S
Pope Boniface VIII. "It is altogether necessary for salvation for every soul to be subject unto the Roman Pontiff (Pope)" Bull Unam Sanctam.
"... whether Boniface was a direct or indirect cause of the tumult that retarded the birth of democracy in Florence [Italy], he earned Dante's undying hatred. Later, Dante rationalized that hatred when he developed his theme that mankind could only know happiness under an emperor appointed by God, that the temporal power of the popes was an offense to heaven which condemned all mankind to chaos. In the Divine Comedy he drags Boniface through hell, through purgatory, through paradise itself, there to be arraigned before St. Petr, condemned by the apostle himself in an appalling indictment:
He who usurps my place upon the Earth,
My place, my place, my place,
Has made of my cemetery a sewer
Of blood and stench whereby the Evil One
Who fell from here, below there is appeased. (1)".
[page 110: Chamberlin, E.R. (1969). The Bad Popes. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.].
Notes.
1. Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 22.
"... whether Boniface was a direct or indirect cause of the tumult that retarded the birth of democracy in Florence [Italy], he earned Dante's undying hatred. Later, Dante rationalized that hatred when he developed his theme that mankind could only know happiness under an emperor appointed by God, that the temporal power of the popes was an offense to heaven which condemned all mankind to chaos. In the Divine Comedy he drags Boniface through hell, through purgatory, through paradise itself, there to be arraigned before St. Petr, condemned by the apostle himself in an appalling indictment:
He who usurps my place upon the Earth,
My place, my place, my place,
Has made of my cemetery a sewer
Of blood and stench whereby the Evil One
Who fell from here, below there is appeased. (1)".
[page 110: Chamberlin, E.R. (1969). The Bad Popes. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.].
Notes.
1. Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 22.