Talk:Pope Boniface VIII

Objectivity

Whatever one might think about Boniface VIII this article seems to take a decidedly negative slant towards him and can hardly be considered objective mainly due to its use of modifiers in a few key places. Note especially the phrases "meddled incessantly", and "so resentful" which can easily be construed as expressing an opinion. Also the "process against memory" section should include a caveat that those proceedings appear, historically speaking, to be politically motivated and that it is likely that many of those sayings were conjured up by persons with an axe to grind. Boniface was an extremely controversial pope in his own era and even to this day and made many enemies. That should be taken into account here. --Kurtkoeh 17:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

A statement like "Regardless, he is certainly regarded with horror by most legitimate catholic theologians" does not contain information; it simply tells the reader what to think. I removed it. --Wetman 15:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Can someone check the source cited for the claim that he committed suicide by gnawing on his arm? He was beaten pretty badly during the kidnapping incident. This suicide claim sounds like a legend created by his enemies to place him in hell. The title of the source, "Bad Popes", seems to indicate a bias in that source. I have seen other sources that contradict the suicide claim, but I haven't looked at them in several years. --Kurtkoeh (talk) 20:35, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Who said he committed suicide? That would be a big deal. But people under stress actually do harm themselves, knowingly or otherwise: biting nails, pulling out hair, cutting. Vicedomino (talk) 08:05, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

process against the memory

This phrase falls oddly on my ear. Could it be from a non-native-speaker trying to render posthumous trial? In some languages the word for "trial" is cognate with "process".

OTOH I don't know much about Roman Catholic canon law; maybe they do have something called a "process against the memory". --Trovatore 00:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

The "Catholic Encyclopedia" link from the article does in fact use the phrase. Maybe someone should explain it, though. --Trovatore 02:00, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Was Boniface the last pope to claim such powers?

The article states:

"No subsequent popes were to repeat Boniface VIII's claims of political supremacy."

While it's true that with Boniface VIII papal claims of superiority over temporal leaders reached their apogee (as set out in the bull "Unam Sanctam"), did not John XXII repeat these claims in his dispute with Emperor Louis IV?--qp10qp 19:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that one read Pope Paul IV's Cum ex apostolatus officio to find an even later pope who claimed a sort of political supremacy. My Wikidness 16:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Expansion

I can handle the expansion, give me a day or so. --Treva 18:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, its all set, enjoy! --Treva 19:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Benedetto or Benedict?

The article sometimes uses Benedetto and sometimes Benedict as his birth name. Which is more correct? It should be made consistent, or the inconsistencies should be explained. Alienmercy 03:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Benedictus (Latin), Benedetto (Italian), Benoît (French), Benedict (English), Benny (Brooklynese).Vicedomino (talk) 08:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Heretical quotes attributed to Boniface

Is it necessary to repeat all of these here? I would expect that an inquest into his memory, conducted at a time when the papacy was under the thumb of Boniface's enemy, the King of France, would hardly be objective. It would suit such an inquiry rather well to have various heterodox or heretical quotes attributed to the late Pope. While I have no doubt that the commission did indeed record these quotes as being attributed to Boniface, I do have doubts about whether he actually held these views. To include them in this article, some justification should be given, particularly as the only scholarly opinion advanced is actually dubious on whether Boniface held any of these views.

If am tempted to amend that section if no further justification can be given. --Iacobus 02:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I have amended the relevant section in the article to delete the actual opinions, for the reasons given above. It should also be noted that they were not adequately referenced. I also amended the surrounding text to make better sense after the excision, and also amended the reference to Boniface's opinions as "bold" and "heterodox" as anachronistic. To the medieval mind they would have been heretical and, to that mind, there was nothing "bold" (in any positive sense) about heresy.--Iacobus 01:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Death of Celestine

It should be at least mentioned that Boniface had Celestine imprisoned for 10 months before his death. LHM 23:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Best remembered for

The intro says Today, he is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth Circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the simonists.

I believe that this sentence is POV when it is placed in the intro of the article. It is also somewhat inaccurate, because most people remember him for the bull Unam Sanctam and for the conflict with Philip the Fair rather than what Dante might have said about him.

76.67.157.61 (talk)

I fixed it a little. Check it out. --Againme (talk) 13:36, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Massacre of Palestrina?

According to Jay Charles, The Evolution of the Bible, 2006 (http://books.google.com/books?id=mgqyPtjqc0wC): "Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) Was a true power mongrel [sic], he had whole towns murdered, tortured thousands of innocent women and children, and ruled through fear. He actually had every man, woman, child and animal massacred in the Italian town of Palestrina in 1298." If this is true, it's probably worth incorporating in the article. Mark314159 (talk) 14:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be self-published. Mannanan51 (talk) 23:12, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Missing text?

