The Investiture Controversy - A Church in Crisis

What was the investiture crisis of the 11th and 12th centuries, and how did the Church resolve it?

The big question during this period was, "Who has the power to appoint bishops, the King or the Church?

The nature and origins of the investiture crisis, its significance for the reform-minded papacy of the time, and how it was ultimately resolved.

     The issue of investiture concerned the king’s right to confer upon bishops and abbots the “ring and crosier” that were symbols of their office. The Church, unfortunately went along with this, so it gave the appearance that the king was making bishops. The bishops would swear loyalty, and this was enslaving the Church. 

The Bishops and the abbots were collecting taxes, and this led to an immoral clergy. For instance, they lived openly with families. Many bishops and abbots were themselves usually part of the ruling nobility. Since the eldest son would inherit the title, siblings often found careers in the church. The bishops were 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 selling of these higher offices, led to the selling of lower ones, and also the selling of the sacraments (known as simony). The investiture crisis caused a terrible corruption in the Church due to the power the state had over the Church. It will be Gregory VII who battles investiture.

     

     Investiture partially originated in the extreme authority of Henry III. Henry III deposed three rival claimants to the papacy, and appointed two successive popes. In all of Europe, no other power equaled his. In the end, he pushed his authority to the extreme, but he died before the storm, and left Henry IV a hostile papacy and a troubled realm.    

    

 Four purposes inspired Gregory VII; to complete Leo’s reform of clerical morals, to end lay investiture, to unify all Europe in one church headed by the papacy, and to lead a Christian army to the East to reclaim the Holy Land from the Turks. The reform of clerical morals, which was begun at the Lateran Council of 1059, was met with much resistance.  The problem of investiture seemed simpler than that of clerical marriage. At the Lenten Synod of 1075, Gregory issued a decree against lay investiture. Henry IV, however, with over a century of precedents, never doubted his right to make such appointments, and fought Gregory for ten years, literally to the death, in one of the bitter conflicts in medieval history. 

     

 Part of the overall significance of investiture was the question, “who should unify and govern Europe, the papacy or the empire?” The German emperors claimed that their power was also divine and necessary for the social order. Privately they resented, long before the reformation, the flow of gold, money, and fees from Germany to Italy. They freely admitted the supremacy of the Church in spiritual matters, but asserted a like supremacy for the state in temporal and earthly affairs. To Gregory this seemed like dualism. He felt that spiritual considerations should dominate material concerns as the sun dominates the moon.

   The first step toward this end was the liberation of the papacy from German control. The second was to bring all bishops under the authority of the Papal See. Here is a timeline of these steps:

1073 – Gregory sends a letter to bishop of Chalons, threatens to excommunicate King Philip Augustus of France for selling bishoprics.

1074 – General letter sent to French episcopate.

1075 – Synod of Italian Bishops in Rome. Decrees issued against simony, clerical marriage, and lay investiture.

• Five bishops excommunicated, other bishops suspended and deposed.
• Henry defiantly appoints replacements, continues investiture.

1075 (December) – Gregory threatens to excommunicate Henry should he continue.

1076 – Synod of Worms – Henry accuses Pope of wrong-doing, deposition of Pope proposed.

1076 – This deposition, presented to Gregory at a synod in Rome. All the bishops who signed the decree were excommunicated, and the Pope launched upon the Emperor a triple sentence of excommunication, anathema, and deposition (take that!!!)

1077 – Henry shows up repentant, and presents himself to Gregory at Matilda’s fortified castle at Canossa.

This was a spiritual triumph for Gregory, but a subtle diplomatic victory for Henry, who now automatically regained his throne.

1077 – 1080 – German civil war. Gregory gives his support to Rudolf, excommunicates Henry a second time, and forbade Christians to serve him.

1080 – Council at Mainz called. Henry deposes Gregory. Declares Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna (Clement III, antipope) pope.

• Rival armies meet. Henry is defeated, but Rudolf is killed. Henry recruits another army and seizes a large part of Rome, including St. Peters, and Gregory fled.

1084 – A synod at the Lateran palace, at Henry’s command, deposes and excommunicated  Gregory, and antipope Clement III is made pope. For a year Henry was master of Rome.

1085 – Robert Guiscard frees Gregory, sacks Rome, and leaves half of it in ruins. Gregory is taken to Monte Cassino.

• Clement returned to Rome as apparent Pope.
• Gregory held another Synod, excommunicates Henry again, and breaks down in body and spirit. Died may 25, 1085

    Both sides claimed that they had the sole power to appoint bishops and abbots. If Christ had established the Church, it seemed clear that her bishops and abbots should be chosen by churchmen rather than laymen. However, most German bishops were vested by the king with lands, revenues, and secular responsibilities. It appeared just, by feudal law, that they should owe their appointment and allegiance to the king. One problem was that if the bishops were released from their loyalty to the king, half the land in Germany would escape control by the state. Gregory complained that lay appointment was the cause of most of the simony, worldliness, and immorality that had appeared in the German and French episcopates. He felt that the bishops must be brought under the papal authority or the Western Church, like the Eastern Church, would become a subservient arm of the state.

  When Henry IV died, Pope Paschal II could not grant a Christian burial to him, an unrepentant excommunicate; but the people of Liege, defying Pope and King, gave Henry IV a royal funeral, and buried him in their cathedral.

    

 Another problem was the Wilbertine schism of 1084-1100; and the conflicts and disputes thereafter up to the Concordat of 1122. It is not clear when lay investiture was formally condemned by the Papacy. There is evidence that it was prohibited by Gregory VII in 1075, but the first clear prohibition that survives dates from 1078. Urban II intensified the prohibition, and the effective ending of the schism in 1100 brought investiture into the spotlight.

   

 In England, St. Anselm tried to enforce Urban’s decrees at the Council of Rome (1099) excommunicating all who gave or received lay investiture. He himself refused to do homage to Henry 1 (1100) or to consecrate bishops who had received it. In 1105 a compromise was reached at Bec and ratified in a Council at Westminster in 1107, to which Henry was allowed to receive homage for temporalities (the secular properties and possessions of the Church) before consecration in return for a complete renunciation of investiture.

    

 In France, there was an understanding reached between Philip I and the Pope Paschal II in 1107. A formal settlement was at last reached in in Empire by the Concordat of Worms (1122), and the provisions of which were reasserted by the First Lateran Council (1123). The Emperor gave up the right to invest with ring and staff but continuing to bestow the temporalities, and in Germany receiving homage before consecration and in other parts of the Empire after six months delay.

    

The investiture dispute was finally settled at the Concordant of Worms in 1122, with both parties making concessions. Pope Callixtus II grants that the elections of bishops and abbots may take place in the presence of the Emperor, and that the Emperor should have the right to invest them with a scepter. Henry I agreed to give up investiture with the ring and crozier, to allow free elections, and to aid in the restoration of church property which had been confiscated during the long struggle.

   Although the Papacy won a complete victory over the issue of investiture itself, lay rulers retained a varying degree over elections.

     Innocent III, a century later, would realize a large part of Gregory’s dream of a world united under the Vicar of Christ; but he would win in a more temperate spirit and with wiser diplomacy.