§ 4. BONIFACE VIII. AND PHILIP THE FAIR. 23
captors being undecided whether to carry Boniface away to Lyons, set him at liberty, or put him to death. Such was the humiliating counterpart to the proud display made at the pope's coronation nine years before I
In the meantime the feelings of the Anagnese underwent a change. The adherents of the Gaetanifamily rallied their forces and, combining together, they rescued Boniface and droveLput the conspirators. Seated at the head of his palace stairway, the pontiff thanked God and the people for his deliverance. " Yesterday," he said, " I was like Job, poor and without a friend. To-day I have abundance of bread, wine, and water." A rescuing party from Rome conducted the unfortunate pope to the Holy City, where he was no longer his own master.^ A month later, Oct. 11, 1303, his earthly_career closed. Outside the death-chamber, the streets of the "cltywere filled with riot and tumult, and the Gaetani and Colonna were encamped in battle array against each other in the Campagna.
Reports agree that Boniface's death was a most pitiable ong. He died of melancholy and despair, and perhaps actually insane. He refused food, and beat his head against the wall. " He was out of his head," wrote Ptolemy of Lucca,^ and believed that every one who approached him was seeking to put him in prison.
Human sympathy goes out for the aged man of fourscore years and more, dying in loneliness and despair. But judgment comes sooner or later upon individuals and institutions for their mistakes and offences. The humiliation of Boniface
1 Ferretus of Vicenza, Muratori : Scriptores, IX. 1002, reports that Boniface wanted to be removed from St. Peter's to the Lateran, but the Colonna sent word he was in custody.
■^ Extra mentempositus. Ferretus relates that Boniface fell into a rage and, after gnawing his staff and striking his head against the wall, hanged himself. Villani, VIII. 63, speaks of a "strange malady " begotten in the pope so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad. The chronicler of Orvieto, see Dollinger : Beitrage, etc. , III. 353, says Boniface died weighed down by despondency and the infirmities of age, ubi tristitia et senectutis infirmitate gravatus mortuus est. It is charitable to suppose that the pope's old enemy, the stone, returned to plague him, the malady from which the Spanish physician Arnald of Villanova had given him relief. See Finke, p. 200 sqq.
24 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
was the long-delayed penalty of the sacerdotal pride of his predecessors and himself. He suffered in part for the hierarchical arrogance of which he was the heir and in part for his own presumption. Villani and other contemporaries represent the pope's latter end as a deserved punishment for his unblushing nepotism, his pompous i)ride, and his implacable severity towards those who dared to resist his plans, and for his treatment of the feeble hermit who preceded him. One of tlie chroniclers reports that seamen plying near the Liparian islands, the reputed entrance to hell, heard evil spirits rejoicing and exclaiming, " Open, open; receive pope Boniface into the infernal regions."
Catholic historians like Hergenrother and Kirsch, bound to the ideals of the past, make a brave attempt to defend Boniface, though they do not overlook his want of tact and his coarse violence of speech. It is certain, says Cardinal Hergenrother,^ " that Boniface was not ruled by unworthy motives and that he did not deviate from the paths of his predecessors or overstep the legal conceptions of the Middle Ages." Finke, also a Catholic historian, the latest learned investigator of the character and career of Boniface, acknowledges the pope's intellectual ability, but also emphasizes his pride and arrogance, his depreciation of other men, his disagreeable spirit and manner, which left him without a personal friend, his nepotism and his avarice. He hoped, said a contemporary, to live till " all his enemies were suppressed."
In strong contrast to the common judgment of Catholic historians is the sentence passed by Gregorovjus. " Boniface was devoid of every apostolical virtue, a man of passionate temper, violent, faitlilesga^ unscru[)ulous,^ unforgiving, filled with ambitions and lust of worldly povver." And this will be the judgment of those who feel no obligation to defend the papal institution.
^ Kirchengesch., II. 597 sq. Boniface called the French "dogs" and riiilip (jarQon, which had the meaning of street urchin. A favorite expression with him was rihaldus, rascal, and he called Charles of Naples " meanest of rascals," vilissimus ribaldits. See Finke, p. 292 s<i. Finke"s judgment is based in part upon new documents he found in Barcelona and other libraries.