Pope Nicholas III (1277-1280)

The pope of the great Franciscan law

In the thirteenth century, the order founded by Saint Francis of Assisi was crossed by a burning question: how far should poverty go? Some wanted a rigorous observance of absolute dispossession; others wanted a more flexible application compatible with large convents and universities. Nicholas III settled the debate by a decretal — a solemn letter by which the pope settles a point of law —, Exiit qui seminat, which the Catholic Encyclopedia calls "still fundamental for the interpretation of the Rule of St. Francis".^[12] For more than forty-three years, from 1279 to 1322-1323, this text remained the official reference on evangelical poverty, until Pope John XXII, by his constitutions Ad conditorem canonum (1322) and Cum inter nonnullos (1323), challenged it and reopened the dispute.

The builder of the Papal State and the Vatican

Nicholas III was also one of the great temporal builders of medieval papacy. By consolidating papal sovereignty over Rome, incorporating Romagna into the Papal States, and launching works at the Vatican, he gave the papacy lasting material foundations. Britannica notes that he was "the first pope to make the Vatican his residence".^[13] The palace he built there, the gardens he laid out, and the Passetto di Borgo linking Saint Peter's to Castel Sant'Angelo — whose construction dates to the years of his pontificate, with no certainty as to his personal initiative — all mark the birth of the Vatican as a center of papal power.^[14]

The pope whom Dante damns for simony

No medieval pope, except perhaps Boniface VIII, left so dark an imprint on literature. By placing Nicholas III in the third bolgia of Hell — the bolge are the concentric pits of the eighth circle, one for each kind of defrauders —, among the simoniacs punished head down with their feet aflame, Dante fixed for posterity the image of a pontiff consumed by love of his kin. This literary portrait, partial but unforgettable, forces any serious article to ask the question frankly: was Nicholas III a great pope stained by nepotism, or a skilled nepotist? The answer, as we shall see, is more nuanced than Dante's verse.

A birth in Rome's most powerful family

Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was born in Rome, between 1212 and 1216, the second son of Matteo Rosso Orsini and Perna Caetani.^[15] His father was one of the most powerful men in the city: senator of Rome, he had, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "defended Rome against Frederick II and saved it for the papacy".^[16] The Orsini family, whose name evokes the Latin ursus, the bear, and whose arms bore the she-bear, dominated Roman nobility in rivalry with the Colonna and the Annibaldi. The young Giovanni therefore grew up at the heart of pontifical politics, between Rome and the curia.

A tradition reported by the Catholic Encyclopedia traces the family's devotion to the Franciscans back to Matteo Rosso's friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi himself and to his membership in the Third Order.^[17] Whether exact or embellished, the tradition helps explain the constant favor Giovanni Gaetano would show throughout his life to the sons of Saint Francis.

Cardinal-deacon in 1244 (between 27 and 32)

On 28 May 1244, Pope Innocent IV made the young Orsini — then aged 27 to 32 according to the birth year retained between 1212 and 1216 — a cardinal-deacon with the title of San Nicola in Carcere Tulliano.^[18][19] To support his rank, he received benefices and canonries at York, Laon, and Soissons, a sign of the European reach of the curial benefice system.^[20] The following year, in 1245, he appears as an auditor at the First Council of Lyon, which deposed Emperor Frederick II.^[21]

Cardinal for thirty-three years, under eight pontificates, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini accumulated exceptional curial experience. Treccani stresses his closeness to Innocent IV in the struggle against Frederick II, then to Alexander IV and Clement IV.^[22] Few men came to the throne of Peter so well prepared for the government of the Church.

Protector of the Franciscans and inquisitor general

Two offices especially marked his career as cardinal. In 1261, Pope Urban IV appointed him protector of the Order of Friars Minor, and in 1263 of the Poor Clares, a decisive role that made him an arbiter of Franciscan affairs.^[23][24] This long familiarity with the order would later allow him, as pope, to legislate on poverty with authority.

In November 1262, he was also designated inquisitor generalis against heresies.^[25] The future Nicholas III was therefore at once the guardian of the Franciscan ideal and one of the officials charged with the struggle against heresy, two complementary facets of the defense of the faith in the thirteenth century.

The archpriest of Saint Peter's

On 18 October 1276, during the brief pontificate of John XXI, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini became archpriest of the chapter of Saint Peter's.^[26] But his role went far beyond this honorary title: the chroniclers make him the strong man of John XXI's pontificate, the real master of the curia while the Portuguese pope devoted himself to his studies.^[27] When John XXI died in May 1277, Cardinal Orsini was, in fact, the most powerful man in the Church.

