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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pope Boniface VIII</title><script src="https://dtyry4ejybx0.cloudfront.net/js/cmp/cleanmediacmp.js?ver=0104" async="true"></script><script defer data-domain="newadvent.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02662a.htm"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content="Born at Anagni about 1235; died at Rome, 11 October, 1303"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.newadvent.org/bestoftheweb?format=xml"><link rel="icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><meta name="robots" content="noodp"><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../utility/screen6.css" media="screen"></head> <body class="cathen" id="02662a.htm">   <div id="capitalcity"><table summary="Logo" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%"><tr valign="bottom"><td align="left"><a href="../"><img height=36 width=153 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></td><td align="right"> <form id="searchbox_000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0" action="../utility/search.htm">  <input type="hidden" name="safe" value="active"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0"/> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9"/>  <label for="searchQuery" id="searchQueryLabel">Search:</label> <input id="searchQuery" name="q" type="text" size="25" aria-labelledby="searchQueryLabel"/>  <label for="submitButton" id="submitButtonLabel" class="visually-hidden">Submit Search</label> <input id="submitButton" type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" aria-labelledby="submitButtonLabel"/> </form> <table summary="Spacer" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td height="2"></td></tr></table> <table summary="Tabs" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../"> Home </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_white_on_color" href="../cathen/index.html"> Encyclopedia </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../summa/index.html"> Summa </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../fathers/index.html"> Fathers </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../bible/gen001.htm"> Bible </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../library/index.html"> Library </a></td> </tr></table> </td> </tr></table><table summary="Alphabetical index" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"> <a href="../cathen/a.htm"> A </a><a href="../cathen/b.htm"> B </a><a href="../cathen/c.htm"> C </a><a href="../cathen/d.htm"> D </a><a href="../cathen/e.htm"> E </a><a href="../cathen/f.htm"> F </a><a href="../cathen/g.htm"> G </a><a href="../cathen/h.htm"> H </a><a href="../cathen/i.htm"> I </a><a href="../cathen/j.htm"> J </a><a href="../cathen/k.htm"> K </a><a href="../cathen/l.htm"> L </a><a href="../cathen/m.htm"> M </a><a href="../cathen/n.htm"> N </a><a href="../cathen/o.htm"> O </a><a href="../cathen/p.htm"> P </a><a href="../cathen/q.htm"> Q </a><a href="../cathen/r.htm"> R </a><a href="../cathen/s.htm"> S </a><a href="../cathen/t.htm"> T </a><a href="../cathen/u.htm"> U </a><a href="../cathen/v.htm"> V </a><a href="../cathen/w.htm"> W </a><a href="../cathen/x.htm"> X </a><a href="../cathen/y.htm"> Y </a><a href="../cathen/z.htm"> Z </a> </td></tr></table></div> <div id="mobilecity" style="text-align: center; "><a href="../"><img height=24 width=102 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></div>  <div id="mi5"><a href="../">Home</a> > <a href="../cathen">Catholic Encyclopedia</a> > <a href="../cathen/b.htm">B</a> > Pope Boniface VIII</div> <div id="springfield2"> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-top' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <h1>Pope Boniface VIII</h1> <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/na2">Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...</a> (BENEDETTO GAETANO) Born at <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> about 1235; died at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, 11 October, 1303. He was the son of Loffred, a descendant of a noble <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> originally Spanish, but long established in <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>--first at <a href="../cathen/06333a.htm">Gaeta</a> and later at <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a>. Through his mother he was connected with the house of <a href="../cathen/13683b.htm">Segni</a>, which had already given three illustrious sons to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, <a href="../cathen/08013a.htm">Innocent III</a>, <a href="../cathen/06796a.htm">Gregory IX</a>, and <a href="../cathen/01287b.htm">Alexander IV</a>. Benedetto had studied at <a href="../cathen/14754a.htm">Todi</a> and at <a href="../cathen/14232b.htm">Spoleto</a> in <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, perhaps also at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>, had obtained the doctorate in canon and <a href="../cathen/09066a.htm">civil law</a>, and been made a canon successively at <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a>, <a href="../cathen/14754a.htm">Todi</a>, Paris, <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, and <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. In 1265 he accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono Fieschi to <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, whither that <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelate</a> had been sent to restore harmony between Henry III and the rebellious barons. It was not until about 1276 that Gaetani entered upon his career in the <a href="../cathen/13147a.htm">Curia</a>, where he was, for some years, actively engaged as consistorial advocate and notary Apostolic, and soon acquired considerable influence. Under <a href="../cathen/09724a.htm">Martin IV</a>, in 1281, he was created <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#d">Cardinal-Deacon</a> of the title of S. Nicolò in carcere Tulliano, and ten years later, under <a href="../cathen/11057a.htm">Nicholas IV</a>, <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#p">Cardinal-Priest</a> of the title of SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. As <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">papal legate</a> he served with conspicuous ability in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> and in <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> (H. Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, Münster, 1902, 1 sqq., 9 sqq.). <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> On the 13th of December, 1294, the saintly but wholly incompetent <a href="../cathen/07280a.htm">hermit</a>-<a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a>, who five months previously, as Pietro di Murrhone, had been taken from his obscure mountain cave in the wilds of the Abruzzi and raised to the highest dignity in <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a>, resigned the intolerable burden of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a>. The act was unprecedented and has been frequently ascribed to the undue influence and pressure of the designing Cardinal Gaetani. That the elevation of the inexperienced and simple-minded <a href="../cathen/07280a.htm">recluse</a> did not commend itself to a man of the stamp of Gaetani, reputed the greatest jurist of his age and well-skilled in all the arts of curial diplomacy, is highly probable. But Boniface himself declared through Ægidius Colonna, that he had at first dissuaded Celestine from taking the step. And it has now been almost certainly established that the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of resigning the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> first originated in the mind of the sorely perplexed Celestine himself, and that the part played by Gaetani was at most that of a counsellor, strongly advising the pontiff to issue a constitution, either before or simultaneously with his abdication, declaring the legality of a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> resignation and the competency of the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#x">College of Cardinals</a> to accept it. [See especially H. Schulz, Peter von Murrhone--Papst Celestin V--in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xvii (1897), 481 sqq.; also Finke, op. cit., 39 sqq.; and R. Scholz, Die Publizistik zur Zeit Philipps des Schönen und Bonifaz VIII, Stuttgart, 1903, 3.] Ten days after Celestine the Fifth's gran rifuto the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> went into <a href="../cathen/04192a.htm">conclave</a> in the Castel Nuovo at <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, and on the 24th of December, 1294, by a majority of votes elected Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, who took the name of Boniface VIII. (For details of the election see Finke, op. cit., 44-54.) With the approval of the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, the new <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> immediately revoked (27 December, 1294) all the extraordinary favours and privileges which "in the fullness of his simplicity" <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a> had distributed with such reckless prodigality. Then, early in January of the following year, in spite of the rigour of the season, Boniface set out for <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, determined to remove the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> as soon as possible from the influence of the <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Neapolitan</a> court. The <a href="../cathen/03538b.htm">ceremony</a> of his <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a> and <a href="../cathen/04380a.htm">coronation</a> was performed at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, 23 January, 1295, amid scenes of unparalleled splendour and magnificence. King Charles II of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a> and his son <a href="../cathen/03629a.htm">Charles Martel</a>, titular king and claimant of <a href="../cathen/07547a.htm">Hungary</a>, held the reins of his gorgeously accoutred snow-white palfrey as he proceeded on his way to St. John Lateran, and later, with their crowns upon their heads, served the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> with the first few dishes at table before taking their places amongst the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>. On the following day the pontiff issued his first encyclical letter, in which, after announcing Celestine's abdication and his own accession, he depicted in the most glowing terms the sublime and indefectible nature of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The unusual step taken by <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a> had aroused much opposition, especially among the religious parties in <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>. In the hands of the Spirituals, or Fraticelli, and the <a href="../cathen/16020a.htm">Celestines</a>--many of whom were not as guileless as their saintly founder--the former pontiff, if allowed to go free, might prove to be a dangerous instrument for the promotion of a <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schism</a> in the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. Boniface VIII, therefore, before leaving <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, ordered <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a> to be taken to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> in the custody of the <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">Abbot</a> of <a href="../cathen/10526b.htm">Monte Cassino</a>. On the way thither the <a href="../cathen/04171a.htm">saint</a> escaped and returned to his hermitage near Sulmona. Apprehended again, he fled a second time, and after weary weeks of roaming through the woods of Apulia reached the sea and embarked on board a vessel about to sail for <a href="../cathen/04606b.htm">Dalmatia</a>. But a storm cast the luckless fugitive ashore at Vieste in the Capitanata, where the authorities recognized and detained him. He was brought before Boniface in his palace at <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a>, kept in custody there for some time, and finally transferred to the strong Castle of Fumone at <a href="../cathen/06042b.htm">Ferentino</a>. Here he remained until his death ten months later, 19 May, 1296. The detention of Celestine was a simple measure of <a href="../cathen/12517b.htm">prudence</a> for which Boniface VIII deserves no censure; but the rigorous treatment to which the old man of over eighty years was subjected--whoever may have been responsible for it--will not be easily condoned. Of this treatment there can now no longer be any question. The place wherein Celestine was confined was so narrow "that the spot whereon the <a href="../cathen/04171a.htm">saint</a> stood when saying <a href="../cathen/10006a.htm">Mass</a> was the same as that whereon his head lay when he reclined" (quod, ubi tenebat pedes ille sanctus, dum missam diceret, ibi tenebat caput, quando quiescebat), and his two companions were frequently <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to change places because the constraint and narrowness made them ill. (In this connexion see the very important and valuable paper "S. Pierre Célestin et ses premiers Biographes" in "Analecta Bolland.", XVI, 365-487; cf. Finke, op. cit., 267.) <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> Thoroughly imbued with the principles of his great and heroic predecessors, <a href="../cathen/06791c.htm">Gregory VII</a> and <a href="../cathen/08013a.htm">Innocent III</a>, the successor of <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a> entertained most exalted notions on the subject of <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> supremacy in <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> as well as in civil matters, and was ever most pronounced in the assertion of his claims. By his profound <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a> of the canons of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, his keen political <a href="../cathen/08050b.htm">instincts</a>, great practical experience of life, and high talent for the conduct of affairs, Boniface VIII seemed exceptionally well qualified to maintain inviolate the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> and privileges of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> as they had been handed down to him. But he failed either to recognize the altered temper of the times, or to gauge accurately the strength of the forces arrayed against him; and when he attempted to exercise his supreme authority in temporal affairs as in spiritual, over princes and people, he met almost everywhere with a determined resistance. His aims of universal peace and <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> coalition against the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> were not realized; and during the nine years of his troubled reign he scarcely ever achieved a decisive triumph. Though certainly one of the most remarkable pontiffs that have ever occupied the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> throne, Boniface VIII was also one of the most unfortunate. His pontificate marks in history the decline of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> power and glory of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a>. Boniface first endeavoured to settle the affiars of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>, which had been in a very distracted condition since the time of the <a href="../cathen/15384a.htm">Sicilian Vespers</a> (1282). Two rivals claimed the island, Charles II, King of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, in right of his <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">father</a> Charles of Anjou, who had received it from <a href="../cathen/04019a.htm">Clement IV</a>, and James II, King of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a>, who derived his claims from the Hohenstaufen, through his mother Constance, the daughter of Manfred. James II had been <a href="../cathen/04380a.htm">crowned</a> King of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> at Palermo in 1286, and had thereby incurred the sentence of <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunication</a> for daring to usurp a fief of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. On his succession to the throne of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a>, after the death of his brother Alfonso III, in 1291, James agreed to surrender <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> to Charles II on condition that he should receive the latter's daughter, Blanche of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, in marriage, together with a dowry of 70,000 pounds of silver. Boniface VIII, as liege lord of the island, ratified this agreement 21 June, 1295, and further sought to reconcile the conflicting elements by restoring James II to peace with the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, confirming him in his possession of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a>, and granting him the islands of <a href="../cathen/13473b.htm">Sardinia</a> and <a href="../cathen/04396b.htm">Corsica</a>, which were fiefs of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>, in compensation for the loss of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>. By these measures Boniface VIII merely adhered to the traditional policy of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> in dealing with <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicilian</a> affairs; there is no evidence to show that, either before or shortly after his election, he had pledged himself in any way to recover <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> for the House of Anjou. <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> was not, however, pacified by this agreement between the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and the kings of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a> and <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>. Threatened with a renewal of the detested rule of the French, the inhabitants of that island asserted their independence, and offered the crown to Frederick, the younger brother of James II. In an interview with Frederick at <a href="../cathen/11346a.htm">Velletri</a>, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> sought to dissuade him from accepting the offer by holding out prospects of a succession to the throne of Constantinople and a marriage with Princess Catherine of Courtenay, granddaughter and heir of Baldwin II, the last Latin Emperor of the East. But the young prince would not be dissuaded. The <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">papal legate</a> was expelled from the island, and, against the protests of Boniface VIII, Frederick was <a href="../cathen/04380a.htm">crowned</a> King of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> at <a href="../cathen/11419b.htm">Palermo</a>, 25 March, 1296. He was at once <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a> and the island placed under <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a>. Neither the king nor his people paid any heed to the censures. At the instigation of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> a <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> ensued, in which James of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a>, as Captain-General of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, was compelled to take part against his own brother. The contest was brought to a close (1302) through the efforts of Prince Charles of Valois, whom the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> had called to his assistance in 1301. Frederick was to be absolved from the censures he had incurred, to marry Eleanora, younger daughter of Charles II, and to retain <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> during his lifetime. After his death the island should revert to the King of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>. Though frustrated in his hopes, Boniface VIII ratified the treaty 12 June, 1303, and agreed to recognize Frederick as vassal of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. In the meantime Boniface VIII had directed his attention also to the north of <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, where, during a period of forty years, the two rival republics of <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venice</a> and <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoa</a> had been carrying on a bitter contest for commercial supremacy in the Levant. A <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> was wellnigh impossible without the active co-operation of these two powers. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, therefore, commanded a truce until 24 June, 1296, and ordered both the contestants to send ambassadors to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> with a view to arranging terms of peace. The <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venetians</a> were inclined to accept his mediation; not so the <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoese</a>, who were elated by their success. The <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> continued till 1299, when the two republics were <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> finally to conclude peace from sheer exhaustion, but even then the intervention of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> was rejected. The efforts made by Boniface VIII to restore order in <a href="../cathen/06105c.htm">Florence</a> and <a href="../cathen/15103b.htm">Tuscany</a> <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> equally futile. During the closing years of the thirteenth century the great <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Guelph</a> city was torn asunder by the violent dissensions of the Bianchi and the Neri. The Bianchi or Whites, of <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Ghibelline</a> tendencies, represented the popular party and contained some of the most distinguished men in <a href="../cathen/06105c.htm">Florence</a>--<a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante Alighieri</a>, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dino Compagni. The Neri or Blacks, professing the old <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Guelph</a> principles, represented the nobles or aristocracy of the city. Each party as it gained the ascendancy sent its opponents into exile. After a vain attempt to reconcile the leaders of the two parties, Vieri dei Cerchi and Corso Donati, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> sent Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta as <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">papal legate</a> to mediate and establish peace at Florence. The <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> met with no success and soon returned to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> leaving the city under an <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a>. Towards the end of 1300, Boniface VIII summoned to his aid Charles of Valois, brother of <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip the Fair</a>. Appointed Captain-General of Church and invested with the governorship of <a href="../cathen/15103b.htm">Tuscany</a> (in consequence of the vacancy of the empire), the French prince was given full powers to effect the pacification of the city. Valois arrived at Florence on 1 November, 1301. But instead of acting as the official peacemaker of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, he conducted himself as a ruthless destroyer. After five months of his partisan administration, the Neri were supreme and many of the Bianchi exiled and ruined--among them <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante Alighieri</a>. Beyond drawing on himself and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> the bitter <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> of the Florentine people, Charles had accomplished nothing. (Levi, Bonifazio VIII e le sue relazioni col commune di Firenze, in Archiv. Soc. Rom. di Storia Patria, 1882, V, 365-474. Cf. Franchetti, Nuova Antologia, 1883, 23-38.) It may be noted here that many scholars of repute seriously question <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante's</a> famous embassy to Boniface VIII in the latter part of 1301. The only contemporary evidence to support the poet's mission is a passage in Dino Compagni, and even that is looked upon by some as a later interpolation. While thus endeavouring to promote peaceful relations between various states in Northern and Southern <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, Boniface had himself become engaged in a desperate struggle at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> with two rebellious members of the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#x">Sacred College</a>, Jacopo Colonna and his nephew Pietro Colonna. The Colonna <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> were Roman princes of the highest nobility and belonged to a powerful <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italian</a> <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> that had numerous palaces and strongholds in <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and in the Campagna. The estrangement which took place between them and Boniface, early in 1297, was owing chiefly to two causes. Jacopo Colonna, upon whom the administration of the vast Colonna <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> possessions had been conferred, violated the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of his brothers, Matteo, Ottone, and Landolfo, by appropriating the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> rightfully belonging to them, and bestowing it on his nephews. To obtain redress they appealed to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, who decided in their favour, and repeatedly admonished the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> to deal justly with his brothers. But the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> and his nephews bitterly resented the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> intervention and obstinately refused to abide by his decision. Moreover, the Colonna <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> had seriously compromised themselves by maintaining highly treasonable relations with the political enemies of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>--first with James II of <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragon</a>, and later with Frederick III of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>. Repeated warnings against this alliance having availed nothing, Boniface, in the interests of his own security, ordered the Colonna to receive <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> garrisons in <a href="../cathen/11421b.htm">Palestrina</a>--the ancestral home of the <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a>--and in their fortresses Zagarolo and Colonna. This they declined to do and forthwith broke off all relations with the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. On the 4th of May, 1297, Boniface summoned the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> to his presence, and when, two days later (6 May), they appeared, he commanded them to do three things: to restore the consignment of gold and silver which their relative Stefano Colonna had seized and robbed from the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> nephew, Pietro Gaetani, as he was bringing it from <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>; to deliver up Stefano as a <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisoner</a> to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>; and to surrender <a href="../cathen/11421b.htm">Palestrina</a> together with the fortresses Zagarolo and Colonna. They complied with the first of these demands, but rejected the other two. Thereupon Boniface on the 10th of May, 1297, issued a <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "In excelso throno", depriving the rebellious <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> of their dignities, pronouncing sentence of <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunication</a> against them, and ordering them, within a space of ten days, to make their submission under penalty of forfeiting their <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>. On the morning of the same day (10 May) the Colonna had attached to the doors of several Roman churches, and even laid upon the <a href="../cathen/07346b.htm">high altar</a> of St. Peter's, a manifesto, in which they declared the election of Boniface VIII invalid on the ground that the abdication of <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a> was uncanonical, accused Boniface of circumventing his saintly predecessor, and appealed to a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a> from whatever steps might be taken against them by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. This protest compiled at Longhezza, with the assistance of <a href="../cathen/08263a.htm">Fra Jacopone da Todi</a> and of two other Spirituals, had somewhat anticipated the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">papal Bull</a>, in answer to which, however, the Colonna issued the second manifesto (16 May) containing numerous charges against Boniface and appealing anew to a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a>. