Dante reserved a spot in Hell for Pope Boniface VIII while he still lived
In the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri anticipates that Pope Boniface VIII will soon arrive in the eighth circle of Hell, among those who sold church offices. The poet was one of many enemies Boniface made by claiming sweeping authority over kings as well as souls, a stance that ended with French troops seizing him.
Benedetto Caetani was born around 1230 in Anagni, about 50 kilometres southeast of Rome, into a baronial family with papal connections. He studied law in Todi, a city he later fondly called the dwelling place of his early youth, then joined the papal administration, travelling on diplomatic missions to France and England, where he briefly served as rector of a church in Northamptonshire. Along the way he gathered seventeen benefices, and in 1281 he became a cardinal.
His path to the papacy opened unusually. Pope Celestine V, a former hermit who kept living like a monk even in the papal apartments, abdicated in December 1294, and Caetani was elected that month as Boniface VIII. He proved an energetic lawgiver, organising church law into a new collection, the Liber Sextus of 1298, still used by canon lawyers, and he established the first Catholic jubilee year in Rome.
Boniface pressed some of the strongest claims any pope has made to worldly as well as spiritual power, and he meddled in affairs from Sicily to the First War of Scottish Independence. His fiercest clash was with Philip IV of France, which began in 1296 when the king taxed the clergy and excluded them from administering justice as part of building a stronger state. Boniface eventually excommunicated Philip and anyone blocking French clergy from travelling to Rome.
Philip struck back hard. On 7 September 1303 his troops attacked the papal residence at Anagni, the pope's own hometown, and held Boniface captive for three days. He died about a month later. Even death did not end the feud: Philip pressed Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, into staging a posthumous heresy trial, though it never produced a verdict.
Source: Pope Boniface VIII
