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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pope Boniface VIII |
 | | Gregory IX had maintained (1232, 1236), in his conflict with the Greeks and with Frederick II, that Constantine the Great had given temporal power to the popes, and that emperors and kings were only his auxiliaries, bound to use the material sword at his direction (Conciliengesch., 2d ed., V, 102, 1044). |
 | | He was one of the most distinguished canonists of his age, and as pope enriched the general ecclesiastical legislation by the promulgation ("Sacrosanctæ", 1298) of a large number of his own constitutions and of those of his predecessors, since 1234, when Gregory IX promulgated his five books of Decretals. |
 | | Gröne, a German Catholic historian of the popes, says of Boniface (II, 164) that while his utterances equal in importance those of Gregory VII and Innocent III, the latter were always more ready to act, Boniface to discourse; they relied on the Divine strength of their office, Boniface on the cleverness of his canonical deductions. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/02662a.htm (9059 words) |
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