Investiture Controversy. audiopedia on Dec 16, 2015 The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest was the most significant conflict between Church and state in medieval Europe. In the 11th and …More
Investiture Controversy.
audiopedia on Dec 16, 2015 The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest was the most significant conflict between Church and state in medieval Europe. In the 11th and 12th centuries, a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies. The issue was whether the pope or the monarch would name powerful local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries. The conflict ended in 1122, when Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed on the Concordat of Worms. It differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. The outcome seemed mostly a victory for the pope and his claim that he was God's chief representative in the world. However, the Emperor did retain considerable power over his Church.
The investiture controversy began as a power struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. A brief but significant struggle over investiture also occurred …More
audiopedia on Dec 16, 2015 The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest was the most significant conflict between Church and state in medieval Europe. In the 11th and 12th centuries, a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies. The issue was whether the pope or the monarch would name powerful local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries. The conflict ended in 1122, when Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed on the Concordat of Worms. It differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. The outcome seemed mostly a victory for the pope and his claim that he was God's chief representative in the world. However, the Emperor did retain considerable power over his Church.
The investiture controversy began as a power struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. A brief but significant struggle over investiture also occurred …More
In 1075, Gregory VII issued a decree forbidding any rulers to invest clerics in church office. Of course, the European rulers reacted violently to the decree. The loudest to protest was Henry IV, the young, canny and avaricious Holy Roman Emperor. He answered the pope by stirring up anti-papal clerics and laymen against him. These staged a revolt in Rome at midnight Mass on Christmas 1075, seized …More
But Henry had gone too far. When Gregory excommunicated him, releasing his subjects from their feudal oaths of allegiance, the German nobles threatened the emperor with deposition if he had not made peace with Gregory before February 1076. Now, Henry had a keen sense of public reactions. Taking the initiative, he crossed the Alps in midwinter with his empress and child and only one servant, and sought out the pope, who was visiting at Canossa in northern Italy. Dressed in penitential garb, he stood before the castle of Canossa for three cold days, begging Gregory to absolve him. The pope, with good reason, doubted the emperor's sincerity, but finally had to grant his petition. It was a melodramatic episode in human history.
The German nobles nevertheless deposed Henry in 1077, and elected in his place Rudolph of Swabia. However, when Rudolph died two years later, Henry renewed his revolt against the pope, naming a pope of his own, Guibert of Revenna. Gregory re-imposed the excommunication, whereupon Henry led his army against Rome and after a siege of three years, occupied it. The pope sought refuge in Castel Sant'Angelo, until his rescue by the forces of Robert Guiscard, the Norman Duke of Calabria. But Guiscard's troops so misbehaved that the Romans drove them out as well, and the pope, for safety's sake, had to go back with the Normans to southern Italy. Thirteen of his cardinals now rebelled against him. The pontiff, failing in health of late, died at Salerno, near Naples. In his last moments, he said (adapting Psalm 44) "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; that is why I die in exile." This strong but generous pope had already forgiven his enemies and lifted the excommunications of all but the impenitent Henry and his antipope.
St. Gregory, in a turbulent era, had envisioned a purified Church, and worked all his priestly life to achieve it. He died before his vision became a reality, but the movement for reform that he launched eventually succeeded.
--Father Robert F. McNamara
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