Dominium mundi

Inspired by the memory of the Roman Empire, dominium mundi implied the recognition of one supreme authority, which generated a prolonged political and spiritual struggle between imperial and ecclesiastical power.

This struggle can be said to have begun with the Investiture Controversy, and was mainly embodied by the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Church, which elevated the emperor and the Pope, respectively, to the status of supreme ruler.

The thesis on the public sovereignty that Roman law (rediscovered by the European jurists and politicians in the twelfth century) has were also used in favor of the imperialist ideals.

It was of them that it was deduced the oneness and the universal character of the Holy Roman Empire, considered "a project of worldwide dominion" that symbolized the whole period.

Given these premises, it was believed in the court of Frederick I that the Empire, was sacred as it was established directly by divine will to act as a form of political organization for humanity.

Without considering this eschatological and messianic element, one cannot correctly understand what the Empire meant for the men of the time, in particular for emperor Frederick I.

The Justinian work would, starting in the 16th century, be known as Corpus Iuris Civilis, but at the time it lacked diffusion and was known through compendiums that deformed it.

The renaissance in Roman studies during the 12th and 13th centuries that would influence all of Europe, occurred in Bologna, a city in the Italian Romagna.

It wasn't small, in this diffusion, the role of the romano-Germanic emperors, who were moved by their political interests as much as by their supposed condition of successors to the old Roman Empire.

The teachers of this most famous "school of Bologna" acted according to a method of medieval study, the one of glosses or commentary of the content and meaning of justinian texts.

The bolognian professors accept justinian law as something superior, even supreme; they are limited to comment on it, without too much critical baggage, because for that they needed philological command of Greek language and study of original texts and historical knowledge, in which they were lacking.

But from their commentary fundamental consequences for the Europe of the time are deduced, by the creation of a rich casuistry that covered a field of superior and more ample legal hypothesis from what was widely known until then.

The first one to compile and systematize the previous universal council canons was Graciano, a theology teacher from bologna, who wrote ca.

The work of Graciano did not have official status, but it reached great prestige and caused in the following decades a height in legal consultations formulated to the pontiff s, something to be expected at a time of insufficient organization of the civil power.

From the 16th century on, all canon law in its recognized compendiums will take the official name of Corpus iuris canonici.

On his return from Italy, after being crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, Frederick I summoned a diet in Besançon (1157), with object to reform the political statute of his kingdom in Arles.

In that diet the first differences between the high civil employees of the emperor, in special took place the chancellor Rainaldo de Dassel, and the pontifical legacy, and future Pope Alexander III, Rolando Bandinelli.

The complaint between theocrats and avivava, being the pretext the interpretation of a papal document in which it was alluded to the "benefits" that Pontiff granted to emperor.

To thus Rainaldo de Dassel understood it and, put forth the argument that, Rolando Bandinelli did not gain a disadvantage in accepting the thesis of its rival: in effect, for him, the emperor received the Empire as a "benefit" of the Pope.

But the complaint had been revived, and when Rolando Bandinelli was raised to the pontifical seat as Alexander III, it was as a true restorer of papal authority (in the spirit of Pope Gregory VII).

In first half of the 12th century, mainly, some authors continued the theses of Gregory VII, like Hugo of San Victor, John of Salisbury or Honorio Augustodunense, but the predominant theories assimilate in some form the new realities: rediscovery of the Roman Law, affirmation of the political powers, complication of the social scheme in a world in which the possible offices and individual situations are multiplied, breaking the primitive ideal of the "trinitarian society" (politicians, the military and agriculturists).

Next, Frederick reunited to one magna assembly in Roncaglia with the purpose of reorganizing the administration of the kingdom of Italy and recovering in him all his authority.

It seemed to obtain it, but the resistance against its measures would raise to the cities and would renew its old "entente" with the Pontiff, for whom the constitution of an imperial power hard in the north and center of Italy was more serious the immediate danger against its political independence.

The split allowed Frederick to attempt a conciliation in Pavia (January 1160), where Pope Victor IV was recognized, while Alexander III looked for support in the Norman kingdom of the south of Italy, whose kings were vassals of The Holy See, and in other European countries, to foment opposition against the emperor.

Frederick won, but Alexander was the Pope recognized by Europe, except for the Empire, and, even so, he counted within this one frightful allies, in particular in Italy, where the emperor and his chancellors, Rainaldo de Dassel and Christian de Bach, organized authoritarian government to counter the old local autonomies, that were not resigned to accept their new lot without resistance.

The death of Victor IV also deprived Frederick of an important support, because antipopes that made choose to happen to him (Paschal III, Callixtus III) did not have possible justification nor were recognized willingly by his own German clergy, since the Emperor took advantage of the circumstances to intervene himself in the ecclesiastical life like at the worse moments of "Investiture Controversy": In 1165, synod of Würzburg and Canonization of Charlemagne was the culmination of imperial interventionism.