BONIFACE VIII, Pope. - Benedetto Caetani, Supreme Pontiff from 1294 to 1303, b. at Anagni between 1220 and 1230, of noble parents. Having gone to Rome at a young age, he immediately showed an uncommon inclination for juridical disciplines. His advancement in curial circles was certainly rapid, thanks to a lively intellect and tireless activity, if as early as 1264 he is found in England in the retinue of the legate Card. Ottobono Fieschi, the future Adrian V. Later, and precisely in 1280, together with Card. Matteo Rosso degli Orsini, he brought to a successful conclusion the negotiations begun in Germany by Bishop Niccolò of Tripoli, for the settlement of the dispute concerning the dominion of Provence between Rudolf of Habsburg, king of the Romans, and the Angevins of Naples. Created the following year by Pope Martin IV cardinal deacon of S. Nicola in Carcere, he received from the same pope, two years later, the arduous task of preventing the concerted and scandalous duel between Charles of Naples and Peter III of Aragon, who had become irreconcilable enemies after the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, which had driven the Angevins from the island and secured it to the Spaniards. When both sovereigns died in 1285, it was relatively easy for the combined diplomatic efforts of Cardd. Caetani and Gerardo da Parma to lead the successors Charles II of Anjou and Alfonso III of Aragon to the conclusion of the treaty of Tarascon of 1291, not without the intervention of Philip IV the Fair, the open protector of the former. This convention, glorious for the papacy and most useful to Charles II, who, after so many defeats, received full liberty for himself and for his sons, and saw himself undisputed lord of Sicily, was too humiliating for the victorious Aragonese and the disappointed islanders for the pact to prove truly constructive and lasting. In the same year Caetani was promoted to the presbyteral title of SS. Silvestro e Martino. From then on, besides as an eminent jurist, he began to distinguish himself among the other members of the Sacred College for evident diplomatic skill, as well as for many other qualities. He did not, however, obtain the tiara until after the resignation of Celestine V (v.) in 1294. It was precisely Caetani who, when the inexperienced Pontiff, desirous after only five months of returning to the longed-for eremitic life, asked his advice concerning the lawfulness and opportuneness of a possible resignation, did not hesitate to encourage and comfort him, without however resorting to those artifices of which he was afterwards so unjustly accused, and which even Villani himself so readily believed.
The famous resignation having therefore taken place on 13 Dec. 1294 at Naples, in the conclave assembled in that same place ten days later in accordance with the Gregorian dispositions, re-established by Celestine V, a few scrutinies led to the proclamation as pontiff, by a great majority of votes, of Card. Benedetto Caetani (24 Dec.), who assumed the name of B. VIII. It was, therefore, an absolutely canonical and regular election, occurring without the simoniacal intrigues to which the Alighieri alludes.
The fundamental aims of the new Pope were to restore the complete liberty of the Church and to pacify the Christian people. He immediately demonstrated a profound and jealous love for the independence of the papacy by withdrawing from the insinuating influence of the Angevins, transferring himself at once to Rome, where the solemn coronation took place on 23 Jan. 1295, and where he also issued the first measures aimed at restoring the splendor of the Eternal City, a splendor greatly diminished by so many wretched vicissitudes. He remained, nevertheless, faithful to the traditional relations of good friendship with the Angevins, who did not desist from defending Guelph interests against the immoderate imperial enthusiasms of the Ghibellines. In this sense many of the most controversial moments in the history of B.'s pontificate are to be viewed and judged, and especially the events concerning the defense of the Angevin dynasty in the kingdom of Sicily, the struggle against the Colonna, the conflict with Philip IV king of France. And as for the first, let us recall how, having already largely absorbed the Pope's work when he was still a cardinal, it did not fail to preoccupy him throughout his pontificate, since in 1291, upon the death of Alfonso of Aragon, who was succeeded by James II, who entrusted Sicily to his younger brother Frederick, it was made impossible for B., by the pacts of Tarascon, to satisfy at one and the same time the Aragonese and the Angevins. But, following laborious and lengthy negotiations, he was able to conclude at Anagni in 1295 a treaty similar to the first, by which, while Aragon was freed from the French threat justified by King Philip with alleged rights of reprisal against the occupation of Sicily granted to him by the Holy See, James renounced dominion over the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, of which the Pontiff disposed as lord. It was necessary, however, to induce the young Frederick to renounce the Sicilian crown; and B. was on the point of succeeding in this at a meeting at Velletri, with the vague hope of splendid nuptials and of a chancy imperial succession. But against so many labors there arose the fiercest opposition of the Sicilians, decisively averse to French dominion, so much so as to compel the prince to have himself crowned in Palermo in 1296 in defiance of the Pope, of the Angevins and of his own brother James II, who, urged on by the Pontiff, set out to war against Frederick, who was living at Palermo with their common mother Constance, daughter of King Manfred. It was indeed B. who had negotiated the conclusion of the marriage of James II with Blanche, daughter of Charles II of Anjou, and two years later, that is in 1297, with the Aragonese present in Rome, had granted him the promised investiture of Sardinia and Corsica, naming him, moreover, gonfalonier and admiral of the Churches and thus putting him in a position to personally head all the land and sea forces for the recovery of Sicily in favor of his father-in-law and to the detriment of his brother Frederick III, meanwhile excommunicated by the Pontiff.
