elicited from Boniface VIII the bull (letter) Clericis laicos, in which the Pope not only forbade the collection of taxes from the clergy by laymen but also denied the French king authority over the clergy within his own realm.

Philip IV retaliated by forbidding the export of all money from France, and in 1297 Boniface came to terms with Philip by recognizing the technicality known as "necessity of state" as reason for emergency taxation, even of clergy, by an imperiled secular government. The position of France in Boniface's conflict with the Colonna cardinals and their allies, the Spiritual Franciscans, also contributed to the settlement between Boniface and Philip IV.

By 1300 Boniface had so successfully restored papal prestige that he proclaimed the first jubilee year. The crowds who flocked to Rome to receive the indulgences that accompanied a papal blessing must have received the impression that the Church and the papacy were indeed at the greatest point of their power in history.

In 1301 another phase of the quarrel between Boniface and Philip IV began. Philip arrested the bishop of Pamiers on charges of heresy and treason and demanded that the Pope recognize the legality of his act. Boniface responded by denouncing Philip's act, calling a council which would meet in 1302 to consider the state of the Church in France, and addressing Philip with a second admonitory letter, Ausculta fili, in which he outlined the traditional superiority of popes to kings and emperors. In 1302 Philip called an assembly of all ranks of French society at Paris, the first meeting in history of a representative Estates General, at which his supporters presented a distorted version of Boniface's letter and urged further royal action against the Pope.

In 1302, when his council to discuss religion in France proved a failure, Boniface issued Unam sanctam, perhaps the most famous papal letter ever written. In this document Boniface presented the traditional ecclesiastical view of papal authority in the Church and in the world: "Therefore, if the earthly power errs, it shall be judged by the spiritual power, if a lesser spiritual power errs it shall be judged by its superior, but if the supreme spiritual power errs it can be judged only by God not by man, as the apostle witnesses, 'The spiritual man judgeth all things and he himself is judged by no man."'

In 1303 Philip's minister Guillaume de Nogaret met Boniface at Anagni; there he held the Pope prisoner and insulted and abused him. Released by the local inhabitants, Boniface proceeded to Rome, where he died several weeks later.

Assessment of Boniface's Life

Boniface was the target of much abuse both within and without the Church. His enemies portrayed him as a heretic, a sorcerer, a sodomite, and a traducer of the faith. His actions against the city of Florence earned him a place in Dante's Inferno, and between 1303 and 1311 Philip IV held the threat of a trial of Boniface and the possible repudiation of his pontificate by the Church over the heads of Boniface's weaker successors.

Boniface's conflict with Philip IV resulted in the Pope's public humiliation, the precipitous decline of papal prestige, and the first major affront to the late-13th-century concept of papal monarchy. Boniface has been described as carrying the medieval theory of papal authority to its highest point and at the same time has been condemned as rashly having thrown away both spiritual and temporal responsibility in what was essentially a political argument.

Yet Boniface's statements of Church policy, his stands against secular taxation of the clergy, and his defense of the legitimacy of his own election may also be understood as being well within ecclesiastical tradition and not exceptional for the period in which they occurred. By committing himself to power and law, Boniface became the greatest representative of the Church of order. His pontificate is one of the most important in the history of the medieval Church and has been the subject of a considerable body of scholarly and ecclesiastical works.

Further Reading

The texts in translation of Boniface's most famous letters are found in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 (1964). The best biography is Thomas S.R. Boase, Boniface VIII (1933). Another excellent study is Charles T. Wood, Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs. Papacy (1967), which contains an exhaustive bibliography.

Additional Sources

Denton, Jeffrey Howard., Philip the Fair and the ecclesiastical assemblies of 1294-1295, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991.

Pope who gained an unenviable notoriety in Dante's Inferno as "Prince of the new Pharisees" and was regarded by many people as an exponent of black magic. A noted jurist, Boniface was born at Anagni in a noble family and was elected pope in 1294. In 1296 he quarreled seriously with Phillippe le Bel, king of France, who wanted to tax the church, and prepared to excommunicate the king. The quarrel arose when Boniface was determined to extend the rule of the papacy throughout the kingdoms of the world and to build up great estates for his family.

