Pope Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII
Bishop of Rome
Fresco of Boniface VIII declaring the Jubilee Year by Giotto, 1300
Church	Catholic Church
Papacy began	24 December 1294
Papacy ended	11 October 1303
Predecessor	Celestine V
Successor	Benedict XI
Previous posts	Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere (1281–1291) Cardinal-Priest of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti (1291–1294)
Orders
Consecration	23 January 1295 by Hugh Aycelin
Created cardinal	12 April 1281 by Martin IV
Personal details
Born	Benedetto Caetani c. 1230 Anagni, Papal States
Died	11 October 1303 (aged 72–73) Rome, Papal States
Other popes named Boniface

Pope Boniface VIII (Latin: Bonifacius PP. VIII, Italian: Bonifacio VIII; born Benedetto Caetani; c. 1230 – 11 October 1303) was head of the Catholic Church and leader of the Papal States from 24 December 1294 until his death in 1303. The Caetani family was of baronial origin with connections to the papacy. He succeeded Pope Celestine V, who had abdicated from the papal throne. Boniface spent his early pontificate abroad in diplomatic roles.

Boniface VIII put forward some of the strongest claims of any pope to temporal as well as spiritual power. He involved himself often with foreign affairs, including in France, Sicily, Italy, and the First War of Scottish Independence. These views, and his chronic intervention in temporal affairs, led to many bitter quarrels with Albert I of Germany, Philip IV of France, and later Dante Alighieri, who expected the pope to soon arrive at the eighth circle of Hell in his Divine Comedy, among the simoniacs.

Boniface systematized canon law by collecting it in a new volume, the Liber Sextus (1298), which continues to be important source material for canon lawyers. He established the first Catholic jubilee year to take place in Rome. Boniface had first entered into conflict with King Philip IV in 1296 when the latter sought to reinforce the nascent nation state by imposing taxes on the clergy and barring them from administration of the law. Boniface excommunicated Philip and all others who prevented French clergy from traveling to the Holy See, after which the king sent his troops to attack the pope's residence in Anagni on 7 September 1303 and capture him. Boniface was held for three days. He died a month afterwards.

King Philip IV pressured Pope Clement V of the Avignon Papacy into staging a posthumous trial of Boniface. He was accused of heresy, but no verdict against him was delivered.

Life and career

Family

Benedetto Caetani was born in Anagni, some 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Rome. He was a younger son of Roffredo Caetani (Podestà of Todi in 1274–1275), a member of a baronial family of the Papal States, the Caetani or Gaetani dell'Aquila. Through his mother, Emilia Patrasso di Guarcino, a niece of Pope Alexander IV (Rinaldo dei Conti di Segni—who was himself a nephew of Pope Gregory IX), he was not far distant from the seat of ecclesiastical power and patronage. His father's younger brother, Atenolfo, was Podestà di Orvieto.

Early career

Benedetto took his first steps into religious life when he was sent to the monastery of the Friars Minor in Velletri, where he was put under the care of his maternal uncle Fra Leonardo Patrasso. He was granted a canonry at the cathedral in the family's stronghold of Anagni, with the permission of Pope Alexander IV. The earliest record of him is as a witness to an act of Bishop Pandulf of Anagni on 16 October 1250. In 1252, when his paternal uncle Pietro Caetani became Bishop of Todi, in Umbria, Benedetto followed him to Todi and began his legal studies there.

His uncle Pietro granted him a canonry in the Cathedral of Todi in 1260. He also came into possession of the small nearby castello of Sismano, a place with twenty-one fires (hearths, families). In later years Father Vitalis, the Prior of S. Egidio de S. Gemino in Narni testified that he knew him and conversed with him in Todi and that Benedetto was in a school run by Rouchetus, a Doctor of Laws, from that city.

Benedetto never forgot his roots in Todi, later describing the city as "the dwelling place of his early youth", the city which "nourished him while still of tender years", and as a place where he "held lasting memories." Later in life he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Anagni, Todi, and his family.

In 1264, Benedetto entered the Roman Curia, perhaps with the office of Advocatus. He served as secretary to Cardinal Simon de Brion, the future Pope Martin IV, on a mission to France. Cardinal Simon had been appointed by Pope Urban IV (Jacques Pantaléon), between 25 and 27 April 1264, to engage in negotiations with Charles of Anjou, Comte de Provence, over the Crown of Naples and Sicily. On 1 May 1264 he was given permission to appoint two or three tabelliones (secretaries) for his mission, one of whom was Benedetto.

On 26 February 1265, only eleven days after his coronation, the new pope, Pope Clement IV wrote to Cardinal Simon, telling him to break off negotiations and travel immediately to Provence, where he would receive further instructions. On the same day, Clement wrote to Charles of Anjou, informing him that the pope had 35 conditions that Charles must agree to in accepting the crown; he also wrote to Henry III of England and his son Edmund Crouchback that they had never been possessors of the Kingdom of Sicily. He also commended to the Cardinal the Sienese bankers who had been working for Urban IV to raise funds for Charles of Anjou, and that he should transfer to them some 7,000 pounds Tournois from the decima (ten percent tax) of France. On 20 March 1265, in order to expedite the business with Charles of Anjou, Cardinal Simon was authorized to provide benefices from cathedrals or otherwise within his province to five of his clerics. This may have been the occasion on which Benedetto Caetani acquired at least some of his French benefices. On 9 April 1265, on the petition of Cardinal Simon de Brion, the legation which had been assigned him by Pope Urban was declared not to have expired on the death of Urban IV. There would have been no point in making such a ruling if Cardinal Simon had already ceased to be Legate.

On 4 May 1265, Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi was appointed Apostolic Legate to England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland by the new Pope Clement IV. In fact, he was sent as the successor of Cardinal Guy Folques, who had been elected Clement IV on 5 February 1265. On 29 August 1265, the Cardinal was received at the French Court by King Louis IX. There he learned that Simon de Montfort and his son Henry had been killed at the Battle of Evesham earlier that month. Cardinal Ottobono did not reach Boulogne until October 1265. He was accompanied by Benedetto Caetani. He was in England until July 1268, working to suppress the remnants of Simon de Montfort's barons who were still in arms against King Henry III of England. To finance their rebellion, the barons had imposed a 10% tax on church property, which the Pope wanted back because the tithe was uncanonical. This drawback was a major concern of Cardinal Ottobono and his entourage. While in England, Benedetto Caetani became rector of St. Lawrence's church in Towcester, Northamptonshire.

Upon Benedetto's return from England, there is an eight-year period in which nothing is known about his life. This period, however, included the long vacancy of the papal throne from 29 November 1268 to February 1272, when Pope Gregory X accepted the papal throne. It also includes the time span when Pope Gregory and his cardinals went to France in 1273 for the second Council of Lyon, as well as the Eighth Crusade, led by Louis IX, in 1270. The Pope and some of the cardinals began their return to Italy at the end of November 1275. Pope Gregory celebrated Christmas in Arezzo and died there on 10 January 1276. In 1276, however, Benedetto was sent to France to supervise the collection of a tithe, which is perhaps when he held the office of Advocatus in the Roman Curia, and then was appointed a papal notary in the late 1270s. During this time, Benedetto accumulated seventeen benefices, which he was permitted to keep when he was promoted. Some of these are enumerated in a bull by Pope Martin IV, in which he bestowed the deaconry of S. Nicolas in Carcere on Cardinal Benedetto Caetani.

At Orvieto, on 12 April 1281, Pope Martin IV created Benedetto Caetani cardinal deacon of Saint Nicholas in Carcere. In 1288 he was sent as Legate to Umbria to attempt to calm the strife between Guelphs and Ghibellines, which was taking the form of a war between the cities of Perugia and Foligno. In the winter of 1289, he was one of Pope Nicholas IV's advisors as he decided on a settlement of the disputes over the election or appointment of Portuguese bishops, in which King Denis played a major role. To give greater authority to the final mandate of the Pope, Cardinal Latino Orsini of Ostia, Cardinal Pietro Peregrosso of S. Marco, and Cardinal Benedetto of S. Nicola in Carcere appended their signatures and seals. Three years later, on 22 September 1291, Pope Nicholas IV (Girolamo Maschi d'Ascoli, O.Min.) promoted him to the Order of Cardinal Priests, with the title of SS. Silvester and Martin. Given the fact that there were only a dozen cardinals, Cardinal Benedetto was assigned the care (commenda) of the deaconry of S. Agata, and his old deaconry of S. Nicola in Carcere. As cardinal, he served as papal legate in diplomatic negotiations to France, Naples, Sicily, and Aragon.

Papal election

Pope Celestine V (who had been Brother Peter, the hermit of Mount Murrone near Sulmone) abdicated on 13 December 1294 at Naples, where, much to the discomfort of a number of cardinals, he had established the papal court under the patronage of Charles II of Naples. He had continued to live like a monk there, even turning a room in the papal apartment into the semblance of a monastic cell. A contemporary, Bartholomew of Lucca, who was present in Naples in December 1294 and witnessed many of the events of the abdication and election, said that Benedetto Caetani was only one of several cardinals who pressured Celestine to abdicate. However, it is also on record that Celestine V abdicated by his own design after consultation with experts, and that Benedetto merely showed that it was allowed by Church law. Either way, Celestine V vacated the throne and Benedetto Caetani was elected in his place as pope, taking the name Boniface VIII.