But, although the famous admiral Roger of Lauria abandoned Frederick and passed with the fleet into the service of the Angevins, the intrepid monarch, with the support of the faithful Sicilians, so valiantly sustained the unequal struggle against the coalition as to weary in 1299 the king of Aragon. And when the latter, incited by the Pontiff, resumed the war the following year, and at the invocation of B. Charles of Valois, the unfortunate peacemaker of Florence, came from France in support of the Angevins, Frederick did not lose heart and resisted until the peace of Caltabellotta of 1302. The Pope too, not without hesitation, gave his consent to the peace, hoping that, according to the letter of the pacts, Sicily upon the death of Frederick III would definitively return under the French dynasty, which not only did not happen, but on the contrary a century later the Aragonese drove the Angevins even from the kingdom of Naples.
The intervention of Charles of Valois proved, as was hinted, not at all happy even in relation to Florence, torn by adverse and irreconcilable factions. The Whites had already been severely struck by the first pontifical legate, Matteo d'Acquasparta, former general of the Franciscans, who clearly inclined toward the Blacks; but worse happened when the French prince and condottiere, siding in 1302 decidedly with the Blacks, did not hesitate to drive the Whites from Florence. The misfortune involved, as is known, Dante himself, who sided with the latter, and who took revenge, afterwards, on Acquasparta, on Valois and principally on B., in the immortal poem. The same heated conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines, which lacerated so many flourishing districts and cities of Italy repeatedly caused the efforts which B. had patiently and generously made to obtain the hoped-for pacification to come to nothing. Thus, while in his desire to promote new understandings for the liberation of the Holy Land B. succeeded in bringing about agreements between the powerful maritime Republics of Venice and Genoa, in the latter everything collapsed because of stubborn enmities between the Guelphs of the Grimaldi and the Ghibellines of the Doria and the Spinola. The Pope was more fortunate as regards the dispute with the future emperor Albert of Austria, who in 1298 had defeated the weak Adolf of Nassau and in 1302 the prince-electors themselves. B. indeed knew how to make the weight of his influence effectively felt by recognizing him, late, but on conditions very favourable to the Church. It was not so with the problem of the Hungarian monarchy, when the papal arbitration in favour of the protected claimant Charles Robert of Naples was not accepted.
But the pontificate of B. had tragic vicissitudes because of the rebellion of the Colonna and the struggle with Philip IV, king of France. The former is connected with the hostile attitude of the Franciscan Spirituals, who in their turn tended to dethrone the Pontiff. The resignation of Celestine V, an almost unique event in history, gave rise in the minds of many contemporaries to doubts about the legitimacy of that divorce between the Pope and the Church of Christ, his mystical spouse. Moreover, the humble and retiring gesture was bound to displease not only the Angevin court, which expected so much from the inexperienced hermit of Isernia, but even more those who shared the latter's mystical views on the government of the Church, so that many soon came to regret the yielding and humble conduct of Celestine in comparison with the inexorable justice and iron intransigence of his successor. The first rumours about the alleged illegitimacy of B. spread precisely in the circle known as that of the Spirituals among the Friars Minor, in which the mystical and popular poet Jacopone da Todi stood out, while the best intellect among them, Olivi, did not at all share so erroneous an opinion. This, however, found fierce and obstinate defenders in Ubertino da Casale and in others, incapable of forgiving B. for the suppression of the exemption already granted by Celestine V to the Spirituals of the Marches.
