Confessor Pope Boniface

Boniface I was a Roman by birth, the son of the priest Jocundus. The year of his birth is not recorded in surviving sources. He served as a priest of the Church of Rome and appears in the historical record principally at the moment of his election to the papacy. After the death of Pope Zosimus in December 418, two elections took place in Rome. A majority of the priests elected Boniface, while a faction that included deacons elected the archdeacon Eulalius. Both men were consecrated, producing a schism that lasted several months and drew in the imperial court.

The Emperor Honorius, residing at Ravenna, was drawn into the conflict. An initial imperial rescript favored Eulalius, but reports of violence and the subsequent conduct of the two claimants led Honorius to summon a synod and to order both Boniface and Eulalius to remain outside Rome. When Eulalius entered the city in violation of that order in the spring of 419, the emperor recognized Boniface as the legitimate bishop of Rome and directed that Eulalius be sent away. Honorius further decreed that future disputed elections should result in a fresh election rather than imperial arbitration between two living claimants. Boniface thus began his pontificate under imperial confirmation, though the Roman church remained divided for a time.

As pope, Boniface corresponded with the bishops of Africa, who were then engaged in the struggle against Pelagianism. He received appeals and letters from Augustine of Hippo and other African prelates concerning the condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius, and he upheld the decisions of the African councils together with the earlier pronouncements of Pope Innocent I. He also addressed disciplinary and jurisdictional questions involving the churches of Gaul and the prefecture of Illyricum, asserting the traditional rights of the Roman see. Contemporary documents portray him as energetic in administration yet constrained by the political and ecclesiastical tensions of the late Western Empire.

Boniface I died in Rome on 4 September 422 after a pontificate of a little more than three years. He was buried in a chapel he had built in the cemetery of Maximus on the Via Salaria, close to the tomb of the martyr Saint Felicitas, to whom he was devoted. His memory as a confessor—a saint who did not die a martyr—was preserved in the Roman church. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 25 October. Relatively few personal details survive beyond the record of the contested election and his official correspondence; later medieval writers added little that can be independently verified.