INVESTITURE, STRUGGLE OF. — It is the struggle between the Roman Church and the Empire over the conferral of ecclesiastical benefices (bishops, abbeys, parishes); it forms the substantial juridical issue from which popes and emperors rise to the general competition for dominium mundi. The Germanic conception of the Church as private property and the feudalization of the Church in the post-Carolingian age had inevitably led to the violation of canonical principles. Early Christian tradition had already established that bishops were to be designated by the clergy, in harmony with the community of the faithful, and consecrated by the metropolitan of the province or another bishop; thus the true transfer of spiritual power was effected.
In the age of barbarian dominations, royal authority actively intervened in episcopal elections. The prince, who, in harmony with imperial legislation, was the natural protector of the Church and had incorporated episcopal sees and bishops into his territory, found no difficulty in intervening to control elections contested by local divisions and could even substitute himself for the canonical electors. In the post-Carolingian age, the *episcopatus* assumed a feudal character equal to that of the *comitatus*: just as the count was invested with his civil office (*honor*) and the related benefice domains (*res de comitatu*), so too it was deemed permissible to invest the bishop with the benefice rights attached to the episcopate and, thereby, with his religious functions. Thus, upon receiving the *episcopatus*, the bishop simultaneously received the civil office and the religious office, becoming at once a religious pastor and a feudal lord.
The conferral of the *episcopatus* took place through the ceremony of *traditio* or investiture; the king pronounced the words *accipere Ecclesiam* as he handed the pastoral staff to the elect, to which an anulus was added in the 11th century. This pertained to the *episcopatus* in its entirety without distinguishing between the spiritual and temporal. Theoretically, the principle of canonical election remained intact, but it was emptied of its content: the people were left only to applaud, and the clergy to proceed with the consecration of one who had been made bishop by the prince. The situation was similar for the great abbeys.
The same issue arose regarding parish churches built by landowners on their properties and endowed by them with goods for worship; they considered themselves masters of the church, its goods, and whatever the origin of the revenues from the cult celebrated therein. They claimed the right to provide for religious service in their churches by placing ecclesiastics of their choosing through a ceremony, also called investiture, which concerned both the religious office and the feudal benefit attached to II.
The Church never recognized this right of the lay proprietor to intervene in the appointment of the priest and always sought to prevent churches from falling into the hands of the incapable and unworthy: conciliar canons repeatedly demanded that in the assignment of churches the bishop be consulted and his consent sought; in the 10th and 11th centuries, it was demanded that the bishop be admitted to oversee the qualifications of the clergy. These canons were little respected, just as the fundamental canon that the foundation of new churches should occur only with the consent of ecclesiastical authorities was disregarded. As for bishops, the Church at various times did not hesitate to recognize election as a royal prerogative.
This association of ecclesiastical and civil organization, which for a time held great significance, was an expression of the substantial unity in medieval life of religious and civil activity and also contributed to the Christianization of much of the Carolingian Empire. The serious drawbacks that resulted were noted by ecclesiastical reformers of the 11th century: simony and Nicolaitism; and the efforts of emperors in the 11th century who sought the moral reform of the Church—from Henry II to Henry III—had little chance of success insofar as they aimed to respect state rights by integrating the Church within the state itself.
The reform movement that, in the mid-11th century, emanated powerfully from the center of the Church and sought to preserve the independent character of the Church itself placed at the forefront the issue of lay investiture. At the Synod of Reims in 1049, Leo IX promulgated a canon that represented a return to tradition: no one should ascend to ecclesiastical offices without the ritual election by the clergy and the people. Here, lay investiture was only indirectly addressed. The Pope reinforced the canon with his conduct in various episcopal elections. In 1058, the famous book of the Lorraine reformer Humbert of Silva Candida, *Adversus Simoniacos*, appeared. He proclaimed the necessity of returning to canonical observance; princes had no authority to confer religious office, for the office was a religious act; the pastoral staff represented pastoral care, the ring, teaching authority; whoever received the delivery of these two symbols had already obtained the entire pastoral office; whoever granted them performed a religious act. Cardinal Humbert thus developed his theory theologically: ecclesiastical office is a spiritual act, bound to a sacrament. Thus, he denied that proprietors had any right over the churches they had founded and endowed; the endowment was an offering of goods to God, a sacred matter, withdrawn from the authority of the laity; the former proprietor retained no rights over it, much less over other goods that had come to the Church.
