Boniface VIII

Background

Boniface VIII was born at Anagni about 1235, the son of Roffredo and Emilia Caetani.

Education

Boniface VIII probably began the study of law, which he continued at Spoleto and, between 1263 and 1274, at Bologna, the center of legal studies in Christendom.

Career

In 1264 Benedetto received his first ecclesiastical appointment, a junior secretarial post in the legation of Cardinal Simon of Brie (later Pope Martin IV) to France. In 1265 Benedetto joined another legation, led by Cardinal Ottoboni Fieschi (later Pope Adrian V) to England, where he remained probably until 1268.

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

After the 6-month pontificate of the hermit-pope Celestine V ended with his resignation in December 1294, Benedetto Caetani was elected pope on December 24, and he took the name Boniface VIII. Celestine's brief pontificate and the unique circumstances of his resignation had created chaos in the world of ecclesiastical administration. Boniface first had to restore order in the papal system of government and justify the legality of his predecessor's resignation and, by implication, the legitimacy of his own election.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Achievements

• Today, he is probably best remembered for his feuds with King Philip IV of France, who caused the Pope's death, and Dante Alighieri, who placed the pope in the Eighth Circle of Hell in his Divine Comedy, among the simoniacs.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Les Registres de Boniface VIII; Recueil Des Bulles de Ce Pape Volume 3 - Primary Source Edition (Latin Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Les Registres De Boniface VIII, Vol. 1: Recueil Des Bulles De Ce Pape (Classic Reprint) (Latin Edition)

    (Excerpt from Les Registres De Boniface VIII, Vol. 1: Recu...)

Personality

As an administrator and legate, he was described by a contemporary as "a man of deep counsel, a man of trust, secret, industrious, circumspect."

Connections

Father:

Roffredo Caetani

Mother:

Emilia Caetani

References

• History of Pope Boniface VIII and his Times: With Notes and Documentary Evidence, in six Books
• Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs. Papacy