Intro to the Council of Florence: A Pope so Important even the Bees Love Him

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe, and to maintain that the Church is one holy

Catholic and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity

that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the spouse in

the canticles proclaims. One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one the chosen

of her who bore her. And she represents one soul, mystical body, whose head is Christ, and

the head of Christ is God. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There had

been, at the time of the day-louge, only one ark of Noah prefiguring the one church

which ark, having been finished to a single qubit, had only one pilot and guide, namely Noah.

And we read that outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed. We

venerate this church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet, deliver

O God my soul from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog. He has prayed for

his soul that is for himself, heart and body, and this body, that is to say, the church,

he has called one because of the unity of the spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and

of the charity of the church. This is the tonic of Lord, the seamless tonic, which was

not rent, but which was cast by lot, therefore. Of the one and only church, there is one body

and one head, not two heads like a monster. That is Christ and the vigor of Christ, Peter,

and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter himself said, feed my sheep, meaning

my sheep in general, not these nor those in particular, once we understand that he entrusted

all to Peter. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to

Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ. Since our Lord says

in John, there is one sheepfold and one shepherd. We are informed by the text of the gospels that

in this church and in its power are two swords, namely spiritual and temporal. For when the

Apostles say, behold here are two swords, that is to say, in the church, since the Apostles

were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but that they were sufficient.

Certainly, the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter,

has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding, put up thy sword into thy scabbard.

Therefore, both are in the power of the church, namely the spiritual sword and the material.

But indeed, the latter is to be exercised on behalf of the church, and truly the former is

to be exercised by the church. The former is of the priest, the latter is by the hand of kings and

soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. That is the papal unum sanctum issued

November 1302 by Pope Boniface VIII. I am your host, Professor Cyril Gary Jenkins,

and once again you are listening to light through the past.

Light through the past, a survey of church history. Dr. Cyril Gary Jenkins examines the course

and development of the Orthodox Church. It struggles with heresy, the empire, and relations to other

Christian bodies. Here's Dr. Jenkins. Greetings, greetings, everyone. Welcome once again to

light through the past. We have now come to episode 208, which means that with this episode,

we have wrapped up four years, four years, just think of it, of podcasts.

And so we are continuing with our podcasts on the system within the church.

And today, we are actually beginning looking at the council of Florence.

Now, it's beginning with 208, and I am going to number these episodes. Florence 1,

Florence 2, maybe Florence Intro 1, Florence Intro 2, something like that.

For the simple reason that it's going to take us a little bit to Florence. Now Florence,

as a period in church history, is just two years, 1438 and 1439.

Its repercussions are enormous, and the run-up to it also needs to be understood.

Because one of the things that we can look at is we can look at, well, this bull, this

papal pronunciation, a bull means a declaration. And it's published in 1302. That is,

it's published 28 years after the council of Lyon. And as I had said before, in the council of Lyon,

what has happened is that for the first time, Rome has declared that to be Catholic,

you have to maintain, well, the Filioquay. And of course, in 1285, as we have seen,

the church in Constantinople, along with others, have all declared we are no longer in communion with

Rome. Because of this question, I shall talk a little more later about the patriarch of Alexandria,

because he does kind of throw a spanner into the works, but not a dreadful spanner,

but we shall come back to him. Now having said all that, one of the things that we're looking at

in the council of Florence, one of the key things, is how did this happen? Why was there a council

of Florence? And because if we look back, well, here in 1302, but basically off of 1274,

at the council of Lyon, it was, there was no debate. You submit. There's no debate.

You know, for Michael VIII, you submit. And of course, as we see, that was all affrault as well.

Michael VIII submitted did everything possibly in his power to bring the church to heal.

How it was that he was excommunicated was purely a political act, purely. Now,

but that said, when we get to 1438, things are completely different.

Like, the papacy's ready to debate these things. The latins are ready to debate these things.

And while I'm not going to say that it was always the most pleasant of debates at Florence,

at least the orthodox position was heard, and it could be disputed and argued about.

At Lyon, in 1274, there was nothing of the sort.

And we see here in 1302, Bonifist VIII, who is easily one of the most consequential

popes of the Middle Ages. Bonifist VIII just kind of sweeps it aside.

Right? Any sort of notion about that, the Greeks have anything to say.

