Boniface IX

Pope Boniface IX (; ; c. 1350 – 1 October 1404, born Pietro Tomacelli Cybo ) was head of the Catholic Church from 2 November 1389 to his death, in October 1404. He was the second Roman pope during the Western Schism. In this time, the Avignon claimants, Clement VII and Benedict XIII, maintained the Roman Curia in Avignon, under the protection of the French monarchy. He is the last pope to date to take on the pontifical name "Boniface".

Early life Born c. 1350 in Naples, Pietro (also Piero or Perino) Tomacelli Cybo was son of Baron Giacomo Tomacelli and Verdella Caracciolo, feudataries of Casarano and nearby Casaranello, from noble neapolitan families, and a descendant of Tamaso Cybo, who belonged to an influential noble family from Genoa and settled in Casarano in the Kingdom of Naples. He was baptized in the paleochristian church of Santa Maria della Croce (the church of Casaranello). An unsympathetic German contemporary source, Dietrich of Nieheim, asserted that he was illiterate (nesciens scribere etiam male cantabat). Neither a trained theologian nor skilled in the business of the Curia, he was tactful and prudent in a difficult era, but Ludwig Pastor, who passes swiftly over his pontificate, says, "The numerous endeavours for unity made during this period form one of the saddest chapters in the history of the Church. Neither pope had the magnanimity to put an end to the terrible state of affairs" by resigning. After his election at the papal conclave of 1389, Germany, England, Hungary, Poland, and the greater part of Italy accepted him as pope. The remainder of Europe recognized the Avignon Pope Clement VII. He and Boniface mutually excommunicated each other.

The day before Tomacelli's election by the fourteen cardinals who remained faithful to the papacy at Rome,

In 1398 and 1399, Boniface IX appealed to Christian Europe in favor of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, threatened at Constantinople by Sultan Bayezid I, but there was little enthusiasm for a new crusade at such a time. Saint Bridget of Sweden was canonized by Pope Boniface IX on 7 October 1391. The universities of Ferrara (1391) and Fermo (1398) owe him their origin, and that of Erfurt (in Germany), its confirmation (1392).

Boniface IX died on 1 October 1404 after a brief illness.

Boniface IX was a frank politician, strapped for cash like the other princes of Europe, as the costs of modern warfare rose and supporters needed to be encouraged by gifts, for fourteenth-century government depended upon such personal support as a temporal ruler could gather and retain. All the princes of the late 14th century were accused of avaricious money-grubbing by contemporary critics, but among them contemporaries ranked Boniface IX as exceptional. Traffic in benefices, the sale of dispensations, and the like, did not cover the loss of local sources of revenue in the long absence of the papacy from Rome, foreign revenue diminished by the schism, expenses for the pacification and fortification of Rome, the constant wars made necessary by French ambition and the piecemeal reconquest of the Papal States. Boniface IX certainly provided generously for his mother, his brothers Andrea and Giovanni, and his nephews in the spirit of the day. The Curia was perhaps equally responsible for new financial methods that were destined in the next century to arouse bitter feelings against Rome, particularly in Germany.