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 religious nobility authorities. Since a substantial amount of wealth and land was usually associated with the office of a bishop or abbot, the sale of Church offices (a practice known as simony) was an important source of income for nobility leaders, who themselves owned the land and by charity allowed the building of churches. Since bishops and abbots were themselves usually part of the nobility rulers, due to their literate administrative resources or due to an outright family relationship (younger sons of the nobility would often be appointed bishops, as their older siblings inherited the titles and they inherited the task of religious learning), it was beneficial for a nobility ruler to appoint (or sell the office to) someone who would be loyal, as the non-nobility priests, who did not inherit, nor earn such great wealth, may be swayed by greed and power.
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 to 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 nobility leaders would play no part in the selection of popes and created the College of Cardinals as a body of electors made up entirely of church officials. To this day the College of Cardinals selects the pope, and once Rome regained control of the election of the pope it was ready to attack the practice of nobility investiture on a broad front.
Read more about this topic: Investiture Controversy
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