Benedict XI

Niccolò Boccasini, later Pope Benedict XI, was born in 1240 at Treviso in northern Italy. He joined the Dominican Order (Order of Preachers) as a young man and received a thorough theological formation, serving as a lector and preacher in several houses of the order in the Italian peninsula, including Venice and Milan. His reputation for learning, preaching, and regular observance led to his election as Master General of the Dominicans in 1296. In that office he governed the order with a combination of personal austerity and firm defense of mendicant privileges, and he remained a reliable supporter of papal authority.

Pope Boniface VIII made him cardinal-priest of Santa Sabina in 1298 and, two years later, cardinal-bishop of Ostia. Throughout Boniface’s struggle with Philip IV of France, Boccasini stood by the pope. He was one of the few cardinals who remained with Boniface during the assault at Anagni in September 1303, when Guillaume de Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna seized the pontiff. After Boniface died in October 1303, the College of Cardinals, meeting in Rome, elected Boccasini on 22 October 1303. He took the name Benedict XI, becoming the second Dominican to occupy the see of Peter.

The pontificate that followed lasted only eight months and was shaped by the aftermath of Anagni. Benedict sought reconciliation with the French crown: he released Philip IV and the kingdom of France from the censures imposed by his predecessor, while still excommunicating those who had used violence against Boniface. He would not, however, consent to a posthumous heresy trial of Boniface, which the French court desired. He also tried to calm the feud with the Colonna family without undoing every act of the previous pontificate. Unrest in Rome led him to transfer the curia to Perugia, from which he administered the Church, filled vacant bishoprics, and attempted to restore a measure of peace in Italy.

Benedict XI died at Perugia on 7 July 1304. Rumors that he had been poisoned, sometimes directed against Nogaret or other French agents, circulated soon afterward, but they have never been proved, and a natural illness is the safer historical conclusion. He was buried in the Dominican church of San Domenico in Perugia. A cult of holiness grew around his memory, and in 1736 Pope Clement XII confirmed that cult by beatifying him. His feast day is 7 July. Because his successor, Clement V, soon settled in France, Benedict’s brief reign is often remembered as the last fully Italian pontificate before the Avignon papacy.