This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
In my last Italy post, I began the story about the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella and the Caetani Castle, two fascinating edifices from two different eras that are now forever linked to one another. (If you haven’t read that first post, you may want to go and do that, and then come back here. I’ll wait.)
Today, let’s talk about Caetani Castle, which wouldn’t exist were it not for one of the most corrupt and intriguing popes I’ve ever heard of. This guy had no moral compass whatsoever. And he also had no shame.
Pope Boniface VIII was born Benedetto Caetani. His baronial family was every bit as influential in his time as Cecelia Metella’s family was in hers. His father was the chief magistrate of the town of Todi, and his mother was the niece of Pope Alexander IV. His uncle was the chief magistrate of the town of Orvieto.
Being a younger son, Benedetto took a religious career path as was common at the time, and went into a monastery. When another one of his uncles became a Bishop in Todi, he went back there to study law, and his uncle the bishop made him the cathedral’s lawyer. (It’s all in who you know, isn’t it?)
From there, he entered the administrative offices of the Holy See. Somewhere along in there Benedetto started receiving benifices, which are sort of lifelong retainers in exchange for the “cure of souls.” It is theoretically unethical to hold more than one benefice at a time. Benedetto eventually racked up at least seventeen of them. He did quite well for himself.
He also wormed his way higher and higher in religious administration, from rector to advocatus to papal Notary to cardinal deacon, advisor to the pope, and papal legate. He had risen to that point when the current pope, Nicholas IV, died in 1292. The cardinals took more than two years to decide on the next pope, and finally landed upon Pope Celestine V, an ascetic monk and a hermit, out of pure frustration and desperation. He refused to accept it, and even tried to flee, but he finally acquiesced. I can’t imagine that the ambitious Benedetto was impressed.
Pope Celestine V attempted to continue his ascetic lifestyle as pope, and did not prove to be very effective in that office. Before long, he decided he wanted to resign, but was not sure he would be able to do so. So he consulted someone with both religious and legal expertise, our friend Benedetto.
I can only imagine that conversation. “Well, if you insist, your holiness, I suppose you could make a decree declaring the right of resignation… I’m sure no one would hold it against you, and you could go back to your ascetic life…” (But I may be giving him too much credit for a gentle touch there, because it was later said that he did pressure Celestine to abdicate. We’ll never really know what was said.)
We do know, however, that Celestine promptly made the decree, and then acted upon it. His papacy had lasted just 5 months and 8 days. The reasons he stated were, “The desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life”
Eleven days later, Benedetto was elected pope. Well, well, well. Imagine that. He chose to be called Pope Boniface VIII. (Boniface means “good fate”, and you’ll see how ironic that is later.)
Boniface knew that several of the cardinals were uncomfortable with Celestine’s abdication, and fearing they might attempt to install him as antipope. (If it were to occur it wouldn’t be the first time two “popes” served concurrently, nor the last.) So he insisted that Celestine accompany him to Rome for his coronation on January 23, 1295 so that he could keep the former pope away from his supporters. Poor Celestine (who had already changed back to his birth name, Pietro) ran away and hid in the woods. The man was 80 years old. He tried to go back home and resume his monastic life, but he soon realized that that would be impossible. He then tried to flee to Dalmatia (modern day Croatia and Montenegro), but a bad storm caused his ship to turn back to port, where he was caught.
Boniface had him imprisoned, which is the height of callousness given the fact that he had reassured Pietro that he’d be able to resume his monastic life if he abdicated. Boniface was quite a guy. Pietro died in prison 10 months later. I wonder if the general populace knew about all of this.
Boniface made his papacy all about money and power for himself and the Caetani family. He formalized the first Roman jubilee, primarily to bring vast amounts of money into Rome in exchange for a remission of sins and debts. He started a bit of a rivalry with the equally greedy and ambitious Colonna family which resulted in open warfare.
Several towns that got caught up in this drama surrendered peacefully to Boniface’s army, under the promise that they would be spared. For their troubles, he had their towns razed to the ground. In fact, Palestrina was razed, a plow driven through, and salt strewn over the ruins. A papal city was eventually put in its place.
His next evil act was to appoint five cardinals from his family. Later he appointed a sixth. He also butted into foreign affairs to an unprecedented degree. He argued that since the church is necessary for salvation, and since Christ appointed Peter to lead it, then it was necessary for every human to be subject to the pope for their salvation to occur. Royal Europeans took exception to that, especially Philip IV of France.
At one point Boniface placed the entire island of Sicily under interdict when he didn’t like who obtained the throne there. (It seems that the average Sicilian couldn’t have cared less about this withdrawal of ecclesiastical functions and privileges, but still, it seems overly harsh. It sounds to me like a papal tantrum.)