The man who invested Charles of Anjou with Sicily (1265)

An earlier episode illuminates the whole Italian policy of the future pope. In 1265, Pope Clement IV charged Cardinal Orsini with giving Charles of Anjou, brother of King Saint Louis of France, the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily, after the papacy had called him to drive the Hohenstaufen from southern Italy.^[28] Orsini was therefore one of the agents of the installation of the house of Anjou on the Sicilian throne.

The irony of history is that, once pope, the same man would work to reduce the Angevin power he had helped to establish. This is one of the threads of his pontificate: restoring the independence of the papacy between the two giants of Empire and Anjou.

A six-month vacancy after John XXI

At the death of John XXI on 20 May 1277, crushed at Viterbo under the collapsed ceiling of his study, the See of Peter remained vacant for almost six months.^[29] This long vacancy was caused by a legal void: John XXI had himself abrogated the strict conclave rules instituted by Gregory X at the Second Council of Lyon, so the cardinals were no longer forced into the seclusion that compelled rapid elections.^[30]

The small college, reduced to seven cardinals, was also divided between a faction favorable to Charles of Anjou and a faction hostile to Angevin domination, whose soul was Orsini.

The conclave of Viterbo and the choice of a Roman

Meeting at Viterbo, the conclave finally chose Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, elected on 25 November 1277.^[31][32] After a series of foreign or non-Roman popes, the return of a high-born Roman to the throne of Peter was not insignificant: it announced a policy of retaking Rome and the Papal State.

The pope-elect was still only a deacon; he had to be ordained priest and then consecrated bishop before being crowned. His coronation took place in Saint Peter's Basilica on 26 December 1277, the feast of Saint Stephen.^[33]

The name Nicholas

Orsini chose to reign under the name Nicholas. The choice was not neutral: it recalled the reforming popes Nicholas I and Nicholas II, and also expressed his personal devotion to Saint Nicholas, whose cardinalatial title he had borne since 1244 at San Nicola in Carcere.^[34] The program was written in the name: to restore the authority and freedom of the Roman Church.

The conflict over poverty

Poverty is the heart of the ideal of Saint Francis of Assisi: his brothers are to possess nothing, either individually or in common. But as the order grew, filled Europe with convents, and entered the universities, this radical ideal became difficult to maintain. Increasing tension opposed the supporters of a rigorous observance (who would later become the Spirituals) to those who favored a more flexible interpretation of the Rule.^[35] How could friars who preached, studied, and lived in large convents possess nothing without falling into illegality or hypocrisy?

Nicholas III, former protector of the order, wanted to give this juridical and spiritual question a definitive answer. To prepare it, he relied on theologians of the order — including Jerome of Ascoli, minister general of the Franciscans and future Nicholas IV, alongside Bentivegna of Todi and Peter of John Olivi — who collaborated with him on drafting the decretal.^[36]

The distinction between use and property

The solution of the bull, promulgated on 14 August 1279, rests on a subtle legal distinction inherited from the thought of Saint Bonaventure: one must separate property (dominium) in a thing from its simple use of fact (usus facti).^[37][38] A person can use a good, by eating bread, living in a house, or reading a book, without being its owner. To put it simply: a traveler who drinks from a fountain uses it without possessing it.

On this basis, Nicholas III declared that the Friars Minor retained only the use of things necessary for their life and vocation, while renouncing all property, both individual and collective. Absolute poverty thereby ceased to be a legal impossibility: it became observable, possible, lawful, meritorious, and perfect.^[39]

Property transferred to the Holy See

One problem remained: if the friars possessed nothing, who owned the convents, books, and bread they consumed? Nicholas III's answer was as clever as it was consequential: property in all the goods used by the Franciscans was transferred to the Holy See, that is, to the Roman Church herself.^[40] The pope thus became the legal owner of what the friars merely used.

This arrangement saved both the rigor of the ideal (the friars truly owned nothing) and the material reality of the order (the goods existed and were protected). But it tied the fate of Franciscan poverty closely to the will of the popes, which would prove fatal when John XXII, by these constitutions of 1322-1323, refused this arrangement and declared erroneous the doctrine of the absolute poverty of Christ and the Apostles.

Evangelical poverty declared holy and meritorious

Beyond law, Exiit qui seminat carries a strong spiritual affirmation: the poverty practised by the Friars Minor is not an eccentricity, but the very way of Christ and the Apostles. The bull teaches that the abdication of all property, for the love of God, is "not only observable, possible and lawful, but meritorious and perfect".^[41] Voluntary poverty is presented as a path of evangelical holiness, conformed to the example of the Savior who "had nowhere to lay his head".

