BENEDICT XI, Pope, Blessed. - Niccolò Boccasini, born in Treviso in 1240 to a notary, entered the Dominican Order in 1254; and was successively lector, prior, provincial of Lombardy and general (1296). Created cardinal in 1298, he carried out various legations in Hungary, Poland, Austria and other countries. Bishop of Ostia and Velletri in 1300, he stood at the side of Boniface VIII when the latter was attacked by the emissaries of the king of France at Anagni. After the death of Boniface, and once the novendials had passed, according to the constitution of Gregory X he was elected pontiff after a single day of conclave (22 Oct. 1303) and took the name Benedict XI.
Of a gentle and conciliatory character, he sought to re-establish peace with the king of France, tempering the bull Clericis laicos. Following Philip the Fair's letter of submission, Benedict absolved him and his accomplices from the censures, and restored to France the privileges of which the deceased Pontiff had deprived it. This pacification was the most notable act of his pontificate. He nevertheless condemned Nogaret, Sciarra Colonna and the other attackers of Anagni, who were excommunicated by a bull of 7 June 1304. He also absolved Cardinals Pietro and Giacomo Colonna, without however restoring them to all the privileges of their rank.
Tuscany was troubled by the Guelph and Ghibelline factions, by the Whites and the Blacks; to restore peace there he sent to Florence as his legate Cardinal Niccolò Albertini da Prato. The work of pacification in Italy was of little avail. Even in Rome the turmoil continued, so that Benedict deemed it opportune to transfer his residence to Montefiascone, to Viterbo and finally to Perugia, where he ended his brief pontificate on 6 July 1304, not without suspicion of poison administered to him through the agency of Nogaret (cf. Villani, Cronaca, VIII, ch. 80; Dino Compagni, Cronaca, III ff.). He was buried in the church of St. Dominic in Perugia. Clement XII confirmed his cult on 24 Apr. 1736 and granted its official status to the Dominican Order and to the diocese of Treviso; Benedict XIV extended it to the whole Venetian territory and inserted the name of Benedict in his edition of the Martyrology (1748), under 7 July. As evidence of his intellectual worth, the Sermons and Commentaries on parts of the Gospel of St. Matthew, of the Psalms, of the book of Job and of the Apocalypse are recalled. He created only three cardinals, chosen from the Order of Preachers.
Great hopes had been conceived for the pontificate of Benedict, so that some commentators of Dante have even wished to see in him the Veltro, the savior of Italy and of the Church (cf. G. M. Cornoldi, Commento alla Divina Commedia, Rome 1888, p. 11). In Perugia he received the ambassadors of James II, king of Aragon, who declared that they recognized as pontifical fiefs the kingdoms of Sardinia and Corsica, granted by the Holy See to the Aragonese in 1297. The same was done, on 1 May 1304, by the ambassadors of Frederick, king of Sicily, on the occasion of the payment of the annual tribute. Benedict ardently longed to bring about a crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land.
A controversy was stirring between the secular clergy and the regular clergy: namely, whether a faithful person who had confessed to a religious should repeat the confession to his own parish priest in order to fulfill the Easter precept. Benedict resolved it with an apostolic constitution, declaring that it was not necessary to repeat the confession to the parish priest (cf. O. Raynaldi-C. Baronio, Annales eccl., year 1304). He approved the celebration of the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi (cf. L. Wadding, Annales Minor., VI, year 1304) and showed himself very favorable to the mendicant Orders, removing the restrictions imposed on them by his predecessor; his concessions were however revoked by his successor Clement V because of the disagreements that arose between the regular and the secular clergy.
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Carlo Castiglioni