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> met this bold proceeding with increased severity. On the 23rd of May, 1297, a second <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a>, "Lapis abscissus", confirmed the previous <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunication</a>, and extended it to the five nephews of Jacopo with their heirs, declared them schismatics, disgraced, their <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> forfeited, and threatened with the <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a> all such places as received them. Boniface at the same time pointed out how the Colonna <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> had themselves favoured his election (in the <a href="../cathen/04192a.htm">conclave</a> they had voted for Gaetani from the first, as they had been among those who counselled Celestine's abdication), had publicly acknowledged him as <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, attended his <a href="../cathen/04380a.htm">coronation</a>, entertained him as their guest at Zagarolo, taken part in his consistories, signed all state documents with him, and had for nearly three years been his faithful <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> at the altar. The rebels replied with a third manifesto (15 June), and immediately set about preparing their fortresses for defense. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> Boniface now withdrew from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> to <a href="../cathen/11331c.htm">Orvieto</a>, where, on the 4th of September, 1297, he declared <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> and entrusted the command of the pontifical troops to Landolfo Colonna, a brother of Jacopo. In December of the same year he even proclaimed a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> against his enemies. The fortresses and castles of the Colonna were taken without much difficulty. <a href="../cathen/11421b.htm">Palestrina</a> (Præneste), the best of their strongholds, alone held out for some time, but in September, 1298, it too was forced to surrender. <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante</a> says it was got by treachery by "long promises and short performances" as Guido of <a href="../cathen/10528a.htm">Montefeltro</a> counselled, but the tale of the implacable <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Ghibelline</a> has long since been discredited. Clad in mourning, a cord around their necks, the two <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, with other members of the rebellious <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a>, came to <a href="../cathen/13054a.htm">Rieti</a> to cast themselves at the feet of the pontiff and implore his forgiveness. Boniface received the captives amid all the splendours of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> court, granted them pardon and <a href="../cathen/01061a.htm">absolution</a>, but refused to restore them to their dignities. <a href="../cathen/11421b.htm">Palestrina</a> was razed to the ground, the plough driven through and salt strewn over its ruins. A new city--the Città Papale--later replaced it. When shortly afterwards the Colonna organized another revolt (which was however speedily suppressed), Boniface once more proscribed and <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a> the turbulent clan. Their <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> was confiscated, and the greater part of it bestowed on Roman nobles, more especially on Landolfo Colonna, the Orsini, and on the relatives of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. The Colonna <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> and the leading members of the <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> now withdrew from the <a href="../cathen/14257a.htm">States of the Church</a>--some seeking shelter in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, others in <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>. (<a href="../cathen/04719a.htm">Denifle</a>, see below, and Petrine, Memorie Prænestine, Rome, 1795.) Early in the reign of Boniface, Eric VIII of <a href="../cathen/04722c.htm">Denmark</a> had <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjustly</a> <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a> Jens Grand, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/09433a.htm">Lund</a>. Isarnus, Archpriest of <a href="../cathen/03331b.htm">Carcassonne</a>, was commissioned (1295) by Boniface to threaten the king with spiritual penalties, unless the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a> were freed, pending the investigation of the matter at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, whither the king was invited to send representatives. The latter were actually sent, but were met at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> by Archbishop Grand, who had in the meanwhile escaped. Boniface decided for the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a>, and, when the king refused to yield, <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a> him and laid the kingdom under <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a> (1298). In 1303 Eric yielded, though his adversary was transferred to Riga and his <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">see</a> given (1304) to the <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> Isarnus. In <a href="../cathen/07547a.htm">Hungary</a> Chambert or Canrobert of Naples claimed the vacant crown as descendant of <a href="../cathen/14287a.htm">St. Stephen</a> on the distaff side, and was supported by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> in his quality of traditional overlord and protector of <a href="../cathen/07547a.htm">Hungary</a>. The nobles, however, elected Andrew III, and on his early demise (1301) chose Ladislaus, son of Wenceslaus II of <a href="../cathen/02612b.htm">Bohemia</a>. They paid no heed to the <a href="../cathen/08073a.htm">interdict</a> of the <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">papal legate</a>, and the arbitration of Boniface was finally declined by the envoys of Wenceslaus. The latter had accepted from the Polish nobles the Crown of <a href="../cathen/12181a.htm">Poland</a>, vacant owing to the banishment (1300) of Ladislaus I. The solemn warning of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and his protest against the violation of his right as overlord of <a href="../cathen/12181a.htm">Poland</a> were unheeded by Wenceslaus, who soon, moreover, allied himself with <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip the Fair</a>. In <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>, on the death of Rudolph of Hapsburg (1291), his son Albert, Duke of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>, declared himself king. The electors, however, chose (1292) Count Adolph of Nassau, whereupon Albert submitted. Adolph's government proving unsatisfactory, three of the electors deposed him at <a href="../cathen/09550a.htm">Mainz</a> (23 June, 1298) and <a href="../cathen/05479c.htm">enthroned</a> Albert. The rival kings appealed to arms; at Göllheim, near Worms, Adolph lost (2 July, 1298) both his life and crown. Albert was re-elected king by the Diet of <a href="../cathen/06237a.htm">Frankfort</a> and <a href="../cathen/04380a.htm">crowned</a> at <a href="../cathen/01001a.htm">Aachen</a> (24 August, 1298). The electors had sought regularly from Boniface recognition of their choice and imperial <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a>. He refused both on the plea that Albert was the murderer of his liege lord. Very soon Albert was at <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> with the three Rhenish archbishop-electors, and in 1301 the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> summoned him to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> to answer various charges. Victorious in battle (1302), Albert sent agents to Boniface with letters in which he denied having slain King Adolph, nor had he sought the battle <a href="../cathen/15506a.htm">voluntarily</a>, nor borne the royal title while Adolph lived, etc. Boniface eventually recognized his election (30 Apr., 1303). A little later (17 July) Albert renewed his <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">father's</a> <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of fidelity to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a>, recognized the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> authority in <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a> as laid down by Boniface (May, 1300), and promised to send no imperial vicar to <a href="../cathen/15103b.htm">Tuscany</a> or <a href="../cathen/09336b.htm">Lombardy</a> within the next five years without the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> consent, and to defend the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a> against its enemies. In his attempt to preserve the independence of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a>, Boniface was not successful. After the overthrow and <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> of John Baliol, and the defeat of Wallace (1298), the Scots Council of Regency sent envoys to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> to protest against the <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> superiority of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. Boniface, they said, was the only judge whose <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> extended over both kingdoms. Their realm belonged of right to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman See</a>, and to none other. Boniface wrote to Edward I (27 June, 1299) reminding him, says <a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Lingard</a>, "almost in the very words of the Scottish memorial", that <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> had belonged from ancient times and did still belong to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman See</a>; the king was to cease all <a href="../cathen/01210a.htm">unjust aggression</a>, free his captives, and pursue at the court of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> within six months any <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> that he claimed to the whole or part of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a>. This letter reached the king after much delay, through the hands of Robert of Winchelsea, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a>, and was laid by Edward before a parliament summoned to meet at Lincoln. In its reply (27 Sept., 1300) the latter denied, over the names of the 104 lay lords, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> claim of suzerainty over <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a>, and asserted that a king of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> had never pleaded before any judge, <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> or secular, respecting his <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> in <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> or any other temporal <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>, nor would they permit him to do so, were he thus inclined (<a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Lingard</a>, II, ch. vii). The king, however (7 May, 1301), supplemented this act by a memoir in which he set forth his royal view of the historical relations of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> and <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. In their reply to this plea the representatives of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> re-assert the immemorial suzerainty of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a> over <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> "the <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>, the peculiar allodium