"To renounce all things, both individually and in common, for God is meritorious and holy; Christ, teaching the way of perfection, showed it in word and confirmed it by his example." — Nicholas III, bull Exiit qui seminat, 14 August 1279 (doctrinal substance)^[42]

This is what makes Exiit qui seminat far more than a juridical arrangement: it is a document of spirituality that consecrates evangelical poverty as a treasure of the Church.

"Noli me tangere": the ban on glossing

Aware that his decision could be distorted by competing interpretations, Nicholas III took a remarkable precaution: he forbade any commentary or gloss on his bull, using the formula "Noli me tangere" ("Do not touch me").^[43] The text had to be received as it stood, without being twisted by school disputes. This clause shows how clearly the pope understood the fragility of his balance: he had found a peace, but a peace that rested entirely on the authority of the Apostolic See.

Reach and limits

Exiit qui seminat pacified the order for more than four decades and remained, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "still fundamental for the interpretation of the Rule of St. Francis".^[44] It illustrates the juridical genius of the thirteenth century, able to reconcile the most radical ideal with the concrete life of a great order. But its very fragility foreshadowed the crisis of the Spirituals and the great conflict over Christ's poverty that would break out under John XXII. Nicholas III's great law was therefore both a remarkable success and a truce whose contradictions would reappear.

Fundamenta militantis Ecclesiae: Rome's "magna carta"

The great political act of the pontificate was the constitution Fundamenta militantis Ecclesiae, promulgated on 18 July 1278. Treccani describes it as "the magna carta of relations between the pontiff and the Roman people".^[45] The text asserts the rights of the pope over Rome, grounding them especially in the Donation of Constantine, and subordinates the election of the city's senators to papal approval.^[46]

Concretely, the constitution forbade the high office of senator of Rome — the head of the city government — from being entrusted durably to a foreign prince, and placed it again under papal control. By this juridical stroke, Nicholas III retook the government of Rome, long disputed among the pope, the great families, and outside powers.

Reducing King Charles of Anjou

The centerpiece of this policy was the reduction of the power of Charles I of Anjou, king of Sicily, senator of Rome, and imperial vicar of Tuscany (the emperor's representative in the region). In 1278, Nicholas III forced the king to renounce the senatorship of Rome, whose mandate expired on 16 September 1278, then, in 1279, the imperial vicariate of Tuscany.^[47][48] In his place, the Romans offered the senatorial office to the pope himself — as a private person and for life (toto tempore vitae), not as pope — which he accepted before delegating it to two Roman nobles, Giovanni Colonna and Pandolfo Savelli, his representatives.^[49]

"He constrained Charles of Anjou, in 1278, to give up the regency of Tuscany and the dignity of senator of Rome." — Catholic Encyclopedia, article Pope Nicholas III (which here groups both measures under 1278; Treccani, more precise, dates the removal from the Tuscan vicariate to 1279)^[50]

This loosened the Angevin grip that threatened to enclose the papacy. Yet by weakening Charles of Anjou, Nicholas III was also, without knowing it, preparing the ground for the great revolt of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, two years after his death.

Rudolf of Habsburg and Romagna

Facing the Empire, Nicholas III won a decisive territorial success. By a concordat negotiated with the king of the Romans Rudolf I of Habsburg, the emperor renounced imperial rights over Romagna and recognized the sovereignty of the Church over this rich region and over the former exarchate of Ravenna.^[51][52] Britannica summarizes: "He obtained from the German king Rudolf I recognition that Romagna belonged to the church."^[53]

The pope sent his nephew Bertoldo Orsini as rector of the new province.^[54] The incorporation of Romagna represented one of the most important enlargements of the medieval Papal States, but it also placed, once again, an Orsini at the head of a land of the Church.

The union with the Greeks

On the ecclesial level, Nicholas III continued the great dossier of the union of the Churches sealed at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. He pressed the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to apply the union in reality and to have his clergy profess the Roman faith — the Catholic Encyclopedia describes his legates sent to Constantinople to obtain the renewal of the oath sworn at Lyon. The union of Lyon, fragile from the start, would not long survive; but Nicholas III, like John XXI before him, was one of its vigilant guardians.^[55][56]

The great imperial project

Several chroniclers and historians have attributed to Nicholas III a vast plan to reorganize Christendom: to reduce the Empire, create new kingdoms to balance the powers, and perhaps carve out a principality for his own family. Britannica soberly notes that "his early death ruined his plans to reorganize the Holy Roman Empire".^[57] The exact scope of this design remains debated by historians, somewhere between a deliberate political project and a retrospective reconstruction by hostile chroniclers. What is certain is that his death in August 1280 interrupted a large-scale policy still in full deployment.

