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| 1294–1303 |
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| BONIFACE VIII (Gaetani). Surpassed all his colleagues in the Sacred College as canon lawyer (in 1298 he promulgated a revision of the Code, the Sext), as diplomat, and as administrator, but with a violent temper and prone to dangerous remarks (e.g., “I'd rather be a dog than a Frenchman,” which, since the most miserable Frenchman had a soul and a dog did not, later opened him to a charge of heresy— denying the immortality of the soul). A fierce defender of papal authority over secular powers, in the tradition of Gregory VII and Innocent III, Boniface failed to understand the growth of national sentiment in the later 13th century. Addicted to low company, he was not as vicious as contemporary propaganda painted him. Handsome and vain, on occasion he substituted imperial dress and regalia for papal vestments (“I am pope, I am Caesar”). An intelligent patron of architecture and art: Giotto in Rome. | 1 |
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| 1295 |
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| Bent on regaining Sicily for the papacy, Boniface continued the support of the Angevin claimant, Charles II of Naples, arranged the Peace of 1295, by which James of Aragon exchanged Sicily for the investiture of Sardinia and Corsica and the extinction of French claims in Aragon. | 2 |
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| 1296 |
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| The bull Clericis laicos, designed to stop the war between France and England by depriving the belligerents of their main financial resources, forbade the payment of taxes by the clergy to lay rulers without papal consent (a vain attempt to maintain a medieval custom in the face of rising national states). Philip IV of France answered with an embargo on the export of bullion; Edward I of England with the outlawing of the clergy; both were supported by public opinion expressed in their national assemblies (See 1296) (See 1296–1303). Boniface backed down. | 3 |
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| 1297 |
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| Angered by the Colonna and their insistence on the validity of Celestine V's election, their appeal to a general council, and their support of the Aragonese in Sicily, the pope began a veritable crusade that exiled the Colonna. | 4 |
| Recognition of the rights of Robert (second son of Charles II) in Naples. Beginning of the formation of a Gaetani state as a threat to the barons. | 5 |
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| 1300 |
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| The Great Jubilee, zenith of the pontificate, one of the magnificent pageants of the medieval papacy, managed with tremendous pomp by Boniface; huge donations (raked over public tables by papal “croupiers”); the proceeds intended by Boniface for the second Gaetani state, to be formed in Tuscany, and for the subjection of Sicily. | 6 |
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| 1302–3 |
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| Boniface's defeat and humiliation by the national states. | 7 |
| The bull Unam sanctam (1302) was long believed to be the most extreme assertion of papal power. Modern scholarship considers it to be a pastiche of earlier canonical and theological arguments with little that was new; still, it marked the last papal claim to superiority over lay rulers. Philip IV dispatched his aggressive councillor Nogaret to bring the pope to French soil for trial by a general council called by Philip. | 8 |
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| 1303, Sept. 8 |
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| Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna (See 1302, June) penetrated to the papal apartment at Anagni, found Boniface in bed, threatened him with death, tried to force his resignation, took him prisoner. Faced with a public reaction, Nogaret and Colonna fled, and Boniface died shortly thereafter of humiliation. The events of Anagni marked the culmination of the conflict between the papacy and the French monarchy. Recently triumphant over the German Empire, the papacy was defeated by a strong centralized monarchy backed by national sentiment; the defeat vindicated the royal claim to criminal jurisdiction over the clergy, and to the right to tax it. | 9 |
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| 1303–4 |
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| Benedict XI. A learned Dominican from a poor family, he had no connection with the quarreling Colonna family, and he had been absent from Rome during most of Boniface's disputes with Philip the Fair. He saw himself as a peacemaker (See 1302, June). Because of the disorders in Rome related to the Colonna family, Benedict withdrew to Perugia, and soon died. A long conclave (July 1304–June 1305) followed his death, and the cardinals, without French pressure, compromised on Bertrand de Gôt, archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name Clement V. | 10 |
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| 1305–14 |
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| Clement V. Convinced that the Church needed the support of the French monarchy, Clement continued the work begun by Benedict, revoking the acts of Boniface VIII that had annoyed Philip of France. Clement chose 12 new cardinals, 9 of them French. But angered by Philip's attack on the Templars (See 1307) and his insistent pressure, Clement removed the papal court to Avignon, a territory in the Venaissin in southeastern France that was outside Philip's jurisdiction. Thus began the Avignon papacy. (See The Papacy and Italy) | 11 |
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