of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>"; in all controversies, they said, between these equal and independent kingdoms it is to their equal superior, the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, that recourse should be had. This somewhat academic conflict soon seemed hopeless at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, owing to the mutual <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> and quarrels of the weaker party (Bellesheim, "Hist. of the Cath. Church of Scotland", London, 1887, II, 9-11), and is of less importance than the strained relations between Boniface and Edward, apropos of the <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> taxation of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. In 1294, of his own authority, Edward I sequestered all moneys found in the treasuries of all churches and <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a>. Soon he demanded and obtained from the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> one half their incomes, both from lay fees and <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>. In the following year he called for a third or a fourth, but they refused to pay more than a tenth. When, at the Convocation of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a> (November, 1296), the king demanded a fifth of their income, the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a>, Robert of Winchelsea, in keeping with the new legislation of Boniface, offered to consult the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, whereupon the king outlawed the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular</a> and <a href="../cathen/12722c.htm">regular</a>, and seized all their lay fees, goods, and chattels. The northern Province of York yielded; in the Province of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a> many resisted for a time, among them the <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courageous</a> <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a>, who retired to a rural <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a>. Eventually he was reconciled with the king, and his goods were restored, but as Edward soon after demanded in his own right a third of all <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> revenues, his recognition of the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Clericis laicos" was evanescent. The memorable conflict with <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip the Fair</a> of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> began early in the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> reign and did not end even with the tragic close of his pontificate. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> chief aim was a general <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> peace, in the interest of a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> that would break forever, at what seemed a favourable moment, the power of <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Islam</a>. The main immediate obstacle to such a peace lay in the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> between <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> and <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, caused by Philip's <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> seizure of Gascony (1294). The chief combatants carried on the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> at the expense of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, whose representatives they sorely taxed. Such taxation had often been permitted in the past by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, but only for the purpose (real or alleged) of a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a>; now it was applied in ordre to raise revenue from <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> for purely secular <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">warfare</a>. The <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legates</a> sent by Boniface to both kings a few weeks after his elevation accomplished little; later efforts were rendered useless by the stubborn attitude of Philip. In the meantime numerous protests from the French <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> moved the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> to action, and with the approval of his <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> he published (24 Feb., 1296) the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Clericis laicos", in which he forbade the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> to exact or receive, and the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to give up, <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> revenues or <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>, without permission of the <a href="../cathen/01640c.htm">Apostolic See</a>; princes imposing such exactions and <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> submitting to them were declared <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a>. Other <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> of the thirteenth century, and the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179, 1215), had legislated similarly against the oppressors of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>; apart, therefore, from the opening line of the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a>, that seemed offensive as reflecting on the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> in general (Clericis laicos infensos esse oppido tradit antiquitas, i.e., "All history shows clearly the enmity of the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> towards the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>,"--in reality a byword in the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> and taken from earlier sources), there was nothing in its very general terms to rouse particularly the royal <a href="../cathen/01489a.htm">anger</a>. Philip, however, was indignant, and soon retaliated by a royal ordinance (17 Aug.) forbidding the export of gold or silver, precious stones, weapons, and food from his kingdom. He also forbade foreign merchants to remain longer within its bounds. These measures affected immediately the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a>, for it drew much of its revenue from <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, inclusive of crusade moneys, whence the numerous <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> collectors were henceforth banished. The king also caused to be prepared a proclamation (never <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgated</a>) concerning the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> to bear the public burden and the revocable character of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> <a href="../cathen/07690a.htm">immunities</a>. (For the generous contributions of the French <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to the national burdens, see the exhaustive statistics of Bourgain in "Rev. des quest. hist.", 1890, XLVIII, 62.) In the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Ineffabilis Amor" (20 Sept.) Boniface protested vigorously against these royal acts, and explained that he had never meant to forbid <a href="../cathen/15506a.htm">voluntary</a> gifts from the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> or contributions <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for the defence of the kingdom, of which necessity the king and his council were the judges. During 1297 the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> sought in various ways to appease the royal embitterment, notably by the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Etsi de Statu" (31 July), above all by the <a href="../cathen/02364b.htm">canonization</a> (11 Aug., 1297) of the king's grandfather, <a href="../cathen/09368a.htm">Louis IX</a>. The royal ordinance was withdrawn, and the painful incident seemed closed. In the meantime the truce which in 1296 Boniface had tried to impose on Philip and Edward was finally accepted by both kings early in 1298, for a space of two years. The disputed matters were referred to Boniface as arbiter, though Philip accepted him not as <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, but as a private <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>, as Benedetto Gaetano. The award, favourable to Philip, was issued (27 June) by Boniface in a public consistory. In the Jubilee of 1300 the high spirit of Boniface might well recognize a compensation and a consolation for previous humiliations. This unique celebration, the apogee of the temporal splendour of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> (Zaccaria, De anno Jubilæi, Rome, 1775), was formally inaugurated by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (29 June). Giovanni Villani, an eyewitness, relates in his Florentine chronicle that about 200,000 <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrims</a> were constantly in the City. It was <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> to make an opening in the wall of the Leonine City, near the Tiber, so that the multitude might have a larger freedom of movement. Pilgrims came from every country in <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> and even from distant <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>. Ominously enough, if we except the elder son of the King of <a href="../cathen/10683a.htm">Naples</a>, none of the kings or princes of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> came to pay their respects to the Vicar of Christ. The second crown in the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> <a href="../cathen/14714c.htm">tiara</a>, indicative of the temporal power, is said to date from the reign of Boniface, and may have been added at this time. In the meantime Philip continued in a merciless way his fiscal oppression of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, and abused more than ever the so-called regalia, or royal privilege of collecting the revenues of a <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a> during its vacancy. Since the middle of 1297 the exiled Colonna had found refuge and sympathy at the court of Philip, whence they spread <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnious</a> charges against Boniface, and urged the calling of a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a> for his deposition. The royal absolutism was now further incited by suggestions of a universal <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> dominion under the hegemony of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. The new state was to secure, besides the Holy Land, a universal peace. Both empires, the Byzantine and the German, were to be incorporated in it, and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a> was to become a purely spiritual <a href="../cathen/11549a.htm">patriarchate</a>, its temporalities administered by the French king, who would pay the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> an annual salary corresponding to his office. Such was the new Byzantinism outlined in a work on the recovery of the Holy Land ("De recuperatione terræ sanctæ", in Bongars, "Gesta Dei per Francos", II, 316-61, ed. Langlois, Paris, 1891), and though only the private work of Pierre Dubois, a civil servant of Philip, it probably reflected some fantastic plan of the king (Finke, Zur Charakteristik, 217-18). In the first half of 1301 Boniface commissioned Bernard de Saisset, <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/11435b.htm">Pamiers</a> (Languedoc), as <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> to Philip. He was to protest against the continued oppression of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, and to urge the king to apply conscientiously to a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a> the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> <a href="../cathen/14741b.htm">tithes</a> collected by <a href="../cathen/07789a.htm">papal indults</a>. For various reasons De Saisset was not a welcome envoy (Langlois, Hist. de France, ed. Lavisse, III, 2, 143). On his return to Pamiers he was accused of treasonable speech and incitement to insurrection, was brought to <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> (12 July, 1301), thence to Senlis, where he was found guilty in a trial directed by Pierre Flote, and known to modern historians (<a href="../cathen/12798b.htm">Von Reumont</a>) as "a model of <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">injustice</a> and <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>". De Saisset in vain protested his innocence and denied the competency of the civil court; he was committed temporarily to the care of the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of Narbonne, while Pierre Flote and <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Guillaume de Nogaret</a> went to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> to secure from Boniface the degradation of his <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> and his delivery to the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">secular authority</a>. Boniface acted with decision. He demanded form the king the immediate liberation of De Saisset and wrote to the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of Narbonne to detain the latter no longer. By the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Salvator Mundi" he withdrew the <a href="../cathen/07789a.htm">indults</a> by which the French king collected canonically <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> revenue for the defence of the kingdom, i.e., he re-established in vigour the "Clericis laicos" and in the famous <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> <a href="../cathen/02112c.htm">"Ausculta Fili"</a> (Listen, O