If they do not submit to Peter, they reject that they are Christ's sheep.

This is the basic point. Now, as we shall see, what Bonifist does is not out of the blue.

And I do need to caution. So the reign of Bonifist VIII, in one sense, it doesn't represent the high

point of papal claims. The papacy is going to be making claims such as Bonifist VIII's

throughout the rest of its history. We can think that of late. They might be a little tempered.

And there are other popes who are willing or less willing to be as exacting as Bonifist.

But ultimately, Bonifist is stating things that most of the councils are going to state.

And, of course, when we get to the period of the Reformation, the claims of the papacy become

more entrenched. Right, till we get down to the Second Vatican Council, 12, 1870, right? Things are

and so we need to look at the reign of Bonifist VIII because in one sense,

Bonifist VIII represents, we could say, the high tide of the medieval papacy.

It's easy to make an argument that that was innocent the Third Pope from 1198 to 1216.

That is, the Pope was Pope when Constantinople was sacked.

There's various reasons to pin this to him. He was a brilliant mind and not just with respect to

handling things within the Church. He was a brilliant mind, even though we could see how

incredibly he bollocks the whole situation in the East.

But when it came to dealing with the monarchs of Europe, he had these men backing down repeatedly,

right? And so innocent was very consequential.

But with Bonifist VIII, the tide really starts to go out.

And there are all sorts of problems. Problems that actually even go back to the naming of Charles

of Anjou as the Papal Champion, which starts entangling the papacy far more closely

with the Kingdom of France. And so now we shall be looking at this and one of the things that we

need to talk about, well, is the pontificate of Bonifist VIII. We need to go over this because

in many ways, our trail begins with him. It begins a few years earlier, actually. But

when we're thinking about this whole episode, and you might be wondering, why are we starting

back in 1302? I mean, really, we're going to go back to 1291. It's because of events that occur

in the Latin Western Church. Events that'll probably take me two or three episodes to unpack.

I realize that's a lot to be talking about late medieval Catholicism. But all of this, A,

actually is keenly interesting. But more importantly, it tells us why it was

that in the 1430s, the Catholic Church, the Pope of Rome, was so quick to be able to

deal with the Greeks, right? To treat with the Orthodox. And why were they willing to debate

to Florence when they weren't at Leone? And the thing is, at the Council of Florence,

in many ways, the Orthodox Church was in much dire situation. Granted, they weren't being threatened

by the Latins. But they were in a far worse situation. And there's all sorts of things to look at

here. Very interesting occurrences that occur in the Latin West. Now, besides talking about the

Latin West, we're also going to have to talk about, of course, the waning years of the Byzantine

Empire. And how it happened to that, everything just crumbled and collapsed. And so all of this is

background to everything that goes on at Florence. And we have lots of information about Florence

itself, about the debates, about the arguments. We have a number of different books that have been

written about it. And so all of this is very important. And it's, well, it's going to be

involved. And therefore, this is why I'm going to, you know, take several weeks to look at this.

And it's also because I don't a lot of work on this. And so what this means is that

because I have a trip to Rome that's going to take eight, 10 days out of my life. And then also,

I have, we all have, holy week coming up. I want to be able to get, well, let's say ahead of the

curve a little. And so while all of this is, let us say, preparatory to the council of Florence,

and while I've already more or less made my case, that the sism occurs in 1285,

that this is when we can actually recognize and see it.

Florence is probably, let us say, the Kudegra, the really ending of any sort of, let's just say,

hope on theological reconciliation, that when we come to how the council treated the questions,

and what occurs there, and then what occurs subsequently, which we'll also talk about,

which is also a very sad set of circumstances, that right, because the council ends in 1439

and 14 years later, the city of Constantinople falls. So first, let's talk about

Pope Boniface VIII. And so tonight, I'm simply going to look at certain things that have to do

with his pontificate. Next week we'll look at, well, things after his pontificate, but why is his

pontificate important? So first and foremost, as we all may recall, there was a particular Pope,

recently resigned from being Pope, namely Pope Benedict XIV,

Cardo Ratsinger. So Benedict resigned from being Pope, and people noted that it was the first time

in 600 years since the Pope had resigned. That is, going back to 1414 at the council of

Constance when a Pope resigned. The first Pope ever to resign, however, was a man named Celestine

