U
UNAM SANCTAM
. Issued in 1302, while Pope Boniface VIII was engaged in his second unsuccessful
struggle with Philip IV the Fair of France, the constitution Unam sanctam contained
some of the medieval papacy’s strongest statements about its supremacy in temporal, as
well as spiritual, affairs. The text was based on previous papalist writings, including those
of Bernard of Clairvaux, and on the papalist reading of the Pseudo-Dionysian doctrine of
hierarchy. Much of its wording was figurative, making the exact nature of its assertion of
papal temporary supremacy ambiguous; but the French monarch saw through the
wording to the essential demand for obedience. The heart of the argument was the close
identification of Christendom with the church, outside of which there was no salvation.
Submission to the papacy as the visible head of the church also was necessary for
salvation. The pope was described as holding the spiritual sword but having the temporal
sword exercised for the church by kings and knights. Failure to wield it as the spiritual
power directed, however, could lead to condemnation of the king by the pope. Even after
Boniface’s death in 1303, Philip remained eager to have Unam sanctam revoked. In
1306, Clement V replied in the bull Meruit with an ambiguous declaration that Unam
sanctam made the French king, realm, and people no more subject to the papacy than it
had been before. Unam sanctam never found a place in the official collections of canon
law, but it was cited frequently by papal apologists in later centuries.
Thomas M.Izbicki
[See also: BONIFACE VIII; CLEMENT V; PHILIP IV THE FAIR]
Luscombe, David. “The Lex divinitatis in the Bull Unam sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII.” In
Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C.R.Cheney on His 70th
Birthday, ed. Christopher Brooke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 205–21.
Tierney, Brian. The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964,
pp. 180–92.
UNICORN TAPESTRIES
. Both sets of unicorn tapestries, those at the Cloisters in New York and at the Musée
Cluny in Paris, were woven ca. 1500. The unicorn had been an object of fascination for
The Encyclopedia 1773