The direct responsibility for having stirred up a wave of resentment against the Pontiff goes back to the Colonna cardinals Giacomo and Pietro, who did not even refrain from exploiting in their own favour the pitiful case of the imprisonment and death of the Pope who had resigned. It is known that B., rightly fearing that malicious men might take advantage of the simplicity of the humble hermit, ordered the abbot of Montecassino to bring him to Rome. After a vain attempt at flight, the old man was taken and conducted to Anagni in the presence of the Pope, who had him kept in the nearby fortress of Fumone, where, in a poor cell, he holily breathed his last on 19 May 1296 by a natural and not a violent death, as the Colonna among others falsely asserted. Between Colonna and Caetani there is no trace of true antagonism before that year. And the two cardinals Giacomo and Pietro had given their vote to Caetani in the Neapolitan conclave. However, among the Colonna, Cardinal Giacomo lorded it so far as to consider himself entitled to enrich his nephews through the administration of the common property, not least the cardinal
Pietro and the impetuous Stefano, entirely to the detriment of the brothers, who, discontented and resentful, appealed to B. The latter thus found himself compelled to take sides in this very delicate family affair, and ordered Cardinal Giacomo to cease from the administration of the brothers' patrimony, thereby making enemies of the two cardinals and their adherents. B. further suspected that a family so intimately bound to the Aragonese of Sicily against the interests of Charles of Anjou, protected by the Church, might use its power to influence matters contrary to papal policy.
More fatal for B. was the conflict with France, despite his love for that nation and for the dynasty reigning in Naples. In the very year in which he was elected, the Anglo-French war broke out again, which through treaties of alliance or friendship dragged many nations into the fray. The Pope, grieved by so great a calamity, which indefinitely postponed the realization of the Crusade in the Holy Land, intervened as a mediator of peace, sending, at the beginning of 1295, his legates, the cardinals of Albano and of Palestrina, who negotiated a truce between Edward of England and Philip IV the Fair, a truce broken shortly afterward through the fault of the latter. The worst was that the two sovereigns, having no money to sustain so hard a war, laid hands on the tithes and other ecclesiastical revenues, wherefore certain French bishops besought the Pope to remedy so great an abuse. B. replied with the bull Clericis laicos of 25 February 1296, in which, after deploring the excesses of the lay power to the detriment of the goods of the churches and the culpable pliancy of ecclesiastical persons in this matter, he launched the excommunication to be incurred ipso facto against those who without apostolic license granted to laymen anything of the sacred patrimony under any pretext; with the same censure he then struck the laymen of whatever condition, even royal or imperial, who without prior permission of the Holy See exacted such tributes or donations. Such decrees in substance did no more than repeat those of the ecumenical Lateran councils; but these were little observed and, on the other hand, were not formulated with such rigor and severity, especially with regard to civil authority. King Edward took offense and wished to react, but finally had to yield to right before the firmness of the English episcopate; thus the constitution of B. entered into force in that State and also elsewhere; not, however, in France. King Philip, wounded to the quick and seeing so conspicuous a source of money closed to him, immediately passed to reprisal, forbidding the exportation of money and other precious objects, and in this way indirectly striking the economy of the Roman Curia, maintained by the contributions of the whole world. The Pope then thought it prudent to show himself more benevolent toward the king, all the more since many malicious persons claimed that feudal contributions, justly owed to the monarch, were also included in the papal prescriptions; therefore with the new bull Ineffabilis he declared such an interpretation erroneous and, with regard to spontaneous donations, permitted that they be bestowed by the clergy and that in case of great necessity, in the judgment of the king and the state, ecclesiastical tributes could be exacted even without requesting apostolic faculties. Having thus re-established for some time the concord between Philip and the Holy See, B. was able to present himself as a welcome arbiter for the conclusion of an Anglo-French armistice, and, with the war of Sicily also temporarily suspended, to announce in an almost general peace the first jubilee of the Holy Year of 1300, which brought to the Eternal City an unprecedented multitude of faithful from the whole world.