V. Celestine had been elected Pope, and he was one of the men who, in one sense, you would think,

this would have been a good Pope, but quite frankly, he was completely elsuited,

because the papacy, by the time Celestine becomes Pope, is completely enthralled, the papal court,

the papacy itself, to powerful interest within Rome itself, particular, particularly the families

of the Colona and the Orcini, right? The Colona and the Orcini, and the Colona and the Orcini themselves

as factions within the church, we're driving papal politics in a very real way, all right? And

in December 13th of 1294, Celestine V resigned as Pope. Celestine was a hermit. He was a monk in the

mountains outside of Rome, and his abdication comes, well, he was pressured to do so, and one of the

leading people, pressuring him to do this, was a Cardinal, then a Detto Caetani, and it just

happens to be that Benedetto Caetani is elected Pope, and it takes more than a year for this to happen,

so he's elected Pope more than a year back up. It takes a few weeks, right? So Celestine resigns,

beginning of December, December 24th, Caetani is elected Pope, and he takes the name of Boniface,

the 8th. He strongly supported by the Orcini faction, right? So two families, the Colona and the

Orcini, he strongly backed by the Orcini's, and the Orcini themselves are very strongly

part de Galfa, that is, they were very much given to the papacy, but they were very much given

to the papacy running the show in Italy. They did not want outside interference, whereas the Colona,

well, they became part of the part de Gabelini. Well, the part de Gabelini was no longer the

Gabelines of yesterday, who looked to the imperial power of the German emperors, and now Gabelini

just simply met people who were looking to, for external help against the wilds of the papacy,

if you wish. And so in all of this, that is in all of the arguments that are going on between them,

right? Boniface becomes, well, he becomes Pope, Caetani becomes Pope, in 1295, January,

he's enthroned, and almost immediately, he, first, he is a great nepotist, right? He creates

several of his relatives as Cardinals, strengthening his family's hold on the church itself,

diluting the power of the College of Cardinals of the Colona, and on top of that,

Boniface, in order to make sure that the Colona, who are accusing him of devious things,

right? I mean, after all, he was the main one who gets celestial in the fifth to resign,

and the Colona are accusing him of, let's just say, underhanded things with respect to the

papacy, and even questioning the legitimacy of him as Pope, Boniface imprisons Celestine,

the fifth, right? He puts them in the Council of Humane, and what happens, May 19th, 1296,

Celestine dies. And of course, you know, all eyes are turned on Boniface.

Boniface and his problems with the Colona are amplified by Boniface and his problems with

Philip IV the France, not just Philip the France, but also Edward of England. Now,

Edward and Philip were constantly at war, and both of them had borrowed money that they could not

pay back from Italian bankers. They both end up defaulting on loans to these Italian bankers,

wipe out two banking families, and in one sense kind of pave the way for the growth of the

Medici bank, but that would be some years down the line. Nonetheless, Philip essentially,

um, Philip decides he's going to tax clergy, and not just tax clergy, but tax church lands.

And this brings out one of Boniface's early bulls, entitled Claracus Leacus. And in this bull,

he strictly forbids any prince from taxing the church. And more importantly,

of prosecuting clergy, clergy are subject to clerical courts, not to secular courts. If,

for some reason, a priest is tried and deprived, theoretically, he can't be punished twice for one

crime, so theoretically, he's not to be touched by the secular powers. This isn't always the case,

let us say, he's a heretic, and he is an unrepentant heretic. Well, then he can be turned over to

the secular authorities and executed burned at the stake, right? This is this is a lot of

John Huss. So he issues Claracus Leacus February of 1296, and this essentially is what ignites

an enormous row between Boniface and Philip. This is going to be something that dominates the rest

Boniface's time as Pope up through 1303. And the fight, of course, is not nearly with Philip,

and with Philip's intentions of Philip's hope of raising money, which continues even after Philip

seemingly succeeds against Boniface. We'll talk about that in a second, but it also now

brings in bitter fighting with two carinals, both of whom are members of the Colona family.

Uh, Jacopo and Pietro Colona denounce Boniface saying that his election is in

valid and people, monies, and treasures that had actually been stolen by a Colona, not one of

those two. Um, they refuse to return to Rome, and consequently Boniface strips them other offices

and excommunicates them. Now, these two carinals end up fleeing Rome. But nonetheless,

this gives Boniface the impetus to declare war on the Colona. And basically, he launches a

military campaign led by a Colona who actually is loyal to the papacy, a man named Londolfo.

