From The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII. Written Originally in Latin by B. Platina, Native of Cremona, and translated into English (from an anonymous translation, first printed in 1685 by Sir Paul Rycaut), Edited by William Benham, Volume I, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, [1888, undated in text]; pp. 141-142.
The Lives of the Popes,
BY
B. Platina
Volume I.
BONIFACE III.
A.D. 607-608.
BONIFACE the Third, a Roman, with much ado obtained of the Emperor Phocas, that the see of St Peter the apostle should by all be acknowledged and styled the head of all the churches; a title which had been stickled for by the Church of Constantinople, through the encouragement of some former princes, who asserted that the supremacy ought to reside there, where the seat of the empire was. But the Roman bishops alleged that Rome, of which Constantinople was but a colony, ought to be accounted the chief city of the empire, since the Greeks themselves in their writings styled their prince τῶν Ῥωμάιων Ἀυτοχράτορα — i.e., the Emperor of the Romans; and the Constantinopolitans, even in that age were called Romans, not Greeks. Not to mention that Peter, the chief of the apostles, bequeathed the keys of the kingdom of heaven to his successors, the bishops of Rome, and left the power which God had given him not to Constantinople, but to Rome. This only I say, that several princes, and particularly Constantine, had granted to the Roman see only, the privilege of calling and dissolving councils, and of rejecting or confirming their decrees. And 142 does not a Church which has with so much integrity and constancy baffled and exploded all manner of heresies, as the Roman see hath done, deserve, think you, the preference of others? The same Boniface, in a synod of seventy-two bishops, thirty presbyters, and three deacons, ordained that, upon pain of excommunication, no person should succeed in the place of any deceased pope or other bishop till at least the third day after the death of his predecessor; and that whoever should by bribes, or by making of parties and interests, endeavour to raise themselves to the Popedom or any other bishopric should undergo the same penalty. He decreed likewise that the choice of any bishop should be by the clergy and people, and that the election should then stand good when it were approved by the civil magistrate, and when the pope had interposed his authority in these words, “We will and command,” — an institution in part very necessary, for our times especially, so many corruptions daily creeping in. For it is probable that, the election being free, the clergy and people will choose, and the magistrate approve of no other than such an one as deserves and is fit to be governor in the Church. Though (if I may speak it without offence to any that are good) the truth is, multitudes do now aspire to the dignity of bishops, not as they ought to do for the sake of the public good, but that they may satisfy their own covetousness and ambition. For the great question is, what any bishopric is worth — not how great a flock there is to take the charge of. But enough of this: I return to Boniface, whose decrees, as it appears, were extinct with his life. He died in the ninth month of his pontificate, and was buried in the church of St Peter. The see was then vacant one month, six days.
15
Previous Pope: 67. Sabinian I. 68. Boniface III. Next Pope: 6. Boniface IV.