Boniface VIII was elected pope on this day in 1294, replacing St. Celestine V, who had resigned. He is considered on the eight Bad Popes in Russell Chamberlin's book of the same name. Bonifacio VIII imprisoned his predecessor Celestine V, who died in captivity. Accused by his contemporaries of such wrongdoings as violating confessional secrets, Boniface VIII was himself imprisoned, and died soon after of a violent fever.
The pope is said to have been short-tempered, kicking an envoy in the face on one occasion, and on another, throwing ashes in the eyes of an archbishop who was kneeling to receive them as a blessing atop his head.
Also: "A famous and horrifying quote of Boniface VIII was that paedophilia was no more problematic than 'rubbing one hand against the other.' Elected in 1294, Boniface VIII established a string of statues all around the city and even destroyed the city Palestrina over a personal feud. He had a reputation for stubbornness and a knack for starting fights." Source
Boniface was so hated that posthumous trial for heresy was planned but eventually abandoned.
The pope was so bad that Dante, in his Inferno portrayed Boniface VIII as destined for hell for the offence of buying and selling offices of the church (simony). Boniface's eventual destiny is revealed to Dante by Pope Nicholas III, whom he meets. A bit later in the Inferno, Dante recalls the pontiff's feud with the Colonna family, which led him to demolish the city of Palestrina, killing 6,000 citizens and destroying both the home of Julius Caesar and a shrine to Mary. Boniface's ultimate fate is confirmed by Beatrice when Dante visits Heaven. It is notable that he does not adopt Guillaume de Nogaret's aspersion that Boniface VIII was a 'sodomite', however, and does not assign him to that circle of hell (although simony was placed in the eighth circle of fraud, below sodomy, in the seventh circle of violence, designating it as a worse offense and taking precedence above activities of sodomy).
He is also mentioned in François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. In the chapter that Epistemos lists the inhabitants of hell and their occupations, he says that Boniface was (in one translation) "skimming the scum off soup pots".
