of Boniface was worthy of so devoted a life. He had once more visited Frisia, and having again baptized many converts to the christian faith, had appointed a day for their confirmation. When the day came, however, the heathen surrounded his encampment on the banks of the river Bordue, with the evident purpose of attacking it. His attendants wished to defend themselves, but this he would not allow. "Let them not," he said, "fear those who may kill the body, but cannot touch the soul. Let them pass with boldness the narrow strait of death, that they might reign with Christ for ever." As the pagans drew near, he fell upon his knees, and placed a copy of the holy gospels on his head. He then commended his soul to God, and in this attitude awaited the blows of his murderers, who quickly dispatched him. Thus nobly died this great missionary, on the 5th of June, 755. He was afterwards canonized at Rome, and the day of his martyrdom is still marked in the English calendar, though not observed as a saint's day by the English church. His life was written by several of his contemporaries, especially by his nephew Willibald, bishop of Aichstadt.—(See also Cave, Dupin, Fleury, and a Life of S. Boniface, by the Rev. George W. Cox, London, 1853.) His epistles were published at Mentz in 1605, by Ferarius, and again reprinted in 1629. Two of them are quoted by William of Malmesbury, in his History of the Kingdom of the Mercians—one addressed to King Ethelbald, and the other to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury. They refer to scandals both among the laity and clergy, and were not, the historian intimates, without effect.—R. S. O.
BONIFACE, a Roman general of the fifth century, by birth a Thracian, was governor of Africa under Honorius, and became the chief councillor of the Empress Placidia. Driven from the court by intrigues, he sought to avenge himself by inviting the Vandals into Spain. Subsequently recovering the favour and confidence of the empress, he was employed against Ætius, by whom he was killed in single combat.—W. B.
BONIFACE. The name borne by several popes:—
Boniface I., a Roman, was canonically elected, after the death of Zosimus, in December, 418. But the archdeacon, Eulalius, was set up by a faction among the clergy and people, and took possession of the Lateran church. Symmachus, the prefect of Rome, favoured Eulalius, and the emperor, Honorius, was at first induced by his letters to do the same; but having afterwards received a petition from those who had participated in the election of Boniface, he summoned a council to Ravenna to decide the matter, and meantime ordered that neither party should enter Rome. Eulalius, however, disobeyed this order; upon which he was expelled by order of the emperor, and the election of Boniface was confirmed. The Pelagian controversy was raging at this time, and Boniface sent a request to St. Augustine, through his friend, Alypius, that he would write against the Pelagians. St. Augustine did so, and addressed his work to Boniface. This pope strenuously maintained and extended the authority of the Roman see both in Gaul and in the East. He died at a great age in the year 422.
Boniface II., a Roman by birth, but of Gothic parentage, succeeded Felix III. in 529. An antipope was set up in the person of Dioscorus, who, however, died at the end of a month; in spite of which, Boniface anathematized his memory. St. Benedict, the patriarch of the western monks, founded at this time the great monastery of Monte Cassino. By an illegal stretch of power, Boniface named his own successor, Vigilius a deacon but the act having been condemned by a council, he appears to have seen his error, and to have cancelled the nomination, which certainly was not acted upon. He died in December, 531.
Boniface III., a Roman, was elected in February, 606, and occupied the papal chair only nine months. Having been sent as nuncio to Constantinople, he ingratiated himself while there with the Emperor Phocas, from whom, after his election, he obtained a formal acknowledgment of the primacy of the Roman see, in opposition to the pretensions of the patriarch of Constantinople. He assembled a council in St. Peter's, by which it was enacted—that in the lifetime of the pope, or any other bishop, it should not be lawful even to speak of a successor. He died in November, 606.
