The Palace of the Popes in Anagni, sometimes called the Boniface VIII Palace (Palazzo Bonifacio VIII), is a building in the ancient hill town of Anagni in central Italy, in the hills east-southeast of Rome. It is closely associated in history with Pope Boniface VIII, was later bought by his nephew Peter II Caetani, and now houses a museum named after the Pope. It is at present part of a property owned by the Cistercian Sisters of Charity and used in part as their motherhouse.
History Ancient Prominence There are multiple reasons for the papacy's ongoing interest in the Anagni area. Firstly, its proximity to Rome is of importance. Secondly, it has historically been used as a place for respite. In the days of the Roman Empire it is recorded that several emperors spent their summers in Anagni to escape the heat of Rome by means of the town's altitude and Rome's endemic diseases by means of the town's isolation. Visitors included Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Commodus and Caracalla. Later, the collapse of the Roman Empire brought with it a collapse of Anagni's population and parts of the lower town became overgrown.
Bishops and Popes
There has been a Bishop of Anagni since at least the 5th century, while the present Anagni Cathedral, known to have been built on the site of a temple dedicated to the goddess Ceres, dates to the 9th century.
The Popes, too, were active at Anagni. It was in Anagni in 1122 that Pope Callistus II promulgated the Concordat of Worms. Additionally, the Englishman Pope Adrian IV, born Nicholas Breakspeare, died there in 1159. In 1160, Pope Alexander III excommunicated the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in Anagni Cathedral. This presence continued in other centuries, for in 1255 Saint Clare of Assisi was canonized in the same cathedral by Alexander IV (1254–1261). He likewise chose the same location to move to in the dispute between the University of Paris and the Mendicant Orders by condemning, on 5 October 1256, William of Saint-Amour's work De periculis novissimorum temporum (On the Dangers of the Last Days). This papal presence, as shown below, in later times intensified.
The Counts of Segni It is difficult to disentangle the different construction phases of the various parts on the palace as it now exists. SomeTeresa Rinaldi. suggest there were seven phases in the construction: in the late 12th or early 13th century a late medieval fortification with two towers would have been incorporated into the main block, which would have led to a structure transversed by arches surmounted by wooden ceilings. The fact that the measurements employed seem to be French has led to the hypothesis that the workforce was French or French-trained, possibly through the Cistercian order. In fact, not far away, at Fossanova, Cistercian monks from outside Italy were working on the construction of Fossanova Abbey, consecrated in 1208 by Pope Innocent III, who was born Lothar of Segni at Gavignano near Anagni.Olivier Hanne, De Lothaire à Innocent III. L’ascension d’un clerc au XII siècle, Presses universitaires de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, 2014; Achille Luchaire, Innocent III, Rome et l’Italie, Hachette, Paris, 1904, pp. 1-12.
Were this suggestion true, it would lend support also to the notion that Innocent had a role in the earliest structure on the site. However, the construction of the southern wing and two floors resting on the previous fortifications, along with the heightening of the wing to the north, would have been undertaken in the time of Innocent's next-but-one successor, Pope Gregory IX Conti, like Innocent, and a total of seven other popes, (including Clement III, Alexander IV and much later Innocent XIII),Jane Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1199–1216, London 1994, p. 16; Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, p. 110. a member of the noble clan of the Counts of Segni. The enlargement of the east wing, on the other hand, was presumably the work of the Caetani.
Other hypotheses have proposed that most of it was simply built by Pope Boniface VIII,Rossana Ferretti, ‘I palazzi di Gregorio IX e Bonifacio VIII’, in Storia della Città 18 (1980) 62-76. while othersGiovanni Carbonara, 'Sul cosiddetto Palazzo di Bonifacio VIII in Anagni. Dalla storia al restauro', in Palladio 3 (1989) 19-60. have thought it possible to identify no less than fifteen different phases of construction, nine traceable to the 10th-11th and 15th centuries, others in the earlier 13th century effected the joining of two separate residences of the end of the 12th century, thus creating a modest romanesque with an adjacent tower. This would then have been modified later in the same century according to Gothic tastes and enlarged by powerful arches mounted on tall columns.
The sources leave no doubt as to the existence of a building already about the beginning of the thirteenth century, but archeological analysis of the stratification of successive constructions on the site suggests the presence of far earlier structures. The site certainly housed the residence of Ugolino Conti, Pope Gregory IX,Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 115-116. which was referred to as (greater) given its prominence. Gregory had been born in Anagni and that construction was linked to a piece of land that had been owned by Pope Gregory's father, Matthias, and must have been completed by the first quarter of the thirteenth century, a period marked by an upsurge of building throughout Anagnil. Upon his election as Pope in 1227, Gregory assigned his possessions, including the palace, to his niece Maria, daughter of his brother Adinolf, while specifying his own right and that of his family members to live there.
Another of the first acts of Gregory's pontificate, one which reverberated far more widely, was his decision to excommunicate the Emperor Frederick II for failing to see through his participation in the Sixth Crusade in breach of a vow. This was accomplished by means of a solemn declaration made in Anagni Cathedral on 29 September 1227. Stung by this, Frederick attempted the following year an invasion of the Papal States. Its failure then forced him to seek reconciliation with the Pope.Pascal Montaubin, 'Entre gloire curiale et vie commune: le chapitre cathédral d'Anagni au XIII siècle', in Mélanges de l'École française de Rome 109 (1997) pp. 303-442. As a result, around 20 or 23 July 1230 the Treaty of San Germano was signedFrédéric Schoell & Franz Xaver Zach, Cours d'histoire des États européens, vol. IV, Gide, Paris, 1830, pp. 190-193. and the Pope's rescinding of the excommunication was not long in coming. This whole complex episode was played for all it was worth by both sides, the Pope displaying his triumph and the Emperor putting a brave face on events in as far as he could. On 1 September 1230 came the politically necessary personal encounter between Gregory and Frederick. In all this, it should be recalled that while the scion of a German dynasty, Frederick had been born in central Italy, at Jesi, near Ancona. The setting for this particular meeting between Pope and Emperor was the palace at Anagni, when it is said that the two 'sat together at table, in a splendid gathering of princes and notables',Vita Gregori IX, cf. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores 19, 362. convoked to highlight the earnestness of their reconciliation. Frederick would not forget that visit, and in a letter of 1239, after a new clash with Gregory, accused the Pope of having lost sight of the poverty of the Apostle Peter, the proof being the residence he had created for himself at Anagni, a truly opulent royal palace.'[...] ut testatur Anagnia, mandasti statim domum fieri mirabilem, sicut regia solis erat, oblitus prorsus Petri inopiae qui dudum non habuit, nisi rete', Pier della Vigna, Epistolario, VI, I, 1 In this new clash of 1239, Gregory again launched an excommunication against Frederick, but the Pope did not see the end of the armed hostilities that followed, dying on 22 August 1241.
The 1243 Anagni Conclave It was at Anagni, after the sede vacante of no less than 19 months which followed the 17-day pontificate of Celestine IV (died 10 November 1241), that Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi was elected Pope on 25 June 1243.Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, p. 116 Though apparently with considerable reluctance, he accepted the election and on 28 June was crowned as Pope Innocent IV.Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 110-115, 127. He left Anagni immediately, and when it became clear that not only was the struggle with the Emperor Frederick II not coming to an end but was intensifying, he fled Rome on 7 June 1244Augustus Potthast, Regesta pontificum Romanorum II (Berlin 1875), p. 969. in disguise for his native Liguria and four months later journeyed on to the city of Lyons, where he was received rapturously by the people and the civil authorities on 29 November 1244. There on 27 December that same year he convoked what became the 13th General (Ecumenical) Council of the Church, the first to be held in Lyon.Ioannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio Tomus 23 (Venice 1779), pp. 606-686.
The connection between Innocent IV and Anagni was not at an end, for a decade or so later another important political summit of the papacy and the civil power took place there in 1254, when Innocent IV received there the ambassadors of the Kingdom of Sicily, in the presence of the cardinals and the people.Bartolommeo Capasso, ‘Historia diplomatica Regni Siciliae’, in Atti della Reale Accademia di archeologia lettere e belle arti Societa reale di Napoli 6/2 (1872) 77 The sources record that this took place ; Matthias was the son and heir of Maria Conti, to whom Gregory IX had in 1227 made over the palace.
Under Boniface VIII
Despite the association of the building with the name of Pope Boniface VIII,Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 119-122 it became the property of the Pope's family, the Caetani, only in 1297, some three years after Boniface (born Benedict Caetani) became pope. The property was purchased, perhaps with constraint, from Adinolf and Nicholas, described as the sons of Matthias de Papa, himself the son, as we saw, of Gregory IX's niece Maria Conti.
The purchaser was the Pope Boniface's nephew Peter II Caetani, son of the Pope's brother Roffredo, Count of Caserta, and the purchase was part of a determined campaign by the family over decades to acquire plots of land and houses around the area of Anagni Cathedral. As Benedict Caetani, Peter's uncle had already long been at work on this project and after his election he continued it, acquiring from 1283 by purchase or exchange an entire area of the town and building on a considerable scale, including the sizeable edifice known today as the Palazzo Traietto, the Caetani Chapel to the south of the cathedral, the residence of the canons, and enlargements to the bishop's residence (the ), which recent studies have shown was where the notorious Outrage of Anagni (Sciaffo di Anagni) took place.
It follows, then, that the Palace of the Popes in Anagni, otherwise known as the Boniface VIII Palace (), with a few structural modifications should be viewed in the context of an urbanistic programme that aimed at the creation of a family fortification on a site protected by the still-visible ancient walled defences of the local acropolis on the model of similar constructions contrived by the families of the Roman nobility. It also aimed at a prestigious display of status by means of the richness of its decorative features.
The Career of Boniface VIII