In 1303, Phillippe's ministers and agents boldly accused Boniface of heresy and sorcery, and the king called a council at Paris to hear witnesses and pronounce judgment. The pope resisted and refused to acknowledge a council not called by himself. Then the king planned to abduct Boniface and bring him to France. The French attacked the pope in his residence, but could not carry off their escape, and the mistreatment to which Boniface was exposed proved too much for him. He died the same year, in the midst of these vindictive proceedings. His enemies spread abroad a report that in his last moments he had confessed his league with the demon, and that his death was attended with "so much thunder and tempest, with dragons flying in the air and vomiting flames, and such lightning and other prodigies, that the people of Rome believed that the whole city was going to be swallowed up in the abyss."

His successor, Benedict XI, undertook to defend his predecessor's memory, but he died in 1304, the first year of his pontificate (some said he was poisoned), and the holy see remained vacant for 11 months. In mid-June 1305 the archbishop of Bordeaux was elected to the papal chair under the title Clement V. This election was ascribed to the influence of the king, who was said to have stipulated as one condition that Clement should support proceedings against Boniface that would make his memory infamous. However, the prosecution was dropped, and in 1312 Boniface was declared innocent of all offenses with which he had been charged. These had included wild accusations of infidelity, skepticism, and communication with demons. One witness deposed that he had a demon enclosed in a ring which he wore on his finger; one friar (Brother Bernard de Sorano) deposed that when Boniface was a cardinal, he was seen to enter a garden adjacent to the palace of Nicholas III and perform a magical ceremony with a sacrificed cock and a book of spells, conjuring up demons. Such statements must be judged in the light of the king's opposition to Boniface and the superstitions of the time.

Quotes:

"Anything done for another is done for oneself."

Boniface VIII
Papacy began	December 24, 1294
Papacy ended	October 11, 1303
Predecessor	Celestine V
Successor	Benedict XI
Personal details
Birth name	Benedetto Caetani
Born	c. 1235 Anagni, Papal States, Holy Roman Empire
Died	October 11, 1303 Rome, Papal States
Other Popes named Boniface

Pope Boniface VIII (c. 1235 – October 11, 1303), born Benedetto Caetani, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in a circle of Hell in his Commedia, and King Philip IV of France.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Conflicts with Philip IV 1.2 The slap 1.3 Posthumous trial 2 Culture 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Caetani was born in 1235 in Anagni, c. 50 kilometers southeast of Rome. He was the younger son of a minor noble family, the Caetani Family, and became a canon of the cathedral in Anagni in his teens. In 1252, when his uncle Peter Caetani became bishop of Todi, in Umbria, Benedetto went with him and began his legal studies there. Benedetto never forgot his roots in Todi, later describing the city as "the dwelling place of his early youth," the city which "nourished him while still of tender years," and as a place where he "held lasting memories". In 1260, Benedetto acquired a canonry in Todi, as well as the small nearby castle of Sismano. Later in life he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Anagni, Todi, and his family.

In 1264, Benedetto became part of the Roman Curia where he served as secretary to Cardinal Simon of Brie on a mission to France. Similarly, he accompanied Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi to England (1265–1268) in order to suppress a rebellion by a group of barons against Henry III, the King of England. Upon Benedetto's return from England, there is an eight year period in which nothing is known about what occurred in his life. After this eight year period of uncertainty, Benedetto was sent to France to supervise the collection of a tithe in 1276 and then became a papal notary in the late 1270s. During this time, Benedetto accumulated seventeen benefices which he was permitted to keep when he was promoted, first to cardinal deacon in 1281 and then 10 years later as cardinal priest. As cardinal, he often served as papal legate in diplomatic negotiations with France, Naples, Sicily, and Aragon.

