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Benedict Gaetani would be bullied by no one. Accusing professors at the University of Paris of dabbling in papal affairs, the 39-year-old cardinal promised the university's destruction if they continued on their course. "You Paris masters at your desk seem to think that the world should be ruled by your reasonings. I tell you that this is not so—it is to us that the world is entrusted, not to you." It would not be the last threat Gaetani (later Pope Boniface VIII) would make against Paris's elite.

Born into a modest Italian family, Gaetani coupled a sharp legal mind with iron determination to advance to the Sacred College, the body responsible for electing the pope. Once inside the papal palace, Gaetani persuaded the inexperienced and weak Pope Celestine V to renounce the papacy and return to his monk's cell. (In Dante's universe, this "great refusal" earns Celestine a place in hell's vestibule, home of the futile.)

Acting quickly, Gaetani negotiated support from his fellow cardinals and in January 1294 entered St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome as the victorious Boniface VIII. Many people hated him, though, believing he had usurped the papal throne.

Boniface lost little time securing fortune for himself and his family. He spent one-fourth of his pontifical revenue buying land for the Gaetani. The rival Colonna family despised him for it, so Boniface destroyed them. The pope's critics accused him of simony—selling church offices and indulgences.

Boniface appears in the Comedy as the greedy pope next in line for the terrors of hell. Mistaking Dante for Boniface, Pope Nicholas III (another simoniac) cries out:

"Art standing there already, Boniface?
Why then, the writ has lied by many a year.
What! so soon sated with the gilded brass
That nerved thee to betray and then to rape
The Fairest among Women that ever was?"

(Inferno, XIX.53-57)

Nicholas proclaims that "the writ has lied" because, if Dante were Boniface, he had arrived ahead of schedule—Dante set the Comedy in 1300, three years before the pope's death. "The Fairest among Women" is the church.

Dante had special enmity toward Boniface, for in March 1302, the pope had sentenced him to death for his political involvements in Florence. Dante then fled into exile, where he wrote the Comedy. He accused the papacy of "fornication with the kings of the earth," believing Boniface's use of power compromised the church's spiritual mission.

True to Dante's assessment, Boniface showed far more interest in politics than spirituality. He desired supreme authority in Europe, but he had to fight King Philip IV of France to get it.

"To Boniface, who calls himself pope," Philip wrote, "little or no greeting. Let your stupendous fatuity know that in temporal matters, we are subject to no man." To this Boniface replied, "Our predecessors have deposed these kings of France. Know—we can depose you like a stable boy if it prove necessary."

But Boniface had met his match. Shortly after issuing the bull Unam Sanctam in 1302, which proclaimed the pope earthly ruler over all Christians, Boniface was captured and humiliated by Philip's agents. Among them was Sciarra Colonna, seeking his family's revenge. Though the pope's allies rescued him from Philip's men, Boniface never recovered from the shock. He died shortly afterward.

Giovanni Villani, a Florentine, gave this appraisal of Boniface's life:

"He was very wise in learning and natural wit, and a man very cautious and experienced and of great knowledge and memory. Very haughty he was, and proud and cruel towards his enemies and he was of great heart and much feared by all the people … a man of large schemes and lordly who sought for much honor."

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