The best time to be pope was between the papacies of Innocent III (1198–1216) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303). Those were the days when popes really had it all—fame, glory, riches, sanctity, power. After that, they went into a long downward spiral, punctuated most noticeably by the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 formally made kings sovereign within their territorial boundaries.