Um, they capture the Colona residences in, uh, palestrina, ancient Roman prinest,

they tear down the residence, they sow it with salt, right? Boniface knows how to get it done,

right? Um, and so in one sense, what we have is we have Boniface kind of clearing the decks

of those who are, let us just say, less than enthusiastic about him within Rome. I mean, he certainly

handles the Colona. Um, in 1301, Boniface issues his bull,

Auskulta Fili. Listen, my son, it's aim to fill up the fourth. It's aim to fill up the fourth

for his attempts to try, uh, French clergy in the royal courts. And in it,

ah, he lays out all these stipulations, right? Again, asserting the primacy of the Pope,

not as his strong terms is going to see in Unum Santo, but basically that the state, the crown,

the king sits under the priest, all right? Um,

and he orders the French clergy, the bishops, to come to Rome for a council. And in November,

1302, we've already seen it. He issues his famous bull, Unum Santo, right? And we are constrained

to confess in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And it is an identity of the church

with the papacy. And it's a bold assertion that all temporal powers are derived directly

from the bishop of Rome. That is, the bishop of Rome has both sorts and that the bishop of Rome

can, because he has both sorts, right? Christ gave him both sorts. Peter put the sword away.

Not Peter, you don't have that sword, illegitimately, right? It's Peter put the sword away.

Hmm. And so this, um, this basically is the great shot across the bow at Philip the fourth.

And in fact, Philip is excommunicated, right? Philip is excommunicated. And because he basically

is trying now to stop French clergy from traveling to Rome. And of course, this is now escalating

everything. Now, I should note, at Philip's court, there are lawyers. We're not chief of them as a

night named, uh, Denosia Ray, Guillaume Denosia Ray. And he is a minister to the king. And he comes

up with this idea and he travels to Italy with a member of the Colona family. And there they have

this plan. It is a group of French knights. It's a group of people from the Colona household. And

they come upon Boniface in the summer palace of Aniani, which is kind of to the south

west southeast of Rome, but up into the hills. And in September of 1303,

they corner Boniface in his residence. And they could not get him out. So what did they do? Um,

they throw a beehive into the house. And of course, everyone comes scurrying out. And

Skiara Colona, the man who's leading this Colona family contingent, uh, assaults Boniface,

demands that he abdicates the throne. Um, and Boniface, of course, is defiant, right?

No, now what happens is while they are a contingent of Colona and a contingent of French knights,

the people of Aniani rise up to defend Boniface. And very quickly, uh, or members of the Orcini family

are there. And with this, uh, Boniface returns to Rome. And within three weeks, he's dead.

Now he does get home. He excommunicates, uh, the chief members of Philip's court,

he excommunicates Guillaume de Nozurei. And so in a sense, this seems like a dramatic climax to

the whole episode. But in fact, it's really not, I mean, it is dramatic. And so I do have to say

a couple words about this. Um, because eventually as we shall see, Philip moves again.

Philip is, you know, yes, this puts a damper on things. Um, the people of Aniani basically

let the French and the Colona leave. But it's only because they're able to bargain with their lives

by turning the Pope over to them. And so this is called sometimes the outrage on Aniani.

And it was a fashion long ago, uh, to basically say, oh, we can trace a line, right? These are

for the people who are into narrative histories. And we can trace a line from Aniani and the

outrage of Aniani in 1303 up to Luther, nailing the 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle.

Well, first off, if you know anything about me, you know that basically I'm among a number of

historians, Reformation historians who basically say Luther never nailed the 95 Theses to the door

of Wittenberg Castle. He certainly had them. He certainly sent them to Albrecht of Magdaburg.

Um, he certainly wrote them in order to be debated. But Luther never mentions this.

Luther never mentions this. The first mention of it we see is by man named Philip Langthun

after Luther's death, right? We don't see anyone else mentioning it for some time.

Uh, there's some very good stuff written on this. Um, it's, it's really difficult to say,

mean, even at one place, Luther says, uh, he uses a subjunctive, right? Had I done this,

basically it's an counterfactual, right? How is Latin is given? Had I done this? Um, so anyway,

but people would draw a line basically saying, oh, this is where the Reformation really begins.

