Unam Sanctam - The Response To Unam Sanctam

The Response To Unam Sanctam

Boniface's reputation for always trying to increase the papal power made it difficult to accept such an extreme declaration. His assertion over the temporal was seen as hollow and misguided and it's said the document was not seen as authoritative because the body of faith did not accept it.

In response to the bull, Philip had the Dominican Jean Quidort issue a refutation. Pope Boniface reacted by excommunicating the king. Philip then called an assembly in which twenty-nine accusations against the pope were made, including infidelity, heresy, simony, gross and unnatural immorality, idolatry, magic, loss of the Holy Land, and the death of Celestine V. Five archbishops and twenty-one bishops sided with the king.

Boniface VIII could only respond by denouncing the charges; but it was already too late for him. On 7 September 1303, the king's advisor Guillaume de Nogaret led a band of two thousand mercenaries on horse and foot. They joined locals in an attack on the palaces of the pope and his nephew at the papal residence at Anagni, later referred to as the Outrage of Anagni. The Pope's attendants and his beloved nephew Francesco all soon fled; only the Spaniard Pedro Rodríguez, Cardinal of Santa Sabina, remained at his side to the end.

The palace was plundered and Boniface was nearly killed (Nogaret prevented his troops from murdering the pope). Boniface was subjected to harassment and held prisoner for three days during which no one brought him food or drink. Eventually the townsfolk expelled the marauders and Boniface pardoned those who were captured. He returned to Rome on 13 September 1303.

Despite his stoicism, Boniface was shaken by the incident. He developed a violent fever and died on 11 October 1303. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman states that his close advisors would later maintain that he died of a "profound chagrin".

Boniface VIII's successor, Benedict XI, lasted only nine months before dying in exile. The Conclave to pick his successor was in deadlock for eleven months before deciding on Pope Clement V. To please Philip IV of France, Clement moved the papacy to Avignon. From this point until around 1378 the papacy, in an effort to keep tensions loose with France, fell under the immense pressure of Philip IV's monarchy. Some theologians feel this stemmed from Boniface VIII's and Philip IV's battle against each other. Philip was said to have held a vendetta against the Roman papacy until his death.

It was not just the French monarchy and clergy who disapproved of Boniface and his assertions. There were many texts circulating around Europe that attacked the bull and Boniface's bold claims for the power of the papacy over the temporal. One of the more notable writers who opposed Boniface and his beliefs was the Florentine poet Dante, who expressed his need for another strong Holy Roman Emperor. His treatise Monarchia attempted to refute the papacy's claim that the spiritual sword had power over the temporal sword. Dante pointed out that the Pope and Roman Emperor were both human, and no peer had power over another peer. Only a higher power could judge the two "equal swords", as each was given power by God to rule over their respected domains.