The regulations promulgated in the 1274 papal bull Ubi periculum had not envisioned an abdication, but declared that election proceedings should begin ten days after the death of the incumbent. The 1294 papal conclave accordingly began on 23 December, ten days after Celestine's abdication. This gave all twenty-two cardinals the chance to assemble at the Castel Nuovo in Naples, the site of the abdication. Hugh Aycelin presided over the papal conclave as the senior cardinal bishop. Benedetto Caetani was elected by ballot and accession on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1294, taking the name Boniface VIII. On the first (secret) ballot, he had a majority of the votes, and at the accessio a sufficient number joined his majority to form the required two-thirds. He was consecrated bishop of Rome in Rome by Cardinal Hugh Aycelin on 23 January 1295. He immediately returned the Papal Curia to Rome, where he was crowned at the Vatican Basilica on Sunday, 23 January 1295. One of his first acts as pontiff was to imprison his predecessor in the Castle of Fumone in Ferentino, where he died on 19 May 1296 at the age of 81. In 1300, Boniface VIII formalized the custom of the Roman Jubilee, which afterwards became a source of both profit and scandal to the church. Boniface VIII founded Sapienza University of Rome in 1303.

Canon law

In the field of canon law, Boniface VIII had considerable influence. Earlier collections of canon law had been codified in the Decretales Gregorii IX, published under the authority of Pope Gregory IX in 1234, but in the succeeding sixty years, numerous legal decisions were made by one pope after another. By Boniface's time a new and expanded edition was needed. In 1298, Boniface ordered published as a sixth part (or Book) these various papal decisions, including some 88 of his own legal decisions, as well as a collection of legal principles known as the Regulæ Juris. His contribution came to be known as the Liber Sextus. This material is still of importance to canon lawyers or canonists today, to interpret and analyze the canons and other forms of ecclesiastical law properly. The "Regulae Iuris" appear at the end of the Liber Sextus (in VI°), and now published as part of the five Decretales in the Corpus Juris Canonici. They appear as simple aphorisms, such as "Regula VI: Nemo potest ad impossibile obligari." ("No one can be obliged to do the impossible.") Other systems of law also have their own Regulæ Juris, whether by the same name or something serving a similar function.

Cardinals

In 1297, Cardinal Jacopo Colonna disinherited his brothers Ottone, Matteo, and Landolfo of their lands. The latter three appealed to Pope Boniface VIII, who ordered Jacopo to return the land and furthermore to hand over the family's strongholds of Colonna, Palestrina, and other towns to the Papacy. Jacopo refused. Jacopo Colonna and his nephew, Pietro Colonna, had also seriously compromised themselves by maintaining highly questionable relations with the political enemies of the pope, James II of Aragon and Frederick III of Sicily. In May, Boniface removed them from the College of Cardinals and excommunicated them and their followers.

The Colonna family (aside from the three brothers allied with the Pope) declared that Boniface had been elected illegally following the unprecedented abdication of Pope Celestine V. The dispute led to open warfare, and in September Boniface appointed Landolfo to the command of his army to put down the revolt of Landolfo's relatives. By the end of 1298 Landolfo had captured Colonna, Palestrina and other towns and razed them to the ground after they had surrendered peacefully under Boniface's assurances that they would have been spared. Dante says it was got by treachery by "long promises and short performances" as Guido of Montefeltro counselled, but this account by the implacable Ghibelline has long since been discredited. Palestrina was razed to the ground, the plough driven through and salt strewn over its ruins. A new city—the Città Papale—later replaced it. Only the city's cathedral was spared.

To deal with the problem of the cardinals left to him by his predecessors, Boniface created new cardinals on five occasions during his reign. In the first creation, in 1295, only one cardinal was appointed, the Pope's nephew Benedetto Caetano. This was no surprise. Nor was the second creation, on 17 December 1295. Two more relatives were appointed, Francesco Caetano, the son of Boniface VIII's brother Peter; and Jacopo (Giacomo) Tomassi Caetani, OFM, a son of the Pope's sister, was made Cardinal Priest of S. Clemente. Giacomo Caetani Stefaneschi, a grand-nephew of Pope Nicholas III, was also appointed, along with Francesco Napoleone Orsini, a nephew of Pope Nicholas III. Three years later, on 4 December 1298, four new cardinals were named: Gonzalo Gudiel (Gundisalvus Rodericus Innojosa), Archbishop of Toledo, was appointed Bishop of Albano; Teodorico Ranieri, Archbishop-elect of Pisa and papal Chamberlain, became Cardinal Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme; Niccolò Boccasini, OP, of Treviso, Master General of the Dominicans, became Cardinal Priest of Santa Sabina; and Riccardo Petroni of Siena, Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, was named a Cardinal Deacon. A pattern begins to emerge, though one sees the pattern only in terms of negatives: of the ten new cardinals, only two are monks, and neither of them Benedictine (Celestine V had been excessively partial to Benedictines); and there are no Frenchmen (Celestine had named seven Frenchmen, under the influence of Charles II of Naples). Pope Boniface was distinctly changing the complexion of the membership of the Sacred College. Without the Colonnas, the influence of the King of France was greatly diminished.

On 2 March 1300, during the Great Jubilee, Boniface VIII created three more cardinals. The first was Leonardo Patrasso, Archbishop of Capua, who was Boniface VIII's uncle; he replaced the archbishop of Toledo, who had died in 1299, as Cardinal Bishop of Albano. The second was Gentile Partino, OFM, Doctor of Theology and Lector of Theology in the Roman Curia, who was made Cardinal Priest of S. Martin in montibus. The third was Luca Fieschi, of the Counts of Lavagna, of Genoa, named Cardinal Deacon of S. Maria in Via Lata (the deaconry which had once belonged to Jacopo Colonna). A relative, a Franciscan; all three Italians.

In his last Consistory for the promotion of Cardinals, on 15 December 1302, Boniface VIII named two more cardinals: Pedro Rodríguez, bishop of Burgos, Spain, became Suburbicarian Bishop of Sabina; and Giovanni Minio da Morrovalle (or da Muro), OFM, Minister General of the Franciscans, was appointed Suburbicarian Bishop of Porto. A Franciscan, a Spaniard, no Benedictines, no French. In fact, there were only two French in the Sacred College at Boniface's death, only five regular clergy (only one Benedictine).

Conflicts in Sicily and Italy

Boniface VIII put forward some of the strongest claims of any pope to temporal as well as spiritual power. He involved himself often with foreign affairs. In his Papal bull of 1302, Unam sanctam, Boniface VIII stated that since the Church is one, since the Church is necessary for salvation, and since Christ appointed Peter to lead it, it is "absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff". These views, and his chronic intervention in "temporal" affairs, led to many bitter quarrels with Albert I of Germany, Philip IV of France, and Dante Alighieri, who wrote his treatise Monarchia to dispute Boniface's claims of papal supremacy.

When Frederick III of Sicily attained his throne after the death of his father Peter III of Aragon, Boniface tried to dissuade him from accepting the throne of Sicily. When Frederick persisted, Boniface excommunicated him in 1296, and placed the island under interdict. Neither the king nor the people were moved. The conflict continued until the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Pedro's son Frederick III recognized as king of Sicily while Charles II was recognized as the king of Naples. To prepare for a Crusade, Boniface ordered Venice and Genoa to sign a truce; they fought each other for three more years, and turned down his offer to mediate peace.

Boniface also placed the city of Florence under an interdict and invited the ambitious Charles, Count of Valois to enter Italy in 1300 to end the feud of the Black and White Guelphs, the poet Dante Alighieri being in the party of the Whites. Boniface's political ambitions directly affected Dante when the pope invited Count Charles to intervene in the affairs of Florence. Charles's intervention allowed the Black Guelphs to overthrow the ruling White Guelphs, whose leaders, including the poet Dante, allegedly in Rome at the time to argue Florence's case before Boniface, were sentenced to exile. Dante settled his score with Boniface in the first canticle of the Divine Comedy, the Inferno, by damning the pope, placing him within the circles of Fraud, in the bolgia (ditch) of the simoniacs. In the Inferno, Pope Nicholas III, mistaking the Poet for Boniface, is surprised to see the latter, supposing him to be ahead of his time.

Conflicts with Philip IV

The conflict between Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France (1268–1314) came at a time of expanding nation states and the desire for the consolidation of power by the increasingly powerful monarchs. The increase in monarchical power and its conflicts with the Church of Rome were only exacerbated by the rise to power of Philip IV in 1285. In France, the process of centralizing royal power and developing a genuine national state began with the Capetian kings. During his reign, Philip surrounded himself with the best civil lawyers and decidedly expelled the clergy from all participation in the administration of the law. With the clergy beginning to be taxed in France and England to finance their ongoing wars against each other, Boniface took a hard stand against it. He saw the taxation as an assault on traditional clerical rights and ordered the bull Clericis laicos in February 1296, forbidding lay taxation of the clergy without prior papal approval. In the bull, Boniface states "they exact and demand from the same the half, tithe, or twentieth, or any other portion or proportion of their revenues or goods; and in many ways they try to bring them into slavery, and subject them to their authority. And also whatsoever emperors, kings, or princes, dukes, earls or barons...presume to take possession of things anywhere deposited in holy buildings... should incur sentence of excommunication." It was during the issuing of Clericis laicos that hostilities between Boniface and Philip began.