Humbert of Silva Candida’s thought henceforth informed the action of the Roman Church. At the Council of 1059, Nicholas II prohibited every ecclesiastic from holding churches from laymen, *neque gratis neque pro suo*. This was an affirmation of principle, not yet a condemnation with sanctions. Yet it fell within the program against lay investiture the decree that regulated papal election, excluding imperial intervention and restoring it to canonical electors. Alexander II, at the Council of 1063, reconfirmed the canon of 1059. Beside him stood St. Peter Damian, who polemicized with the defenders of lay office.
The spiritual and the temporal element: Scharnagl believes so, Fliche does not, and perhaps Fliche is right. For Gregory VII, as for his contemporaries (including St Peter Damian), the *episcopatus* is an absolute unity with its spiritual and temporal prerogatives, a whole from which no part could be severed. Gregory VII insisted on this at the synods of 1078 and 1080, directing his blows directly against the political authorities of Germany and Italy. The controversy was lively: from the imperial side it was argued that the Church had received protection and wealth from the Empire, that bishops were the administrators of these goods and that therefore their appointment belonged to the sovereign. Gregory VII was accused of wishing to destroy all the traditions of the politico-religious unity of Christendom under the pretext of restoring an utopian evangelical ideal. The question became more complicated: all the other issues of the relations between State and Church came into play, as well as the less serious in itself but more thorny issue of the personal relations between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The struggle led the Pope, around 1080, to rigid conclusions: he denied that the prince could have any right to consent; the election of a bishop had to take place in the presence of a representative of the metropolitan or of the Apostolic See; in case of contested election, the Pope reserved to himself the decision by virtue of his unlimited powers.
The absolute contrast between the papal thesis and the imperial thesis was therefore insoluble. Urban II resumed Gregory VII’s stance; Cardinal Deusdedit at his side reproduced the rigorous thought of Humbert of Silva Candida.
Under Paschal II and Henry V, direct negotiations for a way out were finally resumed after so many years of struggle. This way out might have been offered by the elimination of the very object of contention: the *investitura*. The agreements of Sutri in 1111 were based on the Church’s renunciation of all lands and rights deriving from the authority of the prince, who in turn would renounce any involvement in episcopal elections. But such a factual separation between State and Church was inconceivable in a society based on the agreement of the two institutions. Paschal II was therefore prepared to concede the German episcopate: the agreement collapsed and the Emperor took advantage of the situation to accuse the Pope of hostile, inapplicable and heretical designs against religion; imprisoned, he forced him, after two months’ detention in the German camp below Rome, to sign an act in which he acknowledged the legitimacy of the lay *investitura* (11 April 1111).
Paschal II’s surrender provoked protests in the field of the reformers, accusations of heresy and threats of schism; the Pope, moreover, soon came to deplore and condemn the *pravilegium* of 1111. Once this attempt to solve the problem had also failed, the new negotiations between Calixtus II and Henry V were based on the viewpoint already envisaged in the negotiations for the *investiturae* in France and England: a distinction within the *episcopatus* between the religious and the temporal element; dual: to the Church the *investitura* of the cure of souls with the crozier and ring, to the Kingdom the *investitura* of feudal goods and regalia with the sceptre. Only thus, as Yves of Chartres and Hugh of Fleury had taught, was it possible to arrive at the necessary reconciliation between State and Church. On this path the negotiations reached fruition with the Concordat of Worms on 23 September 1122 through a twofold declaration: Henry V declared that he would surrender to the Church every *investitura* by means of the ring and pastoral staff, that is, the religious *investitura*, and that he would recognise full freedom in the election and consecration of bishops. Calixtus II, for his part, declared that he would consent to the election of bishops and abbots in the Kingdom of Germany in the presence of the king, without simony or violence; in case of discord between the parties, the king would intervene to support the worthier party according to the counsel and opinion of the metropolitan; at the election, the king would grant the regalia with the sceptre before the consecration; in the other parts of the Empire (Italy, Burgundy) the king would grant the regalia with the sceptre within six months of the election. The provisions were somewhat unclear and for Germany rather contradictory: what freedom could elections held in the presence of the king enjoy, when his intervention was envisaged in case of uncertainty? It may be thought that in 1122 people believed they had truly found a solution to the grave problem or only a provisional means to calm the violence of the controversy, deferring the solution to the future. Only for the regions south of the Alps could the question be said to have been equitably resolved; for Germany experience was soon to show that the kings now had, in the act of 1122, a legal and recognised means of directing episcopal elections. Yet a principle had been saved and, through the struggle, the Roman Church had closed its ranks and attained a prestige, in its aim of ecclesiastical organisation and among the princes, so high as to suggest that it had truly won a great battle for its spiritual independence, even though the Concordat of Worms had derogated from the rigid principles of Humbert of Silva Candida.