Pope Boniface VIII

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Boniface VIII
Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII (c. 1235 – October 11, 1303), born Benedetto Caetani, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303.

[edit] Biography

Boniface VIII was born in 1235, Anagni as Benedetto Caetani.

He was elected in 1294 after Pope Celestine V abdicated. There is a legend that it was Boniface VIII's doing that Celestine V renounced the papacy - for Boniface, previously Benedetto, convinced Celestine V that no person on the earth could go through life without sin. However, in later times, it is a more common understanding that Celestine V resigned by his own designs and Benedetto merely showed that it was allowed by Church law.

Boniface VIII put forward some of the strongest claims to temporal, as well as spiritual, supremacy 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", so he pushed papal supremacy to its historical extreme. These views and his intervention in 'temporal' affairs led to many bitter quarrels with the Emperor Albert I of Hapsburg (1291–98), the powerful family of the Colonnas and with Philip IV of France (1285–1314).

[edit] References

  • Boase, Thomas S. R. (1933). Boniface VIII, London: Constable.
  • (1995) Jean Coste (ed.) Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d'accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311), Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 88-7062-914-7.

[edit] External links

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