The worst pope in the history: Boniface VIII

Boniface VIII
(C.1230-1303)

Kimmo Huosionmaa

Pope Boniface VIII (born Benedetto Caetani) c.1230-1303. was the worst pope in the world. He was cynical, despotic and believed magic and some other things. So he was superstitious. The picture of him was painted as the egg-shaped helmet on his head. This pope was the very bad thing for the church. But the question is why this particular pope was mentioned as the worst thing for the church but was he worse than some Borgia? Why was this pope so denigrated and hated? Did he make something, what made the leaders of the church to force the people to deny the relationship about this man?  Also, other popes were lived in sinful life, and they didn’t denigrate by the church?


Did this cynical man found something in the Vatican, what caused the force to deny his personality? By the way, I must ask one question, was the crime of that pope, that he was not some fanatic or otherwise the people, who seemed like “real believer? And what made him untouchable during his life? In that time if there were problems with some pope, that person would be poisoned or otherwise murdered. So why this unpopular pope didn’t face that fate? And was Boniface VIII so unpopular during his life? This man got votes from the conclave to rise as the most powerful man in the Catholic church in 1294.  He was in his office almost nine years until his death in the year 1303.


Boniface VIII was quite old when he died, even if the birth year of this man were not marked exactly sharp. The age of over 70  was quite much at that time, there were no antibiotics and other conditions of life were not at the same level than today. The reason for the denigration of this pope could not be that this man persecuted somebody. In that time there were lots of people for persecuting, and if the pope mentioned somebody by name, could his enemies find those persons and they might ask what those people made for the most powerful man in Europe?


All heads of the Catholic church came from noble families in the medieval time. The noble status protected them against ordinary people, who were scared by religious and superstition afraid of the Roman Catholic church more than anything else, and sometimes the priests made the sin. And those children were, of course, perfect persons for the high ranking officials for that system. The parents were well known and the church could control the growth of the child. The noble families were perfect places for those children because they were so powerful, that Catholic church could use them as the shield, what covers it secrets from normal or ordinary people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_VIII

Was Dante's Inferno actually a mining site, where the people were humiliated like in some concentration camp?

Botticelli's painting about "Inferno"
Picture 1

Kimmo Huosionmaa

In many libraries is a strange book, what has been written the man named Dante Alighieri (1262-1321) in 1321. The book was maybe published after Dante's death because in that book had been written the things, what might cause that the writer of this tale would that writer must step to the bonfire. This book what's name is actually wast the narrative poem "Divine Comedy" has given the people the world "Dante's Inferno", what means the hellish place, and when we are reading that book, we might hope, that Dante had very good imagination, and he wrote a fictional story when he met the demon, who allowed that man visited hell. Inferno was the first part of that book.


The hell was an underground place, where was allowed to go by the well, and that route Dante used, when he visited the place, what he called as "Inferno". The place had nine levels, where the souls were suffered by the things, what they did during their lives, and that is the thing what you might find yourself are the styles of punishments, what those people, who made sin, were found in that place. When we are looking at the pictures, that has been drawn for that book by Botticelli and Gustave Dora in 13th and 19th century.

In Botticelli's painting from the year 1482, is the shape, what we might see in the open mining sites in many books. The Botticelli's image might look like also the pope's helmet, but my opinion is that looks like mining site, and when we are starting to look at those levels of hell, we might see the things like bitumen or some other mineral lake, where those person's who worked in that mining site, were brutally pushed, and those minerals will preserve the bodies like they were in their last moments.


Also, other stories what Dante wrote about that place, told about brutal punishments. When we are looking at the figures of Dante and his guide, we must think that Dante got his contact person the uniform of the guards and allowed to see what was going on in that place, what destination Dante didn't want to tell the people. So was that Inferno the mining site, where people were tortured like in some concentration camp?


Did that place the end of the life those people, who were somehow avoided the bonfire, when they were prosecuted by the  Inquisition? And did that mine site remains in the pope's personal control? Or what was the reason, that Dante hired that place? Did the witch hunting made by the reason, that those mines needed workforce? And what was the reason, that this particular mining site was hidden by the public? What was it the product? Was it gold, jewelry or radium?


What was the reason, why that slavery camp was so secret?  If the production was the radium, the reason might give pope the "power of the God" by the radioactive radiation. In this text, the radium means actually the pitchblende mineral, what is the uranium mineral, and if that mineral would be powdered, the dust would cause cancer. And those times the people didn't know about this symptom.


Or maybe it produced the gold for pope's personal use overtaken the Vatican bookkeepers, and that allowed the pope to hire mercenaries for increasing his and his family personal power in medieval Europe. This might be one explanation, why Dante wrote that novel or poem at the time, where the relationship with the devil might send the man straight to the front of inquisition and then to the bonfire. And in that book Dante told stories, where he was in friendship with the demons. So those writings would send that man straight to grave. And that's why this sensation was published after the writer's death.

Sources

Picture 1

https://kottke.org/plus/misc/images/botticelli-dante.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy