George, No good guys; no bad guys. Celestive V, when he was Peter of
Morrone, may have been adequate at organizing monks; after all, even as
Pope he managed to welcome the Franciscan defectors. Running the Church as
a whole was an entirely different matter. The Cardinals made an unfortunate
choice. And of course Philippe le Bel backed Celestive V's sanctity all the
way: it was simply part of his effort to destroy Boniface VIII's
reputation, during his lifetime and posthumously, and so of exonerating his
own actions which precipitated Boniface's death. The ironic thing is that
of the two, Celestive V and Boniface VIII, the saint and the hardly devout
Pope, the latter's importance in the history of Christianity--and not just
of the Church--is imcomparably the greater.
Gary Dickson
University of Edinburgh
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