Son) of 5 Dec., 1301, he stood forth as the mouthpiece of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a>, and as the genuine successor of the Gregories and the Innocents. In it he appeals to the king to listen to the Vicar of Christ, who is placed over kings and kingdoms (cf. <a href="../bible/jer001.htm#vrs10">Jeremiah 1:10</a>). He is the keeper of the keys, the judge of the living and the dead, and sits on the throne of <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, with power to extirpate all iniquity. He is the head of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, which is one and stainless, and not a many-headed monster, and has full Divine authority to pluck out and tear down, to build up and plant. Let not the king imagine that he has no superior, is not subject to the highest authority in the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> is concerned for the welfare of all kings and princes, but particularly for the house of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. He then goes on to relate his many grievances against the king, the application of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> goods to secular uses, despotic procedure in dragging <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> before civil courts, hindrance of episcopal authority, disrespect for <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> provisions and <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>, and oppression of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. He will no longer be responsible for the protection (custodia) of the monarch's <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>, but has decided, after consulting his <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, to call to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> for 4 Nov., 1302, the <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">French</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and <a href="../cathen/05072b.htm">doctors</a> of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a>, principal <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">abbots</a>, etc., to "dispose what is suitable for the correction of abuses, and for the reformation of the king and the kingdom". He invites the king to be present personally or through representatives, warns him against his <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> counsellors, and finally reminds him eloquently of the royal neglect of a <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusade</a>. An impartial reader, says <a href="../cathen/12798b.htm">Von Reumont</a>, will see that the document is only a repetition of previous <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> utterances and resumes the teaching of the most esteemed <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologians</a> on the nature and extension of <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> authority. It was presented to the king (10 Feb., 1302) by Jacques de Normans, <a href="../cathen/01693a.htm">Archdeacon</a> of Narbonne. The Comte d'Artois tore it from the Archdeacon's hands and cast it into the fire; another copy destined for the French <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> was suppressed (<a href="../cathen/07191a.htm">Hefele</a>, 2d ed., VI, 329). In the place of the <a href="../cathen/02112c.htm">"Ausculta Fili"</a>, there was at once circulated a forged <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a>, "Deum time" (Fear <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>), very probably the work of Pierre Flote, and with equal probability approved by the king. Its five or six brief haughty lines were really drawn up to include the fateful phrase, Scire te volumnus quod in spiritualibus et temporalibus nobis subes (i.e., We wish thee to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> that thou art our subject both in spiritual and in temporal matters). It was also added (an odious thing for the grandson of St. Louis) that whoever denied this was a <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretic</a>. <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> In vain did the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> protest against the <a href="../cathen/06135b.htm">forgery</a>; in vain did the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> explain, a little later, that the subjection spoken of in the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> was only ratione peccati, i.e., that the morality of every royal act, private or public, fell within the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> prerogative. The general tone of the <a href="../cathen/02112c.htm">"Ausculta Fili"</a>, its personal admonitions couched in severe Scriptural language, its proposal to provide from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> a good and prosperous administration of the French Kingdom, were not calculated to soothe at this juncture the minds of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">Frenchmen</a> already agitated by the events of the preceeding years. It is also improbable that Boniface was personally very popular with the <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">French</a> <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular clergy</a>, whose petition (1290) against the encroachments of the regular orders he had rejected in his rough sarcastic manner, when <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> (Finke in "Römische Quartalschrift", 1895, IX, 171; "Journal des Savants", 1895, 240). The national concern for the independence and <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> of the French king was further heightened by a forged reply of the king to Boniface, known as "Sciat maxima tua fatuitas". It begins: "Philip, by the <a href="../cathen/06689a.htm">grace of God</a> King of the <a href="../cathen/06238a.htm">Franks</a>, to Boniface who acts as <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Supreme Pontiff</a>. Let thy very great fatuity <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> that in temporal things we are subject to no one.…" Such a document, though probably never officially presented at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> (Hefele), certainly made its way thither. After forbidding the French <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to go to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> or to send thither any moneys, and setting a watch on all roads, ports, and passes leading to <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>, Philip forestalled the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> November council by a national assembly at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> (10 April, 1301) in the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">Cathedral</a> of Notre Dame. The forged <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> was read before the representatives of the three estates; the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> was <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violently</a> denounced by Pierre Flote as aiming at temporal sovereignty in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>; the king besought as their friend, and as their ruler commanded all present to aid him with their counsel. Nobles and burghers offered to shed their blood for the king; the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, confused and hesitating, sought delay, but finally yielded so far as to write to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> quite in the sense of the king. The lay estate directed to the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> a defiant protest, in which they withheld the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> title from Boniface, recounted the services of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a>, and re- echoed the usual royal complaints, above all the calling to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> of the principal <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> of the nation. The letter of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> was directed to Boniface and begged him to maintain the former concord, to withdraw the call for the council, and suggested <a href="../cathen/12517b.htm">prudence</a> and moderation, since the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> was prepared to defy all <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> censures. In the reply of the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> to the lay estates, they assert their complete harmony with the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, denounce the aforesaid forgeries, and maintain that the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> never asserted a right of temporal sovereignty in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. In his reply Boniface roundly scourged the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> for their cowardice, human respect, and selfishness; at the same time he made use, after his fashion, of not a few expressions offensive to the <a href="../cathen/12405a.htm">pride</a> of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">French</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> and poured sarcasm over the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of the powerful Pierre Flote (Hefele). Finally, in a public consistory (August, 1302) at which the envoys of the king were present, the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#b">Cardinal-Bishop</a> of Porto formally denied that the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> had ever claimed any temporal sovereignty over <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> and asserted that the genuine <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> (<a href="../cathen/02112c.htm">Ausculta Fili</a>) had been well weighed and was an act of <a href="../cathen/09397a.htm">love</a>, despite the fatherly severity of certain expressions. He insisted that the king was no more free than any other <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> from the supreme <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">ecclesiastical jurisdiction</a> of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, and maintained the unity of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> authority. The <a href="../cathen/01640c.htm">Apostolic See</a>, he said, was not foreign territory, nor could its nominees be rightly called foreigners. For the rest, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> had full authority in temporal matters ratione peccati, i.e., in as far as the morality of <a href="../cathen/01115a.htm">human acts</a> was concerned. He went on, however, to say that in temporal <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> one must distinguish the right (de jure) and its use and execution (usus et executio). The former belonged to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> as Vicar of Christ and of Peter; to deny it was to deny an <a href="../cathen/01755d.htm">article of faith</a>, i.e., that Christ judges the living and the dead. This claim, says Hefele (2d ed., VI, 346), "must have appeared to the French as quite destructive of the aforesaid limitation ratione peccati. <a href="../cathen/06796a.htm">Gregory IX</a> had maintained (1232, 1236), in his conflict with the Greeks and with <a href="../cathen/06255a.htm">Frederick II</a>, that <a href="../cathen/04295c.htm">Constantine the Great</a> had given temporal power to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, and that emperors and kings were only his auxiliaries, bound to use the material sword at his direction (Conciliengesch., 2d ed., V, 102, 1044). This theory, however, had never yet been officially put forth against <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, and was all the more likely to rouse opposition in that nation, since it was now a question not of a theory, but of a practical situation, i.e., of the investigation of Philip's government and the menace of his deposition." He refers to the closing words of the discourse with which Boniface supplemented that of the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm#b">Cardinal-Bishop</a> of Porto, viz., that his predecessors had deposed three French kings, and, though unequal to such <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, he would, however sorrowfully, depose King Philip, sicut unum garcionem (like a servant); he thinks it not impossible (Hergenröther, Kirche und Staat, 229; Hefele, IV, 344) that the present harsh conclusion of the discourse of Boniface is one of the numerous forgeries of Pierre Flote and <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a>. In the first half of this discourse the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> insists on the great development of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> under <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> protection, the shameless forgeries of Pierre Flote, the exclusive <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> nature of the grant (collatio) of <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>, and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> preference for <a href="../cathen/05072b.htm">doctors</a> of <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theology</a> as aginst lay nepotism in matters of <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>. He is wroth over the assertion that he claimed <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> as a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> fief. "We have been a doctor of both <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> (civil and canon) these forty years, and who can believe that such folly [fatuitas] ever entered Our head?" Boniface also expressed his willingness to accept the mediation of the Duke of <a