Boniface IV. was elected in September, 607, after the see had been vacant for ten months. He was a native of Valeria, in the country of the Marsi. Having obtained permission from the Emperor Phocas to convert the Pantheon into a christian church, he dedicated it in honour of the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, the title it still bears. This dedication gave rise to the festival of All-saints on the first of November. In 610 Mellitus, archbishop of Canterbury, came to Rome, and assisted at a council held by the pope, the decrees of which he took back with him to England, together with letters from Boniface to the clergy, and to King Ethelbert. The pope turned his house into a monastery, which he richly endowed. He died in May, 614, and was canonized after his death.
Boniface V., a Neapolitan, succeeded Deusdedit in December, 617. Hearing of the inclination of Edwin, king of Northumbria, to embrace christianity, he wrote earnestly exhorting him to embrace the true religion, and pointing out for his imitation the example of all the other princes. He wrote also to Edwin's queen, Ethelburga, who was already a christian, urging her to pray and labour for the conversion of her husband. He died in October, 625.
Boniface VI., a Roman, was elected after the death of Formosus, in April, 896, but died fifteen days afterwards.
Boniface VII. Benedict VI. having been imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, Franconi, a Roman, deacon of the Roman church, was elected in his place in 974, and took the name of Boniface VII. Shortly afterwards, Benedict having in the meantime been put to death in prison, Franconi was expelled from Rome, and fled to Constantinople. He died in 985.
Boniface VIII. (Cardinal Benedict Gaetani), a native of Anagni, was elected in December, 1294, on the resignation of Celestine V. He was well versed in the civil and canon law, and had been employed many years in conducting the political and diplomatic affairs of the holy see. Fearing that the party which did not recognize the legality of the abdication of his predecessor, might, if they got him into their hands, use him as an instrument for creating a disturbance, he caused Celestine to be confined in the fortress of Fumona, where, being ill treated by his guards, he died in 1296. Boniface possessed the qualities rather of a temporal sovereign than of a prince of the church. His pride and ambition led him to aim at the extension of the papal power in temporal matters, to a point far beyond what even Gregory VII. or Innocent III. had attempted; and, when he met with opposition, he recklessly employed against his adversaries the whole armory of ecclesiastical censures, in such a manner as to bring both himself and them into contempt. He is made the subject of a withering invective in the nineteenth canto of Dante's Inferno, although there seems reason to believe, that the particular crime, simony, there ascribed to him, cannot justly be laid to his charge. He attempted, but vainly, to weaken the hold of the house of Aragon upon Sicily. In 1297 a rupture occurred between him and the powerful family of the Colonnas. He excommunicated the whole family, including two cardinals, and having taken Palestrina, one of their strongholds, he caused the town to be demolished, and another to be built in its stead on a different site. But his pontificate is rendered chiefly remarkable by the long struggle between him and Philip the Fair, king of France. There were grave faults on both sides. Philip, by his unjust exactions and illegal exercises of power in the affairs of the French church, had furnished the pope, to whom many of the French clergy appealed, with a reasonable ground for interference. By the bull, Clericis laicos, published in 1296, Boniface attempted to put a stop to these exactions, and again by the bull, Ausculta fili, published in 1298. But as Philip refused or delayed to make reparation, the pope summoned all the heads of the French clergy to a council, to be held in Italy, to consult on the affairs of the French church. Philip forbade any of his subjects to leave the kingdom without his permission. The council was, nevertheless, opened in 1302, and well attended by the French prelates, and one result of its deliberations, was the celebrated bull, Unam sanctam, in which the absolute superiority of the spiritual over the temporal power is asserted in the strongest terms. Boniface, however, in the course of the quarrel, put forward pretensions which were evidently extravagant. He interfered in the civil administration of France to such a degree, that nearly the whole nation turned against him. At an assembly of prelates and barons held at Paris in 1303, Boniface was declared to be guilty of heresy and simony, and an appeal was made from his judgment to that of a future general council. The pope, in return, prepared to fulminate an excommunication against Philip and his adherents, and to lay France under an interdict. But before these bulls could be expedited, Boniface was seized at Anagni by a party of
