#OTD in 1303 - Maundy Thursday - Pope Boniface VIII excommunicated all persons who were impeding French clerics from coming to the Holy See. This included Philip IV, King of France, though not by name.

This was in response to Phillip’s anti-papal campaign in France: the row began when the French king started to claim a share of all church revenues in France to fund his military campaigns. That alarmed Boniface, who had initially supported Philip against his rival Edward I. Now he changed his tune.

The king’s chief minister, Guillaume de Nogaret, condemned Boniface as a heretic and a criminal. After a further exchange of pleasantries, Nogaret led a French army to Rome to confront Boniface at his palace at Anagni.

The pope was ordered to resign, to which he responded “I would rather die.” Nogaret then hit him, a blow remembered as the ‘Anagni slap’, and took Boniface into custody. He might have been tortured, although later tales of the French chopping his hands off were fictional.

Boniface died shortly afterwards of a ‘strange malady’, probably triggered by stress. His successor, Benedict XI, lasted just eight months before kicking the bucket - allegedly poisoned by Philip’s implacable minister, Nogaret. The next Pope, Clement V, adopted a wiser policy of giving Philip and Edward pretty much everything they wanted.

Attached is a depiction of the death of Boniface in a 15th-century manuscript of Boccaccio's De Casibus.