The Investiture Controversy

The kingdom of Italy, a creation of the Lombards, had all but ceased to exist as a separate entity in the early 11th century. Pavia no longer functioned as an administrative centre after 1024, when the royal palace was destroyed. The great beneficiary of the new situation was Milan, whose archbishop Heribert (Ariberto) of Antimiano had played the role of kingmaker in the selection of Conrad II as Italian king in 1026. But the archbishop faced considerable opposition from his lesser vassals, the vavasours, who revolted on his return to Milan after supporting Conrad in Burgundy. The roots of this revolt lay in a dispute between two ranks of Milan’s warrior elite, the capitanei and the vavasours, over the inheritance of fiefs. Conrad was able to restore peace between these factions in 1037 by the Constitutio de feudis, which made the fiefs of the vavasours hereditary. The settlement, however, did not create a lasting peace. A group of vavasours and lower clergy led by Arialdo and Erlembaldo opposed the archbishop, who was supported by the capitanei. The dissidents, known as pataria (most probably meaning “rag pickers”), also had ties to the reform movement. There were also disorders in a number of other cities. Nearby Brescia, for example, forced its bishop to flee the city. In Florence, John Gualbert, one of the leaders of the monastic reform movement, opposed the city’s bishop, an admitted simoniac (i.e., a person guilty of using money to obtain clerical office). Yet the unrests were too varied to fit a simple explanation. The experience of Lucca, for example, differed substantially from that of Florence. Bishop Anselm of Lucca, one of the strongest leaders of the reform movement among the Italian bishops, was chosen by the cardinals as the successor of Nicholas II in 1061 and became Pope Alexander II (1061–73). His position at Lucca was due in large measure to the support of Countess Matilda of Canossa, a principal figure in Italian politics throughout the period. She provided the necessary weight to support papal reform policies in northern Italy and provided the papacy with a counterbalance to the risky alliance with the Normans.

The threat posed to the imperial order in northern Italy by the cities and the crucial role of the reform papacy and its ally, Countess Matilda, evoked a strong response from the imperial party at the death of Pope Nicholas. The Lombard bishops and their allies called upon the youthful Henry to provide a successor. Even though the reformers had already selected Anselm of Lucca as Alexander II in accordance with the election decree of 1059, Henry proceeded to appoint Cadalo, bishop of Parma, who took the name Honorius II as antipope in 1061. The Cadalan schism brought together segments of the Roman nobility and the Lombard bishops, who were opposed to reform. The empire, which had been a partner in reform, was emerging as the enemy of reform. Under the legitimate pope, Alexander II, Hildebrand, former secretary of Pope Gregory VI and now archdeacon of the Roman church, succeeded Humbert of Silva Candida as the leading architect of reform. The papacy increasingly reached out beyond Italy in its effort to extend the influence of the reform movement. Alexander II lent his support, most probably with the advice of Hildebrand, to the conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, in 1066. Likewise, the papacy became more fully involved in the efforts of the kings of Spain to reconquer lands from the Muslims. The internationalization of the Roman Curia, begun by Leo IX, continued to attract important leaders of the reform to Rome. Under Alexander II the papacy succeeded in escaping the shadows of Roman aristocratic domination and imperial control and in moving onto the European stage.

Against this background, King Henry IV reached his majority and began to assert his rights in both Germany and Italy. Alexander and Hildebrand continued papal support for the pataria in Milan; as noted, the reformers demanded an end to marriage of the clergy, to the buying of church offices, and to lay control of appointments to church offices. The issue of lay investiture (the practice whereby secular rulers formally presented to clerics the symbols of their various offices) gained paramount importance in Alexander II’s reform program. The reformers’ opposition to lay investiture was a major challenge to the Ottonian system, which rested in part on the emperor’s long-standing rights to appoint and control church officials. The issue drove a deep wedge between the advocates of reform and the supporters of the empire, even dividing the reformers themselves.

From the imperial point of view, it was impossible to separate the issue of lay investiture from the changes occurring in the political life of the northern Italian cities. Indeed, the struggle over lay investiture lent legitimacy to movements directed against imperial bishops. Milan was one among a number of northern Italian cities in which a reform movement struggled to secure greater independence from imperial control. Similar movements developed in southern Italy as well. The religious confraternity dedicated to St. Nicholas, whose body had been brought to Bari from Anatolia, served to rally local sentiment. The 11th-century reform movement grew partly out of the emergence of communes, the political organizations of the towns, particularly in central and northern Italy.