His interference in the politics of Florence caused Dante, a resident, to place Boniface in one of his circles of hell in his book Inferno. He accused him of being a simoniac, or someone who sells church offices and sacred things. So Boniface’s corruption was known among the educated people of the time, at least.
But things came to a head when the King of France wanted to tax the French clergy in order to finance his wars with England. Boniface wasn’t having it. He said it would result in excommunication. So the king turned around and prohibited pretty much anything of value from being exported from France to the Papal States, and banished anyone from France who was trying to raise funds for the crusades.
Boniface needed that money in order to combat the Colonna family, so he backed off a little and allowed some taxes. And then he backpedaled even further and allowed “voluntary clerical donations without papal approval in times of emergency as determined by the king.” King Philip then dropped his embargoes.
But the two men continued to bicker. Boniface didn’t like that Philip put a member of the church on trial, and that he continued to use church money for state purposes. But when many nobles and clergy wrote to Boniface supporting the king’s right to temporal power, Boniface wrote a bull stating that the pope had both spiritual and temporal power, and all kings were subordinate to the pope. He then threatened to excommunicate the king again, and said the king should come to the papal court and explain his bad behavior.
Instead, an army led by the king’s minister and the Colonna family attacked Boniface. Boniface then excommunicated the king and the minister. The French Chancellor and the Colonna family demanded Boniface’s abdication, and when he said he’d rather die, he was slapped in the face, which is so shocking that it is still talked about today. He was then soundly beaten and nearly executed, but was released after 3 days. He was 73. He died a month later, on October 12, 1303.
He was a horrible person, but that was pretty crappy treatment, in the end, for a 73 year old man. So much for a “good fate”. (By the way, he can also be remembered for updating the books of canon law, which are still used today, which goes to show you that every cloud has a silver lining, however thin it may be. But that’s kind of like saying Mussolini made the trains run on time.)
The next Pope, Benedict XI, quickly released the king of France from excommunication, but did excommunicate everyone else who was involved in Boniface’s abduction. Eight months later, he died under mysterious circumstances. The pope after him was a Frenchman who moved the papacy to Avignon, France, where it remained through 7 popes, for 65 years.
So yes, I got off on a bit of a tangent, there, but I wanted to show you the chaos out of which the Caetani Castle was born. Sometime during the last year of Pope Boniface’s life, he was probably feeling besieged, and was desperate to grab what money and power he still could for himself and his family. It was then that he interceded so that his nephew Francesco Caetani (whom Boniface had made a Cardinal in 1295) could obtain the land owned by the church that we talked about in the last post. It included Cecelia Metella’s Mausoleum.
This was prime property. It sat just south of downtown Rome, and straddled the Appian Way, which was the main route to all points south. And it already has a structure on it, you say? Don’t mind if I do.
Just as many other noble families were doing at the time, Francesco decided to build himself a nice fortified settlement, which would have a military function, to control the road and defend his large agricultural land grab. He built his castle leaning right up against Cecelia Metella’s Mausoleum, and (get this) started collecting outrageous tolls from anyone who wanted to pass through his section of the Appian Way, as if it hadn’t been a public road for centuries. (Thanks, Uncle!) Oh, and he threw a church in there for good measure, along with housing for all his feudal farm workers.
Their elegant castle was one of the finest examples of feudal architecture in the Roman countryside. They converted the mausoleum into the defensive tower of the palace (which sounds like the height of disrespect to Cecelia to me). The battlements and the walkway, which in the Middle Ages were added to the top of the tomb, have left no trace of the original roof, which must have been conical.
In addition to the mausoleum that was now a tower, he added a quadrangular tower that also had a defensive function. Today all the floors in the castle are missing, as they were wooden and rested on beams. The holes, which are easy to see on the walls, are all that survives of the system of floor beams and joists.
The wall around the property had a walkway and 19 turrets. There were two gates, one to the north (Porta di Roma) and one to the south (Porta di Albano). The length of its long sides (about 755 feet) and its short sides (about 318 feet) has remained unchanged, but it’s hard to see them because of more modern, private buildings and the plantlife that has all but taken over.
That’s why my favorite part of visiting this venue was the VR experience. It allowed you to “see” what the castle, along with the church and the supporting outbuildings looked like in their heyday. It replaced the flooring before our very eyes, and showed us what typical furniture of the time would have looked like in each room.
So there you have it. A monument to greed and excess leaning on a monument to grief and excess. Now it’s a fascinating museum, accessible to all, that provides you with new insight into the history of Rome. I think we, the modern visitors, are the ones who have benefited the most, when all is said and done. Check it out if you’re ever in Rome.
Sources:
Check out this virtual tour of the mausoleum and the castle that allows you to wander through in all its three dimensional glory!
A short Youtube Video of the site.
Wikipedia–Tomb of Cecilia Metella
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