The phrase "the first in of many such jubilees take place in Rome" is completely meaningless. It looks as if something got deleted by mistake, but of course I can't tell what it might have been.213.127.210.95 (talk) 21:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

"the first in of many such jubilees to take place in Rome" surely - see the lead also. Done Johnbod (talk) 14:54, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Burial

The text makes absolute nonsense. I refer to, "Boniface VIII had arranged that this would be done to offset the fact that his predecessor was still alive, which caused him to worry that the legitimacy of his own papacy would be thrown into doubt. In choosing such a burial, Boniface VIII was trying to show that he was a legitimate pope with the implicit support from the grave of a popular predecessor, Boniface IV." If his predecessor, Celestine V, were still alive, the tomb would have had to have been chosen within the first seventeen months of Boniface's reign, since Celestine died on May 23, 1296. But the fact is, that we do not know when Boniface chose his burial place. "...this would be done..." is ambiguous. What, exactly, did Boniface arrange to have done? The fact is that popes were regularly buried in S. Peter's and it is often mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis that a pope was buried in Such-and-such Chapel, next to the body of Pope So-and-so. Such proximity did not confer posthumous legitimacy--ever. I propose that the offending sentence be removed. By the way, the date of the exhumation was wrong; I fixed it and added the documentary source. Vicedomino (talk) 01:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Angelicum

I propose the removal of the phrase, "...which would develop into the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in the 20th century...", on the grounds that it has nothing to do with Boniface VIII or anything he did, nor does it refer to the XIII or XIV centuries in which he lived. Vicedomino (talk) 01:28, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

 Done Vicedomino (talk) 00:44, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Expanding nation states

The phrase "... a time of expanding nation states ..." is wildly anachronistic. Boniface lived at the height of the age of Feudalism. Nobody thought in terms of 'nation states'. Indeed the papacy and the Emperor were two institutions which worked against the idea of individual nations. The contest was between the two swords, religious and civil, Church and Empire, and whether they were coordinate, or one was supreme. Italy and Rome in particular were beginning to enjoy the (quite ancient) idea of city-states. I suggest that the phrase be deleted. Vicedomino (talk) 03:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Infallibility

An editor deletes the following statement:

‎Philgoetz (talk | contribs)‎ (→‎Posthumous trial: Deleted "They had a point, in that the persecution implied that a pope was not infallible in matters of faith and morals." The Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility applies only when he speaks ex cathedra.)

The grounds for deletion are (1) POV Catholic; (2) anachronistic, since the definition quoted is a mid-19th century one. One doesn't judge the opinions of 14th century people based on 19th century considerations. For an exposition of earlier views, and a wider range of opinion, see, e.g.: Peter Le Page Renouf (1868). The Condemnation of Pope Honorious. New York: Longmans, Green.

I suggest that the sentence be returned to the text.

--Vicedomino (talk) 19:56, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Pope Boniface VIII

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Pope Boniface VIII's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "bbc":

• From Style (manner of address): Wood, Paul (August 1, 2005). "Life and legacy of King Fahd". BBC News. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
• From Vatican Library: Willey, David (17 July 2007). "Vatican Library closure irks scholars". BBC News. Retrieved 17 July 2007.
• From Papal conclave, 2013: Staff (11 February 2013). "Pope Benedict XVI to resign citing poor health". BBC News. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
• From Sapienza University of Rome: BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Papal visit scuppered by scholars 15 January 2008
• From Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: "Former 1950s students to sue Catholic order over abuse". BBC News. 23 June 2011.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 16:18, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Your attempt to show AI is amusing. Your efforts at fixing are not. The suggestions are all irrelevant.

--Vicedomino (talk) 08:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Hands cut off

Dumb-ass question from somebody who is not a specialist in this period:

Why does the near-contemporary picture of him on his deathbed show him as having had his hands cut off?Paulturtle (talk) 05:40, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

The fifteenth century manuscript illustration attempts to visualize the words of the chronicler Giovanni Villani, "...the grief which had hardened in the heart of Pope Boniface, by reason of the injury which he had received, produced in him, once he had come to Rome, a strange malady so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad, and in this state he passed from this life on the twelfth day of October in the year of Christ 1303..." Villani disliked Boniface VIII, and the alleged gnawing has been disproved by the disinterment and autopsy of Boniface's body in the 17th century, at which his hands were discovered to be intact.

--Vicedomino (talk) 08:24, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Might be worth pointing out in the picture caption. Similar stories are told of Richard II of England (deposed 1399, died in prison the following year, quite possibly starved to death), so maybe "gnawing the flesh from his own arms" was a literary convention of the period for deposed rulers ...Paulturtle (talk) 04:23, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

That, alas, might constitute original research, or unsupported speculation, which are not allowed. And, as to captions, they are intended to identify the image, not provide additional data for the article.

--Vicedomino (talk) 06:50, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

It is perfectly permissible, and indeed helpful to people skimming through the article, to explain points of interest and notability in a picture.Paulturtle (talk) 06:05, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorted in LGBT cats

• Category:LGBT Roman Catholic popes

Pope Boniface VIII was a LGBT Roman Catholic pope. That should be sorted in category.

• Advocate.con: 21 Gay Popes, Cardinals, and Assorted Catholic Leaders, By Jacob Ogle

--188.96.230.248 (talk) 20:55, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

He was accused of sodomy by Philip IV. That is the only fact mentioned in your link. Defamatory statements by one's enemies at a posthumous show trial are not generally considered authoritative.24.182.239.226 (talk) 08:12, 31 August 2021 (UTC)