Pope Boniface IX

“ Boniface I., bishop of Rome from 418 to 422. At the death of Pope Zosimus, the Roman clergy were divided into two factions, one of which elected the deacon Eulalius, and the other the priest Boniface. The imperial government, in the interests of public order, commanded the two competitors to leave the town, reserving the decision of the case to a council. Eulalius having broken his ban, the emperor Honorius decided to recognize Boniface, and the council was countermanded. But the faction of Eulalius long continued to foment disorders, and the secular authority was compelled to intervene. ”

“ Their chief effect was to seal the doom of Boniface, and to explode the claim of Rome to any kind of temporal sovereignty outside the States of the Church. In the course of a few months Philip was excommunicated, Boniface was arraigned before the French Estates, the legitimacy of his election was solemnly impugned, his heresies were denounced, appeal was made from him to a new and legitimate Pope, and this appeal was endorsed by the States-General, by a majority of the secular clergy, by the religious Orders, and by the University of Paris. ”

“ It gave final expression to the theory of the jurisdiction of the papacy. Intended to break down the opposition of Philip IV of France, who was asserting the independent rights of kings, it set forth in unambiguous terms the pope’s claim to supreme authority in all mundane affairs and made salvation to depend upon personal submission to him. Boniface was giving expression to no new assumption. In compact statement he gathered up the claims which his predecessors had been constantly making for more than two centuries. ”

“ Benedict XI. (Niccolo Boccasini) , pope from 1303 to 1304, the son of a notary, was born in 1240 at Treviso. Entering the Dominican order in 1254, he became lector, prior of the convent, provincial of his order in Lombardy, and in 1296 its general. In 1298 he was created cardinal priest of Santa Sabina, and in 1300 cardinal bishop of Ostia and Velletri. In 1302 he was papal legate in Hungary. On the 22nd of October 1303 he was unanimously elected pope. He did much to conciliate the enemies made by his predecessor Boniface VIII., notably France, the Colonnas and King Frederick II. of Sicily ”

“ Ambition. Boniface was naturally a Lover of Peace, and an Enemy to all Strife and Contention. He did not claim, nor attempt to usurp, any new Power over his Collegues; but yet he would not part with any his Predecessors enjoyed, by what means soever they had acquired it; and those who attempted to curtail the usurped Jurisdiction of the Apostolic See, met with as vigorous an Opposition from him as they could have done either from Innocent or Zosimus. ”

“ By embodying in the canon law the bull Unam Sanctam the Church accepted the definition of Boniface VIII. that whoever resists the power lodged by God in the Church resists God, unless, like a Manichæan, he believes in two principles, which shows him to be a heretic. If the supreme spiritual power errs, it is to be judged of God alone; there is no earthly appeal. “We say, declare, define, and pronounce that it is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subjected to the Roman pontiff.” ”

“ If I did not deserve to be degraded from my Dignity, I did not deserve to be driven from my See. Thus he artfully turned the Mercy that had been shewn him against those who had shewn it; and, having by that means imposed upon the Primate, persuaded him to write a Letter in his Behalf to Boniface. |How received by Boniface.| With this Letter he repaired to Rome, but did not meet there with the Reception he expected: for all he could obtain of Boniface was a Letter to the Bishops of Numidia, requiring them to reinstate him in his See, provided he had represented Matters as they truly were. ”

“ But Boniface never mixed himself up with the political intrigues of the popes, nor did he ever intermeddle in the political manœuvres between Pepin and the Merovingians, between the Frankish empire and its German vassals. An inventive genius, great and profound thoughts, a liberal and comprehensive view of matters, we certainly often miss in him. All his thoughts, feelings and desires were bound within the narrow limits of Romish ecclesiasticism. His piety was deep, earnest and sincere, but is quite of the legalistic and hard external kind that characterizes Roman Catholicism. ”

“ He was able to restore Roman authority in the major part of the papal states, and in 1398 put an end to the republican liberties of the city itself. Boniface won Naples, which had owed spiritual allegiance to the antipopes Clement VII. and Benedict XIII. of Avignon, to the Roman obedience. In 1403 he ventured at last to confirm the deposition of the emperor Wenceslaus and the election of Rupert. Negotiations for the healing of the Great Schism were without result. In spite of his inferior education, the contemporaries of Boniface trusted his prudence and moral character ”

