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Pope Boniface IX

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Pope Boniface IX
Papacy beganNovember 2, 1389
Papacy endedOctober 1, 1404
PredecessorUrban VI
SuccessorInnocent VII
Orders
Consecration9 November, 1389
Created cardinal21 December, 1381
Personal details
Born
Piero Tomacelli

ca. 1350
Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Died(1404-10-01)October 1, 1404
Rome, Papal States
Other popes named Boniface
Papal styles of
Pope Boniface IX
Reference styleHis Holiness
Spoken styleYour Holiness
Religious styleHoly Father
Posthumous styleNone

Pope Boniface IX (1350 – October 1, 1404), born Piero Tomacelli, was the second Roman Pope of the Western Schism from November 2, 1389, until October 1, 1404. During his time the antipope Clement VII (1378–94) continued to hold court as pope in Avignon under the protection of the French monarchy.

Piero (also Perino, Pietro) Tomacelli came of an ancient but impoverished baronial family of Casarano in the Kingdom of Naples. An unsympathetic German contemporary source, Dietrich of Nieheim, asserted that he was illiterate (nesciens scribere etiam male cantabat); neither a trained theologian nor skilled in the business of the Curia, he was tactful and prudent in a difficult era, but Ludwig Pastor, who passes swiftly over his pontificate, says, "The numerous endeavours for unity made during this period form one of the saddest chapters in the history of the Church. Neither Pope had the magnanimity to put an end to the terrible state of affairs" by resigning.[1] Germany, England, Hungary, Poland, and the greater part of Italy accepted him as pope (he and the Avignon Pope Clement VII having mutually excommunicated one another), but the day before Tomacelli's election by the fourteen cardinals who remained faithful to the papacy at Rome, Clement VII at Avignon had just crowned a French prince, Louis II of Anjou, King of Naples. The youthful Ladislaus was rightful heir of Charles III of Naples, assassinated in 1386, and Margaret of Durazzo, scion of a line that had traditionally supported the popes in their struggles in Rome with the anti-papal party in the city itself. Boniface IX saw to it that Ladislaus was crowned King of Naples at Gaeta May 29, 1390) and worked with him for the next decade to expel the Angevin forces from southern Italy. But on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, it looked not less complicated. Where the widowhood regency of a mother (Elizabeth of Bosnia) as a deputy of her daughter caused a lot of resistance and where Đurađ II Balšić took the side of Louis II of Anjou in a war against Ladislaus of Naples. But the broader plans for organizing a crusade against Turks have remained but a dream. Boniface IX supported also the construction of new church buildings, he founded in 1391 the monastery of Saint Clara in Šibenik and ordered to build another church for it, because there were some wives at the new built church of Saint Saviour in Šibenik, built from 1386 until 1390 under the procurator Stephanos Keglević, but they were, as he wrote, obviously not sitting on rules.[2] Henry Scarampo, Bishop of Feltre, prepared the Council of Constance, was the treasurer to Boniface IX and the secretary to the Emperor Sigismund and wonders of his piety relate to him.[3] Shortly before Pietro Tomacelli (Boniface IX) died, Feltre was conquered by the Republic of Venice in 1404, only one week before, Boniface IX wrote to the bishop of Senj to use all means to get this money.[4] In 1390 he had written his "great surprise" that a Benedictine monastery in the diocese of Senj wanted to collect taxes.[5] In 1395, 1396 and in 1399, he was anxious, as many before, to clarify the unclear ownership relations between the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg and the Benediktbeuern Abbey, where it seems that probably Saint Boniface had an involvement in the foundation.[6][7] Marquard of Randegg the Vicar general of Augsburg in 1395 protested in Rome against the papal money collectors, while the protest was heard in Rome, he was moved to the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, in the same year he was appointed by Pope Boniface IX as the money collector in the Archbishopric of Salzburg and he became later Bishop of Constance.[8] Leopold III, Duke of Austria, had made ​​in 1373 a foray through northern Italy and had sent the booty with the prisoners to Feltre, where he had left his cash to pay his mercenaries, but the prisoners were liberated in Feltre and the booty was hidden.[9] Finally, Pope Boniface IX asked Cardinal Bartolomeo Oleario from Padua to get involved in the dispute between Ladislaus of Naples and Louis II of Anjou. The pope, wishing to return the kingdom to the obedience of King Ladislao and to stop the internal division caused by the schism, sent Cardinal Bartolomeo Oleario as his legate to Naples, with wide powers. The cardinal was very successful in his mission and went to Gaeta, where King Ladislao had sought protection. While in Gaeta, Cardinal Oleario was asked by the pope to ask King Martino I of Sicily, who favored the party of Antipope Benedict XIII, to submit to Rome. When the cardinal was about to leave in his new mission, he fell gravely ill and died.[10] Two condottieri from Casale Monferrato and from Barbiano di Cotignola both financed by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who invented bureaucracy in noting the details of several taxes, were conquering northern Italy, which culminated into the battle of Casalecchio in 1402.[11] One of the saddest chapters in the history of the Church. This can also be seen as an inscription on a chapel near Feltre: "Hic infirmi firmum urbani rusticum Silvestrem velatudinem firmitatemque oremus." ("Here, let us, the weak, pray to the rural Silvester for the strength of the city, for the need and for the constancy." The "rural Silvester" was in the 9th Century the Duke of Dioclea, who was appointed by Pope Hadrian II as the first Metropolit of Ohrid and later fled to Dubrovnik to the birthplace of his mother when the ancient town of Duklja was attacked.[12][13][14]) Adam of Usk commented it, he wrote, that next to Pope John XXII, Boniface IX was one of the shrewdest financiers of all Popes, because he was like a lean fox.[15] There is also a noteworthy comment on this inscription in "the description of the uncivilized civilization in Europe": "This way is the historical process of the civilizing of social life abandoned and replaced by social figment of imagination, which role models are mostly to find in the European Middle Ages. Pope Boniface IX occupies an unique position in the history of the Church, partially because of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and partially because of the Siege of Belgrade (1456). The Christian faith became a bill of money and power."[16] In 1399, the Council of Ten was deeply divided whether to proceed against the Dominican reformer blessed Giovanni Dominici, who already resented for alienating the patrician nuns of the Venetian convent of Corpus Christi from their families and who was accused of challenging the government's control of religious life.[17] Boniface IX approved in 1400 the cult of blessed John, who lived and died holy and was a parish priest of San Giovanni Decollato in Venice, about whom is nothing known and even his death in 1348 is suggested.[18] The vicar of the king Sigismund bishop Szepesi had already sold Cherso several times, the last time in 1396, to learn every time that he is not a landowner there, but only a Comes, who spent a lot of money for something.[19] During Boniface IX, it began in 1396 the construction of the last Gothic cathedral in Italy, namely of the Como Cathedral, which is regarded as a superb example of the transition from Gothic architecture to Renaissance architecture.[20][21] Boniface IX had given a commission to the abbot of Szepes to take the place of schismatic father abbots and preside over elections, and do everything in their kingdom which the abbot of Cîteaux Abbey and the general chapter could do according to the statues of the Order.[22] Considering an agreement of the Order with Béla III of Hungary in 1183, it followed legal consequences, as it is known, this occurred only once presumably until now, namely in 1533 when a gubernator (Petar Keglević) for the monastery Topusko in Croatia became activ, whereupon an inquisition followed after which significant changes in church law were made.[23][24] A famous deputation was sent in 1582 by the convent of the Knights of Malta to Pope Gregory XIII, to entreat him not to infringe the order's right of election. Pope Gregory XIII ordered a search to be made into the registers of his predecessors, particularly those of Pope Boniface IX, Pope Innocent VII and Pope Gregory XII.[25]


