Dante’s thoughts of the New Papacy around 1300

Towards the boundary of the material cosmos, and right before entering the Eternal Mind of the Divine, Dante sums up his thoughts about Pope Boniface VIII through the voice of St. Peter – the first Pope:

He who on earth usurps that place of mine,
that place of mine, that place of mine which now
stands vacant in the eyes of Christ, God’s Son,

has turned my sepulchre into a sewer
of blood and filth, at which the Evil One
who fell from here takes great delight down there.

A sewer of blood and filth, to the delight of Lucifer. But a historical account of the New Papacy that emerged after the Great Schism, might largely suggest the historicity of this.

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