href="../cathen/03068a.htm">Burgundy</a> or the Duke of Brittany; the efforts of the former, however, availed not, as the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> insisted on satisfaction for the burning of the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">papal Bull</a> and the <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnious</a> attacks on Boniface. The king replied by confiscating the goods of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> who had set out for the Roman Council, which met 30 Oct., 1302. There were present four <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishops</a>, thirty-five <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, six <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">abbots</a>, and several <a href="../cathen/05072b.htm">doctors</a>. Its acts have disappeared, probably during the process against the memory of Boniface (1309-11). Two <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a>, however, were issued as a result of its deliberations. One <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a> whoever hindered, <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a>, or otherwise ill-treated <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> journeying to, or returning from, <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The other (18 Nov., 1302) is the famous "Unam Sanctam", probably the composition of Ægidius Colonna, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/02720b.htm">Bourges</a> and a member of the council, and largely made up of passages from such famous <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologians</a> as <a href="../cathen/02498d.htm">St. Bernard</a>, <a href="../cathen/07521c.htm">Hugo of St. Victor</a>, <a href="../cathen/14663b.htm">St. Thomas Aquinas</a>, and others. Its chief concepts are as follows (Hergenröther-Kirsch, 4th ed., II, 593): (1) There is but one <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> Church, outside of which there is no <a href="../cathen/13407a.htm">salvation</a>; but one body of Christ with one head and not two. (2) That head is Christ and His representative, the Roman <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>; whoever refuses the pastoral care of Peter belongs not to the flock of Christ. (3) There are two swords (i.e., powers), the spiritual and the temporal; the first borne by the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, the second for the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>; the first by the hand of the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a>, the second by that of the king, but under the direction of the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> (ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis). (4) Since there must be a co- <a href="../cathen/11279a.htm">ordination</a> of members from the lowest to the highest, it follows that the spiritual power is above the temporal and has the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to instruct (or establish--instituere) the latter regarding its highest end and to judge it when it does <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; whoever resists the highest power <a href="../cathen/11279a.htm">ordained</a> of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> resists <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> Himself. (5) It is <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for <a href="../cathen/13407a.htm">salvation</a> that all men should be subject to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Roman Pontiff</a>--"Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanæ creaturæ declaramus, dicimus, definimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis". (For a more detailed account of the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> and several controversies concerning it see <a href="../cathen/15126a.htm">UNAM SANCTAM</a>.) Philip had a refutation of the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> prepared by the <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominican</a> Jean Quidort (Joannes Parisiensis) in his "Tractatus de potestate regiâ et papali" (Goldast, Monarchia, ii, 108 sq.), and the conflict passed at once from the domain of principle to the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of Boniface. The king now rejected the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> as arbiter in his disputes with <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and <a href="../cathen/06094b.htm">Flanders</a>, and gave a courteous but evasive answer to the Legate, Jean Lemoine, whom the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> sent (February, 1303) on a mission of peace, but with insistence, among other conditions, on recognition of the aforesaid <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papacy</a>. Lemoine was further commissioned to declare to Philip that, in default of a more satisfactory reply to the twelve points of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> letter, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> would proceed spiritualiter et temporaliter against him, i.e., would <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicate</a> and depose him. Boniface also sent to Lemoine (13 Apr., 1303) two Briefs, in one of which he declared the king already <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a>, and in the other ordered all <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">French</a> <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> to come to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> within three months. In the meantime there was brewing at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> the storm in which the pontificate of Boniface was so disastrously to close. Philip concluded peace with <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, temporized with the Flemings, and made concessions to his subjects. Boniface on his side acknowledged, as aforesaid, the election of Albert of <a href="../cathen/02121b.htm">Austria</a>, and brought to an end his hopeless conflict with the <a href="../cathen/03410b.htm">Aragonese</a> King of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a>. Otherwise he seemed politically helpless, and could only trust, as he publicly stated, in his sense of <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> and <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a>. Later events showed that in his own household he could not count on loyalty. In an extraordinary session of the French Council of State (12 March, 1303) <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Guillaume de Nogaret</a> appealed to Philip to protect the Holy Church against the intruder and <a href="../cathen/05781a.htm">false</a> <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, Boniface, a <a href="../cathen/14001a.htm">simonist</a>, robber, and <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretic</a>, maintaining that the king, moreover, ought to call an assembly of the <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> and peers of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, through whose efforts a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a> might be convoked, before which he would prove his charges. Such an assembly was called for 13 June, and met at the Louvre in <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a>. The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> messenger with the aforesaid Briefs for the <a href="../cathen/09118a.htm">legate</a> was seized at <a href="../cathen/15067a.htm">Troyes</a> and <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a>; Lemoine himself, after protesting against such <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>, fled. At this assembly, packed with friends or creatures of Philip, the <a href="../cathen/03691a.htm">knight</a> Guillaume de Plaisians (Du Plessis) submitted a solemn accusation against the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> in twenty-nine points, offered to prove the same, and begged the king to provide for a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a>. The Colonna furnished the material for these <a href="../cathen/08001a.htm">infamous</a> charges, long since adjudged <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnious</a> by grave historians (<a href="../cathen/07191a.htm">Hefele</a>, Conciliengesch., 2nd ed., VI, 460-63; Giovanni Villani, a contemporary, says that the Council of Vienne, in 1312, formally absolved him from the charge of <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>. Cf. Muratori, "SS. Rer. Ital.", XIV, 454; Raynaldus, ad an. 1312, 15-16). Scarcely any possible crime was omitted--infidelity, <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>, <a href="../cathen/14001a.htm">simony</a>, gross and unnatural immorality, <a href="../cathen/07636a.htm">idolatry</a>, magic, loss of the Holy Land, death of <a href="../cathen/03479b.htm">Celestine V</a>, etc. The king asserted that it was only to satisfy his <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> and to protect the <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> that he would co-operate in the calling of a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a>, asked the help of the <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a>, and appealed (against any possible action of Boniface) to the future council, the future <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, and to all to whom appeal could be made. Five <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishops</a>, twenty-one <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, and some <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">abbots</a> sided with the king. The resolutions of the assembly were read to the people, and several hundred adhesions were secured from chapters, <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a>, and provincial cities, mostly through <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> and intimidation. The <a href="../cathen/01015c.htm">Abbot</a> of <a href="../cathen/03792a.htm">Cîteaux</a>, Jean de Pontoise, protested, but was <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a>. Royal letters were sent to the princes of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>, also to the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> and <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, setting forth the king's new-found <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a> for the welfare of Holy Church. In a public consistory at <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> (August, 1303) Boniface cleared himself on his solemn <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of the charges brought against him at <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> and proceeded at once to protect the Apostolic authority. Citations before the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> were declared valid by the mere fact of being affixed to the church doors at the seat of the <a href="../cathen/13147a.htm">Roman Curia</a>, and he <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunicated</a> all who hindered such citations. He suspended Archbishop Gerhard of <a href="../cathen/11071c.htm">Nicosia</a> (Cyprus), the first signatory of the <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatical</a> resolutions. Pending satisfaction to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, the <a href="../cathen/11495a.htm">University of Paris</a> lost the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">right</a> to confer degrees in <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theology</a> and in canon and <a href="../cathen/09066a.htm">civil law</a>. He suspended temporarily for <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> the right of election in all <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> bodies, reserved to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> all vacant <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">French</a> <a href="../cathen/02473c.htm">benefices</a>, repelled as <a href="../cathen/02595a.htm">blasphemies</a> the <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnious</a> charges of de Plaisians, saying "Who ever heard that We were a <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretic</a>?" (Raynaldus, ad an. 1311, 40), and denounced the appeal to a future general council which could be convoked by none other than himself, the legitimate <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. He declared that unless the king repented he would inflict on him the severest punishments of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Super Petri solio" was ready for <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgation</a> on 8 September. It contained in traditional form the solemn <a href="../cathen/05678a.htm">excommunication</a> of the king and the liberation of his subjects from their <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of fidelity. Philip, however, and his counsellors had taken measures to rob this step of all force, or rather to prevent it at a decisive moment. It had long been their plan to seize the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of Boniface and compel him to abdicate, or, in case of his refusal, to bring him before a <a href="../cathen/04423f.htm">general council</a> in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> for condemnation and deposition. Since April, <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a> and Sciarra Colonna had been active in <a href="../cathen/15103b.htm">Tuscany</a> for the formation, at Philip's expense, of a band of mercenaries, some 2,000 strong, horse and foot. Very early on the morning of 7 September the band appeared suddenly before <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a>, under the lilies of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, shouting, "Long