Boniface
VIII was born at Anagni. He was successively canon of Todi, of
Paris, of Lyons, and the Vatican Basilica, consistorial
advocate, and apostolical prothonotary. On the 12th of April,
1281, he was created cardinal by Martin IV; then
Nicholas IV named him cardinal-priest of Saints Sylvester
and Martin. Martin IV, who knew him to be a man of talent,
dexterity, and fidelity, sent him as legate to King Charles of
Sicily, to prevent him from warring against the King of Aragon,
and to keep the subjects of both kings in their devotion to the
Roman court. He was afterwards sent with another cardinal to
restore peace between King Philip of France and Edward of
England, and to defend the rights of the Church in both
countries. Nicholas IV deputed him, with other cardinals, to
inquire into and arrange the differences between Denis, King of
Portugal, and the clergy of that kingdom. After these many
signal services Cardinal Gaetani was unanimously elected pope on
the 24th of December, 1294, at Castel Nuovo, near the city of
Naples, where the cardinals were assembled in conclave.
After accepting the pontificate on the 2nd of January, 1295,
he, in company with Charles II, King of Sicily, and Charle
Martel, his son, King of Hungary, set out for Rome, where he was
consecrated and crowned by Cardinal Matthew Roar Orsini, the
first deacon, on the 16th of the month of January. When he went
to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran he rode a magnificent
palfrey, of which the two kings held bridle-reins. They also,
wearing their crowns, presented him at table with the first two
dishes, and then seated selves at the cardinals' table.
The first cares of Boniface were directed to the pacification
of Italy. He reduced Sicily to obedience to the Holy See, and he
succeeded in restoring a sufficient concord between the kings of
France and England. He dissuaded the king of the Romans from his
intention of attacking France, and sought means to destroy all
the factions that divided the Christian princes. New efforts
were made to reunite the Greeks to the faith; and, finally,
every effort was made to aid in the recovery of the Holy Land,
from which the Catholics had been driven by the Mussulmans.
At the conclusion of a peace between Charles II of Naples and
the King of Aragon, Charles swore fidelity to Pope Boniface in
the Church of Saint Sabina.
In the year 1295 Boniface ordered the feasts of the Holy
Evangelists and of the four Doctors of the Church—Gregory,
Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome–to be celebrated as doubles. He
ordered that at Rome there should be for the future a general
academy of all the faculties.
Boniface, perceiving that some princes oppressed the clergy
with imposts, published, on the 21st of September, 1296, a bull,
which he caused to be inserted in the sixth book the Decretals,
to remedy that evil. The clauses of the bull were singularly
softened for France, at the request of some of the prelates of
the kingdom. The sixth book, entitled the Sexte, was printed at
Mainz in 1465, folio.
The bull in question is called Clericis laicos. In it the
pope says: "Antiquity shows us the enmity of laymen against the
clergy, and our experience in the present time manifestly
supports that teaching, since, without considering that they
have no power over the persons or the property of ecclesiastics,
the laity lay imposts upon the prelates and the clergy, both
regular and secular; and we grieve to say that some prelates and
other ecclesiastics, having more fear of the temporal majesty
than of the eternal, acquiesce in that abuse. That we may
obviate this, we order that all the prelates and ecclesiastics,
regular or secular, who pay to the laymen tithes or any other
portion of their revenues, under the name of aid, subvention, or
any other, without the authority of the Holy See, and the kings,
princes, and magistrates, and all others who shall impose such
burdens, or who shall give aid and counsel thereto, shall incur
excommunication, absolution from which is reserved to the Holy
See, notwithstanding any privilege."
Fleury adds: "The aversion of the laity to the clergy, which
the pope speaks of at the outset, goes back to no ancient date,
for during the first five or six centuries the clergy attracted
universal respect and affection by a charitable and
disinterested conduct."
Boniface, being at Orvieto on the 11th of August, 1297,
canonized Louis IX, King of France, who died at Tunis on the
25th of August, 1270. He says: "At length Boniface determined
that King Louis should be included among the saints."