At war with both his English and his Flemish vassals, Philip was convinced that the wealth of the Catholic Church in France should be used in part to support the state. He countered the papal bull by decreeing laws prohibiting the export of gold, silver, precious stones, horses, arms, or food from France to the Papal States. These measures had the effect of blocking a main source of papal revenue. Philip also banished from France the papal agents who were raising funds for a new crusade in the Middle East. In the bull Ineffabilis amor of September 1296, Boniface pledged approval of reasonable taxation for genuine emergencies but contested Philip's demands, asking him rhetorically: "What would happen to you—God forbid!—if you gravely offended the Apostolic See, and caused an alliance between Her and your enemies?." In the face of the support of French clergy such as Pierre de Mornay for Philip's general position and the need for French revenue to combat unrest in Rome from the Colonna family, Boniface retreated still further. In February 1297, the bull Romana mater ecclesia permitted voluntary clerical donations without papal approval in times of emergency as determined by the king. On 3 April 1297, seven French archbishops and forty bishops, provided this authorisation, agreed to concede to the King the fifth part of their ecclesiastical revenues under the form of two tithes, the first of which to be paid by Pentecost, the second at the end of September. This subsidy could be collected just in case the war with England should go on, with Church authority and not by means of the secular arm. By July 1297, Boniface yielded completely in the bull Etsi de statu, conceding that kings could raise taxes on church property and incomes during emergencies without prior papal approval. Philip rescinded his embargoes and even accepted Boniface's nuncios as arbitrators to delay and conclude his war with the English, with the 1303 Treaty of Paris restoring the status quo but obliging Edward to come to France in person to do homage for the return of Aquitaine.

First jubilee year

Boniface proclaimed 1300 a "jubilee" year, the first of many such jubilees to take place in Rome. He probably wanted to gather money from pilgrims to Rome as a substitute for the missing money from France, or it may be that he was seeking moral and political support against the hostile behaviour of the French king. The event was a success; Rome had never received such crowds before. It is said that on one particular day some 30,000 people were counted. Giovanni Villani estimated that some 200,000 pilgrims came to Rome. Boniface and his aides managed the affair well, food was plentiful, and it was sold at moderate prices.

First Scottish War of Independence

After King Edward I of England invaded Scotland and forced the abdication of the Scottish King John Balliol, the deposed king was released into the custody of Pope Boniface on condition that he remain at a papal residence. The hard-pressed Scottish Parliament, then in the early stages of what came to be known as First Scottish War of Independence, condemned Edward I's invasion and occupation of Scotland and appealed to the Pope to assert a feudal overlordship over the country. The Pope assented, condemning Edward's invasions and occupation of Scotland in the papal bull Scimus, Fili (Latin for "We know, my son") of 27 June 1299. The bull ordered Edward to desist from his attacks and start negotiations with the Scots. However, Edward ignored the bull; in 1301, a letter was composed in which the English rejected its authority, but it was never sent.

Continued feud with Philip IV

The feud between Boniface and Philip IV reached its peak in the early 14th century, when Philip began to launch a strong anti-papal campaign against Boniface. A quarrel arose between Philip's aides and a papal legate, Bernard Saisset. The legate was arrested on a charge of inciting an insurrection, was tried and convicted by the royal court, and committed to the custody of the archbishop of Narbonne, Giles Aycelin – one of his key ministers and allies, in 1301. In the bull Ausculta Fili ("Listen, [My] Son", December 1301) Boniface VIII appealed to Philip IV to listen modestly to the Vicar of Christ as the spiritual monarch over all earthly kings. He protested against the trial of churchmen before Philip's royal courts and the continued use of church funds for state purposes and he announced that he would summon the bishops and abbots of France to take measures "for the preservation of the liberties of the Church". When the bull was presented to Philip IV, Robert II, Count of Artois, reportedly snatched it from the hands of Boniface's emissary and flung it into the fire.

On 10 February 1302 the bull Ausculta Fili was officially burned at Paris before Philip IV and a large crowd. Nonetheless, on 4 March 1302, Pope Boniface sent cardinal Jean Lemoine as his legate to reassert papal control over the French clergy. To forestall the ecclesiastical council proposed by Boniface, Philip summoned the three estates of his realm to meet at Paris in April. At this first French Estates-General in history, all three classes – nobles, clergy, and commons – wrote separately to Rome in defence of the king and his temporal power. Some forty-five French prelates, despite Philip's prohibition, and the confiscation of their property, attended the council at Rome in October 1302.

Following that council, on 18 November 1302, Boniface issued the bull Unam sanctam ("One holy [catholic and apostolic Church]"). It declared that both spiritual and temporal power were under the pope's jurisdiction, and that kings were subordinate to the power of the Roman pontiff. The Pope also appointed Cardinal Jean le Moine as Apostolic Legate to King Philip, to attempt to find some resolution of the impasse that had developed; he was granted the specific power of absolving King Philip from excommunication.

Abduction and death

On Maundy Thursday, 4 April 1303, the Pope again excommunicated all persons who were impeding French clerics from coming to the Holy See, "etiam si imperiali aut regali fulgeant dignitati" ("even if they shone with imperial or royal dignity"). This included King Philip IV, though not by name. In response, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's chief minister, denounced Boniface as a heretical criminal to the French clergy. On 15 August 1303, the Pope suspended the right of all persons in the Kingdom of France to name anyone as Regent or Doctor, including the King. And in another document of the same day, he reserved to the Holy See the provision of all present and future vacancies in cathedral churches and monasteries, until King Philip should come to the Papal Court and make explanations of his behavior. On 7 September 1303, an army led by King Philip's minister Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna attacked Boniface at his palace in Anagni next to the cathedral. The Pope responded with a bull dated 8 September 1303, in which Philip and Nogaret were excommunicated. The French Chancellor and the Colonnas demanded the Pope's abdication; Boniface VIII responded that he would "sooner die". In response, Colonna allegedly slapped Boniface, a "slap" historically remembered as the schiaffo di Anagni ("Anagni slap").

According to a modern interpreter, the 73-year-old Boniface was probably beaten and nearly executed, but was released from captivity after three days. He died a month later. The famous Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote:

And when Sciarra and the others, his enemies, came to him, they mocked at him with vile words and arrested him and his household which had remained with him. Among others, William of Nogaret, who had conducted the negotiations for the king of France, scorned him and threatened him, saying that he would take him bound to Lyons on the Rhone, and there in a general council would cause him to be deposed and condemned.... no man dared to touch [Boniface], nor were they pleased to lay hands on him, but they left him robed under light arrest and were minded to rob the treasure of the Pope and the Church. In this pain, shame and torment, the great Pope Boniface abode prisoner among his enemies for three days.... the People of Anagni beholding their error and issuing from their blind ingratitude, suddenly rose in arms... and drove out Sciarra della Colonna and his followers, with loss to them of prisoners and slain, and freed the Pope and his household. Pope Boniface... departed immediately from Anagni with his court and came to Rome and St. Peter's to hold a council... but... the grief which had hardened in the heart of Pope Boniface, by reason of the injury which he had received, produced in him, once he had come to Rome, a strange malady so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad, and in this state he passed from this life on the twelfth day of October in the year of Christ 1303, and in the Church of St. Peter near the entrance of the doors, in a rich chapel which was built in his lifetime, he was honorably buried.

He died of a violent fever on 11 October, in full possession of his senses and in the presence of eight cardinals and the chief members of the papal household, after receiving the sacraments and making the usual profession of faith.

Burial and exhumation

The body of Boniface VIII was buried in 1303 in a special chapel that also housed the remains of Pope Boniface IV (A.D. 608–615), which had been moved by Boniface VIII from a tomb outside the Vatican Basilica in the portico.

The body was accidentally exhumed in 1605, and the results of the excavation recorded by Giacomo Grimaldi (1568–1623), Apostolic Notary and Archivist of the Vatican Basilica, and others. The body lay within three coffins, the outermost of wood, the middle of lead, and the innermost of pine. The corporal remains were described as being "unusually tall" measuring seven palms when examined by doctors. The body was found quite intact, especially the shapely hands, thus disproving the myth that he had died in a frenzy, gnawing his hands, beating his brains out against the wall. The body wore ecclesiastical vestments common for Boniface's lifetime: long stockings covered legs and thighs, and it was garbed also with the maniple, cassock, and pontifical habit made of black silk, as well as stole, chasuble, rings, and bejeweled gloves.

After this exhumation and examination, Boniface's body was moved to the Chapel of Pope Gregory and Andrew. His body now lies in the crypt (grotte) of St. Peter's in a large marble sarcophagus, inscribed BONIFACIVS PAPA VIII.

Posthumous trial

After the papacy had been removed to Avignon in 1309, Pope Clement V, under extreme pressure from King Philip IV, consented to a posthumous trial. He said, "[I]t was permissible for any persons who wanted to proceed against the memory of Boniface VIII to proceed." He gave a mandate to the Bishop of Paris, Guillaume de Baufet d'Aurillac, and to Guillaume Pierre Godin, OP, that the complainants should choose prosecutors and determine a day on which the Inquiry would begin in the presence of the Pope (coram nobis Avinione). The Pope signed his mandate at his current place of residence, the Priory of Grauselle near Malusan (Malausène) in the diocese of Vasio (Vaison), on 18 October 1309. Both the King of Aragon and the King of Castile immediately sent ambassadors to Pope Clement, complaining that scandal was being poured into the ears of the Faithful, when they heard that a Roman pontiff was being charged with a crime of heresy. Complaints also came from Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands.