He was elected in December 24, 1294 after Pope Celestine V abdicated in December 13. There is a legend that it was Boniface VIII's doing that Celestine V renounced the papacy—for Boniface, previously Benedetto, convinced Celestine V that no person on the earth could go through life without sin. However, in later times, it is a more common understanding that Celestine V resigned by his own designs and Benedetto merely showed that it was allowed by Church law. Either way, Celestine V vacated the throne and Boniface VIII took his place as pope. One of his first acts as pontiff was to imprison his predecessor in the Castle of Fumone in Ferentino, where he died at the age of 81, attended by two monks of his order. In 1300, Boniface VIII formalized the jubilees, which afterwards became a source of both profit and scandal to the church. Boniface VIII founded the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1303.

Boniface VIII put forward some of the strongest claims to temporal, as well as spiritual, supremacy of any Pope and constantly involved himself with foreign affairs. In his Bull of 1302, Unam Sanctam, Boniface VIII proclaimed that it "is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff", pushing papal supremacy to its historical extreme. These views and his intervention in "temporal" affairs led to many bitter quarrels with the Emperor Albert I of Habsburg (1291–1298), the powerful family of the Colonnas, with Philip IV of France (1285–1314) and with Dante Alighieri (who wrote De Monarchia to argue against it).

In the field of canon law Boniface VIII continues to have great influence. He published his 88 legal dicta known as the "Regulae Iuris" in 1298.^[1] This material must be well known and understood by canon lawyers or canonists today in order to interpret and analyze the canons and other forms of ecclesiastical law properly. The "Regulae Iuris" appear at the end of the so-called Liber Sextus (in VI°), promulgated by Boniface VIII and now published as one of the five Decretals in the Corpus Iuris Canonici. Other systems of law also have their own "Regulae Iuris" even by the same name or something serving a similar function.^[2]

Conflicts with Philip IV

The conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France came at a time of expanding nation states and the desire for the consolidation of power by the increasingly powerful monarchs. The increase in monarchical power in the rising nation states and its conflicts with the Church of Rome were only exacerbated by the rise to power of Philip IV. In France, the process of centralizing royal power and developing a genuine national state began with the Capetian kings. During his reign, Philip surrounded himself with the best civil lawyers, and decidedly expelled the clergy from all participation in the administration of the law. With the clergy beginning to be taxed in Theri and England in order to finance their ongoing wars against each other, Boniface took a hard stand against it. He saw the taxation as an assault on traditional clerical rights, and ordered the bull Clericis laicos in February 1296, forbidding lay taxation of the clergy without prior papal approval. In the bull, Boniface states "they exact and demand from the same the half, tithe, or twentieth, or any other portion or proportion of their revenues or goods; and in many ways they try to bring them into slavery, and subject them to their authority. And also whatsoever emperors, kings, or princes, dukes, earls or barons...presume to take possession of things anywhere deposited in holy buildings...should incur sentence of excommunication." It was during the issuing of Clericis Laicos that hostilities between Boniface and Philip began. Philip retaliated against the bull by denying the exportation of money from France to Rome, funds that the Church required to operate. Boniface had no choice but to meet Philip's demands quickly by allowing taxation only "during an emergency".

After complications involving the capture of Bernard Saisset by Philip, the conflict was re-ignited. In December of 1301, Philip was sent the Papal Bull Ausculta fili ("Listen, My Son"), informing Philip that "God has set popes over kings and kingdoms."

The feud between the two reached its peak in the early 14th century when Philip began to launch a strong anti-papal campaign against Boniface. On November 18, 1302, Boniface issued one of the most important papal bulls of Catholic history: Unam sanctam. It declared that both spiritual and temporal power were under the pope's jurisdiction, and that kings were subordinate to the power of the Church.

The slap

In response, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's chief minister, denounced Boniface as a heretical criminal to the French clergy. In 1303, Philip and Nogaret were excommunicated.^{[citation needed]} However, on September 7, 1303 an army led by Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna of the Colonna family surprised Boniface at his retreat in Anagni. The King and the Colonnas demanded that he resign, to which Boniface VIII responded that he would "sooner die". In response, Colonna hit Boniface, a "slap" that is still remembered in the local lore of Anagni.