During his reign, Boniface IX finally extinguished the troublesome independence of the commune of Rome and established temporal control, though it required fortifying not only the Castel Sant'Angelo, but the very bridges, and for long seasons he was forced to live in more peaceful surroundings, at Assisi or Perugia. He also took over the port of Ostia from its Cardinal Bishop. In the Papal States Boniface IX gradually regained control of the chief castles and cities, and he re-founded the States as they would appear during the fifteenth century. At some time between 1391 and 1399, Saint Vincent Ferrer predicted that the young Alonso de Borja (Pope Callixtus III), who appointed as his admiral of the fleet Cardinal Scarampo, would became Pope.[26][27]

Clement VII died at Avignon, September 16, 1394, but the French cardinals quickly elected a successor, on September 28: Cardinal Pedro de Luna, who took the name Benedict XIII (1394–1423). Over the next few years Boniface IX was entreated to abdicate, even by his strongest supporters: Richard II of England (in 1396), the Diet of Frankfurt (in 1397), and King Wenceslaus of Germany (at Reims, 1398). But he refused. Pressure for an ecumenical council also grew as the only way to breach the Great Schism, but the conciliar movement made no headway during Boniface IX's papacy.

During the reign of Boniface IX two jubilees were celebrated at Rome. The first, in 1390, had been declared by his predecessor Pope Urban VI, and was largely frequented by people from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and England. Several cities of Germany obtained the "privileges of the jubilee", as indulgences were called, but the preaching of indulgences led to abuses and scandal. The jubilee of 1400 drew to Rome great crowds of pilgrims, particularly from France, in spite of a disastrous plague. Pope Boniface IX remained in the city.