live the King of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> and Colonna!" Fellow-conspirators in the town admitted them, and they at once attacked the palaces of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> and his nephew. The ungrateful citizens fraternized with the besiegers of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, who in the meanwhile obtained a truce until three in the afternoon, when he rejected the conditions of Sciarra, viz., restoration of the Colonna, abdication, and delivery to Sciarra of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>. About six o'clock, however, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> stronghold was penetrated through the adjoining <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a>. The soldiers, Sciarra at their head, sword in hand (for he had sworn to slay Boniface), at once filled the hall in which the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> awaited them with five of his <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, among them his beloved nephew Francesco, all of whom soon fled; only a <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spaniards</a>, the <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">Cardinal</a> of Santa Sabina, remained at his side to the end. In the meantime the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> palace was thoroughly plundered; even the archives were destroyed. Dino Compagni, the Florentine chronicler, relates that when Boniface saw that further resistance was useless he exclaimed, "Since I am betrayed like the Saviour, and my end is nigh, at least I shall die as Pope." Thereupon he ascended his throne, clad in the pontifical ornaments, the <a href="../cathen/14714c.htm">tiara</a> on his head, the keys in one hand, a cross in the other, held close to his breast. Thus he confronted the angry men-at-arms. It is said that <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a> prevented Sciarra Colonna from killing the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a> himself made known to Boniface the <a href="../cathen/11480c.htm">Paris</a> resolutions and threatened to take him in chains to <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a>, where he should be deposed. Boniface looked down at him, some say without a word, others that he replied: "Here is my head, here is my neck; I will patiently bear that I, a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> and lawful pontiff and vicar of Christ, be condemned and deposed by the Paterini [<a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, in reference to the <a href="../cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> of the Tolosan Nogaret]; I desire to die for <a href="../cathen/08374c.htm">Christ's</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> and His <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>." <a href="../cathen/12798b.htm">Von Reumont</a> asserts that there is no evidence for the physical maltreatment of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> by Sciarra or <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a>. <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante</a> (Purgatorio, XX, 86) lays more stress on the moral <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>, though his words easily convey the notion of physical wrong: "I see the flower-de-luce <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> enter, and Christ in his own Vicar captive made; I see him yet another time derided; I see renewed the vinegar and gall, and between living thieves I see him slain." Boniface was held three days a close <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisoner</a> in the plundered <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> palace. No one cared to bring him food or drink, while the banditti quarrelled over his <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>, as over a valuable asset. By early morning of 9 September the burghers of <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> had changed their minds, wearied perhaps of the presence of the soldiers, and ashamed that a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, their townsman, should perish within their walls at the hands of the <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hated</a> Francesi. They expelled <a href="../cathen/11089a.htm">Nogaret</a> and his band, and confided Boniface to the care of the two Orsini <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a>, who had come from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> with four hundred horsemen; with them he returned to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. Before leaving <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> he pardoned several of the marauders captured by the townsmen, excepting the plunderers of <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">Church property</a>, unless they returned it within three days. He reached <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, 13 Sept., but only to fall under the close surveillance of the Orsini. No one will wonder that his bold spirit now gave way beneath the weight of grief and melancholy. He died of a violent fever, 11 October, in full possession of his senses and in the presence of eight <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> and the chief members of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> household, after receiving the <a href="../cathen/13295a.htm">sacraments</a> and making the usual profession of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>. His life seemed destined to close in gloom, for, on account of an unusually violent storm, he was buried, says an old chronicler, with less decency than became a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. His body lies in the <a href="../cathen/04558a.htm">crypt</a> of St. Peter's in a large marble sarcophagus, laconically inscribed BONIFACIUS PAPA VIII. When his <a href="../cathen/14773b.htm">tomb</a> was opened (9 Oct., 1605) the body was found quite intact, especially the shapely hands, thus disproving another <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumny</a>, viz., that he had died in a frenzy, gnawing his hands, beating his brains out against the wall, and the like (<a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a>). Boniface was a patron of the <a href="../cathen/05248a.htm">fine arts</a> such as <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> had never yet seen among its <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, though, as Guiraud warns us (p. 6), it is not easy to separate what is owing to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> own initiative from what we owe to his nephew and biographer, the art-loving Cardinal Stefaneschi. Modern historians of <a href="../cathen/12765b.htm">Renaissance</a> art (Müntz, Guiraud) date its first efficient progress from him. The "iodolatry" accusation of the Colonna comes from the marble <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">statues</a> that grateful towns, like <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> and <a href="../cathen/11736a.htm">Perugia</a>, raised to him on public sites, "where there once were idols", says a contemporary, an anti-Bonifacian <a href="../cathen/09210a.htm">libel</a> (Guiraud, 4). The <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a> <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">statue</a> stands yet in the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> of that town, repaired by him. He also repaired and fortified the Gaetani palace in <a href="../cathen/01448a.htm">Anagni</a>, and improved in a similar way neighbouring towns. At <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> the Palace of the Senator was enlarged, Castel Sant' Anagelo fortified, and the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of San Lorenzo in Panisperna built anew. He encouraged the work on the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> of <a href="../cathen/11736a.htm">Perugia</a>, while that gem of ornamental Gothic, the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> of <a href="../cathen/11331c.htm">Orvieto</a> (1290-1309), was largely finished during his pontificate. For the great Jubilee of 1300 he had the churches of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> restored and decorated, notably St. John Lateran, St. Peter's and St. Mary Major. He called <a href="../cathen/06565a.htm">Giotto</a> to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and gave him constant occupation. A portrait of Boniface by <a href="../cathen/06565a.htm">Giotto</a> is still to be seen in St. John Lateran; in our own day M. Müntz has restored the original concept, and in it is seen the noble balcony of Cassetta, whence, during the jubilee, the pontiff was wont to bestow upon the vast multitude the blessing of <a href="../cathen/15403b.htm">Christ's vicar</a>. In the time of Boniface the Cosimati continued and improved their work and under the influence of <a href="../cathen/06565a.htm">Giotto</a> rose, like Cavallini, to higher concepts of art. The delicate French miniaturists were soon equalled by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> Vatican scribes; two glorious <a href="../cathen/10354c.htm">missals</a> of Oderisio da Gubbio, "Agubbio's honour", may yet be seen at the Vatican, where lived and worked his disciple, likewise immortalized by <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante</a> (Purg., XI, 79), who speaks of "the laughing leaves touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese". Finally, <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">sculpture</a> was <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honoured</a> by Boniface in the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of <a href="../cathen/01750a.htm">Arnolfo di Cambio</a>, who built for him the "Chapel of the Crib" in St. Mary Major, and executed (Müntz) the sarcophagus in which he was buried. Boniface was also a friend of the <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">sciences</a>. He founded (6 June, 1303) the <a href="../cathen/13177a.htm">University of Rome</a>, known as the Sapienza, and in the same year the <a href="../cathen/15188a.htm">University</a> of <a href="../cathen/06043c.htm">Fermo</a>. Finally, it was Boniface who began anew the Vatican Library, whose treasures had been scattered, together with the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> archives, in 1227, when the Roman Frangipani passed over to the side of <a href="../cathen/06255a.htm">Frederick II</a> and took with them the turris chartularia, i.e. the ancient repository of the documents of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. The thirty-three Greek <a href="../cathen/09614b.htm">manuscripts</a> the Vatican Library contained in 1311 are pronounced by Fr. Ehrle the earliest known, and long the most important, <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> collection of Greek works in the West. Boniface <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honoured</a> with increased solemnity (1298) the feasts of the four evangelists, twelve Apostles, and four <a href="../cathen/05075a.htm">Doctors of the Church</a> (Ambrose, <a href="../cathen/02084a.htm">Augustine</a>, <a href="../cathen/08341a.htm">Jerome</a>, <a href="../cathen/06780a.htm">Gregory the Great</a>, egregios ipsius doctores Ecclesiæ) by raising them to the rank of "double feasts". He was one of the most distinguished canonists of his age, and as <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> enriched the general <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> legislation by the <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgation</a> ("Sacrosanctæ", 1298) of a large number of his own constitutions and of those of his predecessors, since 1234, when <a href="../cathen/06796a.htm">Gregory IX</a> <a href="../cathen/12454b.htm">promulgated</a> his five books of <a href="../cathen/04670b.htm">Decretals</a>. In reference to this the collection of Boniface was entitled "Liber Sextus", i.e., Sixth Book of Pontifical Constitutions (Laurin, Introd. in Corp. Juris can., Freiburg, 1889), being constructed on the same lines. Few <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a> have aroused more diverse and contradictory appreciations. <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> historians, generally, and even modern <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> writers, wrote <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a> in 1844, class him among the wicked <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, as an ambitious, haughty, and unrelenting man, deceitful also and treacherous, his whole pontificate one record of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. To dissipate this grossly exaggerated and even <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnious</a> view, it is well to distinguish his utterances and deeds as <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> from his personal character, that even in his lifetime seemed to many unsympathetic. Careful examination of the sources of his most famous public pronouncements has shown that they are largely a <a href="../cathen/10584a.htm">mosaic</a> of teachings of earlier <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologians</a>, or solemn reenforcements of the canons of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> and well-known <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a> of his predecessors. His chief aims, the peace of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> and the recovery of the Holy Land, were those of all preceding <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>. He did no more than his <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> in defending the <a href="../cathen/15179a.htm">unity of the Church</a> and the supremacy