INVESTITURE, STRUGGLE OVER.—This is the struggle between the Roman Church and the Empire over the conferment of ecclesiastical benefices (bishoprics, abbeys, parishes): it constitutes the substantive juridical issue from which popes and emperors rise to the general competition for the 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. The earliest Christian age had already established the tradition that bishops were designated by the clergy, in agreement with the community of the faithful, and consecrated by the metropolitan of the province or by another bishop; in this way the true transfer of spiritual power took place. In the age of barbarian dominations, royal authority intervened actively in episcopal elections. The prince who, in harmony with imperial legislation, was the natural protector of the Church and had bishoprics and bishops within his territory, encountered no difficulty in intervening to control elections contested by local divisions, and was subsequently even able to replace the canonical electors themselves. In the post-Carolingian age, the episcopatus also assumed a properly feudal character, on a par with the comitatus: just as the king invested the count with his civil office (honor) and at the same time with the related benefice-holdings (res de comitatum), so it was deemed permissible to invest the bishop with the benefice rights attached to the episcopal office and, with them, also with his religious functions. The bishop, thus receiving the episcopatus, received both the civil office and the religious office, becoming at once a religious shepherd and a feudal lord. The delivery of the episcopatus took place through the ceremony of the traditio ad investitura; the king pronounced the phrase accipe Ecclesiam while handing the elected man the pastoral staff, to which, in the 11th century, the ring was also added. Such investiture concerned the episcopatus in its entirety, without distinguishing between the spiritual and the temporal. Theoretically, the principle of canonical election remained intact, but it was emptied of content: the people were left only to applaud, and the clergy to proceed to the consecration of the man whom the prince had made bishop. The situation was similar in the case of the great abbeys.
The question was likewise analogous in the case of parish churches built by landowners on their own properties and endowed by them with goods for worship: they considered themselves masters of the church and of the goods, whatever their subsequent origin, as well as of the revenues from the worship celebrated therein; they had the right to provide religious service in their churches by installing whatever ecclesiastics they pleased, through a ceremony also called investiture, which concerned both the religious office and the feudal holding attached to II.
The Church never recognized this right of the lay proprietor to intervene in the appointment of the priest and was always concerned to prevent churches from passing into the hands of incapable and unworthy persons: conciliar canons always required that the bishop be consulted in the assignment of churches and that his assent be sought; in the 10th and 11th centuries, it was required that the bishop be admitted to intervene in order to verify the qualifications of the person to be elected. These canons were little respected, just as little respected was the fundamental canon that new churches should be founded only with the consent of the ecclesiastical authorities. As for bishoprics, the Church on several occasions did not hesitate to recognize election as a royal prerogative.
This association of ecclesiastical and civil organization, which for a certain period was of great importance, expressed the substantive unity of religious and civil activity in medieval life and also contributed to the Christianization of a considerable part of the Carolingian Empire. The serious disadvantages that resulted from it were identified by the ecclesiastical reformers of the 11th century: simony and Nicolaitism; and the work of the emperors who in the 11th century concerned themselves with the Church’s moral reform, from Henry II to Henry III, had little chance of succeeding, insofar as it proceeded from the intention of respecting the rights of the State by incorporating the Church within the sphere of the State itself.
The reform movement that in the middle of the 11th century burst forth powerfully from the center of the Church, and that was concerned to safeguard the independent character of the Church itself, placed the problem of lay investiture in the forefront when, at the Synod of Reims in 1949, Leo IX promulgated a canon representing a return to tradition: no one should rise to ecclesiastical offices without the customary election by the clergy and the people. Lay investiture was struck only indirectly. The Pope commented on the canon through his conduct in various episcopal elections. In 1958 appeared the famous book by the Lotharingian reformer Humbert of Silva Candida, Adverum Simoniscos. It proclaimed the necessity of returning to observance of the canons; princes had no power whatsoever to confer investiture of religious offices, because the investiture of such offices was a religious act; the pastoral staff represented pastoral care, the ring, teaching authority; whoever had received the delivery of the two symbols had already obtained the entire pastoral office; whoever conferred them performed a religious act. Cardinal Humbert therefore developed his theory theologically: ecclesiastical investiture was a spiritual act, linked to a Sacrament. Thus he denied that proprietors had rights over the churches they had founded and endowed; the endowment was an offering of goods to God, a sacred matter removed from lay authority; the former proprietor no longer had any right over it, and even less over goods that had otherwise come to the Church. From this moment, the thought of Humbert of Silva Candida informed the action of the Roman Church. At the Council of 1959, Nicholas II prohibited every ecclesiastic from receiving churches from laymen nec gratis nec precio. This was an affirmation of principle, not yet a condemnation accompanied by sanctions. The decree regulating the papal election, excluding imperial intervention and restoring it to the canonical electors, nevertheless formed part of the program against lay investitures. Alexander II, at the Council of 1963, reconfirmed the canon of 1959. At his side stood St. Peter Damian, who polemicized against the defenders of lay investiture: he rejected their theory that lay investiture concerned only ecclesiastical goods and not the religious office, and said: Sane cum baculum ille tuis manibus tradidit, dixitiae: accipe terras atque diecitas illius Ecclesiae, an potius quod certum est: accipe Ecclesiam?