In the latter part of 1399 there arose bands of self-flagellating penitents, known as the Bianchi, or Albati ("White Penitents"), especially in Provence, where the Albigenses had been exterminated less than a century before, and spreading to Spain and northern Italy. These evoked uneasy memories of the mass processions of wandering flagellants of the Black Death period, 1348—1349. The Church mobilized immediately, as it had with natural disasters in centuries past.[28] They went in procession from city to city, clad in white garments, with faces hooded, and wearing on their backs a red cross, following a leader who carried a large cross. Rumors of imminent divine judgement and visions of the Virgin Mary abounded. They sang the newly popular hymn Stabat Mater during their processions. For a while, as the White Penitents approached Rome, gaining adherents along the way, Boniface IX and the Curia supported their penitential enthusiasm, but when they reached Rome, Boniface IX had their leader burnt at the stake, and they soon dispersed. "Boniface IX gradually discountenanced these wandering crowds, an easy prey of agitators and conspirators, and finally dissolved them", as the Catholic Encyclopedia reports.

Of great importance to Mariazell in 1399 was the granting of a plenary indulgence by Pope Boniface IX. It has been granted for the week after the week of the Assumption of Mary and led to the formation of penitential rites and processions, which remained alive even after the abolition of this indulgence and are detectable into the Baroque era. The number of pilgrims continued to grow and it became the most important pilgrimage site in Austria.[29]

In England the anti-papal preaching of John Wyclif supported the opposition of the King and the higher clergy to Boniface IX's habit of granting English benefices as they fell vacant to favorites in the Roman Curia. Boniface IX introduced a revenue known as annates perpetuæ, withholding half the first year's income of every benefice granted in the Roman Court. The pope's agents also now sold not simply a vacant benefice but the expectation of one; and when an expectation had been sold, if another offered a larger sum for it, the pope voided the first sale; the unsympathetic observer Dietrich von Nieheim reports that he saw the same benefice sold several times in one week, and that the Pope talked business with his secretaries during Mass. There was resistance in England, the staunchest supporter of the Roman papacy during the Schism: the English Parliament confirmed and extended the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire of Edward III of England (1327–77), giving the king veto power over papal appointments in England. Boniface IX was defeated in the face of a unified front, and the long controversy was finally settled, to the English king's satisfaction. Nevertheless, at the Synod of London (1396), the English bishops convened to condemn Wyclif.

In Germany the Electors had met at Rhense (August 20, 1400) to depose the unworthy Wenceslaus, and had chosen in his place Rupert, Duke of Bavaria and Rhenish Count Palatine. In 1403 Boniface IX made the best of it and approved the deposition and recognized Rupert.

In 1398 and 1399 Boniface IX appealed to Christian Europe in favor of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, threatened at Constantinople by Sultan Bayezid I, but there was little enthusiasm for a new crusade at such a time. Saint Birgitta of Sweden was canonized by Pope Boniface IX, October 7, 1391. The universities of Ferrara (1391) and Fermo (1398) owe him their origin, and that of Erfurt (in Germany), its confirmation (1392).

Boniface IX died in 1404 after a brief illness.

Boniface IX was a frank politician, strapped for cash like the other princes of Europe, as the costs of modern warfare rose and supporters needed to be encouraged by gifts, for fourteenth-century government depended upon such personal support as a temporal ruler could gather and retain. All the princes of the late 14th century were accused of avaricious money-grubbing by contemporary critics, but among them contemporaries ranked Boniface IX exceptional. Traffic in benefices, the sale of dispensations, and the like, did not cover the loss of local sources of revenue in the long absence of the papacy from Rome, foreign revenue diminished by the schism, expenses for the pacification and fortification of Rome, the constant wars made necessary by French ambition and the piecemeal reconquest of the Papal States. Boniface IX certainly provided generously for his mother, his brothers Andrea and Giovanni, and his nephews in the spirit of the day. The Curia was perhaps equally responsible for new financial methods that were destined in the next century to arouse bitter feelings against Rome, particularly in Germany.

(Note on numbering: Pope Boniface VII is now considered an anti-pope. At the time however, this fact was not recognized and so the seventh true Pope Boniface took the official number VIII. This caused the true eighth Pope Boniface to take the number IX. This has advanced the numbering of all subsequent Popes Boniface by one. Popes Boniface VIII through IX are really the seventh through eight popes by that name.)