On 27 April 1310, in what was certainly a peace gesture toward the French, Clement V pardoned Guillaume Nogaret for his offences committed at Anagni against Boniface VIII and the Church, for which he had been excommunicated, with the condition that Nogaret personally go to the Holy Land in the next wave of soldiers and serve there in the military. By the end of Spring 1310, Clement was feeling the embarrassment and the pressure over the material being produced by Boniface's accusers. His patience was wearing thin. He issued a mandate on 28 June 1310, in which he complained about the quality of the testimony and the corruption of the various accusers and witnesses. Then he ordered the Quaesitores that future examinations should proceed under threat of excommunication for perjury. A process (judicial investigation) against the memory of Boniface was held by an ecclesiastical consistory at Priory Groseau, near Malaucène, which held preliminary examinations in August and September 1310. and collected testimonies that alleged many heretical opinions of Boniface VIII. This included the offence of sodomy, although there is no substantive evidence for this, and it is likely that this was the standard accusation Philip made against enemies. The same charge was brought against the Templars.

Before the actual trial could be held, Clement persuaded Philip to leave the question of Boniface's guilt to the Council of Vienne, which met in 1311. On 27 April 1311, in a public Consistory, with King Philip's agents present, the Pope formally excused the King for everything that he had said against the memory of Pope Boniface, on the grounds that he was speaking with good intentions. This statement was written down and published as a bull, and the bull contained the statement that the matter would be referred by the Pope to the forthcoming Council. The Pope then announced that he was reserving the whole matter to his own judgment.

The XV Ecumenical Council, the Council of Vienne, opened on 16 October 1311, with more than 300 bishops in attendance. When the Council met (so it is said), three cardinals appeared before it and testified to the orthodoxy and morality of the dead pope. Two Catalan knights, as challengers, threw down their gauntlets to maintain his innocence by trial by combat. No one accepted the challenge, and the Council declared the matter closed. Clement's order disbanding the Order of the Knights Templar was signed at the Council of Vienne on 2 May 1312.

Character

The pope is said to have been short-tempered, kicking an envoy in the face on one occasion, and on another, throwing ashes in the eyes of an archbishop who was kneeling to receive them as a blessing atop his head.

In culture

• In his Inferno, Dante portrayed Boniface VIII being punished in hell for simony, even though Boniface was still alive at the date of the poem's story. Boniface's eventual destiny is revealed to Dante by Pope Nicholas III, whom he meets in the eighth circle of hell. A bit later in the Inferno, Dante recalls the pontiff's feud with the Colonna family, which led him to demolish the city of Palestrina, killing 6,000 citizens and destroying both the home of Julius Caesar and a shrine to Mary. Boniface's ultimate fate is confirmed by Beatrice when Dante visits Heaven. It is notable that he does not adopt Guillaume de Nogaret's aspersion that Boniface VIII was a 'sodomite', however, and does not assign him to that circle of hell (although simony was placed in the eighth circle of fraud, below sodomy, in the seventh circle of violence, designating it as a worse offense and taking precedence above activities of sodomy).
• He is also mentioned in François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. In the chapter that Epistemos lists the inhabitants of hell and their occupations, he says that Boniface was (in one translation) "skimming the scum off soup pots".
• Boniface's title in the Prophecy of the Popes is "From the Blessing of the Waves".
• The mathematician and astronomer Campanus of Novara served as personal physician or perhaps only as a chaplain to Pope Boniface VIII. Campano died at Viterbo in 1296.
• In Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, Boniface VIII is satirically depicted granting a highwayman (Ghino di Tacco) a priorate (Day 10, second tale). Earlier (I.i), Boniface VIII is also mentioned for his role in sending Charles, Count of Valois to Florence in 1300 to end the feud between the Black and White Guelphs.
• The Tale of Pope Boniface is told in Book 2 of John Gower's Confessio Amantis as an exemplum of the sin of fraudulently supplanting others. Gower claims that Boniface tricked Pope Celestine V into abdicating by having a young cleric, pretending to be the voice of God, speak to him while he was sleeping and convince him to abdicate (ll. 2861–2900). Gower also repeats the rumour that Boniface died by gnawing off his own hands, but attributes it to hunger rather than a deliberate suicide attempt (ll. 3027–28).
• Boniface was a patron of Giotto.
• Boniface had the churches of Rome restored for the Great Jubilee of 1300, particularly St. Peter's Basilica, the Lateran Basilica, and the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
• Pope Boniface VIII is a main character played by Jim Carter in the History Channel television show Knightfall. Boniface is portrayed as a warm and avuncular man and a seasoned politician, who acts as a stabilizing, incorruptible force within a corrupt medieval world. The Knights Templar value him as their Holy leader, and they are willing to execute his orders without question. Boniface personally appoints Landry the new Master and Commander of the Paris Temple after Godfrey's assassination, and entrusts him with the mission of finding the Holy Grail, hoping to use it to launch a new Crusade to claim the Holy Land.

See also

• Cardinals created by Boniface VIII
• Giovanni Villani (Florentine chronicler who made an account of Boniface and his jubilee)
• Unam sanctam
• Barons' Letter of 1301

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pope Boniface VIII — (BENEDETTO GAETANO)

Born at Anagni about 1235; died at Rome, 11 October, 1303. He was the son of Loffred, a descendant of a noble family originally Spanish, but long established in Italy—first at Gaeta and later at Anagni. Through his mother he was connected with the house of Segni, which had already given three illustrious sons to the Church, Innocent III, Gregory IX, and Alexander IV. Benedetto had studied at Todi and at Spoleto in Italy, perhaps also at Paris, had obtained the doctorate in canon and civil law, and been made a canon successively at Anagni, Todi, Paris, Lyons, and Rome. In 1265 he accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono Fieschi to England, whither that prelate 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 Curia, where he was, for some years, actively engaged as consistorial advocate and notary Apostolic, and soon acquired considerable influence. Under Martin IV, in 1281, he was created Cardinal-Deacon of the title of S. Nicolò in carcere Tulliano, and ten years later, under Nicholas IV, Cardinal-Priest of the title of SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. As papal legate he served with conspicuous ability in France and in Sicily (H. Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, Münster, 1902, 1 sqq., 9 sqq.).

On the 13th of December, 1294, the saintly but wholly incompetent hermit-pope Celestine V, 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 Christendom, resigned the intolerable burden of the papacy. 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 recluse 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 idea of resigning the papacy 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 papal resignation and the competency of the College of Cardinals 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 cardinals went into conclave in the Castel Nuovo at Naples, 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 cardinals, the new pope immediately revoked (27 December, 1294) all the extraordinary favours and privileges which "in the fullness of his simplicity" Celestine V 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 Rome, determined to remove the papacy as soon as possible from the influence of the Neapolitan court. The ceremony of his consecration and coronation was performed at Rome, 23 January, 1295, amid scenes of unparalleled splendour and magnificence. King Charles II of Naples and his son Charles Martel, titular king and claimant of Hungary, 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 pope with the first few dishes at table before taking their places amongst the cardinals. 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 Church.

The unusual step taken by Celestine V had aroused much opposition, especially among the religious parties in Italy. In the hands of the Spirituals, or Fraticelli, and the Celestines—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 schism in the Church. Boniface VIII, therefore, before leaving Naples, ordered Celestine V to be taken to Rome in the custody of the Abbot of Monte Cassino. On the way thither the saint 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 Dalmatia. 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 Anagni, kept in custody there for some time, and finally transferred to the strong Castle of Fumone at Ferentino. Here he remained until his death ten months later, 19 May, 1296. The detention of Celestine was a simple measure of prudence 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 saint stood when saying Mass 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 obliged 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.)

Thoroughly imbued with the principles of his great and heroic predecessors, Gregory VII and Innocent III, the successor of Celestine V entertained most exalted notions on the subject of papal supremacy in ecclesiastical as well as in civil matters, and was ever most pronounced in the assertion of his claims. By his profound knowledge of the canons of the Church, his keen political instincts, great practical experience of life, and high talent for the conduct of affairs, Boniface VIII seemed exceptionally well qualified to maintain inviolate the rights and privileges of the papacy 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 Christian coalition against the Turks 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 papal throne, Boniface VIII was also one of the most unfortunate. His pontificate marks in history the decline of the medieval power and glory of the papacy.

Boniface first endeavoured to settle the affiars of Sicily, which had been in a very distracted condition since the time of the Sicilian Vespers (1282). Two rivals claimed the island, Charles II, King of Naples, in right of his father Charles of Anjou, who had received it from Clement IV, and James II, King of Aragon, who derived his claims from the Hohenstaufen, through his mother Constance, the daughter of Manfred. James II had been crowned King of Sicily at Palermo in 1286, and had thereby incurred the sentence of excommunication for daring to usurp a fief of the Holy See. On his succession to the throne of Aragon, after the death of his brother Alfonso III, in 1291, James agreed to surrender Sicily to Charles II on condition that he should receive the latter's daughter, Blanche of Naples, 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 Church, confirming him in his possession of Aragon, and granting him the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, which were fiefs of the Holy See, in compensation for the loss of Sicily. By these measures Boniface VIII merely adhered to the traditional policy of the papacy in dealing with Sicilian affairs; there is no evidence to show that, either before or shortly after his election, he had pledged himself in any way to recover Sicily for the House of Anjou. Sicily was not, however, pacified by this agreement between the pope and the kings of Aragon and Naples. 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 Velletri, the pope 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 papal legate was expelled from the island, and, against the protests of Boniface VIII, Frederick was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo, 25 March, 1296. He was at once excommunicated and the island placed under interdict. Neither the king nor his people paid any heed to the censures. At the instigation of the pope a war ensued, in which James of Aragon, as Captain-General of the Church, 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 pope 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 Sicily during his lifetime. After his death the island should revert to the King of Naples. Though frustrated in his hopes, Boniface VIII ratified the treaty 12 June, 1303, and agreed to recognize Frederick as vassal of the Holy See.

