1350: The Jubilee without a Pope

1350. Il Giubileo senza papa.

Exhibition at the (always excellent) Museum of the Imperial Fora on until 1 February 2026.

Rome in the fourteenth century was riddled with plague, war, and natural disaster. The city languished in a slough of despond peopled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It must, I often think, have felt like the end of the world.

Anthropomorphic Trinity, c.1330. Fresco detached from the church of San Salvatore alle Tre Immagine, destroyed in 1888 during the building of via Cavour. On loan from the Museo di Roma.

The century had begun with the optimistic proclamation by Pope Boniface VIII of the first Jubilee, but not two years after the lucrative Holy Year had concluded, in 1303, Boniface was dealt the schiaffo di Anagni.

Commemorative inscription referring to the first Jubilee. Found in the province of Parma and on loan to the exhibition from Complesso della Pilotta, Galleria Nazionale di Parma. It reads: “In the name of the Lord m[…] thirteenth indiction. This work was made for this (?) church by Master Dodus by the will of Jacobus Valentis of Casara (?), who made this brief record of the plenary indulgence that was held in Rome and that will be granted every hundred years thereafter. Therefore every hundred years in Rome, sins will always be forgiven to those who repent. This was agreed and established by Boniface”

Aged seventy or so he was seized and imprisoned at Anagni by the Colonna family, with the collaboration of Philip the Fair, the King of France on the verge of excommunication. The Pope was dealt a blow (schiaffo) which is usually considered to have been more humiliating than physically damaging, though one can imagine Giacomo Colonna, to whom the blow is usually attributed and who went by the nickname “Sciarra”—meaning “brawl”— didn’t have the lightest of touches.

Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella late first century BCE, subsequently incorporated into the fortress of the Caetani (the family of Pope Boniface VIII) outside Rome at Capo di Bove. October 2025