of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> authority when threatened by <a href="../cathen/12004a.htm">Philip the Fair</a>. His politico-ecclesiastical dealings with the kings of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> will naturally be blamed by Erastians and by those who ignore, on the one hand, the rapacity of an Edward and the wily vindictiveness and obtuse selfishness of a Philip, and on the other, the supreme fatherly office of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> as the respected head of one mighty <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> of peoples, whose civil institutions were only slowly coalescing amid the decay of <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudalism</a> and ancient barbarism (Gosselin, <a href="../cathen/12798b.htm">Von Reumont</a>), and who were long conscious that in the past they owed to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> alone (i.e., to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>) sure and swift <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, equitable courts and procedure, and relief from a <a href="../cathen/06058c.htm">feudal</a> absolutism justified as yet by no commensurate public service. "The loftiest, truest view of the character and conduct of the popes has often been overlooked", says <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a> (op. cit.); "the divine <a href="../cathen/08050b.htm">instinct</a> which animated them, the <a href="../cathen/07687a.htm">immortal</a> destiny alloted to them, the heavenly cause confided to them, the superhuman aid which strengthened them could not be appreciated but by a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> mind, and are too generally excluded from <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> historians, or are transformed into corresponding human capacities, or policies, or energies, or virtues." He goes on to say that, after examination of several popular assertions affecting the moral and <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> conduct of Boniface, this <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> appeared to him in a new light, "as a pontiff who began his reign with most glorious promise and closed it amid sad calamities; who devoted, through it all, the energies of a great mind, cultivated by profound learning and matured by long experience in the most delicate <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> affairs, to the attainment of a truly noble end; and who, throughout his career, displayed many great virtues, and could plead in extenuation of his faults the convulsed state of public affairs, the rudeness of his times, and the faithless, violent character of many among those with whom he had to deal. These circumstances, working upon a mind naturally upright and inflexible, led to a sternness of manner and a severity of conduct, which when viewed through the feelings of modern times, may appear extreme, and almost unjustifiable. But after searching through the pages of his most hostile historians, we are satisfied that this is the only point on which even a plausible charge can be brought against him." The memory of Boniface, curiously enough, has suffered most from two great poets, mouthpieces of an ultra-spiritual and impossible <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a>, Fra <a href="../cathen/08263a.htm">Jacopone da Todi</a> and <a href="../cathen/04628a.htm">Dante</a>. The former was the "sublime fool" of spiritual <a href="../cathen/09397a.htm">love</a>, author of the "Stabat Mater", and chief singer of the "Spirituals", or extreme <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscans</a>, kept in <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prison</a> by Boniface, whom he therefore satirized in the popular and musical vernacular of the peninsula. The latter was a <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Ghibelline</a>, i.e., a political antagonist of the <a href="../cathen/07056c.htm">Guelph</a> <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, to whom, moreover, he attributed all his personal misfortunes, and whom he therefore pilloried before the bar of his own <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, but in quivering lines of <a href="../cathen/07687a.htm">immortal</a> invective whose malignant beauty will always trouble the reader's judgment. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> historians like Hergenröther-Kirsch (4th ed., II, 597-98) praise the uprightness of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope's</a> motives and that <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a> of his convictions which almost on the eve of his death made him count as straws all earthly rulers, if only he had <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> and <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a> on his side (op. cit., II, 597, note 4). They admit, however, the explosive <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> and offensive phraseology of some of his public documents, and the occasional imprudence of his political measures; he walked in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors, but the new enemies were more fierce and <a href="../cathen/09324a.htm">logical</a> than the extirpated Hohenstaufen, and were quicker to pervert and utilize the public opinion of young and proud nationalities. A contemporary and eyewitness, Giovanni Villani, has left in his Florentine chronicle (Muratori, XIII, 348 sqq.) a portrait of Boniface which the judicious <a href="../cathen/12798b.htm">Von Reumont</a> seems to consider quite reliable. According to it Boniface, the most clever canonist of his time, was a great-hearted and generous man and a lover of magnificence, but also arrogant, proud, and stern in manner, more feared than <a href="../cathen/09397a.htm">loved</a>, too worldly-minded for his high office and too fond of money both for the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> and for his <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a>. His nepotism was open. He founded the Roman house of the Gaetani, and in the process of exalting his <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> drew down upon himself the effective <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> of the Colonna and their strong clansmen. <a href="../cathen/07035c.htm">Gröne</a>, a German <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> historian of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">popes</a>, says of Boniface (II, 164) that while his utterances equal in importance those of <a href="../cathen/06791c.htm">Gregory VII</a> and <a href="../cathen/08013a.htm">Innocent III</a>, the latter were always more ready to act, Boniface to discourse; they relied on the Divine strength of their office, Boniface on the cleverness of his canonical deductions. For the process against his memory see <a href="../cathen/04020a.htm">CLEMENT V</a>. <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-bottom' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <div class="cenotes"><h2>Sources</h2>Original materials.--The history of Boniface is best found in DIGARD, FAUCON, AND THOMAS, Les registres de Boniface VIII. (Paris, 1884, sqq.); DU PUY (Gallican), Hist. du différend du pape Boniface VIII. avec Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1655), with a very partial selection and arrangement of valuable, but badly edited, materials; BAILLET (violent Jansenist), Hist. des désmelez du pape Boniface VIII. avec Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1718). On the Roman side see: VIGOR, Historia eorum qua acta sunt inter Philippe, Pulcher, et Bonif. VIII. (Rome, 1639); RUBEUS, Boniface VIII et Familia Caietanorum (Rome, 1651). The earlier career and coronation of the pope are related (in verse) by CARDINAL STEPANESCHI (STEPHANESIUS) in Acta SS. (May, IV, 471). RAYNAULDUS, Ann. Eccl. (1294-1303), where many of the most important documents are given in full. Contemporary Chroniclers. --VILLANI, Hist. Fiorentine, in Muratori SS. Rer. Ital., XIII, 348; DINO COMPAGNI, Chronica, ed. DE LONGO (Florence, 1879-87); the Italian chroniclers quoted in HERGENRÖTHER-KIRSCH (4th ed.) are in MURATORI, Scriptores. For the election of Boniface see HEFELE, Conciliengesch.; SOUCHON, Die Papstwahlen von Bonifaz VIII. bei Urban VI., etc. (Brunswick, 1888); FINKE, Aus den Tagen etc., 44- 76; DENIFLE, Das Denkschrift der Colonna gegen Bonifaz VIII., u. der Kardinäle gegen die Colonna, in Archiv für Litt. u. Kircheng. des M. A. (1892), V, 493. For the Anagni incident see: KERVYN DE LETTENHOVE, in Rev. der quest. hist. (1872), XI, 411; DIGARD, ibid. (1888), XXIII, 557. Catholic Biography. --Besides the general historians, FLEURY (Gallican), ROSENBACHER, CHRISTOPHER, see CHANTREL, Boniface VIII. (Paris, 1862), and the excellent work of TOSTI, Storia de Bonifazio VIII e de’ suoi tempi (Monte Cassino, 1846). The most important modern critical contributions to the life of Boniface are those of FINKE, op. cit. (Munich, 1902), the result of new discoveries in medieval archives, especially at Barcelona, among the papers of the reign of James II, King of Aragon and contemporary of Boniface (reports of the royal agents at Rome, etc.). Cf. Anal. Bolland. (1904), XXIII, 339; Rev. des quest. hist. (1903), XXVI, 122; Lit. Rundschau (1902), XXVIII, 315; and Canoniste Contemporain (1903), XXVI, 122. See also FINKE, Bonifaz VIII., in Hochland (1904), I; IDEM, Zur Charakteristik Philipps des Schönen in Mittheil. des Inst. f. æst. Geschichtsforschung (1905), XXIV, 201-14. An excellent apology is that of (CARDINAL) WISEMAN, Pope Boniface VIII, in Dublin Review (1844), reprinted in Historical Essays; HEMMER, in Dict. de théol cath., II, i, 982-1003 (good bibliography); and the thorough study of HEFELE, op. cit. (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1890), VI, 281 passim; JUNGMANN, Diss. selectæ in hist. eccl. (Ratisbon, 1886), VI. The (non-Catholic) work of DRUMANN, Geschichte Bonifaz VIII. (Königsberg, 1852), is learned but partisan. Political Situation and Attitude of Medieval Popes.--See the solid work of GOSSELIN, The Power of the Pope in the Middle Ages, tr. KELLY (London, 1883); the erudite work of HERGENRÖTHER, Kath. Kirche und christ. Staat (Freiburg, 1873); Eng. tr. London, 1876); BAUDRILLARD, Des idées qu'on se faisait au XIVe siècle sur le droit d'interven. du Souv. Pont. dans les affaires polit., in Revue d'hist. et de litt. relig. (Paris, 1898); PLANCK, Hist. de la const. de la soc. eccl. chrét. (1809), V, 12-154 (favourable). The most notable of the modern French writers favourable to Philip are: LECLERCQ and RENAN, in Hist. Litt. de la France au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1865); [see RENAN, Etudes sur la polit. relig. du règne de Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1889)]; and LANGLOIS, Hist. de France, ed. LAVISSE (Paris, 1901), III, II, 127-73; cf. the equitable study of BOUTARIC, La France sous Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1861); also the fair narrative of VON REUMONT, Gesch. der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1867), II, i, 614-71; GGEGOROVIUS (non-Catholic), Gesch. d. Stadt Rom (3d ed., Stuttgart, 1878), V, 501, tr. by Hamilton; HÖFLER, Rückblick auf Papst Bonifaz VIII., in Abhandl. d. bayrisch. Akad. d. Wiss. hist. Kl. (Munich, 1843), III, iii, 32 sqq.; ROCQUAIN, La Cour de Rome et l'esprit de réforme avant Luther (Paris, 1895), II, 258-512; LAURENT, L'Église et l'Etat, moyen âge et réforme (Paris, 1866), violent and unjust. Pamphlet Literature. --For both sides, see SCHOLZ, Die Publizistik zur Zeit Ph. des Schönen und Bonif. VIII. (Stuttgart, 1903); also SCADUTO, Stato e Chiesa negli scriti politici, 1122-1347 (Florence, 1847); and RIEZLER, Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern (Munich, 1874). Important new monographs concerning chief figures in the conflict are those of HOLTZMANN, Wilhelm von Nogaret (Freiburg, 1898); and HUYSKINS, Kardinal Napoleon Orsini, ein Lebensbild, etc. (Marburg, 1902). Among the latest studies, based on the above-described researches of Dr. Finke, are: SCHOLZ, Zur Beurteilung Bonifaz VIII. und seines sittlich-religiosen Charakters, in Hist. Vierteljahrschrift (1906), IX, 470-506; WENCK, War Bonifaz VIII. ein Ketzer? in Hist. Zeitschrift (1905), 1-66 (maintaining that Boniface was an Averroist), and the good refutation by HOLTZMANN, Papst Bonifaz VIII., ein Ketzer? in Mittheil. d. Inst. f. æst. Gesch. f(1905), 488-98; cf. WENCK's reply, ibid. (1906), 185-95. The Bull "Unum Sanctam": BERCHTOLD, Die Bulle Unam Sanctam, etc., und ihre wahre Bedeutung für Kirche und Staat (1887); cf. GRAVERT in Hist. Jahrbuch (1887). MUMET, in Rev. des quest. hist. (July, 1887), abandoned his (and DANBERGER'S thesis that this Bull was a forgery (ibid., 1879), 91-130. On the exact sense of the much-disputed instituere (instruct or establish?) in "Unam Sanctam", see FUNK, Kirchengesch. Abhandlungen (Paderborn, 1897), I, 483- 89. For the services of Boniface to the sciences and the fine arts, see EHRLE, Zur Gesch. des Schatzes, der Bibl. und des Archivs der Päpste in 14. Jahrh., in Archiv für Litt. u. Kircheng. des M. A. (1885), I, i, 228; IDEM, Hist. Biblioth. Avenionen. (Rome, --); MOLINIER, Inventaire du trésor du Saint-Siège sous Boniface VIII., in Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes (1882-85); the writings of the art-historian, MÜNTZ, and GUIRARD, L'Église et les Origines de la Renaissancea (Paris, 1904).</div> <div class="pub"><h2>About this page</h2>APA citation. Oestereich, T. (1907). Pope Boniface VIII. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02662a.htmMLA citation. Oestereich, Thomas. "Pope Boniface VIII." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02662a.htm>.Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by WGKofron. With thanks to Fr. John Hilkert, Akron, Ohio.Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. 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