But although the reformers agreed in rejecting the intrusion of civil power into the Church through lay investiture, there was nevertheless some hesitation concerning the assessment of the rights of the State: positions ranged here from the absolute rigorism of Humbert of Silva Candida, inclined to recognize only the prince’s traditional consensus, to the conciliatory position of St. Peter Damian, who was prepared to leave the laity investiture of goods following canonical election.
Gregory VII began his pontificate by continuing the struggle against simony and Nicolaitism: the evils to be combated. Only at the Council of 1975 did he take up again the canon of 1959 against lay investiture, but with a certain hesitation. It is debated whether Gregory VII distinguished between the element—
spiritual and temporal elements: Scharnagl believes so, Fliche does not, and perhaps he is right. For Gregory VII, as for his contemporaries (including St. Peter Damian), the episcopatus was an absolute unity with its spiritual and temporal prerogatives, a whole from which no part could be detached. 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 became heated: the imperial side observed that the Church had received protection and wealth from the Empire, that the bishops were the administrators of these possessions, and that their appointment therefore belonged to the sovereign. Gregory VII was accused of wanting to destroy all the traditions of politico-religious Christian unity under the pretext of restoring a utopian evangelical ideal. The question became more complicated: all the other issues concerning relations between Church and State became involved, as did the less serious in itself but more thorny question 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 the right of consensus; the bishop’s election had to take place in the presence of a representative of the metropolitan or of the Apostolic See; and the pope, by virtue of his unlimited powers, reserved the decision in cases of a disputed election.
The absolute opposition between the papal and imperial theses was therefore insoluble. Urban II resumed Gregory VII’s position; Cardinal Deusdedit, at his side, reproduced the rigorous thinking of Humbert of Silva Candida.
Under Paschal II and Henry V, after so many years of struggle, direct negotiations finally resumed in search of a way out. This seemed to be offered by eliminating the very object of the dispute: investiture. 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 would consequently renounce involvement in episcopal elections. But such a de facto separation between Church and State did not appear conceivable in a society founded on the cooperation of the two institutions. Paschal II was therefore disapproved by the German episcopate: the agreement collapsed, and the Emperor took advantage of this to accuse the Pope of projects hostile to religion, inapplicable, and heretical. Having imprisoned him, he compelled him, after two months of detention in the German camp outside Rome, to sign an act recognizing the legitimacy of lay investiture (11 April 1111).
Paschal II’s surrender provoked protests among the reformers, accusations of heresy, and threats of schism; the Pope, moreover, did not delay in deploring and condemning the «pravilegium» of 1111. This attempt to resolve the problem having also failed, the new negotiations between Callistus II and Henry V centered on the position that had already prevailed in the negotiations concerning investitures in France and England: a distinction within the episcopatus between the religious and temporal elements; double investiture—the Church’s investiture of the cura animarum with the baculus and the anulus, and the Kingdom’s investiture of feudal possessions and the regalia with the scepter. Only in this way, as Yves de Chartres and Hugues de Fleury had taught, was it possible to achieve the necessary reconciliation between Church and State. Along this path, the negotiations reached their conclusion with the Concordat of Worms of 23 September 1122, by means of a twofold declaration: Henry V declared that he would abandon to the Church every investiture by the ring and pastoral staff, that is, religious investiture, and that he would recognize full freedom of episcopal election and consecration. Callistus II, for his part, declared that he would be satisfied for the bishops and abbots of the Kingdom of Germany to be elected in the presence of the king, without simony or violence; in the event of disagreement between the parties, the king would intervene in support of the more deserving party, following the metropolitan’s counsel and opinion; the king would grant the elected candidate the regalia with the scepter before consecration; in the other parts of the Empire (Italy and Burgundy), the king would grant the regalia with the scepter within six months of the election. These provisions were unclear and, for Germany, somewhat contradictory: what freedom could elections held in the presence of the king possess when his intervention was envisaged in cases of uncertainty? It must be assumed that in 1122 people believed they had truly found a solution to the grave problem, or merely a provisional means of suppressing the violence of the conflict while deferring the solution to the future. Only for the regions south of the Alps could the question be said to have been fairly resolved; for Germany, experience was soon to demonstrate that the kings now possessed, in the act of 1122, a legal and recognized means of directing episcopal elections. One principle had nevertheless been saved, and through the struggle the Roman Church had tightened its ranks and attained such prestige, both within ecclesiastical organization and among the princes, that it seemed truly to have won a great battle for its spiritual independence, notwithstanding the fact that the Concordat of Worms had departed from the rigid principles of Humbert of Silva Candida.
#### INVETRIATURA: V. CERAMICA.