Everything about Boniface Iv totally explained
Pope Saint Boniface IV (c.
550 –
May 25 615) was
pope from
608 to his death.
Son of Johannes, a
physician, a
Marsian from the province and town of
Valeria; he succeeded
Boniface III after a vacancy of over nine months. He was consecrated on either
25 August (
Duchesne) or
15 September (
Jaffé) in 608. His death is listed as either
May 8 or
25 May,
615 by these two authorities.
In the time of
Pope Gregory I, he was a deacon of the Roman Church and held the position of
dispensator, that is, the first official in connection with the administration of the patrimonies.
Boniface obtained leave from the Emperor
Phocas to convert the
Pantheon, Rome into a Christian Church, and on
May 13 609 (?) the temple erected by
Agrippa to
Jupiter the Avenger, to
Venus, and to
Mars was consecrated by the pope to the
Virgin Mary and all the Martyrs. It was the first instance at Rome of the transformation of a pagan temple into a place of Christian worship. Twenty-eight cartloads of sacred bones were said to have been removed from the
Catacombs and placed in a porphyry basin beneath the high altar.
During the pontificate of Boniface,
Mellitus, the first
Bishop of London, went to Rome "to consult the pope on important matters relative to the newly established English Church". While in Rome he assisted at a council then being held concerning certain questions on "the life and monastic peace of
monks", and, on his departure, took with him to England the decree of the council together with letters from the pope to
Lawrence,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and to all the clergy, to
King Ethelbert, and to all the
English people "concerning what was to be observed by the
Church of England". The decrees of the council now extant are spurious. The letter to Ethelbert is considered spurious by
Hefele, questionable by
Haddan and
Stubbs, and genuine by
Jaffé.
Between
612 and
615, the
Irish missionary
Saint Columban, then living at
Bobbio in
Italy, was persuaded by
Agilulf,
King of the
Lombards, to address a letter on the condemnation of the "
Three Chapters" to Boniface IV, which is remarkable at once for its expressions of exaggerated deference and its tone of excessive sharpness.
"You have already erred, O Rome! — fatally, foully erred. No longer do you shine as a star in the apostolic firmament," Columban wrote.
In it he tells the pope that he's charged with heresy for accepting the
Fifth Ecumenical Council (the Second Council of
Constantinople in
553), and exhorts him to summon a council and prove his orthodoxy. Despite Columban's letter, it seems not to have disturbed in the least his relation with the
Holy See, and it would be wrong to suppose that Columban regarded himself as independent of the pope's authority.
During the pontificate of Boniface there was much distress in Rome owing to famine, pestilence, and inundations, and the pope, since he was considered to be the closest link between God and man, was often blamed by proxy for these misfortunes. The pontiff died in monastic retirement (he had converted his own house into a
monastery) and was buried in the portico of
St. Peter's Basilica. His remains were three times removed — in the
tenth or
eleventh century, at the close of the
thirteenth under
Boniface VIII, and to the new St. Peter's on
21 October 1603.
Boniface IV is commemorated as a saint in the
Roman Martyrology on his feast day,
25 May.
During Boniface's reign,
Muhammad began to preach in
Makka, forming the basis of
Islam.
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