In the meantime Boniface VIII had directed his attention also to the north of Italy, where, during a period of forty years, the two rival republics of Venice and Genoa had been carrying on a bitter contest for commercial supremacy in the Levant. A crusade was wellnigh impossible without the active co-operation of these two powers. The pope, therfore, commanded a truce until 24 June, 1296, and ordered both the contestants to send ambassadors to Rome with a view to arrangeing terms of peace. The Venetians were inclined to accept his mediation; not so the Genoese, who were elated by their success. The war continued till 1299, when the two republics were obliged finally to conclude peace from sheer exhaustion, but even then the intervention of the pope was rejected.

The efforts made by Boniface VIII to restore order in Florence and Tuscany proved equally futile. During the closing years of the thirteenth century the great Guelph city was torn asunder by the violent dissensions of the Bianchi and the Neri. The Bianchi or Whites, of Ghibelline tendencies, represented the popular party and contained some of the most distinguished men in Florence—Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dino Compagni. The Neri or Blacks, professing the old Guelph 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 pope sent Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta as papal legate to mediate and establish peace at Florence. The legate met with no success and soon returned to Rome leaving the city under an interdict. Towards the end of 1300, Boniface VIII summoned to his aid Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair. Appointed Captain-General of Church and invested with the governorship of Tuscany (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 pope, 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 Dante Alighieri. Beyond drawing on himself and the pope the bitter hatred 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 Dante's 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 Italy, Boniface had himself become engaged in a desperate struggle at Rome with two rebellious members of the Sacred College, Jacopo Colonna and his nephew Pietro Colonna. The Colonna cardinals were Roman princes of the highest nobility and belonged to a powerful Italian family that had numerous palaces and strongholds in Rome 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 family possessions had been conferred, violated the rights of his brothers, Matteo, Ottone, and Landolfo, by appropriating the property rightfully belonging to them, and bestowing it on his nephews. To obtain redress they appealed to the pope, who decided in their favour, and repeatedlyl admonished the cardinal to deal justly with his brothers. But the cardinal and his nephews bitterly resented the pope's intervention and obstinately refused to abide by his decision. Moreover, the Colonna cardinals had seriously compromised themselves by maintaining highly treasonable relations with the political enemies of the pope—first with James II of Aragon, and later with Frederick III of Sicily. Repeated warnings against this alliance having availed nothing, Boniface, in the interests of his own security, ordered the Colonna to receive papal garrisons in Palestrina—the ancestral home of the family—and in their fortresses Zagarolo and Colonaa. This they declined to do and forthwith broke off all relations with the pope. On the 4th of May, 1297, Boniface summoned the cardinals 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 pope's nephew, Pietro Gaetani, as he was bringing it from Anagni to Rome; to deliver up Stefano as a prisoner to the pope; and to surrender Palestrina 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 Bull "In excelso throno", depriving the rebellious cardinals of their dignities, pronouncing sentence of excommunication against them, and ordering them, within a space of ten days, to make their submission under penalty of forfeiting their property. 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 high altar of St. Peter's, a manifesto, in which they declared the election of Boniface VIII invalid on the ground that the abdication of Celestine V was uncanonical, accused Boniface of circumventing his saintly predecessor, and appealed to a general council from whatever steps might be taken against them by the pope. This protest compiled at Longhezza, with the assistance of Fra Jacopone da Todi and of two other Spirituals, had somewhat anticipated the papal Bull, in answer to which, however, the Colonna issued the second manifesto (16 May) containing numerous charges against Boniface and appealing anew to a general council. The pope met this bold proceeding with increased severity. On the 23rd of May, 1297, a second Bull, "Lapis abscissus", confirmed the previous excommunication, and extended it to the five nephews of Jacopo with their heirs, declared them schismatics, disgraced, their property forfeited, and threatened with the interdict all such places as received them. Boniface at the same time pointed out how the Colonna cardinals had themselves favoured his election (in the conclave they had voted for Gaetani from the first, as they had been among those who counselled Celestine's abdication), had publicly acknowledged him as pope, attended his coronation, 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 ministers at the altar. The rebels replied with a third manifesto (15 June), and immediately set about preparing their fortresses for defense.

Boniface now withdrew from Rome to Orvieto, where, on the 4th of September, 1297, he declared war 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 crusade against his enemies. The fortresses and castles of the Colonna were taken without much difficulty. Palestrina (Præneste), the best of their strongholds, alone held out for some time, but in September, 1298, it too was forced to surrender. Dante says it was got by treachery by "long promises and short performances" as Guido of Montefeltro counselled, but the tale of the implacable Ghibelline has long since been discredited. Clad in mourning, a cord around their necks, the two cardinals, with other members of the rebellious family, came to Rieti to cast themselves at the feet of the pontiff and implore his forgiveness. Boniface received the captives amid all the splendours of the papal court, granted them pardon and absolution, but refused to restore them to their dignities. Palestrina 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 excommunicated the turbulent clan. Their property 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 pope. The Colonna cardinals and the leading members of the family now withdrew from the States of the Church—some seeking shelter in France, others in Sicily. (Denifle, see below, and Petrine, Memorie Prænestine, Rome, 1795.)

Early in the reign of Boniface, Eric VIII of Denmark had unjustly imprisoned Jens Grand, Archbishop of Lund. Isarnus, Archpriest of Carcassonne, was commissioned (1295) by Boniface to threaten the king with spiritual penalties, unless the archbishop were freed, pending the investigation of the matter at Rome, whither the king was invited to send representatives. The latter were actually sent, but were met at Rome by Archbishop Grand, who had in the meanwhile escaped. Boniface decided for the archbishop, and, when the king refused to yield, excommunicated him and laid the kingdom under interdict (1298). In 1303 Eric yielded, though his adversary was transferred to Riga and his see given (1304) to the legate Isarnus. In Hungary Chambert or Canrobert of Naples claimed the vacant crown as descendant of St. Stephen on the distaff side, and was supported by the pope in his quality of traditional overlord and protector of Hungary. The nobles, however, elected Andrew III, and on his early demise (1301) chose Ladislaus, son of Wenceslaus II of Bohemia. They paid no heed to the interdict of the papal legate, and the arbitration of Boniface was finally declined by the envoys of Wenceslaus. The latter had accepted from the Polish nobles the Crown of Poland, vacant owing to the banishment (1300) of Ladislaus I. The solemn warning of the pope and his protest against the violation of his right as overlord of Poland were unheeded by Wenceslaus, who soon, moreover, allied himself with Philip the Fair.

In Germany, on the death of Rudolph of Hapsburg (1291), his son Albert, Duke of Austria, 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 Mainz (23 June, 1298) and enthroned 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 Frankfort and crowned at Aachen (24 August, 1298). The electors had sought regularly from Boniface recognition of their choice and imperial consecration. He refused both on the plea that Albert was the murderer of his liege lord. Very soon Albert was at war with the three Rhenish archbishop-electors, and in 1301 the pope summoned him to Rome 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 voluntarily, 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 father's oath of fidelity to the Roman Church, recognized the papal authority in Germany as laid down by Boniface (May, 1300), and promised to send no imperial vicar to Tuscany or Lombardy within the next five years without the pope's consent, and to defend the Roman Church against its enemies. In his attempt to preserve the independence of Scotland, Boniface was not successful. After the overthrow and imprisonment of John Baliol, and the defeat of Wallace (1298), the Scots Council of Regency sent envoys to the pope to protest against the feudal superiority of England. Boniface, they said, was the only judge whose jurisdiction extended over both kingdoms. Their realm belonged of right to the Roman See, and to none other. Boniface wrote to Edward I (27 June, 1299) reminding him, says Lingard, "almost in the very words of the Scottish memorial", that Scotland had belonged from ancient times and did still belong to the Roman See; the king was to cease all unjust aggression, free his captives, and pursue at the court of Rome within six months any rights that he claimed to the whole or part of Scotland. This letter reached the king after much delay, through the hands of Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, 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 papal claim of suzerainty over Scotland, and asserted that a king of England had never pleaded before any judge, ecclesiastical or secular, respecting his rights in Scotland or any other temporal rights, nor would they permit him to do so, were he thus inclined (Lingard, 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 Scotland and England. In their reply to this plea the representatives of Scotland re-assert the immemorial suzerainty of the Roman Church over Scotland "the property, the peculiar allodium of the Holy See"; in all controversies, they said, between these equal and independent kingdoms it is to their equal superior, the Church of Rome, that recourse should be had. This somewhat academic conflict soon seemed hopeless at Rome, owing to the mutual violence 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 unjust taxation of the clergy.

In 1294, of his own authority, Edward I sequestered all moneys found in the treasuries of all churches and monasteries. Soon he demanded and obtained from the clergy one half their incomes, both from lay fees and benefices. 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 Canterbury (November, 1296), the king demanded a fifth of their income, the archbishop, Robert of Winchelsea, in keeping with the new legislation of Boniface, offered to consult the pope, whereupon the king outlawed the clergy, secular and regular, and seized all their lay fees, goods, and chattels. The northern Province of York yielded; in the Province of Canterbury many resisted for a time, among them the courageous archbishop, who retired to a rural parish. 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 ecclesiastical revenues, his recognition of the Bull "Clericis laicos" was evanescent.

