Boniface I

d.422. Pope from 418. Unlike his predecessor Zosimus,* he sought to establish and defend respect for Roman authority in the West. He withdrew the unpopular papal vicar from S Gaul. A Council of Carthage in 419, reacting against rash claims by Zosimus, urged upon Boniface that the bishop of Rome should accept appeals from bishops alone, not from clerics. This Boniface did when he restored the pro-Augustinian Anthony to his see in the Donatist* stronghold of Fussala, but he accepted the appeal with caution, on the condition “ . . . if he has truthfully told us the facts.” Although Illyricum had been made part of the Eastern Empire, Boniface defended the traditional Roman ecclesiastical control through the bishop of Thessalonica. His nine extant letters, concerned with his rights in the consecration of the bishop of Corinth, introduce papal claims later institutionalized by Leo I.*