And then they kind of spin out this whole long tail about the decline and decadence of the church.

And now I believe in giving a narrative to history, the saying that there is calls an effect.

The one thing I do not believe in is what some people have called the grand narratives.

Grand narratives are the, uh, Bayleywick of people like Marx or Hegel. They are the Bayleywick of

post-structuralists. Um, there was a book put together some years ago by, by the very

Abel Cambridge political historian Quentin Skinner called the Return of Grand Narrative.

And it was all basically a pay-on to kind of these post-structuralist guys who are giving us

grand narratives. And one of the things that grand narratives do is they're basically trying to

make sense of history, but they're making sense of history at the expense of human action.

And in one sense, they were a revolt against certain other aspects about social economic history,

which also got rid of human action, right? So I'm someone who believes in human action,

and the job of this story is trying to unpack motives for how things happen. We don't always get

there. But one of the things that we shouldn't say is we shouldn't say, well, this inevitably led

to this. We can draw all sorts of lines and all sorts of connections, but we should never say,

oh, this is what inevitably led to this. Now, once in a while, we do have that, especially

of immediate things, right? Like we could say, the murder of Julius Caesar led to the next civil war.

Those types of things we can see, right? We can see fairly readily, but drawing things out

over 200 and some years. So therefore, this then calls for me to make a bit of an apologia,

because basically what I'm saying is is, well, we want to go back and look at these events,

not because we think, oh, it inevitably leads to this. But we see how these events

lay the groundwork for what will happen. So the outrage of Onyani, this incredible conflict

of church and state between France and the papacy, it's getting, it's going to continue. It doesn't

end with Boniface. And indeed, Boniface's successors prove unequal to his own will in facing

down Philip. And this will, of course, involve the whole affair of the Templars. And it's the

affair of the Templars that we can see provides the inertia for what eventually happens that the

papacy ends up absent from Rome for over 70 years. It's the chaos of the return to Rome

that ends up then with having, oh, a pope in Avignon and a pope in Rome.

And then the consequences of this is a reassertion, as we shall see, of bishops basically looking

at the popes and thinking, well, they have an important position within the church.

Their position is not as important as the church acting as a whole in council.

That's interesting. Thought isn't it? The church acting in council.

And it gets rise to a movement called conciliarism. And conciliarism is hot and heavy and an enormous

threat to the papacy. And the papacy's powers and prerogatives

when the council of Florence stops, stops, starts, and then when it stops too. So we're going to

look at this. All right, we're going to look at how all of this unfolds. And we're also going to

look at what happens to the Byzantine Empire after the death of Michael VIII. Michael, who would

seemingly put it on such sure footing, seemingly, and how everything falls apart.

And so that is going to be our tale for the next few weeks. But again, right? We have, yeah,

French lawyers, French lawyers kind of mucking up things, throwing beehives into houses, right?

And so this basically is an incredible, an incredible,

let us just say outrage, right? That we see right there. And so I will say that before I

sign off for those of you listening in the Philadelphia area, 16th of April, Father Andrew

Stephen Damick, Dr. Joshua Moritz, evolution and evangelism, right? Or I should say evolution

and evangelization, right? The Orthodox Church and the American scene, right? It's going to be

at Eastern University. The tickets are $10. I need to charge a nuisance fee because I have limited

seats. And because I have limited seats, I need to make sure that people who tell me they're coming

are coming, right? So therefore, hopefully, right, you're just going to not going to blow it off

and say, I know I paid $10, but I'm not going. Damick should charge it more, make him really invest.

Anyway, all proceeds are going to the Orthodox Christian fellowship in the St. Basil Center.

So anyway, but October 16th, October 16th, April 16th, Thursday of bright week,

market in your calendars. It's a month away. And so how bumper music is by none other than Johann

Sebastian Bach. And a link to the event bright page will be at the bottom of the show notes.

And you have been listening to a listener supported podcast of ancient faith ministries.

Like through the past, a survey of church history. Dr. Cyril Gary Jenkins is the director of the

Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture, the editor of the Basilian Journal, the co-editor

in chief of the Rule of Faith Journal, and a member of St. Paul Orthodox Church in a Mayus

Pennsylvania. This has been a listener supported presentation of ancient faith radio.