The memorable conflict with Philip the Fair of France began early in the pope's reign and did not end even with the tragic close of his pontificate. The pope's chief aim was a general European peace, in the interest of a crusade that would break forever, at what seemed a favourable moment, the power of Islam. The main immediate obstacle to such a peace lay in the war between France and England, caused by Philip's unjust seizure of Gascony (1294). The chief combatants carried on the war at the expense of the Church, whose representatives they sorely taxed. Such taxation had often been permitted in the past by the popes, but only for the purpose (real or alleged) of a crusade; now it was applied in ordre to raise revenue from ecclesiastics for purely secular warfare. The legates 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 clergy moved the pope to action, and with the approval of his cardinals he published (24 Feb., 1296) the Bull "Clericis laicos", in which he forbade the laity to exact or receive, and the clergy to give up, ecclesiastical revenues or property, without permission of the Apostolic See; princes imposing such exactions and ecclesiastics submitting to them were declared excommunicated. Other popes of the thirteenth century, and the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils (1179, 1215), had legislated similarly against the oppressors of the clergy; apart, therefore, from the opening line of the Bull, that seemed offensive as reflecting on the laity in general (Clericis laicos infensos esse oppido tradit antiquitas, i. e., "All history shows clearly the enmity of the laity towards the clergy,"—in reality a byword in the schools and taken from earlier sources), there was nothing in its very general terms to rouse particularly the royal anger. 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 Roman Church, for it drew much of its revenue from France, inclusive of crusdade moneys, whence the numerous papal collectors were henceforth banished. The king also caused to be prepared a proclamation (never promulgated) concerning the obligation of ecclesiastics to bear the public burden and the revocable character of ecclesiastical immunities. (For the generous contributions of the French clergy to the national burdens, see the exhaustive statistics of Bourgain in "Rev. des quest. hist.", 1890, XLVIII, 62.) In the Bull "Ineffabilis Amor" (20 Sept.) Boniface protested vigorously against these royal acts, and explained that he had never meant to forbid voluntary gifts from the clergy or contributions necessary for the defence of the kingdom, of which necessity the king and his council were the judges. During 1297 the pope sought in various ways to appease the royal embitterment, notably by the Bull "Etsi de Statu" (31 July), above all by the canonization (11 Aug., 1297) of the king's grandfather, Louis IX. 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 pope, but as a private person, 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 papacy (Zaccaria, De anno Jubilæi, Rome, 1775), was formally inaugurated by the pope on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (29 June). Giovanni Villani, an eyewitness, relates in his Florentine chronicle that about 200,000 pilgrims were constantly in the City. It was necessary 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 Europe and even from distant Asia. Ominously enough, if we except the elder son of the King of Naples, none of the kings or princes of Europe came to pay their respects to the Vicar of Christ. The second crown in the papal tiara, 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 Church, and abused more than ever the so-called regalia, or royal privilege of collecting the revenues of a diocese during its vacancy. Since the middle of 1297 the exiled Colonna had found refuge and sympathy at the court of Philip, whence they spread calumnious charges against Boniface, and urged the calling of a general council for his deposition. The royal absolutism was now further incited by suggestions of a universal Christian dominion under the hegemony of France. 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 papacy was to become a purely spiritual patriarchate, its temporalities administered by the French king, who would pay the pope 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 1201 Boniface commissioned Bernard de Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers (Languedoc), as legate to Philip. He was to protest against the continued oppression of the clergy, and to urge the king to apply conscientiously to a crusade the ecclesiastical tithes collected by papal indults. 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 Paris (12 July, 1301), thence to Senlis, where he was found guilty in a trial directed by Pierre Flote, and known to modern historians (Von Reumont) as "a model of injustice and violence". De Saisset in vain protested his innocence and denied the competency of the civil court; he was committed temporarily to the care of the Archbishop of Narbonne, while Pierre Flote and Guillaume de Nogaret went to Rome to secure from Boniface the degradation of his legate and his delivery to the secular authority. Boniface acted with decision. He demanded form the king the immediate liberation of De Saisset and wrote to the Archbishop of Narbonne to detain the latter no longer. By the Bull "Salvator Mundi" he withdrew the indults by which the French king collected canonically ecclesiastical revenue for the defence of the kingdom, i. e., he re-established in vigour the "Clericis laicos" and in the famous Bull "Ausculta Fili" (Listen, O Son) of 5 Dec., 1301, he stood forth as the mouthpiece of the medieval papacy, 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. Jer., i, 10). He is the keeper of the keys, the judge of the living and the dead, and sits on the throne of justice, with power to extirpate all iniquity. He is the head of the Church, 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 Church. The pope is concerned for the welfare of all kings and princes, but particularly for the house of France. He then goes on to relate his many grievances against the king, the application of ecclesiastical goods to secular uses, despotic procedure in dragging ecclesiastics before civil courts, hindrance of episcopal authority, disrespect for papal provisions and benefices, and oppression of the clergy. He will no longer be responsible for the protection (custodia) of the monarch's soul, but has decided, after consulting his cardinals, to call to Rome for 4 Nov., 1302, the French bishops and doctors of theology, principal abbots, 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 evil counsellors, and finally reminds him eloquently of the royal neglect of a crusade. An impartial reader, says Von Reumont, will see that the document is only a repetition of previous papal utterances and resumes the teaching of the most esteemed medieval theologians on the nature and extension of papal authority. It was presented to the king (10 Feb., 1302) by Jacques de Normans, Archdeacon 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 clergy was suppressed (Hefele, 2d ed., VI, 329). In the place of the "Ausculta Fili", there was at once circulated a forged Bull, "Deum time" (Fear God), very probably the work of Pierrer 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 know 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 heretic.

In vain did the pope and the cardinals protest against the forgery; in vain did the pope explain, a little later, that the subjection spoken of in the Bull was only ratione peccati, i. e., that the morality of every royal act, private or public, fell within the papal prerogative. The general tone of the "Ausculta Fili", its personal admonitions couched in severe Scriptural language, its proposal to provide from Rome a good and prosperous administration of the French Kingdom, were not calculated to soothe at this juncture the minds of Frenchmen already agitated by the events of the preceeding years. It is also improbable that Boniface was personally very popular with the French secular clergy, whose petition (1290) against the encroachments of the regular orders he had rejected in his rough sarcastic manner, when legate at Paris (Finke in "Römische Quartalschrift", 1895, IX, 171; "Journal des Savants", 1895, 240). The national concern for the independence and honour 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 grace of God King of the Franks, to Boniface who acts as Supreme Pontiff. Let thy very great fatuity know that in temporal things we are subject to no one.…" Such a document, though probably never officially presented at Rome (Hefele), certainly made its way thither. After forbidding the French clergy to go to Rome or to send thither any moneys, and setting a watch on all roads, ports, and passes leading to Italy, Philip forestalled the pope's November council by a national assembly at Paris (10 April, 1301) in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The forged Bull was read before the representatives of the three estates; the pope was violently denounced by Pierre Flote as aiming at temporal sovereignty in France; 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 clergy, confused and hesitating, sought delay, but finally yielded so far as to write to the pope quite in the sense of the king. The lay estate directed to the cardinals a defiant protest, in which they withheld the papal title from Boniface, recounted the services of France to the Roman Church, and re- echoed the usual royal complaints, above all the calling to Rome of the principal ecclesiastics of the nation. The letter of the bishops was directed to Boniface and begged him to maintain the former concord, to withdraw the call for the council, and suggtested prudence and moderation, since the laity was prepared to defy all papal censures. In the reply of the cardinals to the lay estates, they assert their complete harmony with the pope, denounce the aforesaid forgeries, and maintain that the pope never asserted a right of temporal sovereignty in France.

In his reply Boniface roundly scourged the bishops 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 pride of French ecclesiastics and poured sarcasm over the person of the powerful Pierre Flote (Hefele). Finally, in a public consistory (August, 1302) at which the envoys of the king were present, the Cardinal- Bishop of Porto formally denied that the pope had ever claimed any temporal sovereignty over France and asserted that the genuine Bull (Ausculta Fili) had been well weighed and was an act of love, despite the fatherly severity of certain expressions. He insisted that the king was no more free than any other Christian from the supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the pope, and maintained the unity of ecclesiastical authority. The Apostolic See, he said, was not foreign territory, nor could its nominees be rightly called foreigners. For the rest, the pope had full authority in temporal matters ratione peccati, i. e., in as far as the morality of human acts was concerned. He went on, however, to say that in temporal jurisdiction one must distinguish the right (de jure) and its use and execution (usus et executio). The former belonged to the pope as Vicar of Christ and of Peter; to deny it was to deny an article of faith, 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. Gregory IX had maintained (1232, 1236), in his conflict with the Greeks and with Frederick II, that Constantine the Great had given temporal power to the popes, 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 France, 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 Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, viz., that his predecessors had deposed three French kings, and, though unequal to such popes, 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 Nogaret. In the first half of this discourse the pope insists on the great development of France under papal protection, the shameless forgeries of Pierre Flote, the exclusive ecclesiastical nature of the grant (collatio) of benefices, and the papal preference for doctors of theology as aginst lay nepotism in matters of benefices. He is wroth over the assertion that he claimed France as a papal fief. "We have been a doctor of both laws (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 Burgundy or the Duke of Brittany; the efforts of the former, however, availed not, as the cardinals insisted on satisfaction for the burning of the papal Bull and the calumnious attacks on Boniface. The king replied by confiscating the goods of the ecclesiastics who had set out for the Roman Council, which met 30 Oct., 1302.

