Unam Sanctam (November 18, 1302), issued by Boniface VIII during his war with Philip IV of France, declares two swords, spiritual and temporal, with the temporal wielded for the church, and concludes that submission to the Roman pontiff is necessary for salvation. Philip's answer was documented force: the outrage at Anagni (1303), Boniface seized and dead within weeks, and the papacy's removal to Avignon by 1309. The bull's claims were effectively repudiated by events, though never formally withdrawn.
Sovereign-citizen and redemption literature treats Unam Sanctam as the first of three 'trusts', with the 1455 and 1481 bulls (Romanus Pontifex, Aeterni Regis) as later layers, claiming the Vatican holds legal title to all souls and property. Historians classify this as a misreading: the bulls are jurisdictional claims in a medieval dispute, not instruments creating modern legal trusts.
The bull's real significance is the high-water mark of papal supremacy claims, the medieval doctrine that kings rule by delegation from Peter's successor. Its collapse at Anagni is the documented moment the secular state stopped asking permission, which makes Unam Sanctam less a foundation of hidden world government than the exact point such government failed to consolidate.
If a 1302 bull claimed every soul, when exactly did the claim expire?