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 between Henry
I of England and Pope Paschal II in the years 1103 to 1107, and the issue played
a minor role in the struggles between church and state in France, as well.
By undercutting the Imperial power established by the Salian emperors, the
controversy led to nearly 50 years of civil war in Germany, and the triumph of
the great dukes and abbots. Imperial power was finally re-established under
the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Historian Norman Cantor:
The age of the investiture controversy may rightly be regarded as the
turning-point in medieval civilization. It was the fulfillment of the early
Middle Ages because in it the acceptance of the Christian religion by the
Germanic peoples reached its final and decisive stage… The greater part of the
religious and political system of the high Middle Ages emerged out of the
events and ideas of the investiture controversy.
Origins After the decline of the Roman Empire,
and prior to the Investiture Controversy, while theoretically a task
of the church, investiture was in practice performed by members of the
religious nobility. Many bishops and abbots were themselves usually part of
the ruling nobility. Since the eldest son would inherit the title, younger
siblings often found careers in the church. This was particularly true where
the family may have established a proprietary church or abbey on their
estate. Since Otto the Great the bishops had been princes of the empire, had
secured many privileges, and had become to a great extent feudal lords over
great districts of the imperial territory. The control of these great
units of economic and military power was for the king a question of primary
importance, affecting as it did imperial authority. It was essential for a ruler
or nobleman to appoint someone who would remain loyal.
Since a substantial amount of wealth and land was usually associated with the
office of a bishop or abbot, the sale of church offices was an important source
of income for leaders among the nobility, who themselves owned the land
and by charity allowed the building of churches.
The crisis began when a group within the church, members of the Gregorian Reform,
decided to rebel against the rule of simony by forcefully taking the power of
investiture from the ruling secular power, i.e. the Holy Roman Emperor and
placing that power wholly within control of the church. The Gregorian reformers
knew this would not be possible so long as the emperor maintained the ability to
appoint the pope, so their first step was to forcibly gain the papacy from the
control of the emperor. An opportunity came in 1056 when Henry IV became German
king at six years of age. The reformers seized the opportunity to take the
papacy by force while he was still a child and could not react. In 1059, a
church council in Rome declared, with In Nomine Domini, that leaders of the
nobility would have no part in the selection of popes and created the
College of Cardinals as a body of electors made up entirely of church
officials. Once Rome regained control of the election of the pope, it was ready
to attack the practice of investiture and simony on a broad front.
In 1075, Pope Gregory VII composed the Dictatus Papae. One clause asserted that
the deposal of an emperor was under the sole power of the pope. It declared that
the Roman church was founded by God alone – that the papal power was the
sole universal power; in particular, a council held in the Lateran Palace from
24 to 28 February the same year decreed that the pope alone could appoint or
depose churchmen or move them from see to see. By this time, Henry IV was no
longer a child, and he continued to appoint his own bishops. He reacted to
this declaration by sending Gregory VII a letter in which he withdrew his
imperial support of Gregory as pope in no uncertain terms: the letter was
headed "Henry, king not through usurpation but through the holy
ordination of God, to Hildebrand, at present not pope but false monk". It
called for the election of a new pope. His letter ends, "I, Henry, king by the
grace of God, with all of my Bishops, say to you, come down, come down!", and
is often quoted with "and to be damned throughout the ages." which is a later
addition. The situation was made even more dire
when Henry IV installed his chaplain, Tedald, a Milanese priest, as Bishop of
Milan, when another priest of Milan, Atto, had already been chosen in Rome by
the pope for candidacy. In 1076 Gregory responded by excommunicating Henry, and
deposed him as German king, releasing all Christians from their oath of
allegiance. Enforcing these declarations was a
different matter, but the advantage gradually came to be on the side of
Gregory VII. German princes and the aristocracy were happy to hear of the
king's deposition. They used religious reasons to continue the rebellion
started at the First Battle of Langensalza in 1075, and for seizure of
royal holdings. Aristocrats claimed local lordships over peasants and
property, built forts, which had previously been outlawed, and built up
localized fiefdoms to secure their autonomy from the empire.
Thus, because of these combining factors, Henry IV had no choice but to
back down, needing time to marshal his forces to fight the rebellion. In 1077,
he traveled to Canossa in northern Italy to meet the pope and apologize in
person. As penance for his sins, and echoing his own punishment of the Saxons
after the First Battle of Langensalza, he dramatically wore a hair shirt and
stood in the snow barefoot in the middle of winter in what has become known as
the Walk to Canossa. Gregory lifted the excommunication, but the German
aristocrats, whose rebellion became known as the Great Saxon Revolt, were
not so willing to give up their opportunity. They elected a rival king,
Rudolf von Rheinfeld. Three years later, Gregory declared his support for von
Rheinfeld, and excommunicated Henry IV again.
Henry IV then proclaimed Antipope Clement III to be pope. In 1080, Rudolf
died, effectively ending the internal revolt against Henry. In 1081, Henry
invaded Rome, for the first time, with the intent of forcibly removing Gregory
VII and installing a more friendly pope. Gregory VII called on his allies, the
Normans in southern Italy, and they rescued him from the Germans in 1085.
