He was chosen Pope in 1294. “The inauguration of Boniface,” says Milman, History of Latin Christianity , Book IX , ch. 7, “was the most magnificent which Rome had ever beheld. In his procession to St.

Dante indulges towards him a fierce Ghibelline hatred, and assigns him his place of torment before he is dead. In Canto XXVII 85, he calls him “the Prince of the new Pharisees”; and, after many other bitter allusions in various parts of the poem, puts into the mouth of St. Peter, Paradiso XXVII 22, the terrible invective that makes the whole heavens red with anger.