Unam Sanctum (Latin the One Holy, i.e. Church), the Bull on papal supremacy issued 18 November, 1302, by Boniface VIII during the dispute with Philip the Fair, King of France. It is named from its opening words. The Bull was promulgated in connection with the Roman Council of October, 1302, at which it had probably been discussed. it is not impossible that Boniface VIII himself revised the Bull; still it also appears that Aegidius Colonna, Archibishop of Bourges, who had come to the council at Rome notwithstanding the royal prohibition, influenced the text. The original of the Bull is no longer in existence; the oldest text is to be found in the registers of Boniface VIII in the Vatican archives. It was also incorporated in the “Corpus juris canonici”. The genuineness of the Bull is absolutely established by the entry of it in the official registers of the papal Briefs, and its incorporation in the canon law. The objections to its genuineness raised by such scholars as Damberger, Mury, and Verlaque are fully removed by this external testimony. At a later date Mury withdrew his opinion.
