[Prev Page][Contents][Next Page]

Crisis in the Late Medieval Church

Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII

Boniface was in some ways a man of similar temper and ambitions as Philip. He had an exalted view of the role of the pope as a kind of clerical monarch. He had been trained as a lawyer and knew how to use the law as a weapon as effective as any sword to get what he wanted. And, like Philip, he wanted a very great deal.

Boniface was stubborn, ambitious, intelligent, vain, and unscrupulous. He believed deeply that the pope was literally the vicar of Christ on Earth and that he held extraordinary powers. Anyone who opposed him opposed God and therefore must certainly be wicked.

Boniface also had a notorious temper and he specifically despised the French, famously once saying that he would rather be a dog than a Frenchman. In one incident, he kicked a royal envoy in the head as the man bowed at the papal throne, because he was angry with him. His vanity can be seen in that he had statuettes of himself distributed through Rome.

This was not the sort of fellow to sit by while the French king claimed novel and extensive powers over the Gallic Church.