page_title: Pope Boniface IX
section_title: Pontificate
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Boniface IX / Pontificate
context_page_description: Pope Boniface IX was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 November 1389 to his death. He was the second Roman pope of the Western Schism. During this time the Avignon claimants, Clement VII and Benedict XIII, maintained the Roman Curia in Avignon, under the protection of the French monarchy.
context_section_description: During his reign, Boniface IX finally extinguished the troublesome independence of the commune of Rome and established temporal control, though it required fortifying not only the Castel Sant'Angelo, but the bridges also, and for long seasons he was forced to live in more peaceful surroundings at Assisi or Perugia. He also took over the port of Ostia from its Cardinal Bishop. In the Papal States, Boniface IX gradually regained control of the chief castles and cities, and he re-founded the States as they would appear during the fifteenth century.
  The antipope Clement VII died at Avignon on 16 September 1394, but the French cardinals quickly elected a successor on 28 September: Cardinal Pedro de Luna, who took the name Benedict XIII. Over the next few years, Boniface IX was entreated to abdicate, even by his strongest supporters: King Richard II of England (in 1396), the Diet of Frankfurt (in 1397), and King Wenceslaus of Germany (at Reims, 1398). He refused. Pressure for an ecumenical council also grew as the only way to breach the Western Schism, but the conciliar movement made no headway during Boniface's papacy.
  During the reign of Boniface IX two jubilees were celebrated at Rome. The first, in 1390, had been declared by his predecessor, Urban VI, and was largely frequented by people from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and England. Several cities of Germany obtained the "privileges of the jubilee", as indulgences were called, but the preaching of indulgences led to abuses and scandal. The jubilee of 1400 drew to Rome great crowds of pilgrims, particularly from France, in spite of a disastrous plague. Pope Boniface IX remained in the city nonetheless.
  In the latter part of 1399 there arose bands of self-flagellating penitents, known as the Bianchi, or Albati ("White Penitents"), especially in Provence, where the Albigenses had been exterminated less than a century before. Their numbers spread to Spain and northern Italy.  These evoked uneasy memories of the mass processions of wandering flagellants of the Black Death period, 1348—1349. They went in procession from city to city, clad in white garments, with faces hooded, and wearing on their backs a red cross, following a leader who carried a large cross. Rumors of imminent divine judgement and visions of the Virgin Mary abounded. They sang the newly-popular hymn Stabat Mater during their processions. For a while, as the White Penitents approached Rome, gaining adherents along the way, Boniface IX and the Curia supported their penitential enthusiasm, but when they reached Rome, Boniface IX had their leader burnt at the stake, and they soon dispersed. "Boniface IX gradually discountenanced these wandering crowds, an easy prey of agitators and conspirators, and finally dissolved them", as the Catholic Encyclopedia reports.
  In England the anti-papal preaching of John Wyclif supported the opposition of the king and the higher clergy to Boniface IX's habit of granting English benefices as they fell vacant to favorites in the Roman Curia. Boniface IX introduced a revenue known as annates perpetuæ, withholding half the first year's income of every benefice granted in the Roman Court. The pope's agents also now sold not simply a vacant benefice but the expectation of one; and when an expectation had been sold, if another offered a larger sum for it, the pope voided the first sale. The unsympathetic observer Dietrich von Nieheim reports that he saw the same benefice sold several times in one week, and that the Pope talked business with his secretaries during Mass. There was resistance in England, the staunchest supporter of the Roman papacy during the Schism: the English Parliament confirmed and extended the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire of Edward III, giving the king veto power over papal appointments in England. Boniface IX was defeated in the face of a unified front, and the long controversy was finally settled to the English king's satisfaction. Nevertheless, at the Synod of London (1396), the English bishops convened to condemn Wyclif.
  In Germany, the prince-elect
caption: Map showing support for Avignon (red) and Rome (blue) during the Western Schism