gout and kidney stones, rested in Viterbo and Sismano.
He spent time in the company of a certain Parisian doctor
with whom he discussed, rather casually, questions of
faith and sexual morality. One witness reported having
overheard Benedict say, “Sleeping with women or boys
is no more a sin than rubbing your hands together.”
Meanwhile, the weary conclave fi nally agreed on an
unlikely outsider, Pietro Morrone, a devout eremite of
the Abruzzi who was an exponent of the fanatical asceti-
cism that had been sweeping central Italy for a century.
Pietro became Pope Celestine V and spent his entire his
fi ve-month papacy in Naples under the watch of Charles
of Anjou, frustrating the Franciscan Spirituals who
hoped to make Celestine their longawaited reformer, and
overwhelmed by political demands he could not fathom.
Celestine wanted to escape, and although it was unclear
whether a pope could legally abdicate, Benedict assured
him that abdication was both legal and appropriate. (One
of the more wild-eyed chronicles has Benedict haunting
Celestine at night, casting his voice into Celestine’s cell
through a tube and urging him to resign.) Celestine re-
signed on 13 December, and Benedict became Boniface
VIII on the day before Christmas.
Boniface acted at once to reimpose papal authority
by invalidating Celestine’s appointments, which in any
case had been rather arbitrary. During the fi rst few years
of his papacy, he intervened deftly in European affairs.
By 1296, however, his tense relations with Philip the
Fair and with Edward I of England had reached a crisis
over the issue of taxation: did secular monarchs have
the authority to tax the clergy? In the bull Clericis la-
icos, Boniface soundly forbade taxation of the clergy
without the pope’s approval. Philip responded by expel-
ling Italian trading agents from France and outlawing
the export of gold bullion. The scene was set for their
fi nal confl ict.
In 1297, however, mere was a commotion closer to
home. The Colonna, who were alarmed by the loss of
their lands to the Caetani and Orsini under Boniface,
at last openly challenged the legitimacy of his election.
Boniface declared war, indeed a holy war, against the
Colonna and their property, and by late 1298 he had
the Colonna at his mercy: they had taken refuge in
their mountaintop fortress at Palestrina. These events
inform Dante’s encounter in Inferno 27 with Guido da
Montefeltro, a soldier turned Franciscan, an encounter
in which the apparently penitent friar provides treach-
erous advice. In the end, Palestrina was razed, and the
Colonna fl ed to France to bide their time.
Also in 1298, Boniface published an important com-
pilation of canon law. In 1300, he declared the fi rst jubi-
lee. In 1301, he invited Philip’s landless brother Charles
of Valois to Italy, ostensibly to help him restore peace
in Sicily—and in upstart Florence, where dangerous
experiments in republican democracy had been under
way since the early 1290s and the aristocratic Black
Guelfs had been banished from power. By November
1301, Charles had entered Florence, reinstalled the
Black Guelfs, and taken what he could for himself; but
no peace came of his efforts. The Black Guelfs immedi-
ately exiled the leading Whites, including Dante, whose
disdain for Boniface as an emblem of ecclesiastical
corruption marks the entire Comedy.
In the meantime, the tension with Philip had led to
open confl ict and defi ance on both sides. In 1301, Boni-
face issued the letter Ausculta fi li (Listen Here, Son), an
unbridled indictment of Philip; and in November 1302
he issued the famous bull Unam sanctam. According to
Unam sanctam, it is true that the world is ruled by two
swords, temporal and spiritual, but the spiritual must
forever guide and judge the temporal; and this must
be taken on faith as divine revelation. In April 1303,
Boniface recognized Albert of Hapsburg as Holy Ro-
man emperor while reaffi rming the absolute supremacy
of the papacy in the bull Patris aeterni, in which the
earlier military metaphors are replaced by astronomy:
pope and emperor are, respectively, like the sun and
moon, a greater source and a lesser, refl ected light.
Dante would redefi ne this traditional imagery in Book
3 of Monarchia, where both lights are declared to be
equally dependent on God. In the same month that he
issued Patris aeterni, Boniface founded the University
of Rome.
Through the spring and summer of 1303, Philip the
Fair held council with his ministers and the alienated
Colonna and drew up formal charges against Boniface,
denying the legitimacy of Boniface’s rule and demand-
ing that he stand trial. Boniface moved to excommuni-
cate Philip. A contingent of men led by Sciarra Colonna
and Philip’s minister Guillaume de Nogaret laid siege to
Boniface at Anagni and seized the pope during the fi rst
week of September. Boniface managed to escape after
three days, but he was utterly undone by the episode.
He died in Rome on 12 October.
See also Celestine V, Pope; Dante Alighieri;
Edward I, Philip IV the FairFurther Reading
Boase, T. S. R. Boniface VIII. London: Constable, 1933.
Bonifacio VIII e il suo tempo: Anno 1300 il primo giubileo, ed.
Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce. Milan: Electa, 2000. (Catalog of
exhibit in Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 12 April–16 July 2000.)
Chamberlin, E. R. “The Lord of Europe: Benedict Gaetani/Pope
Boniface VIII (1294–1303).” In The Bad Popes. New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1969, pp. 75–103.
DuPuy, Pierre. Histoire du diffi rend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII
et Philippes le Bel, roy de France. Paris: Cramoisy, 1655.
(Reissue, Tucson, Ariz.: Audax, 1963.)
Ferrante, Joan M. “Boniface VIII, Pope.” In The Dante Encyclo-
pedia, ed. Richard Lansing. New York and London: Garland,
2000, pp. 122–124.BONIFACE VIII, POPE