Unam sanctam
The bull in which Pope Boniface VIII, in conflict with Philip IV of France, set out the unity of the church under one head, the doctrine of the two swords and the necessity for salvation of being subject to the Roman pontiff.
Read the text at archive.org ↗Another English translation, on one page (Papal Encyclicals Online) ↗That second translation again (Fordham Medieval Sourcebook) ↗Latin text with its dating clause, printed in H. E. Manning, The Vatican Decrees (1875), appendix A ↗
The bull is a short doctrinal statement, built from Scripture read allegorically: the one ark, the seamless tunic, the two swords of Luke 22. It names no king and no dispute. It was taken into the church’s law among the Extravagantes communes, in book 1 under the title on majority and obedience.
The Latin text is dated at the Lateran on the fourteenth day before the kalends of December in the eighth year of Boniface, which is 18 November 1302. Henderson’s translation prints this as “Nov. 14”, a slip. Everything before the last sentence is argument and exposition; the last sentence alone uses the words of a formal definition, “we declare, announce and define”. How much of the bull that sentence was meant to cover, and whether it concerns the pope’s spiritual authority only, has been disputed ever since; see Meruit, Fifth Lateran Council, Session 11: On the Abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction and the Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.
Cited in
- 18 November 1302, firm date