References

  1. ^ Pastor, The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages (1906), vol. i, p 165.
  2. ^ Pope Boniface IX about the wives in Šibenik
  3. ^ The History of the Council of Constance, page 403, Stephen Whatley, Jacques Lenfant, published by A. Bettesworth, 1730.
  4. ^ Ungarn-Jahrbuch : Zeitschrift für die Kunde Ungarns und verwandte Gebiete. Seite 64, Ungarisches Institut München. Hase und Koehler Verlag, Mainz 1969.
  5. ^ V. Štefanić, "Opatija sv. Lucije u Baški i drugi benediktinski samostani na Krku," Croatia sacra 6, nos. 11-12, 1936, p. 31 (with fn. 114)
  6. ^ Das Bistum Augsburg: Die Benediktinerabtei Benediktbeuern, Bistümer der Kirchenprovinz Mainz, Band 28 von Germania sacra, Band 1 von Das Bistum Augsburg, Seite 175, Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Josef Hemmerle, Walter de Gruyter, 1991, ISBN 9783110129274
  7. ^ Bauerreiss, Romuald (1939). "Bonifatius und das Bistum Staffelsee: Zur bayrischen Bistumsorganisation von 739", Seite 4-6
  8. ^ Deutsche biographische Enzyklopädie (DBE), Band 6 von Deutsche biographische Enzyklopädie, Seite 628,, Walther Killy, Rudolf Vierhaus, K.G. Saur, 1999, ISBN 9783598231865
  9. ^ Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig: von ihrem Ursprunge bis auf unsere Zeiten, in welcher zwar der Text des Herrn Abtes L'Augier zum Grunde gelegt, seine Fehler aber verbessert, die Begebenheiten bestimmter und aus echten Quellen vorgetragen, und nach einer richtigen Zeitordnung ..., Bände 1-2, Seite 118, Johann Friedrich Le Bret, Hartknoch, 1773.
  10. ^ http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1389.htm
  11. ^ Renaissance in Italy; the age of the despots, p. 142, John Addington Symonds, H. Holt and Company, New York 1888.
  12. ^ Handbuch der kirchlichen geographie und statistik von den zeiten der apostel bis zu dem anfange des sechszehnten jahrhunderts: Mit besonderer rücksicht aus die ausbreitung des judenthums und mohammedanismus nach den quellen und besten hülfs-mitteln, Band 1, Seite 437, Johann Elieser Theodor Wiltsch, H. Schultze, 1846.
  13. ^ Kirchen-Lexikon: oder, Encyklopädie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer Hilfswissenschaften, Band 12, Seite 516, Heinrich Joseph Wetzer, Benedict Welte, Herder Verlag, 1856.
  14. ^ Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte des kroatischen Frühmittelalters, Band 40 von Schriften der Balkan-Kommission. Philologische Abteilung. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Radoslav Katičić, Seite 232, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999. ISBN 9783700128083
  15. ^ The decline of the Medieval Church, Volume 1, page 315, Alexander Clarence Flick, Burt Franklin bibliography & reference series 1967.
  16. ^ Die unzivilisierte Zivilisation: wie die Gesellschaft ihre Zukunft verspielt, S. 111, Horst Kurnitzky, Verlag Campus, 2002, ISBN 9783593367767
  17. ^ Women and men in Renaissance Venice: twelve essays on patrician society, page 41, Stanley Chojnacki, JHU Press, 2000, ISBN 9780801863950
  18. ^ Parish priests among the saints: canonized or beatified parish priests, page 49, Biography index reprint series, Walter Gumbley, Ayer Publishing, 1947, ISBN 9780836980615
  19. ^ Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn, 1387-1437, Seite 110-199, Elemér Mályusz, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990, ISBN 9789630549783
  20. ^ Famous Cathedrals As Seen and Described by Great Writers, page 225, Esther Singleton, Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 9781417924318
  21. ^ Milan and the Italian Lakes, Globetrotter Travel Pack Series, page 89, Rowland Mead, Edition 2, illustrated, New Holland Publishers, 2008, ISBN 9781845378721
  22. ^ The English historical review, Volume 44, page 378, Mandell Creighton, Justin Winsor, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Reginald Lane Poole, Sir John Goronwy Edwards, Longman., 1929.
  23. ^ Agreement with Bela III.
  24. ^ Bulletin scientifique, Band 8, page 108, Savet akademija nauka SFRJ. Le Conseil, 1972.
  25. ^ The history of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, styled afterwards, the Knights of Rhodes and at present, the Knights of Malta, Volume 3, page 278, Vertot (abbé de), J. Christie, 1818
  26. ^ A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome Part Three, Kessinger Publishing's rare reprints, Volume 3 of A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, page 184, Mandell Creighton, Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 9781417944439
  27. ^ Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter: vom V. bis zum XVI. Jahrhundert, S. 147, Ferdinand Gregorovius, Franz Rühl, Verlag Cotta, 1870.
  28. ^ Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues: A-M Volume 1 of Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues, page 63, Joseph Patrick Byrne, ABC-CLIO, 2008. ISBN 9780313341014
  29. ^ Basilika Mariazell
  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Boniface IX". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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