Boniface was beaten badly and nearly executed but was released from captivity after three days. He died a month later of "shame", on October 11, 1303.

Posthumous trial

After the papacy had been removed to Avignon during the time of Pope Clement V in 1309, he consented to a post-mortem trial by an ecclesiastical consistory at Groseau, near Avignon, which held preliminary examinations in August and September of 1310.

A process (judicial investigation) against the memory of Boniface was held ^[3] and collected testimonies that alleged many heretical opinions of Boniface VIII. This included the offence of sodomy, although there is little substantive evidence for this and it is more likely that this was the standard accusation Philip made against enemies.^[4]

Before the actual trial could be held, Clement persuaded Philip to leave the question of Boniface's guilt to the Council of Vienne, which met in 1311. When the council met, three cardinals appeared before it and testified to the orthodoxy and morality of the dead pope. Two knights, as challengers, threw down their gauntlets to maintain his innocence by wager of battle. No one accepted the challenge, and the Council declared the matter closed.^[5]

Statue of Pope Boniface VIII at the Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Florence.

Culture

• In his Inferno, Dante portrayed Boniface VIII as destined for hell, where simony is punished, although Boniface was still alive at the fictional date of the poem's story. Boniface's eventual destiny is revealed to Dante by Pope Nicholas III, whom he meets. A bit later in the Inferno, we are reminded of the pontiff's feud with the Colonnesi, which led him to demolish the city of Palestrina, killing 6,000 citizens and destroying both the home of Julius Caesar and a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Boniface's ultimate fate is confirmed by Beatrice when Dante visits Heaven.

• The great mathematician and astronomer Giovanni Campano served as personal physician to Pope Boniface VIII.

• In Boccaccio's Decameron, Boniface VIII is satirically depicted granting a highwayman (Ghino di Tacco) a priorate (Day 10, second tale). Earlier (I.i), Boniface VIII is also mentioned for his role in sending Charles of Valois to Florence in 1300 to end the feud between the Black and White Guelphs.

• Boniface was a patron of Giotto di Bondone.

• Boniface had restored the churches of Rome for the Great Jubilee of 1300, particularly St. Peter's Basilica, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and the Saint Mary Major Basilica.

References

1. ^ Regulae iuris In VI Decretalium Bonifacii VIII. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an English translation on the Internet.
2. ^ cf. Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia Christopher Kleinhenz et al. eds. Routledge, 2004, p. 178.
3. ^ Its records were republished in a critical edition by J. Coste (1995).
4. ^ James Brundage, Law, Sex and Christianity in Medieval Europe, University of Chicago, 1990.
5. ^ The Age of Faith, Will Durant, 1950, 13th printing, page 816

• Boase, Thomas S. R. (1933). Boniface VIII. London: Constable. 
• Coppa, Frank J, ed. (2002). The Great Popes Through History. Connecticut. Greenwood Press. 
• Jean Coste (ed.), ed (1995). Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d'accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311). Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 88-7062-914-7. 
• Tierney, Brian (1964). Crisis of Church and State. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 
• Wood, Charles, T. (1967). Phillip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs Papacy. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston. 

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Pope Boniface VIII

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pope Boniface VIII

• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Pope Boniface VIII"
• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Pope Clement V: a paragraph on the trial of Boniface VIII
• Register of Boniface VIII: The Indiction of the Holy Year 1300 (Vatican Secret Archives)
• The 1303 document founding the University of Rome La Sapienza (Vatican Secret Archives)
• The 1303 document joining several schools into the University of Avignon (Vatican Secret Archives)
• The Bull Clericis Laicos (Medieval Sourcebook)
• Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon" "Bonifatius VIII"
• "Boniface VIII against the Revolution" (Saint Benedict Center)
• "Boniface VIII and the Heresy of Statism" (Saint Benedict Center)

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