The Normans sacked Rome in the process, and when the citizens of Rome rose up
against Gregory, he was forced to flee south with the Normans. He died soon
thereafter. The Investiture Controversy continued
for several decades as each succeeding pope tried to diminish imperial power by
stirring up revolt in Germany. These revolts were gradually successful. Henry
IV was succeeded upon his death in 1106 by his son Henry V, who had rebelled
against his father in favor of the papacy, and who had made his father
renounce the legality of his antipopes before he died. Nevertheless, Henry V
chose one more antipope, Gregory VIII. Later, he renounced some of the rights
of investiture with the Concordat of Worms, abandoned Gregory, and was
received back into communion and recognized as legitimate emperor as a
result. English investiture controversy of 1103
to 1107 At the time of Henry IV's death, Henry I
of England and the Gregorian papacy were also embroiled in a controversy over
investiture, and its solution provided a model for the eventual solution of the
issue in the empire. William the Conqueror had accepted a
papal banner and the distant blessing of Pope Alexander II upon his invasion, but
had successfully rebuffed the pope's assertion after the successful outcome,
that he should come to Rome and pay homage for his fief, under the general
provisions of the "Donation of Constantine".
The ban on lay investiture in Dictatus Papae did not shake the loyalty of
William's bishops and abbots. In the reign of Henry I, the heat of exchanges
between Westminster and Rome induced Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to
give up mediating and retire to an abbey. Robert of Meulan, one of Henry's
chief advisors, was excommunicated, but the threat of excommunicating the king
remained unplayed. The papacy needed the support of English Henry while German
Henry was still unbroken. A projected crusade also required English support.
Henry I commissioned the Archbishop of York to collect and present all the
relevant traditions of anointed kingship. "The resulting 'Anonymous of
York' treaties 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" Concordat of London, 1107
According to René Metz, author of "What Is Canon Law?", a concordat is a
convention 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. The concordat is one type of an
international convention. Concordats began during the First Crusade's end in
1098. The Concordat of London suggested a
compromise that was later taken up in the Concordat of Worms. In England, as
in Germany, the king's chancery started to distinguish between the secular and
ecclesiastical powers of the prelates. Employing this distinction, Henry gave
up his right to invest his bishops and abbots while reserving the custom of
requiring them to swear homage for the "temporalities" directly from his hand,
after the bishop had sworn homage and feudal vassalage in the commendation
ceremony, like any secular vassal. The system of vassalage was not divided
among great local lords in England as it was in France, since the king was in
control by right of the conquest. Concordat of Worms and its significance
On the European mainland, after 50 years of fighting, the Concordat of Worms
provided a similar, but longer lasting, compromise when signed on September 23,
1122. It eliminated lay investiture, while leaving secular leaders some room
for unofficial but significant influence in the appointment process.
While the monarchy was embroiled in the dispute with the Church, it declined in
power and broke apart. Localized rights of lordship over peasants grew. This
resulted in multiple effects: 1) increased serfdom that reduced human
rights for the majority, 2) increased taxes and levies that royal coffers
declined, and 3) localized rights of Justice where courts did not have to
answer to royal authority. In the long term, the decline of imperial power
would divide Germany until the 19th century. Similarly, in Italy, the
investiture controversy weakened the emperor's authority and strengthened
local separatist forces. The papacy grew stronger from the
controversy. Marshalling for public opinion engaged lay people in religious
affairs increasing lay piety, setting the stage for the Crusades and the great
religious vitality of the 12th century. The dispute did not end with the
Concordat of Worms. Future disputes between popes and Holy Roman Emperors
continued until northern Italy was lost to the empire entirely. The church would
Crusade against the Holy Roman Empire under Frederick II. According to Norman
Cantor: The investiture controversy had
shattered the early-medieval equilibrium and ended the interpenetration of
ecclesia and mundus. Medieval kingship, which had been largely the creation of
ecclesiastical ideals and personnel, was forced to develop new institutions and
sanctions. The result during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries,
was the first instance of a secular bureaucratic state whose essential
components appeared in the Anglo-Norman monarchy."
See also Cluniac Reforms
Concordat of Worms First Council of the Lateran
References Bibliography
Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from
the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cantor, Norman F. Church. Kingship, and Lay Investiture in England: 1089-1135
Cantor, Norman F.. The Civilization of the Middle Ages. HarperCollins, PP
265–76, 284-88 Cowdrey, H.E.J.. Pope Gregory VII,
1073–1085. Oxford University Press. Jolly, Karen Louise.. Tradition &
Diversity: Christianity in a World Context to 1500. ME Sharpe.
McCarthy, T. J. H.. Chronicles of the Investiture Contest: Frutolf of
Michelsberg and his continuators. Manchester: Manchester Medieval Sources.
ISBN 9780719084706. Metz, René.. What Is Canon Law? Hawthorn
Books. New York. Morrison, Karl F., ed. The investiture
controversy: issues, ideas, and results excerpts from primary and secondary
sources Tellenbach, Gerd. The Western Church
from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century. Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, James Westfall, and Edgar Nathaniel Johnson. An introduction to
medieval Europe, 300-1500 PP 380–90 = Primary sources =
Slocum, Kenneth, ed. Sources in Medieval Culture and History pp 170–75
External links "Investiture Controversy", from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online. "Canonical Investiture", from the
Catholic Encyclopedia] "Investiture", from the Columbia
Encyclopedia. "The Owl, The Cat, And The Investiture
Controversy", from the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies.
"Empire and Papacy", from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
= Sources = Henry IV: Letter to Gregory VII, Jan 24
1076. Gregory VII: First Deposition and
Banning of Henry IV Gregory VII: Second Banning and
Dethronement of Henry IV Gregory VII: Dictatus Papae 1090
Ban on Lay Investitures, 1078 The Concordat of Worms 1122
The Canons of the First Lateran Council, 1123
Avalon Project, Yale University: Documents relating to the War of the
Investitures