Boniface VIII, né Benedetto Caetani (Anagni, ca. 1235 – October 11, 1303) was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Boniface VIII's given name was either Benedict Cajetan or Benedetto Caetani. He was elected in 1294 after Pope Celestine V abdicated. Before this, Boniface VIII was a cardinal priest and papal legate to Sicily, France, and England. One of his first acts as pontiff was to imprison his predecessor in the Castle of Fumone in Ferentino, where he died at the age of 81, attended by two monks of his order. In 1300, Boniface VIII formalized the jubilees, which afterwards became a source of both profit and scandal to the church. Boniface VIII founded the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1303.

Boniface VIII put forward some of the strongest claims to temporal, as well as spiritual, supremacy of any Pope and meddled incessantly in foreign affairs. In his Bull of 1302, Unam Sanctam, Boniface VIII proclaimed that it "is necessary for salvation that every living creature be under submission to the Roman pontiff", pushing papal supremacy to its historical extreme. These views and his intervention in 'temporal' affairs led to many

Boniface VIII's quarrel with Philip IV of France became so resentful that he excommunicated him in 1303. However, before the Pope could lay France under an interdict, Boniface VIII was seized at Anagni by a party of horsemen under Guillaume de Nogaret, an agent of Philip IV and Sciarra Colonna. The King and the Colonnas demanded that he resign, to which Boniface VIII responded that he would 'sooner die'. The Pope was released from captivity after three days, however he died of shock a month later, on October 11, 1303. No subsequent Popes were to repeat Boniface VIII's claims of political supremacy.

Boniface VIII was buried in St. Peter's Basilica, in a grandiose tomb that he had designed himself. (Allegedly, when the tomb cracked open three centuries after his death, his body was revealed to be perfectly incorrupt.)

Boniface VIII and culture

• Dante portrayed Boniface VIII, though alive at the date of his vision, as destined for the Inferno — specifically the Eighth Circle, in a special pit reserved for Popes guilty of simony — in his Divine Comedy. Dante knows this as Pope Nicholas III, whom he met in Hell, had foreseen the damnation of Pope Boniface. The pontiff earned this when his feud with the Colonnas led him to demolish the city of Palestrina, killing 6,000 citizens and destroying both
  
  
  
  the home of Julius Caesar and a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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

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

• A patron of Giotto di Bondone.

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

Posthumous process against the memory of Boniface VIII

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 (see literature). 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 Pope Boniface VIII 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 VIII was in any case settled without a result in 1311.

Literature

• Boase, Thomas S. R.: Boniface VIII. London: Constable, 1933.

• 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.

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