What was the Investiture Controversy, and how did it impact Christianity?

Such was the state of what may be called the christian constituency when Hildebrand issued his memorable edict against lay investitures; and such was the right or usage on the part of the crown of nominating and appointing to the greater ecclesiastical dignities and benefices. Hildebrand's scheme was to abolish entirely even the remotest claim of any interference, either for or against, on the part of the laity, in spiritual appointments, and to deprive the sovereign of the right of investiture, with which the law and custom of centuries had armed him, and which he regarded as the most precious prerogative of his crown. This was the question raised, the prize at issue, and the great battle to be fought, between the potentates of Europe and the meagre monk in the Vatican. Gregory now addressed himself to the contest, the greatest by far ever undertaken single-handed in any age.

Another of Gregory's decrees was directed against lay investitures, and this involved him in a quarrel with Henry IV. of Germany. The inauguration of bishops and abbots by ring and crosier, had been the custom with kings and emperors long before the time of Charlemagne; and Henry was in no mood to surrender the time-honoured privilege at the command of a Romish priest. His refusal incensed the pope, and led him to connive at Henry's destruction.

One of the great things contended for by Gregory was that he, and he alone, had power to invest the clergy with authority, and not only at Rome, but in every other place; whereas Henry would not agree to this. The clergy appointed by Rome were too much under Roman influence to serve the emperor. He would appoint his own clergy. If they were dependent on him, he could count on them to serve him and carry out his purposes.

Alas, that the church of God should have thus become a mere citadel, open to the attacks of, and governed by, a merely worldly man, and made to serve his purposes, right or wrong! or, on the other hand, to be ruled and used by such a crafty man as Gregory VII., who did not scruple to depose the emperor when he would not obey his mandates, in direct opposition, as we have seen, to the exhortation to "obey the powers that be" in worldly matters.

The traditional right of monarchs to have a voice in the appointment of the bishops and church dignitaries in their states had been recognized for centuries. They not infrequently nominated to the See of Rome as to the other bishoprics in their dominions. Even Hildebrand himself waited patiently till his own election received the legal ratification of the Emperor. But scarcely had he been raised to the pontifical chair, when he wrote an insulting letter to the Emperor, commanding him to abstain from simony, and to renounce the right of investiture by the ring and staff. Henry, in self-defence, asserted the prerogatives which his predecessors had exercised without question, especially since the days of Charlemagne. Gregory then thundered a sentence of excommunication against him, released his subjects from their oath of fealty, and pronounced him deposed for disobedience. Popery now threw off its mask, and the world was no longer in doubt of the aims and objects of the spiritual power. But so great was the ignorance of the period that the wildest pretensions found many supporters, and so superstitious were the people, that they were made to believe that all who took up arms against the excommunicated king, were to be regarded as the champions of the faith.

The long and wasting wars occasioned by the dispute between Gregory and Henry as to the right of investiture, utterly failed to bring that question to anything like a settlement. The successors of Gregory, deeply imbued with his spirit, endeavoured by every means to carry out his scheme. On the other hand, the new king Henry V. was equally determined to oppose the papal demands, and also to recover all that his crown had lost by the spiritual tyranny of the popes. He invested bishops with the ring and crosier as his ancestors had done, and compelled the prelates of Germany to consecrate them. Anathemas and excommunications without number from popes and councils were fulminated against the rebellious Emperor, but he allowed them to roll peacefully over him. Thus the contest was continued, though with less bloodshed than in Gregory's time.

Gilbert of Ravenna, however, was still pope or anti-pope through their pontificates as Clement III, a council of thirty bishops and others having elected him and deposed Gregory VII at the time of the latter hurrying into the see before his predecessor was buried. Gregory, we have seen, died out of Rome, among the Normans. Paschal II, who succeeded Gregory VII, made war on Clement III, and drove him into Calabria. His first successor was, after four months, taken by Pope Paschal's troops and confined in a monastery; his successor had it three months and retired; the third, who took the name of Sylvester IV, was better sustained, but died soon after; so Paschal was sole pope. The Emperor and popes were at war. The Emperor had put Paschal in irons, and made him yield the right of the investiture of the prelates in their Sees. In this, on a trial with Callixtus II, as afterwards in France, the princes gained their point: only it was agreed to be done with the sceptre in Germany, by writing in France — not with staff and ring.

The pope granted on his part, that all elections of bishops and abbots should take place in the presence of the Emperor or his commissioners, only without bribery and violence, with an appeal in cases of contested elections to the metropolitan and provincial bishops. The bishop elect in Germany was to receive, by the touch of the sceptre, all the temporal rights, principalities, and possessions of the See, excepting those which were held immediately of the See of Rome; and faithfully discharge to the Emperor all duties incident to those principalities. In all other parts of the empire the royalties were to be granted to the bishop consecrated within six months. The pope grants peace to the Emperor and his adherents, and promises aid and assistance on all lawful occasions."*

In November of the same year, another council was summoned to meet the pope at Clermont in Auvergne. The citations to this council were urgent, and the clergy were charged to stir up the laity in the cause of the crusade. A vast assemblage of archbishops, bishops, abbots, etc., were drawn together, the towns and neighbouring villages were filled with strangers, while numbers were obliged to lodge in tents. The session lasted ten days; the usual canons being passed in condemnation of simony, etc., Urban ventured to advance a step beyond Gregory, by forbidding not only the practice of lay investiture, but that any ecclesiastic should swear fealty to a temporal lord — a prohibition which was intended entirely to do away with all dependence of the church on the secular power. Thus we see the crafty pope taking every advantage of his extreme popularity, and when the minds of all were engrossed with the greater subject of the holy crusade. No moment could be more favourable for the advancement of the great papal object of ambition, the acknowledged supremacy over Latin Christendom; or for the elevation of Urban himself over the rival Pope Clement, and the temporal sovereigns who supported him.

But Cenci and other enemies of the pope, found refuge at the emperor's court, and it became evident that the great conflict for power was to be between Henry IV. and Gregory VII.

The formal inauguration of a bishop or abbot by the delivery of a ring and a staff had been customary with the emperors, kings, and princes of Europe, long before the establishment of the feudal system by Charlemagne, probably from the time of Clovis. And so far, if we bear in mind the relation of the Church to the State, and the original source of the privilege, it appears fair and right, though to a spiritual mind a most incongruous combination of temporal and spiritual powers, and ruinous to both. "When the early conquerors of the West," says Dean Waddington, "conferred territorial grants upon the church, the individuals who came to the enjoyment of them were obliged to present themselves at court, to swear allegiance to the king, and to receive from his hands some symbol in proof that the temporalities were placed in their possession. The same ceremony, in fact, was imposed on the ecclesiastical as on the lay proprietor of royal fiefs, and it was called investiture. Afterwards, when the princes had usurped the presentation to all valuable benefices, even to those which had not been derived from royal bounty, they introduced no distinction, founded on the different sources of the revenue, but continued to subject those whom they nominated to the same rank of allegiance, and the same ceremony of investiture, with the laity."*