The political man on loan to the Church; Boniface 8th
After the pontificate of
Celestine 5th a “pope”, and I have set le word pope between comma
because he was everything except a pope, an ascetic man, and he was alone ascetic
that lived in a cavern, when the conclave of Perugia, after 27 months, didn’t
choose a pope, hence Celestine 5th was a solution for to stall, and
take a decision for the next candidate, Pacuvius March(b.Ch.220-130) said that:”Ubi
bonum patria est”, this is: “Where is the good there is the homeland”; we can
also think that after this conclave and paraphrasing Pacuvius: “Ubi the good
there is the power”; and in fact ascertained the weakness of Celestine 5th
the after pope was Boniface 8th, a political man that was also a
pope; his nature merely political there is in the intuition, that he had for to
read the interest of Philipp 4th, king of France, for the richness
of the Church, that in France was the tithe necessary to keep the churches and
orders; and the Bull Clericis laicos in year 1296, was a political document
that reveals the political head of Boniface, because through this Bull the pope
forbidden to the lay power of imposition the tax without authorization of the
pope, and as well as to Boniface also Dante Alighieri(1265-1321), a most famous
Italian poetry, synthetized this will of Philipp 4th through the
words: “To bright to temple the avid sails”, regard the robber that Philip 4th
made of the treasure of Templar, but Dante has simply anticipated and followed both
the larceny of Philipp 4th toward the Templars, and followed thw
Bull of Boniface 8th, in text of prohibition is written: “On the
prelates of the churches and on ecclesiastical persons, monastic and secular,
they impose heavy burdens, tax them and declare levies upon them. They exact
and extort from them the half, the tenth or twentieth or some other portion or
quota of their revenues or of their goods; and they attempt in many ways to
subject them to slavery and reduce them to their goods; and they attempt in
many ways to subject them to slavery and reduce them to their sway. And with
grief do we mention it, some prelates of the churches and ecclesiastical
persons, fearing where they ought not to fear, seeking a transitory peace,
dreading more to offend the temporal than the eternal majesty, without
obtaining the authority or permission the Apostolic chair, do acquiesce, not so
much rashly as improvidently, in the abuses of such persons. We, therefore,
wishing to put a stop to such iniquitous acts, by the counsel of our brothers,
of the apostolic authority, have decreed: that whatever prelates, or ecclesiastical
persons, monastic or secular, of whatever grade, condition or standing, shall
pay, or promise, or agree to pay as levies or talliages to laymen the tenth,
twentieth or hundredth part of their own and their churches' revenues or goods
- or any other quantity, portion or quota of those same revenues or goods, of
their estimated or of their real value-under the name of an aid, loan,
subvention, subsidy or gift, or under any other name, manner or clever
pretense, without the authority of that same chair.”; this is the political man
that has thought and understood that Philipp 4th, needed very much
of this money, and the refuse of transfer to Rome after the short pontificate
of Benedict 11th(1203-1204), from Clemens 5th was wanted
from Philipp 4th before the money of the Church, finally, was of
France. This essay wanted alone to affirm that the head of Boniface 8th
was merely political before religious.
Alessandro Lusana