The climax of the Investiture Controversy came under Alexander II’s successor, Hildebrand, who took the name Gregory VII (1073–85). With Gregory the reform movement achieved its most revolutionary form, although Gregory hardly thought of himself and his contemporary reformers in such terms. Their ideal was a restoration of the church to its primitive freedom, summed up in the Donation of Constantine, a document forged in the 8th century but generally regarded as genuine throughout the Middle Ages. According to this document, the emperor Constantine in the 4th century had granted to Pope Sylvester I and his successors spiritual supremacy and temporal dominion over Rome and the entire Western Empire. Gregory and the reformers, for whom the freedom of the church meant freedom from imperial intervention and the ability of the pope to act without restraint for the good of Christendom, used the Donation of Constantine to bolster their program of reform. That the Donation cast a long shadow over the program of Gregory VII is especially evident in the Dictatus Papae (“Treatise of the Pope”), a list of brief statements inserted in Gregory’s register asserting papal claims. For example, the eighth title states that the pope alone can use the imperial insignia (the symbols of temporal power). Fruit of an assiduous combing of various sources, the Dictatus (which dates to 1075) seems to anticipate the controversies of the coming years. Certainly, it suggests the direction in which the thought of the Roman Curia was moving. The notion of a revival of a golden age also found its expression in the artistic and architectural works of the period—for example, in the mosaics of the basilica constructed at Montecassino by Abbot Desiderius and in the newly built cathedral of Salerno.

The conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV (1056–1106) over lay investiture was a culmination of developments in Italy that had their origins in the last years of the pontificate of Leo IX. At the Roman synod of 1075, Gregory signaled his determination to bring an end to the practice of lay investiture. There could be no doubt that this policy would have its most drastic impact on Germany and northern Italy, where the remains of the Ottonian system constituted important vestiges of imperial control. Henry IV and his counselors realized these implications and replied at the synod of Worms in 1076. Henry employed a frontal attack on Gregory, challenging the legitimacy of his election. Gregory’s response was equally provocative: he excommunicated Henry, which released his subjects from their allegiance. This calculated political response aimed at undermining Henry’s position with the German aristocracy. Faced with rebellion, Henry made his celebrated trek across the Alps to meet the pope before he could come to Germany. Pope and emperor met at Matilda’s castle in Canossa. There, amid the snows of winter, Henry stood for three days as a penitent until the pope received and absolved him. Henry’s action at Canossa saved him temporarily, but he remained in jeopardy. When the conflict resumed in 1080, Gregory again excommunicated Henry, who proceeded to gather his supporters. A synod at Brixen under Henry’s control elected Guibert of Ravenna as pope under the name Clement III (elected antipope in 1080; enthroned antipope in 1084–1100). Henry led his army into Italy and laid siege to Rome. Gregory turned for assistance to Robert Guiscard and the Normans, who drove Clement and Henry from Rome but also sacked the city (1084). Gregory went south with Guiscard and the Normans, where he died in Salerno in 1085.

Gregory’s defeat did nothing to strengthen the position of the empire in northern Italy, while it drove the papacy closer to the Normans. The election of Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino as Pope Victor III (1086–87) illustrates this change, since Desiderius had long functioned as an intermediary between the papacy and the Normans. The election of Urban II (1088–99), formerly a monk of Cluny in Burgundy and a strong supporter of Gregory’s policy, showed the continued strength of the Roman Curia’s resolve and at the same time initiated closer ties to the Capetian kings of France as a counterweight to the empire and an alternative to the Normans. Urban was also effective in gaining support for reform among the cities of northern Italy. Yet his most dramatic endeavour was his summons of the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, presaged by his earlier meeting with Byzantine envoys in Italy. Urban’s commitment to the Crusade proceeded from his desire to heal the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, to extend the papal reform program to the Eastern churches, and to forge a new alliance within Christendom against Islam, its foremost external enemy. The Crusade offered new opportunities for the maritime cities of northern Italy, which for some time had been opposing Muslim power in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. Urban also worked closely with Roger I, count of Sicily, to reestablish the Latin church on the island, but he came into conflict with him over the degree of direct papal control to be exercised there. The apostolic legation that he granted to Roger and his son limited direct papal intervention in the ecclesiastical affairs of the island and thereby joined the reconstruction of the church to the interests of the Norman monarchy (see below). At his death in 1099, Urban had greatly enhanced the prestige of the papacy, yet the conflict with the empire remained unresolved.

The settlement of the investiture struggle that finally emerged under Popes Paschal II (1099–1118) and Calixtus II (1119–24) had a far-reaching impact on the church and on civil society. The settlement represented a compromise between the reformist church and the empire. The agreement reached between Paschal II and King Henry I of England, which limited the role of the king in the appointment of bishops, marked the direction for the eventual solution reached by Calixtus II and Henry V (1106–25) in the Concordat of Worms in 1122. Thenceforward, the emperor was denied the right to invest prelates with the spiritual symbols of their offices; however, as their temporal overlord he retained certain rights (the ones for Germany differing substantially from those for Burgundy and Italy). An earlier attempt at settlement had proposed a near-total severance of the ties between the bishops and the monarchy and thus an end to the Ottonian system. While such an arrangement would have satisfied every aim of the reformers, it would have plunged the empire into chaos. The bishops, well aware of their role as linchpins, objected strongly to such a radical solution, and the plan foundered. But the compromise at Worms was also fraught with danger for the empire. The reformers gained much more than the actual agreement granted. The chief beneficiary was the papacy, which succeeded in freeing itself from imperial restraints. In the temporal sphere, however, and largely by accident, northern and central Italy also faced a new situation as a result of this settlement.