There were present four archbishops, thirty-five bishops, six abbots, and several doctors. Its acts have disappeared, probably during the process against the memory of Boniface (1309-11). Two Bulls, however, were issued as a result of its deliberations. One excommunicated whoever hindered, imprisoned, or otherwise ill-treated persons journeying to, or returning from, Rome. The other (18 Nov., 1302) is the famous "Unam Sanctam", probably the composition of Ægidius Colonna, Archbishop of Bourges and a member of the council, and largely made up of passages from such famous theologians as St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others. Its chief concepts are as follows (Hergenröther-Kirsch, 4th ed., II, 593): (1) There is but one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation; but one body of Christ with one head and not two. (2) That head is Christ and His representative, the Roman pope; 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 Church, the second for the Church; the first by the hand of the priest, the second by that of the king, but under the direction of the priest (ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis). (4) Since there must be a co- ordination of members from the lowest to the highest, it follows that the spiritual power is above the temporal and has the right to instruct (or establish—instituere) the latter regarding its highest end and to judge it when it does evil; whoever resists the highest power ordained of God resists God Himself. (5) It is necessary for salvation that all men should be subject to the Roman Pontiff—"Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanæ creaturæ declaramus, dicimus, definimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis". (For a more detailed account of the Bull and several controversies concerning it see.)

Philip had a refutation of the Bull prepared by the Dominican 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 person of Boniface. The king now rejected the pope as arbiter in his disputes with England and Flanders, and gave a courteous but evasive answer to the Legate, Jean Lemoine, whom the pope sent (February, 1303) on a mission of peace, but with insistence, among other conditions, on recognition of the aforesaid rights of the papacy. Lemoine was further commissioned to declare to Philip that, in default of a more satisfactory reply to the twelve points of the papal letter, the pope would proceed spiritualiter et temporaliter against him, i. e., would excommunicate and depose him. Boniface also sent to Lemoine (13 Apr., 1303) two Briefs, in one of which he declared the king already excommunicated, and in the other ordered all French prelates to come to Rome within three months.

In the meantime there was brewing at Paris the storm in which the pontificate of Boniface was so disastrously to close. Philip concluded peace with England, temporized with the Flemings, and made concessions to his subjects. Boniface on his side acknowledged, as aforesaid, the election of Albert of Austria, and brought to an end his hopeless conflict with the Aragonese King of Sicily. Otherwise he seemed politally helpless, and could only trust, as he publicly stated, in his sense of right and duty. 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) Guillaume de Nogaret appealed to Philip to protect the Holy Church against the intruder and false pope, Boniface, a simonist, robber, and heretic, maintaining that the king, moreover, ought to call an assembly of the prelates and peers of France, through whose efforts a general council might be convoked, before which he would prove his charges. Such an assembly was called for 13 June, and met at the Louvre in Paris. The papal messenger with the aforesaid Briefs for the legate was seized at Troyes and imprisoned; Lemoine himself, after protesting against such violence, fled. At this assembly, packed with friends or creatures of Philip, the knight Guillaume de Plaisians (Du Plessis) submitted a solemn accusation against the pope in twenty-nine points, offered to prove the same, and begged the king to provide for a general council. The Colonna furnished the material for these infamous charges, long since adjudged calumnious by grave historians (Hefele, 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 heresy. Cf. Muratori, "SS. Rer. Ital.", XIV, 454; Raynaldus, ad an. 1312, 15-16). Scarcely any possible crime was omitted—infidelity, heresy, simony, gross and unnatural immorality, idolatry, magic, loss of the Holy Land, death of Celestine V, etc. The king asserted that it was only to satisfy his conscience and to protect the honour of the Holy See that he would co-operate in the calling of a general council, asked the help of the prelates, and appealed (against any possible action of Boniface) to the future council, the future pope, and to all to whom appeal could be made. Five archbishops, twenty-one bishops, and some abbots sided with the king. The resolutions of the assembly were read to the people, and several hundred adhesions were secured from chapters, monasteries, and provincial cities, mostly through violence and intimidation. The Abbot of Citeaux, Jean de Pontoise, protested, but was imprisoned. Royal letters were sent to the princes of Europe, also to the cardinals and bishops, setting forth the king's new-found zeal for the welfare of Holy Church.

In a public consistory at Anagni (August, 1303) Boniface cleared himself on his solemn oath of the charges brought against him at Paris and proceeded at once to protect the Apostolic authority. Citations before the Holy See were declared valid by the mere fact of being affixed to the church doors at the seat of the Roman Curia, and he excommunicated all who hindered such citations. He suspended Archbishop Gerhard of Nicosia (Cyprus), the first signatory of the schismatical resolutions. Pending satisfaction to the pope, the University of Paris lost the right to confer degrees in theology and in canon and civil law. He suspended temporarily for France the right of election in all ecclesiastical bodies, reserved to the Holy See all vacant French benefices, repelled as blasphemies the calumnious charges of de Plaisians, saying "Who ever heard that We were a heretic?" (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 pope. He declared that unless the king repented he would inflict on him the severest punishments of the Church. The Bull "Super Petri solio" was ready for promulgation on 8 September. It contained in traditional form the solemn excommunication of the king and the liberation of his subjects from their oath 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 person of Boniface and compel him to abdicate, or, in case of his refusal, to bring him before a general council in France for condemnation and deposition. Since April, Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna had been active in Tuscany 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 Anagni, under the lilies of France, shouting, "Long live the King of France and Colonna!" Fellow-conspirators in the town admitted them, and they at once attacked the palaces of the pope and his nephew. The ungrateful citizens fraternized with the besiegers of the pope, 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 pope's person. About six o'clock, however, the papal stronghold was penetrated through the adjoining cathedral. The soldiers, Sciarra at their head, sword in hand (for he had sworn to slay Boniface), at once filled the hall in which the pope awaited them with five of his cardinals, among them his beloved nephew Francesco, all of whom soon fled; only a Spaniard, the Cardinal of Santa Sabina, remained at his side to the end.

In the meantime the papal 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 tiara 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 Nogaret prevented Sciarra Colonna from killing the pope. Nogaret himself made known to Boniface the Paris resolutions and threatened to take him in chains to Lyons, 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 Catholic and lawful pontiff and vicar of Christ, be condemned and deposed by the Paterini [heretics, in reference to the parents of the Tolosan Nogaret]; I desire to die for Christ's faith and His Church." Von Reumont asserts that there is no evidence for the physical maltreatment of the pope by Sciarra or Nogaret. Dante (Purgatorio, XX, 86) lays more stress on the moral violence, though his words easily convey the notion of physical wrong: "I see the flower-de-luce Anagni 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 prisoner in the plundered papal palace. No one cared to bring him food or drink, while the banditti quarrelled over his person, as over a valuable asset. By early morning of 9 September the burghers of Anagni had changed their minds, wearied perhaps of the presence of the soldiers, and ashamed that a pope, their townsman, should perish within their walls at the hands of the hated Francesi. They expelled Nogaret and his band, and confided Boniface to the care of the two Orsini cardinals, who had come from Rome with four hundred horsemen; with them he returned to Rome. Before leaving Anagni he pardoned several of the marauders captured by the townsmen, excepting the plunderers of Church property, unless they returned it within three days. He reached Rome, 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 cardinals and the chief members of the papal household, after receiving the sacraments and making the usual profession of faith. 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 pope. His body lies in the crypt of St. Peter's in a large marble sarcophagus, laconically inscribed BONIFACIUS PAPA VIII. When his tomb was opened (9 Oct., 1605) the body was found quite intact, especially the shapely hands, thus disproving another calumny, viz., that he had died in a frenzy, gnawing his hands, beating his brains out against the wall, and the like (Wiseman).

