Investiture Controversy - Investiture Controversy

Investiture Controversy

In 1075 Pope Gregory VII asserted in the "Dictatus Papae", a “collection of canons” (see also Canon law), one of which claimed 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 (the auctoritas of Pope Gelasius) was the sole universal power; in particular, a council held in the Lateran 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 and 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 be damned throughout the ages."

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 the king, removing him from the Church and deposing him as German king.

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 the cover of religion as an excuse 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 hairshirt 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.

Henry IV then proclaimed Antipope Clement III to be pope. In 1081 Henry IV captured and killed Rudolf, and in the same year he invaded Rome 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. Henry V also chose one more antipope, Gregory VIII; however, he renounced some of the rights of investiture with the Concordat of Worms, and was received back into communion and recognized as legitimate Emperor as a result.