NOGARET, GUGLIELMO. – Born around 1260 at St-Felix de Caraman (Toulouse). Professor of law at Montpellier (1291), then judge of Beaucaire (1294), he was favored by Filippo il Bello and became a member of the royal Curia (1296); he was made a knight, keeper of the seal, and baron, and was enriched with fiefs and lordships.
Armed with all the sophistries of the jurists, he was the minister of the King’s villainies, especially in the struggle against Bonifacio VIII, in which he upheld the falsehoods and misrepresentations of the papal enemies, particularly after the publication of the bull Ausculta fili (5 Dec. 1301). He joined the Colonna in the struggle against the Pope, and in the spring of 1303, with a band of criminals, entered the papal territories with the audacious plan of imprisoning him and taking him to France. On the eve of the day on which the bull of excommunication against Filippo il Bello, Super Petri solio (7 Sept. 1303), was to be published, he entered Anagni with Sciarra Colonna, attacked the papal Palace, and took the aged Pontiff prisoner; the latter refused to yield to the violence inflicted upon him. The following day the city rose up and, after a fierce struggle, freed the Pontiff and drove out the French.
N., having returned to his homeland, received further great favors and was subsequently appointed vice-chancellor of France (22 Sept. 1307); he took an active part in the question of the suppression of the Templars and in the trial staged against the memory of Bonifacio VIII. He died in April 1313, after having obtained ad cautelam absolution from Clement V. BIBLICA.: M. Pieri, L'attentato contro Bonifacio VIII, Turin 1903; L. Thomas, La vie privée de G. de N., Toulouse 1904; P. Fedele, Per la storia dell'attentato di Anagni, in Boll. dell'Ist. storico ital., 41 (1921), pp. 195–203; id., Ulteriori precisazioni sull'attentato di Anagni, in Résumés of the International Congress of Historical Sciences, Zurich 1938. Innocenzo Giuliani