The Orsini in power

The reverse side of Nicholas III's great policy was a spectacular nepotism. As early as 12 March 1278, he created several cardinals, including two close relatives: his brother Giordano Orsini, made cardinal-deacon of Sant'Eustachio, and his nephew Latino Malabranca, son of his sister Mabilia, a Dominican and respected theologian, made cardinal-bishop of Ostia.^[58][59] The same promotion included his cousin Giacomo Colonna, as well as the Franciscan Jerome of Ascoli (the future Nicholas IV) and Bentivegna da Todi.^[60]

The table below summarizes the principal relatives of Nicholas III raised to major offices.

This family deployment was not mere greed: placing reliable men in key posts was a means of government in a Rome delivered to factions. Cardinal Latino Malabranca in particular was a remarkable churchman, an artisan of peace between Guelfs and Ghibellines at Florence in 1280.^[62] But the concentration of power in the hands of a single house left a lasting impression on contemporaries.

The judgment of contemporaries

The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani left the most quoted judgment. While acknowledging the pope's greatness, he accused him of having first institutionalized family simony:

"He was magnanimous, and because of the zeal he had for his kin he undertook many things to make them great; and he was one of the first, or the first pope, at whose court open simony was practised for his relatives." — Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, book VII, chap. 54^[63]

The word is heavy: for Villani, Nicholas III had inaugurated a practice that would corrupt the curia. This judgment, taken up by Dante, has permanently darkened his memory.

Should one speak of simony?

Here a nuance is necessary. Simony in the strict sense is traffic in sacred things: selling or buying spiritual offices. Nothing proves that Nicholas III sold dignities; what is reproached is that he favored his relatives shamelessly. The term used by Villani and Dante therefore belongs largely to moral polemic rather than precise canon law. The Catholic Encyclopedia offers a balanced judgment: "an ecclesiastically-minded pontiff of great diplomatic ability and, if we except his acts of nepotism, of unblemished character".^[64]

"An ecclesiastically-minded pontiff of great diplomatic ability and, if we except his acts of nepotism, of unblemished character." — Catholic Encyclopedia, article Pope Nicholas III^[65]

In other words — and this is the answer to the question posed above: a great pope stained by nepotism, not a mere skilful nepotist — Nicholas III was a real great pope, whose nepotism was a serious fault but not the whole man. Dante's posterity has often reduced this complex figure to his single defect.

The Vatican, new residence of the popes

Until the thirteenth century, the ordinary residence of the popes was the Lateran Palace. Nicholas III made a shift of lasting significance: he made the Vatican, near Saint Peter's Basilica, his habitual residence — although, as the Catholic Encyclopedia specifies, some of his predecessors had already occupied it on occasion.^[66] There he had the palace remodeled and enlarged, and acquired nearby lands "subsequently transformed into the Vatican gardens", according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.^[67] This was the birth act of the Vatican as the heart of papal power, seven centuries before the State of Vatican City.

The Lateran Sancta Sanctorum

At the Lateran, Nicholas III had the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum rebuilt: the private oratory of the popes, housing the acheiropoietic image of Christ, the Acheropita, and precious relics.^[68] He adorned it with a rich cycle of frescoes. This ensemble, which still bears his inscription, is one of the great witnesses to Roman art at the end of the thirteenth century and a high point of pontifical patronage.

The Passetto and Castel Sant'Angelo

Finally, Nicholas III strengthened the defensive system of the papacy in Rome. The construction of the Passetto di Borgo, the fortified corridor laid out on the Leonine walls linking the Vatican to Castel Sant'Angelo, the popes' refuge in danger, dates, according to Treccani, to the years of his pontificate, though its personal initiative cannot be attributed to the pope with certainty.^[69] Under his pontificate, control of the fortress passed durably into the hands of the Orsini.^[70] Here again, the interest of the Church and the interest of the family were inextricably mingled.

Sudden apoplexy

In the summer of 1280, Nicholas III had withdrawn to the castle of Soriano nel Cimino, near Viterbo, which he had embellished. There he died suddenly on 22 August 1280, probably of apoplexy, a stroke (Treccani writes "probabilmente per apoplessia").^[71][72] The pope of great politics disappeared in an instant, amid unfinished projects.

