Concordat of Worms - Gregorian Reform

Gregorian Reform

The Holy Roman Emperors of Ottonian Dynasty, when they came to the throne, believed they should have the power to appoint the pope. They also believed they should appoint minor church officials. The result was that, more often than not, bishops, abbots of monasteries, and even the pope were not independent, but resembled lackeys or sycophants of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. This attitude was bolstered by the general conception that the Holy Roman Emperor and all other European Kings were chosen by God to be leaders.

For temporal secular reasons, the kings did nothing to dispel this attitude. It meant more power for them. A series of popes began to directly challenge this condition. The most vocal and strident was Pope Gregory VII. Reform took a century, but brought greater autonomy for the papacy and the Church in general.

In the period immediately after 1000, two figures appeared to lead Western Christendom, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. Antagonism between the two dominated the next century. After the death of Pope Silvester II in 1003, the papacy fell under the influence of the nobility in Latium, and then after 1046, under the influence of the German emperors. The reality for the west in the Middle Ages was not only the fact that government was split up into small particles but also the fact that vertical and horizontal powers were entangled. People in the Middle Ages did not always know to which of the many lords, the Church and the individual churches, the towns, princes, and kings, they were subordinate. This can be observed in the complexity even at the administrative and judicial level in the jurisdictional conflicts that fill medieval history.

The Church endeavored to become disengaged from the German control. An example of this secular politicization is seen when Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor supported Pope Benedict IX, the most corrupt of any of the popes of the era. It took more than a century to end this manipulation, and was never complete. In the process, the whole Church emerged freed from the grip of all lay lords. This was known as the Gregorian Reform, which takes its name from Pope Gregory VII, (1073–85) . It was merely the latest and most visible of reforms that tended to move the Church back to its roots. It was a question of restoring the autonomy and power of the priestly class in the face of increasing control by the warrior class. The clergy was forced to renew and define itself. There was a battle against simony. The roadmap to celibacy was drawn, if not immediately enacted. Monarchs were excluded from selecting popes. This had been decreed by Pope Nicholas II in 1059. Afterward, only cardinals could elect the pope. Gregorian Reform reiterated this notion. There was to be no more lay interference in the selection of clergy. The aim was to deprive emperors and their under-lords the right to nominate and invest bishops. The effect was to deprive lay kings power over the Church and increase both spiritual and temporal power in the Vatican and the bishops.

Gregory VII appeared to have succeeded when the emperor Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor was humiliated at Canossa in 1077. There, Henry begged in the snow to be let back into the good graces of the Church, having been excommunicated the year before by Gregory. The penitent and humbled emperor did not remain in that state. Soon Henry IV took his revenge. He named his own pope Antipope Clement III in the old manner of the Holy Roman Emperors. Pope Urban II, more prudent than Gregory sidestepped the issue using a Crusade to gather Christian Europe together under his authority. A compromise was reached in Worms in 1122, by which the emperor abandoned investiture “by ring and staff” to the pope, and promised to respect the freedom of elections and consecrations, but kept for himself the right to invest bishops with the temporalities of their sees “by scepter”. Though the Emperor retained some power over imperial churches, his power was damaged irreparably because he lost the religious authority that previously belonged to the office of the king. 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 the Church, which, for several centuries, had given him a mystical authority. From time to time, rebellious and recalcitrant monarchs might afoul of the Church. These could be excommunicated, and after an appropriate time and public penance, be received back into the communion and good graces of the Church.