"He delivered two sermons upon the subject at Orvieto, the
first in his palace, the Tuesday before Saint Laurence, that is
to say, on the 6th of August, 1297, and in them summed up the
proceedings preliminary to the canonization. Among other things
he said: 'Pope Nicholas III affirmed that the virtues of that
saint were so well known to him he would have canonized him if
he had seen two or three miracles.' And again: 'The matter has
been so often inquired into that the documents about it are more
than an ass could carry.' Boniface delivered the other sermon in
the church of the Friars Minor, in Orvieto, on the same day that
he published the bull of canonization, which was the 11th of
August. The bull, which is dated on the same day and addressed
to all the bishops of France, gives an abridged life of the
saint, with many of his miracles, and orders his feast to be
celebrated on the anniversary of his death, the morrow of Saint
Bartholomew, that is to say, the 25th of August."
It was in the year 1297 that quarrels between the pope and
the Colonna family began to appear. He confiscated their palace,
condemned them as schismatics, compelled them to leave Rome, and
took the purple from James and Peter, belonging to that
illustrious family. The Colonnas had done evil to the Church.
They had circulated a manifesto which affirmed that Celestine
had no power to renounce the pontificate, and that Boniface,
consequently, could not be legitimately elected.
The two cardinals having appealed to the clemency of
Boniface, he granted their pardon, released them from the
interdict, and restored them to their dignity.
Led away by bad advice, the two cardinals again revolted.
Boniface again condemned them. But there was too much severity
in the order to raze the town of Palestrina. At the same time it
was astonishing that at that very moment Boniface published a
constitution which, like one that had been published by Honorius
III, punished all who sacrilegiously wronged the cardinals of
the Holy Roman Church.
The Holy Father perceived that at the close of the century a
great number of pilgrims arrived at Rome, because their fathers
had told them that every hundred years, at the close of the
century, they ought to visit the tomb of the apostles to acquire
the benefits of the jubilee. In the year 1300, therefore, he did
not institute, but renewed that plenary indulgence. He ordered
the feast to be renewed every hundred years; Clement V ordered
that it should be every fifty years; Urban VI, every
thirty-three years; and, finally, Paul II ordered that it should
take place every fifty years, which is the present arrangement,
excepting some irremediable cause of prevention arise, as was
the case in the year 1800.
At the jubilee of the year 1300 there was an immense
concourse of pilgrims. Boniface ordained that to obtain the
benefits of the jubilee the Romans should visit Saint Peter's
and Saint Paul's thirty times and the pilgrims only fifteen
times.
In 1301 the differences between Philip the Fair and the pope
were still further envenomed because the pope confirmed the bull
by which he forbade ecclesiastics to pay anything to laymen
without the apostolical authorization. Philip then confirmed a
former decree prohibiting the sending of any money to Rome. One
of the king's partisans, William of Nogaret, a fiery magistrate,
accused the pope of simony, magic, and atheism; and the bishops,
theologians, and doctors who would not embrace the party of the
king were exiled. Philip even went so far as to forbid all the
prelates of his kingdom to attend a council about to be held in
Italy. The pope, being at Rome on the 6th of November, is said
to have published there the celebrated constitution,
Unam Sanctam, in which, in order to re-establish the papal
authority, oppressed by the councillors of the king, he declared
it to be heretical to say that any Christian is not subject to
the pope; and he excommunicated those who had prohibited the
prelates from going to Rome. Neither at Rome nor elsewhere is
the bull, Unam Sanctam, or In Coena Domini, any longer
officially mentioned.
In 1303 Boniface founded at Rome the university commonly
known as the Sapienza.
The usage of cloistering nuns was very ancient, as is proved
by the fourth century, nevertheless it was not generally
recognized. Boniface made it a law for all nuns in Christendom.
In 1303 there were disturbances in Rome, and the pope deemed
it prudent to retire to Anagni. But Sciarra Colonna, his
irreconcilable enemy, and William of Nogaret, Philip's
councillor, after corrupting some of the servants of the court
and many of the principal inhabitants of the city, entered Rome
at the head of armed men, shouting: "Death to Pope Boniface!