The difficult succession

The death of Nicholas III opened a long and stormy conclave at Viterbo. Without the strict rules of Gregory X, and under pressure from Charles of Anjou, who wanted to recover the influence he had lost, the cardinals took six months to agree. They finally elected, in February 1281, a Frenchman, Martin IV, closely tied to Anjou.^[73] Nicholas III's anti-Angevin policy was thus partly reversed by his successor, proof that his success had depended heavily on his own person.

Burial and memory

Nicholas III was buried in the Chapel of Saint Nicholas which he himself had built in the old Saint Peter's Basilica (the Constantinian basilica, later replaced by the present building).^[74] His memory remains divided: for historians of the papacy, a great governor, restorer of the Papal State, and legislator of Franciscan poverty; for the literary tradition born of Villani and Dante, a figure of curial nepotism, even of simony.

The third bolgia of Hell

In canto XIX of the Inferno, Dante visits the third bolgia of the eighth circle, where the simoniacs are punished: those who made commerce of holy things. Their punishment is a striking contrapasso: planted head down in stone holes, they have the soles of their feet licked by flames, an infernal parody of baptism and anointing. The deepest of these damned, who writhes and burns more fiercely than the others, is precisely Nicholas III.^[75]

"Are you already there, Boniface?"

The most famous scene turns on a mistaken identity. Believing he hears the successor he expects, Boniface VIII, the damned pope calls out to Dante without seeing him:

"Are you already standing there, are you already standing there, Boniface? The writing has lied to me by several years. Are you so soon sated with that wealth for which you did not fear to take by fraud the beautiful lady, and then to do her outrage?" — Dante, Inferno, canto XIX, lines 52-57^[76]

The "beautiful lady" is the Church, fraudulently wedded and then mistreated. Dante inserts here a terrible accusation: for him, Nicholas III as well as Boniface VIII betrayed their spouse, the Church, for money and family.

The son of the she-bear and the cubs

Pressed to say who he is, the damned man names himself through an unforgettable image, playing on the name of the Orsini (orsa, the she-bear; orsatti, the cubs):

"Know that I was clothed in the great mantle; and truly I was son of the she-bear, so eager to advance my cubs that up there I put wealth in my purse, and here I have put myself into the purse." — Dante, Inferno, canto XIX, lines 69-72^[77]

The whole indictment of nepotism is compressed into these three lines: the Orsini pope put wealth "in the purse" (in borsa) for his kin on earth, and put himself there in Hell. The cruel wordplay, with borsa echoing the punishment that sinks him into the rock, is one of the peaks of Dante's satirical art.

The prophecy of simoniac popes

Nicholas III finally announces to Dante that other pontiffs will join him in the hole: first Boniface VIII, then, worse still, Clement V, "a lawless shepherd" from the West.^[78] Through this post eventum prophecy, Dante condemns three popes of his time in a single movement. These lines must be read for what they are: a political and moral pamphlet by an indignant exile, not a judgment of the Church. The historian should retain the force of the grievance, since curial nepotism was indeed a real scandal, without confusing Dante's satire with a definitive verdict on the salvation of a soul, which belongs to God alone.

Reference sources

• Treccani, Enciclopedia dei Papi, "Niccolo III" — the most complete scholarly synthesis on his biography, curial career, pontificate, nepotism, and artistic patronage.^[79]
• Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent), "Pope Nicholas III" (1911) — the classic factual framework for his birth, career, acts of government, and overall judgment.^[80]
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Nicholas III (pope)" — concise notice on the pontificate, Romagna, and Dante's memory.^[81]

On Exiit qui seminat and Franciscan poverty

On Dante and the memory of Nicholas III

• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, canto XIX — the pope damned among the simoniacs.^[82]
• Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica — the contemporary judgment on family simony.^[83]

• Pope John XXI (1276-1277) — the predecessor under whom Cardinal Orsini was the strong man before succeeding him.
• Pope Clement IV (1265-1268) — the pope who charged Orsini with investing Charles of Anjou with the kingdom of Sicily.
• Pope Gregory X (1271-1276) — the author of the conclave rules abrogated before the election of Nicholas III.
• The Second Council of Lyon (1274) — the union with the Greeks that Nicholas III sought to maintain.
• The Papal States — the territorial framework enlarged by the acquisition of Romagna.
• The Avignon Papacy — the later crisis prophesied by the "lawless shepherd" of canto XIX.
• Saint Thomas Aquinas — the great doctor of the same scholastic thirteenth century.