This is how the schism happened and how the papacy was moved from Rome to France.
In 1292, when Nicholas IV passed into God's fullest grace, there was a deadlock in the sacred college for twenty-seven months before his successor could be elected, and even then it happened by a cruel trick. There were only nine cardinals left in that college and only three of those were independent, the others were either Orsini or Colonna. Pope Nicholas had been an Orsini. The Orsini would not accept the loss of the papacy but the Colonna were determined to take it away from them, and you may be sure that the three remaining cardinals were unwilling to offend either family, both of whom had wilfully scattered murder throughout the streets of Rome.
The cardinals disputed who should be elected pope until the plague came to Rome, and they withdrew to the mountains of Perugia, still deadlocked.
One of the neutrals – a cardinal who was neither an Orsini nor a Colonna – was Cardinal Gaetani; the greatest canon lawyer of his time. He was a cold, pinguescent man whose height was such that he could tower over everyone (except me, had I been there). He carried his weight as daintily as a hippopotamus; he had eyes like knives, the determination of an assassin, and delicate hands.
To break the deadlock in his own devious way, Gaetani told Latino Malabranca, Cardinal of Ostia – therefore the senior cardinal that he had received a `letter of fire' from a holy hermit, Peter of Morone, which prophesied the vengeance of God upon all of them if a pope were not soon elected.
This was July 1294. Malabranca was a very religious fellow. He took the forgery which Gaetani had handed him with devout seriousness. He prayed. He contemplated. Then, on 5 July, he summoned the handful of cardinals, read them the letter which he believed had come from the holy hermit; demanding a vote instantly, he was so carried away by his own visions that he cried out, `In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I elect brother Peter of Morone.' The deadlock was broken by the logic of demonstrating to Colonna and Orsini alike that neither of them needed to prevent the other from winning.
Not that the cardinals of either family bothered to make the journey to Abruzzi to meet the new pope, to kiss his feet as ever tradition of the sacred college required. But, it, being only the villain of every piece who is certain of what he wants, Cardinal Gaetani did go to Abruzzi to pay his homage. With him were the King of Naples and an enormous following of ordinary people. In a bleak cave in the Abruzzi mountains, Gaetani told the holy hermit that he had been made Vicar of Christ on earth. The confused frightened old man, who had never seen so many people in his life, nodded to the statement because Gaetani had bellowed at him from that great height, in those rich and beautiful scarlet robes covering that barrel' chest and hogshead belly, commanding that Peter now nod his head to signify his acceptance of God's glory. Emaciated, hardly understanding Latin, much less the condition, Peter accepted the rulership of Christendom filled with mortal terror because he would have to leave his cave. He refused to go to Rome. He would rule from Naples. At Gaetani's, suggestion, he chose the name Celestine V. From that day forward, Gaetani served the pope as his lawyer and soothed him by creating a replica of the hermit's mountain cell in the Castel Nuovo, which had become the Lateran palace of Naples.
Celestine belonged to an order called the Spiritualists, who now brought terrible pressure upon him to bring pure love to the world. Gaetani saw to it that the tough, cynical bureaucrats of the curia jockeyed around the new pope.
Gaetani's consideration in duplicating, Celestine's cold, wet mountain cave within the Castel Nuovo was a hidden speaking tube which he had installed in the ceiling of the cell. Deep in the night, while Celestine prayed for divine guidance, Gaetani sat at the working end of the tube and, in the sepulchral tones which soared out of that great belly, warned his pope to abdicate the throne or face the flames of hell. After suffering the agonies of several nights of this, the poor old man turned to his eminent lawyer. Gaetani, lot advice on how such an abdication could be arranged. Piously Gaetani piloted his client's request through dangerous legal shoals.
The news leaked out. There was an uproar. Along with his consuming fear that if he didn't get out before he died he would be damned to an eternity in hell, Celestine had to cope with the ferocities of his fellow Spiritualist monks, who knew the abdication would prevent the long-awaited reign of eternal love and take away from them their new privileges. They stirred up the populace of Naples until the king afraid that the capital of Christendom would leave Naples as a result of the abdication, battered upon the old man to change his mind.
Celestine pretended to reconsider, while Gaetani's legal machinery ground on, but fifteen weeks after his coronation the miserable, addled old man summoned his last consistory and read out the prepared deed of renunciation to his cardinals. Slowly, to favour his old legs, he descended from the throne and stripped himself of his imprisoning robes.
Gaetani was elected to the papacy ten days later, as the compromise candidate, taking the name of Boniface VIII. His first act as pope was to order the arrest of Celestine, whom he sentenced to death.
Boniface VIII was consecrated and crowned at St Peter's in Rome. He witnessed the archdeacon throw the scarlet robe over him, confer his papal name and declare, `I invest you with the Roman Church.' Boniface was seated upon the sedes stercoraria, a true night commode, so that all would see that their pope was demonstrating I Kings 2.8: `He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes:'
Boniface had burdened himself with many nephews to allay his agony as a spiritual ruler, which was although the papal range was greater than any king's that he was denied the right to transmit his power and his possessions to his children. He acquired rich cities and contiguous, territories in the name of Gaetani. One quarter of the revenue of his reign was poured into buying these. His dynastic ambitions began to shove the great families to one side. Inevitably, he had to confront the Colonna, who ruled their domain from the hilltop city of Palestrina, twenty-two miles east of Rome.
The Colonna took their case against Boniface to the common people, instilling the belief that his election could not have been legal because it had been secured by the people's loss of heaven on earth when Pope Celestine, chosen of the Holy Ghost, had been usurped by him. They might have won with that argument, but Stephen Colonna raided and sacked a column of the pope's gold which was being sent to Caserta to buy yet another city for the Gaetani dynasty. Boniface, almost insane with rage, jailed two of the Colonna cardinals.
The Colonna offered to return the gold but Boniface wanted not only revenge on Stephen Colonna: but to install garrisons inside the chief Colonna cities. To the Colonna, papal garrisons would be Gaetani garrisons. At dawn the next day, Colonna heralds posted manifestos attacking the legitimacy of Boniface's election all over Rome, leaving one tacked to the high altar of St, Peter's. That evening, Boniface issued the bull In excelso throno, which expanded savagely upon the injuries the papacy had received at Colonna hands. It excommunicated the two imprisoned Colonna cardinals and every member of the cardinals' branches of the family unto the fourth generation. He charged them with heresy and, by putting them beyond the law, identified them as legitimate prey for all who could overcome them. By mid-August he had extended this to include all Colonnas. In November, he proclaimed a religious crusade against the Colonna, using money from all over Europe which had been intended to finance the Crusades in the Holy Land to buy the Knights Templar to crush the Colonna strongholds, The Colonna women and children: were thus to be killed or sold into slavery. By the summer of 1298, all the Colonna cities had fallen except Palestrina. Boniface offered a pardon for everyone it they would yield the city. When the Colonna agreed and surrendered, Boniface destroyed Palestrina. It was not a token destruction such as the demolition of a short section of the city's wall; Palestrina was razed to the ground, and the hideous Roman ritual of the plough and the salt was re-enacted to leave the place eternally barren. The Colonna went to France in exile.