Long live the King of France!" They then attacked the palace of
the pontiff, and found him seated on his throne, in his
pontifical attire, with the crown on his head, and holding in
his hand the keys of the Church. It was Boniface who added to
the tiara a second circle or crown.
The unfortunate pope was abandoned by all his court, except
the cardinals of Sabina, Peter of Spain, of Ostia, and Bonasini,
who was his successor.
The invaders pillaged the treasury, and left the pope, still
clad as we have described, under the guard of some soldiers,
after having insulted him. Nogaret even threatened to take him
to France as a prisoner and to have him deposed by a general
council. At that threat the magnanimous pontiff replied: "We
shall be well content to be deposed by Patarini [heretic
Albigenses] such as you are, and such as were your father and
mother, who were punished as such."
Novaes says not a word about Sciarra Colonna having struck
the pope in the face with his gauntlet. Feller thinks the blow
was given. The Biographie Universelle says on the subject: "Some
historians add that Colonna carried his brutality so far as to
strike the pope on the cheek with his gauntlet. Fortunately for
the memory of Colonna, there is still some doubt as to this
excess, which would have been dastardly as well as inhuman
against an unarmed and aged man." After so cruel and ignoble an
attack, the inhabitants of Anagni, who had not interfered,
repented of their ingratitude to their compatriot and their
sovereign, who had heaped benefits upon them. Suddenly,
stimulated by the Cardinal Luca Fieschi, they rushed to arms,
attacked the pope's enemies, who were few in number, put them to
flight, and took prisoner Nogaret himself, whom the pope ordered
to be treated gently.
Hearing of that success, Boniface, with unheard-of clemency,
set Nogaret at liberty, and he retired without suffering the
penalty of his crime.
The pope, finding himself free, determined to return to Rome.
But he was so violently shocked by these insults and sacrileges
that, thirty days after, on the 11th of October, 1303, he died
from the excitement he had suffered. He had governed eight
years, nine months, and eighteen days.
Boniface was a man of remarkable qualities. He showed himself
to be a consummate jurisconsult, a man of elevated ideas, and an
intrepid conservator of the rights of the Church. So Saint
Antoninus describes him.
It was affirmed that, frenzied with grief, he had gnawed his
own flesh; but on the 11th of October, 1605, three hundred years
after his death, he was found in his tomb without the least sign
of decomposition, and with the flesh entirely uninjured.
Posthumous process against the memory of
Boniface
A process (judicial investigation) against
the memory of pope Boniface VIII was held from
1303 to 1311. Its records were recently
republished in a critical edition by J. Coste.
If reliable, the collected testimonies
(especially those of the examination held at
Groseau in the August and September of 1310)
revealed many bold sayings of Boniface VIII,
which seem partially rather nihilist-hedonist,
partially remarkably critical-freethinking. For
example, Boniface VIII was reported to have
said:
-
The Christian religion is a human invention
like the faith of the Jews and the Arabs;
-
The dead will rise just as little as my
horse which died yesterday;
-
Mary, when she bore Christ, was just as
little a virgin as my own mother when she
gave birth to me;
-
Sex and the satisfaction of natural drives
is as little a sin as hand washing;
-
Paradise and hell only exist on earth; the
healthy, rich and happy people live in the
earthly paradise, the poor and the sick are
in the earthly hell;
-
The world will exist forever, only we do
not;
-
Any religion and especially Christianity
does not only contain some truth, but also
many errors. The long list of Christian
untruth includes trinity, the virgin birth,
the godly nature of Jesus, the eucharistic
transformation of bread and wine into the
body of Christ and the resurrection of the
dead.
The historicity of these quotations is
disputed among scholars. T. Boase, whose
biography of Boniface is often regarded as still
the best (see literature), comes to the
conclusion, "The evidence is not unconvincing
... but it was too late, long years after the
event, to construct an openly held heresy out of
a few chance remarks with some newly-added venom
in construing them" (p. 361). The posthumous
trial against the memory of Boniface was in any
case settled without a result in 1311.
Coste, Jean (ed.): Boniface
VIII en procès. Articles d'accusation et dépositions des témoins
(1303–1311). Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1995. ISBN
88-7062-914-7.