“ St Boniface has well been called the proconsul of the papacy. His organizing genius, even more than his missionary zeal, left its mark upon the German church throughout all the middle ages. The missionary movement which until his day had been almost independent of control, largely carried on by schismatic Irish monks, was brought under the direction of Rome. But in so welding together the scattered centres and binding them to the papacy, Boniface seems to have been actuated by simple zeal for unity of the faith, and not by a conscious political motive. ”

“ Boniface, who was an Enemy to all Fraud and Imposition, acquiesced; the Dispute was dropped; so that the Canon, which the African Bishops had lately made, forbidding Appeals to Rome, and Zosimus had thus fraudulently attempted to defeat, remained in its full Vigour; and the Churches of Africa were suffered quietly to enjoy their antient Rights and Privileges, so long as Boniface lived. But in the Pontificate of his Successor Celestine, the Storm broke out anew. ”

“ It seems we must choose between Christ and the Pope. Let the Pope perish. ”

“ Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he shewed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. ”

“ There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. ”

“ While this Ecclesiastical Dominion was rising up, the northern barbarous nations invaded the Western Empire, and founded several kingdoms therein, of different religions from the Church of Rome. But these kingdoms by degrees embraced the Roman faith, and at the same time submitted to the Pope's authority. The Franks in Gaul submitted in the end of the fifth Century, the Goths in Spain in the end of the sixth; and the Lombards in Italy were conquered by Charles the great A.C. 774. ”

“ "And as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy, and antichrist, with all his false doctrine. ”

“ As to the new pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast his eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he cherished the hope of directing at the will of his own genius. ”

“ 51EASTER DAY The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’ ”

“ Soon after, upon Christmas-day, the people of Rome, who had hitherto elected their Bishop, and reckoned that they and their Senate inherited the rights of the antient Senate and people of Rome, voted Charles their Emperor, and subjected themselves to him in such manner as the old Roman Empire and their Senate were subjected to the old Roman Emperors. The Pope crowned him, and anointed him with holy oil, and worshipped him on his knees after the manner of adoring the old Roman Emperors; as the aforesaid Poet thus relates:
Post laudes igitur dictas & summus eundem
Præsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim ”

“ I spoke of this matter with Cardinal Rohan at Nantes when Valentine, as Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander, was commonly called, was occupying the Romagna, for on Cardinal Rohan saying to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied that the French did not understand politics, for if they did they would never allow the Church to become so great. ”

“ I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: "You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine." ”

“ Do you suppose we owe nothing to Pope’s deformity? He said to himself, ‘If my person be crooked, my verses shall be strait.’ I myself have felt this in passing along the street, when I have heard rude remarks made on my personal appearance. ”

“ He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined in interpolators. We need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothic mythology of fairies. ”

“ The pope being informed of the great increase of protestantism, in the year 1512 sent inquisitors to Venice to make an inquiry into the matter, and apprehend such as they might deem obnoxious persons. Hence a severe persecution began, and many worthy persons were martyred for serving God with purity, and scorning the trappings of idolatry. ”

“ In a small book printed at Paris A.C. 1689, entitled, An historical dissertation upon some coins of Charles the great, Ludovicus Pius, Lotharius, and their successors stamped at Rome, it is recorded, that in the days of Pope Leo X, there was remaining in the Vatican, and till those days exposed to public view, an inscription in honour of Pipin the father of Charles the great, in these words: Pipinum pium, primum fuisse qui amplificandæ Ecclesiæ Romanæ viam aperuerit, Exarchatu Ravennate, & plurimis aliis oblatis; ”

“ Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes. ”

“ Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each 343other, all the qualities that constitute genius. He had invention, by which new trains of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism. ”

“ Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. ”

“ It was Pope Innocent III who placed in the hands of the Church this terrible weapon of persecution, and who, by the awful severity of his own attitude towards liberty of conscience, of thought, and of expression, afforded to fanaticism and religious intolerance an example that was to be their merciless guide through centuries to come. ”

“ and the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all Churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness. ”

“ Yes, replies Pope, for "health consists with temperance alone," which, for the purpose of his argument, must mean that all the temperate are healthy. ”

“ Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books inside the papist superstition, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; ”

“ Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope, that he "could select from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply." Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we are taught "sapere et fari," to think naturally and express forcibly. ”

“ Nor do I know what is become
Of him, more than the Pope of Rome. ”