Wednesday, May 02, 2007

One Hundred Ninety-third Pope: Boniface VIII - 2 comments




Boniface VIII had a decently-long reign as pope, from 1294-1303, but at great cost to the church. He bought his way into the seat (Dante's Nicholas III expects him to end up in the Eighth Circle of inferno, reserved for simoniacs), bullied his way through Europe (unsuccessfully, marking a real turning point in the temporal and political power of the church against the monarchies), and left a trail of heresies behind (investigation of these took a decade after his death).

2 Comments:

Blogger Mike & Helen said...

Matt, how do you know what all these chaps looked like? Do you have a book, or some website, or just a really creative imagination?

I never realised there were so many!

Wednesday, 02 May, 2007  
Blogger matt kirkland said...

Oh, how I wish I had a book . . . well, really I'm just going by whatever Google can help me find. For many of the first seven or eight centuries I only had tile mosaics to go by; other times there are only medieval manuscripts with little illustrations. As we get further on in history, we're getting closer to the age of realistic portraiture, which makes it much easier to find interesting lines. Boniface here is from a large sculpture, which happens to have its hands broken off.

Wednesday, 02 May, 2007  

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