Given, however, the haughty character of Philip and his scant scruple in ecclesiastical matters, new clashes with the zealous and energetic Pope were to be foreseen, although the latter was making the greatest efforts to exalt the French princes of Anjou and Valois, and although with the canonization of St. Louis, the king's ancestor, celebrated in August 1297, he had given magnificent proof of affection for that nation. An occasion of new struggle was in 1301 the ill-advised designation of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, little pleasing to the king because of a previous dissension. Saisset was to repeat to the monarch the grave complaints of the Holy See for the continual infractions of the canon laws concerning immunity and ecclesiastical tithes in France. Against the worthy legate, who had intrepidly set forth the dangerous papal mandate, Philip proceeded as against one guilty of lese-majesty, having him imprisoned by the archbishop of Narbonne and demanding his deposition from the Pope. The latter instead, supremely disgusted, in December of the same year issued the bull Salvator mundi, communicated to the king together with the other Nuper ex rationalibus causis, where he declared the privileges lately granted to have lapsed and demanded immediate satisfaction for the outrage. With the letter, then, Ausculta fili he admonished the monarch paternally but severely to show himself a more worthy son of the Church. These letters and the invitation to French prelates and doctors to appear in Rome for the reform of so many abuses and the defense of ecclesiastical liberty in that nation, greatly irritated the sovereign and his court, while Peter of Flotte and then William Nogaret pushed Philip to extreme measures. Instead of the bull Ausculta fili, burned publicly, another false one was circulated, in which the Pope was made to speak with coarse and very harsh phrases toward the king. At the same time a reply of Philip enormously irreverent toward the Pontiff was put into circulation. In April 1302 the monarch convoked in Paris a parliament of the three estates, and there Flotte and other malicious persons raised accusations against the alleged tyranny of B. with regard to France, thus obtaining that the nobility and the bourgeoisie should range themselves completely on the side of the king to defend what they called the liberties of the nation. The prelates and the members of the clergy, without reaching the excesses of the other two estates, likewise yielded before the demands of the sovereign, afterward recommending to the Pope greater benevolence toward their fatherland. Much more grave was then the tenor of the letter of the nobility to the Sacred College, in which Philip's complaints against the Roman Curia were justified. B. replied to the ecclesiastics with the bull Verba delirantis filiae, censuring their lack of zeal for the interests of the Church; to the letter of the nobility the cardinals replied defending the conduct of the Pope in the dispute, and B. himself echoed them in the consistory of August and in the Council of October of the same year 1302. Memorable in the meantime proved the Roman Synod, where in defiance of King Philip some French prelates assisted, and one of the most famous bulls of history was issued, the Unam Sanctam, the work, perhaps, of Giles of Rome, aimed at expounding and clarifying Catholic doctrine on the unity of the Church under a single head, on spiritual and temporal power, the latter subordinate to the former in moral matters, and, finally, on the obedience of all the faithful to the Roman Pontiff.
But although such a document was addressed, naturally, to the whole Church and without any particular purpose, it was received hostilely at the French court, where, after the death of Peter of Flotte, the counselor William Nogaret, a bitter enemy of B., had acquired enormous influence, and on whom the two Colonna cardinals then refugees with Philip also easily exerted leverage. Nogaret therefore proposed that an assembly of French prelates and nobles declare B. an intruder and press for the convocation of an ecumenical council. And indeed in June 1303 the congress of the Louvre was held, where William Du Plessis presented twenty-nine articles against the Pope, containing accusations of heresy, immorality and superstition. The result of this unworthy scene was the request for a general council, subscribed by a great part of the episcopate, by the university and by other corporations in accordance with the wishes of King Philip. B. in the consistory held in August at Anagni rejected all the calumnies and errors of which the French accused him, justifying his conduct by love for the truth and the liberty of the Church; with regard then to those appealing to a council he dictated a series of punitive provisions, at the same time preparing the bull of excommunication and deposition of the monarch, which was to have been published on 8 September, had not the famous sacrilegious attempt of Anagni occurred a day earlier, which Alighieri himself inflexibly stigmatized.
Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, in fact, having gathered armed men among the Italian Ghibellines, appeared on the 7th of that month at the gates of Anagni, and having taken the papal castle by assault, they seized the head of the Church, who received them clothed in the sacred vestments with admirable calm and dignity. It cannot be proved that Colonna laid hands on the person of the Pontiff; nevertheless he was detained with the threat of being taken to France, until, three days later, the people of Anagni rose up against the invaders and restored his freedom. B., struck by the most grievous outrage he had suffered, a few days later returned to Rome, where on 11 October of the same year he died piously and not in despair, as his enemies later claimed, who did not refrain from persecuting even his memory. Upon the king of France, moreover, falls the greatest responsibility for having arranged everything so that the Pontiff of Anagni might be condemned by the all-too-yielding Clement V, who, among other things, permitted the accusers of B. to be heard, and a kind of shameful trial to be instituted at the ecumenical Council of Vienne, although it was limited to the rehabilitation of the Colonnas, the canonization of Celestine V and, for the king, the undeserved papal declaration that he had acted in good faith in the Bonifacian question. The bulls of B. against the king were erased from the papal register.
History, far more equitable and far more dispassionate, has by now judged B. a Pontiff exceedingly worthy, endowed with great talent and uncommon wisdom, an intrepid and firm defender of the liberty of the Church, although one certainly cannot admire acts and words at times imprudent, the primary cause of the shipwreck of noble but perhaps anachronistic designs. - See Pl. CIX.
