Investiture Controversy

A series of popes in the 11th and 12th centuries undercut the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and other European monarchies, and the controversy led to nearly 50 years of conflict.

The agreement required bishops to swear an oath of fealty to the secular monarch, who held authority "by the lance" but left selection to the church.

In Germany (but not Italy and Burgundy), the Emperor also retained the right to preside over elections of abbots and bishops by church authorities, and to arbitrate disputes.

Many of the papal selections before 1059 were influenced politically and militarily by European powers, often with a king or emperor announcing a choice which would be rubber-stamped by church electors.

The control of these great units of economic and military power was for the king a question of primary importance due to its effect on imperial authority.

[14][page needed] As penance for his sins, and echoing his own punishment of the Saxons after the First Battle of Langensalza, he wore a hair shirt and stood barefoot in the snow in what has become known as the Road to Canossa.

Gregory lifted the excommunication, but the German aristocrats, whose rebellion became known as the Great Saxon Revolt, were not as willing to give up their opportunity and elected a rival king, Rudolf von Rheinfeld.

In October 1080, troops raised by the pro-Imperial bishops of Northern Italy clashed with the pro-papal forces of Countess Matilda in the battle of Volta Mantovana.

As a result, Gregory VII was forced to leave Rome under the protection of the Normans, fleeing to Salerno, where he grew ill and died on 25 May 1085.

Urban II preached the First Crusade, which united Western Europe, and more importantly, reconciled the majority of bishops who had abandoned Gregory VII.

Its simple and radical solution[22] of the Investiture Controversy between the prerogatives of regnum and sacerdotium proposed that German churchmen would surrender their lands and secular offices to the emperor and constitute a purely spiritual church.

On this topic, the historian Norman Cantor would note: "The resulting 'Anonymous of York' treatises are a delight to students of early-medieval political theory, but they in no way typify the outlook of the Anglo-Norman monarchy, which had substituted the secure foundation of administrative and legal bureaucracy for outmoded religious ideology.

Henry I of England perceived a danger in placing monastic scholars in his chancery and turned increasingly to secular clerks, some of whom held minor positions in the Church.

[27][28] The European mainland experienced about 50 years of fighting, with efforts by Lamberto Scannabecchi, the future Pope Honorius II, and the 1121 Diet of Würzburg to end the conflict.

The emperor renounced the right to invest ecclesiastics with ring and crosier,[citation needed] the symbols of their spiritual power, and guaranteed election by the canons of cathedral or abbey and free consecration.

[citation needed] To make up for this and symbolise the worldly authority of the bishop which the pope had always recognised to derive from the Emperor, another symbol, the scepter, was invented, which would be handed over by the king (or his legate).

In modern terminology, a concordat is an international convention, specifically one concluded between the Holy See and the civil power of a country to define the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in matters in which both are concerned.

Emperor Otto IV marched on Rome and commanded Pope Innocent III to annul the Concordat of Worms and to recognise the imperial crown's right to make nominations to all vacant benefices.

Indeed, medieval emperors, which were "largely the creation of ecclesiastical ideals and personnel", were forced to develop a secular bureaucratic state, whose essential components persisted in the Anglo-Norman monarchy.

The conflict in Germany and northern Italy arguably left the culture ripe for various Protestant sects, such as the Cathars, the Waldensians and ultimately Jan Hus and Martin Luther.

In France, England, and the Christian state in Spain, the king could overcome rebellions of his magnates and establish the power of his royal demesne because he could rely on the Church, which, for several centuries, had given him a mystical authority.

If the compromise was a rebuke to the most radical vision of the liberty of the Church, on at least one point its implication was firm and unmistakable: the king, even an emperor, was a layman, and his power at least morally limited (hence, totalitarianism was unacceptable).

According to the opinion of W. Jordan, the divine right of kings was dealt a blow from which it never completely recovered,[39] yet unfettered authority and Caesaropapism was not something the later Mediaevals and Early Moderns understood by the phrase "by the grace of God" (which many of them ardently defended).

[clarification needed] It was the consequence of this lengthy episode that a whole generation grew up in Germany and Northern Italy in an atmosphere of war, doubt and scepticism.

[citation needed] The political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues that the Concordat of Worms contained within itself the germ of nation-based sovereignty that would one day be confirmed in the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

But if said diocese was prosperous, the pope wanted to resolve the dispute more quickly so that he could sooner get that ample revenue flowing into his coffers, and so he was more inclined to let the local ruler pick the bishop.

A local secular ruler could stimulate the economy of his domain, and thereby collect more tax revenue, by giving his subjects more liberty and more participation in politics.

Generally, a shrewd ruler would permit his people just enough liberty that he could raise sufficient tax revenue to provide his essential supporters with just enough rewards to keep them loyal (see selectorate theory for a thorough explanation of these trade-offs).

In this specific context, the ruler of a diocese also had to consider whether to raise additional money, by risking liberalization, to convince the pope to compromise on the choice of bishop.

On the other hand, if the pope's influence in the region was weak, the local ruler calculated that liberalizing his state, thereby making it more prosperous, could give him enough leverage to get his choice of bishop.