Boniface was a patron of the fine arts such as Rome had never yet seen among its popes, though, as Guiraud warns us (p. 6), it is not easy to separate what is owing to the pope's own initiative from what we owe to his nephew and biographer, the art-loving Cardinal Stefaneschi. Modern historians of Renaissance art (Müntz, Guiraud) date its first efficient progress from him. The "iodolatry" accusation of the Colonna comes from the marble statues that grateful towns, like Anagni and Perugia, raised to him on public sites, "where there once were idols", says a contemporary, an anti-Bonifacian libel (Guiraud, 4). The Anagni statue stands yet in the cathedral of that town, repaired by him. He also repaired and fortified the Gaetani palace in Anagni, and improved in a similar way neighbouring towns. At Rome the Palace of the Senator was enlarged, Castel Sant' Anagelo fortified, and the Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna built anew. He encouraged the work on the cathedral of Perugia, while that gem of ornamental Gothic, the cathedral of Orvieto (1290-1309), was largely finished during his pontificate. For the great Jubilee of 1300 he had the churches of Rome restored and decorated, notably St. John Lateran, St. Peter's and St. Mary Major. He called Giotto to Rome and gave him constant occupation. A portrait of Boniface by Giotto 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 Christ's vicar. In the time of Boniface the Cosimati continued and improved their work and under the influence of Giotto rose, like Cavallini, to higher concepts of art. The delicate French miniaturists were soon equalled by the pope's Vatican scribes; two glorious missals of Oderisio da Gubbio, "Agubbio's honour", may yet be seen at the Vatican, where lived and worked his disciple, likewise immortalized by Dante (Purg., XI, 79), who speaks of "the laughing leaves touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese". Finally, sculpture was honoured by Boniface in the person of Arnolfo di Cambio, 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 sciences. He founded (6 June, 1303) the University of Rome, known as the Sapienza, and in the same year the University of Fermo. Finally, it was Boniface who began anew the Vatican Library, whose treasures had been scattered, together with the papal archives, in 1227, when the Roman Frangipani passed over to the side of Frederick II and took with them the turris chartularia, i. e. the ancient repository of the documents of the Holy See. The thirty-three Greek manuscripts the Vatican Library contained in 1311 are pronounced by Fr. Ehrle the earliest known, and long the most important, medieval collection of Greek works in the West. Boniface honoured with increased solemnity (1298) the feasts of the four evangelists, twelve Apostles, and four Doctors of the Church (Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, 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 pope enriched the general ecclesiastical legislation by the promulgation ("Sacrosanctæ", 1298) of a large number of his own constitutions and of those of his predecessors, since 1234, when Gregory IX promulgated his five books of Decretals. 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 popes have aroused more diverse and contradictory appreciations. Protestant historians, generally, and even modern Catholic writers, wrote Cardinal Wiseman in 1844, class him among the wicked popes, as an ambitious, haughty, and unrelenting man, deceitful also and treacherous, his whole pontificate one record of evil. To dissipate this grossly exaggerated and even calumnious view, it is well to distinguish his utterances and deeds as pope 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 mosaic of teachings of earlier theologians, or solemn re- enforcements of the canons of the Church and well-known Bulls of his predecessors. His chief aims, the peace of Europe and the recovery of the Holy Land, were those of all preceding popes.

He did no more than his duty in defending the unity of the Church and the supremacy of ecclesiastical authority when threatened by Philip the Fair. His politico-ecclesiastical dealings with the kings of Europe 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 medieval pope as the respected head of one mighty family of peoples, whose civil institutions were only slowly coalescing amid the decay of feudalism and ancient barbarism (Gosselin, Von Reumont), and who were long conscious that in the past they owed to the Church alone (i. e., to the pope) sure and swift justice, equitable courts and procedure, and relief from a feudal 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 Cardinal Wiseman (op. cit.); "the divine instinct which animated them, the immortal destiny alloted to them, the heavenly cause confided to them, the superhuman aid which strengthened them could not be appreciated but by a Catholic mind, and are too generally excluded from Protestant 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 ecclesiastical conduct of Boniface, this pope 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 ecclesiastical 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 Catholicism, Fra Jacopone da Todi and Dante. The former was the "sublime fool" of spiritual love, author of the "Stabat Mater", and chief singer of the "Spirituals", or extreme Franciscans, kept in prison by Boniface, whom he therefore satirized in the popular and musical vernacular of the peninsula. The latter was a Ghibelline, i. e., a political antagonist of the Guelph pope, to whom, moreover, he attributed all his personal misfortunes, and whom he therefore pilloried before the bar of his own justice, but in quivering lines of immortal invective whose malignant beauty will always trouble the reader's judgment. Catholic historians like Hergenröther-Kirsch (4th ed., II, 597-98) praise the uprightness of the pope's motives and that courage of his convictions which almost on the eve of his death made him count as straws all earthly rulers, if only he had truth and justice on his side (op. cit., II, 597, note 4). They admit, however, the explosive violence 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 logical 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 Von Reumont 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 loved, too worldly-minded for his high office and too fond of money both for the Church and for his family. His nepotism was open. He founded the Roman house of the Gaetani, and in the process of exalting his family drew down upon himself the effective hatred of the Colonna and their strong clansmen. Gröne, a German Catholic historian of the popes, says of Boniface (II, 164) that while his utterances equal in importance those of Gregory VII and Innocent III, 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 V.

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 XIV^e 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 XIV^e 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'Eglise 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'Eglise et les Origines de la Renaissancea (Paris, 1904).

Bibliography

• Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm (1975). "Pope Boniface VIII". In Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 1. Hamm: Bautz. cols. 690–692. ISBN 3-88309-013-1.
• Boase, Thomas S. R. (1933). Boniface VIII. London: Constable.
• Celidonio, Giuseppe (1896). Vita di S. Pietro del Morrone, Celestino Papa V, scritta su documenti coevi (in Italian). Vol. 3 volumes. Sulmone: Angeletti.
• Ciochetti, Marco (2020). Racconti di un evento: l’"aggressione" a Bonifacio VIII. Anagni, 7–9 settembre 1303. Raccolta e critica dei testi contemporanei, Rome, UniversItalia, 2020, online.
• Coppa, Frank J, ed. (2002). The Great Popes Through History. Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
• Coste, Jean, ed. (1995). Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d'accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311) (in French). Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 978-88-7062-914-9.
• de Sainte-Marthe, Denis (1716). Gallia Christiana, in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa (in French). Paris.
• Denifle, H. (1889). "Die Denkschriften der Colonna gegen Bonifaz VIII. und der Cardinale gegen die Colonna". Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchen- Geschichte (in German). V. Freiburg im Breisgau.
• Denton, J. (2018). "The attempted trial of Boniface VIII for heresy", in M. Mulholland (ed.) Judicial tribunals in England and Europe, 1200–1700: The trial in history, volume I. UK: Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137463.00013.
• Finke, Heinrich (1902). Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII. Funde und Forschungen (in German). Muenster.
• Frugoni, A. (1950). Il giubileo di Bonifacio VIII (in Italian). Vol. LXII. Bulletino dell'Istituto storico per il Medioevo.
• Gregorovius, Ferdinand (1906). History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. Vol. V. London: George Bell and Sons.
• Marrone, John and Charles Zuckerman (1975). "Cardinal Simon of Beaulieu and relations between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII". Traditio. 21: 195–222. doi:10.1017/S0362152900011326. S2CID 151457515.
• Matheus, Michael / Lutz Klinkhammer (eds.): Eigenbild im Konflikt. Krisensituationen des Papsttums zwischen Gregor VII. und Benedikt XV. WBG, Darmstadt, 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-20936-1.
• Morghen, R. (1929). "Una legazione di Benedetto Caetani nell'Umbria e la guerra tra Perugia e Foligno del 1288". Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria. 52.
• Oestereic, Thomas (1907). "Pope Boniface VIII". The Catholic Encyclopedia. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino (2003). Boniface VIII. Un pape hérétique? (in French). Paris: Payot.
• Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino (2003). Bonifacio VIII (in Italian). Torino: Einaudi.
• Rociglio, A. (1894). La Rinuncia di Celestino V: Celestino V ed il VI centenario della sua Incornazione (in Italian). Aquila.
• Rubeus (Rossi), Joannes (Giovanni) (1651). Bonifacius VIII e familia Caietanorum principum Romanus Pontifex (in Italian). Romae: Corbelletti.
• Schmidinger, H. (1964). "Ein vergessener Bericht über das Attentat von Anagni". Mélanges Tisserant (in German). V. Roma.
• Théry, Julien (2017). "The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy. Guillaume de Nogaret and the conflicts between Philip the Fair and the Papacy", in The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan, Jenna Rebecca Phillips, Brepols, 2017, p. 219-259, online.
• Schmidt, Tilmann (1983). Bonifatius VIII. In: Lexikon des Mittelalters. Vol. 2, Munich/Zurich 1983, cols. 414–416.
• Schmidt, Tilmann (1989). Der Bonifaz-Prozeß. Verfahren der Papstanklage zur Zeit Bonifaz' VIII. und Clemens' V (in German). Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau.
• Scholz, Richard (1903). Die Publizistik zur Zeit Philipps des Schönen und Bonifaz' VIII (in German). Stuttgart.
• Sestan, Ernesto (1970). Bonifacio VIII. In: Enciclopedia Dantesca, a cura di Umberto Bosco. A-CIL, Rome, 1970, pp. 675–679.
• Souchon, Martin (1888). Die Papstwahlen von Bonifaz VIII bis Urban VI (in German). Braunschweig: Benno Goeritz.
• Theseider, Eugenio Dupré: Bonifacio VIII. In: Massimo Bray (ed.): Enciclopedia dei Papi. Volume 2: Niccolò I, santo, Sisto IV. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2000 (treccani.it)
• Tierney, Brian (1964). Crisis of Church and State. Totowa, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
• Tosti, Luigi (1911). History of Pope Boniface VIII and his times. Translated by Donnelly, E. J. New York.
• Wenck, Karl (1905). War Bonifaz VIII. ein Ketzer? In: Historische Zeitschrift 94 (1905), pp. 1–66.
• Wood, Charles, T. (1967). Phillip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs Papacy. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston.
• Xavier, Adro (1971). Bonifacio VIII. Barcelona, 1971.

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Pope Clement V: a paragraph on the trial of Boniface VIII
• Notes on the Conclave of April 4, 1292 – July 5, 1294 Dr. J. P. Adams (with contemporary sources)
• Notes on the Conclave of December, 1294 Dr. J. P. Adams (with contemporary sources)
• The Bull Clericis Laicos (Medieval Sourcebook)
• "Boniface VIII against the Revolution" (Saint Benedict Center) [a strongly biased conservative Catholic view]
• "Boniface VIII and the Heresy of Statism" (Saint Benedict Center) [a strongly biased conservative Catholic view]
• Literature by and about Pope Boniface VIII in the German National Library catalogue
• Works by and about Pope Boniface VIII in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library)
• Meister Eckhart und seine Zeit – Päpste – Bonifaz VIII.