Pope Boniface VIII - Biography

Biography

Benedetto was born in 1235 in Anagni, c. 50 kilometres southeast of Rome. He was the younger son of a minor noble family, the Gaetani. He took his first steps in the religious life when he was sent to the monastery of the Friars Minor in Velletri, where he was put under the care of his uncle Fra Leonardo Patrasso. He became a canon of the cathedral in Anagni in his teens. In 1252, when his uncle Pietro Gaetani became Bishop of Todi, in Umbria, Benedetto went with him and began his legal studies there. Benedetto never forgot his roots in Todi, later describing the city as "the dwelling place of his early youth," the city which "nourished him while still of tender years," and as a place where he "held lasting memories". In 1260, Benedetto acquired a canonry in Todi, as well as the small nearby castle of Sismano. Later in life he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Anagni, Todi, and his family.

In 1264, Benedetto became part of the Roman Curia, where he served as secretary to Cardinal Simon de Brion, the future Pope Martin IV, on a mission to France. Similarly, he accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono Fieschi, the future Pope Adrian V, to England in 1265–1268 to suppress a rebellion by a group of barons against King Henry III of England. Upon Benedetto's return from England, there is an eight-year period in which nothing is known about his life, after which Benedetto was sent to France to supervise the collection of a tithe in 1276 and then became a papal notary in the late 1270s. During this time, Benedetto accumulated seventeen benefices that he was permitted to keep when he was promoted, first to cardinal deacon in 1281 and then ten years later to cardinal-priest. As cardinal, he often served as papal legate in diplomatic negotiations to France, Naples, Sicily, and Aragon.

Pope Celestine V abdicated on 13 December 1294 at Naples, where he had established the papal court under the patronage of King Charles II of Sicily. There is a legend that Benedetto Gaetani was responsible for Celestine V's renunciation of the papacy by convincing him that no person on the earth could go through life without sin. A contemporary, Bartholomew of Lucca, who was present in Naples in December 1294 and witnessed many of the events of the abdication and election, said that Benedetto Gaetani was only one of several cardinals who pressured Celestine to resign. However, it is also on record that Celestine V resigned by his own design after consultation with experts, and that Benedetto merely showed that it was allowed by Church law. Either way, Celestine V vacated the throne and Benedetto Gaetani was elected in his place as pope, taking the name Boniface VIII. The conclave began on 23 December 1294, ten days after Celestine's resignation, in strict accordance with the rules established by Pope Gregory X at the Second Council of Lyons of 1274. Benedetto Gaetani was elected pope the next day, Christmas Eve, 24 December. On the first (secret) ballot, he had a majority of the votes, and at the accessio a sufficient number joined his majority to form the required two-thirds. He immediately returned the Papal Curia to Rome, where he was crowned at the Vatican Basilica on Sunday, 23 January 1295. One of his first acts as pontiff was to imprison his predecessor in the Castle of Fumone in Ferentino, where he died the next year at the age of 81, attended by two monks of his order. In 1300, Boniface VIII formalized the custom of the Roman Jubilee, 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, power of any Pope and constantly involved himself with foreign affairs. In his Bull of 1302, Unam Sanctam, Boniface VIII proclaimed that it "is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff", pushing papal supremacy to its historical extreme. These views, and his chronic intervention in "temporal" affairs, led to many bitter quarrels with the Emperor Albert I of Habsburg, the powerful Colonna family of Rome, King Philip IV of France, and Dante Alighieri, who wrote his essay De Monarchia to dispute Boniface's claims of papal supremacy. The quarrel with the Colonnas culminated in Boniface VIII ordering the destruction in 1298 of their family city Palestrina after it surrendered peacefully under Boniface's assurances that it would be spared. Much of the city still boasted intact buildings and monuments from ancient Roman times, but Boniface razed it anyway, even spreading salt on the site as the Romans did in Carthage 1500 years before. Only the city's cathedral was spared.

In the field of canon law Boniface VIII continues to have great influence. He published his 88 legal dicta known as the "Regulae Iuris" in 1298. This material must be well known and understood by canon lawyers or canonists today to interpret and analyze the canons and other forms of ecclesiastical law properly. The "Regulae Iuris" appear at the end of the so-called Liber Sextus (in VI°), promulgated by Boniface VIII and now published as one of the five Decretals in the Corpus Iuris Canonici. Other systems of law also have their own "Regulae Iuris" even by the same name or something serving a similar function. Pope Boniface VIII claimed that the popes were the final authority over both the church and the state.