Pope and Emperor, part 1

I created a blog! My purpose for this blog is simple - I want to give good, well sourced history that most could read with minimal prior knowledge. Hopefully this blog will be both beneficial to the reader (because she gets easy, accurate history), and to me (because I get to understand the history better).

That being said, my first topic will be about Imperial-Papal relations in the middle ages and onward. As an avid CK2 and EU4 player, I have never thought about this aspect of the middle ages much, but in researching it, I found that this conflict of giants, one spiritual and one temporal, shook central and Southern Europe for nearly 500 years.

This post will be a two-parter, just because of how much information there is in my book about this subject. I will try to get Part 2 out in a couple of days, but no promises. I am currently working on two history projects, college essays and supplements, multivariable calculus, and a cr*p ton of schoolwork. Please be understanding if the next part does not come out in a timely manner. 

For the last housekeeping bit, my information for this post comes from Peter H. Wilson’s Heart of Europe, pages 19-76.

I: Background

Empire in the modern sense cannot be used to define the Holy Roman Empire. Nowadays, Empire just signifies a particularly powerful nation who exploits other nations, such as 19th century Britain or 20th century Russia, or 21st century America. However, in the medieval sense, being an Emperor was considered beyond prestigious, even divine. In the European mind, there were only four empires throughout history - Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome. These were all considered blessed by the heavens, their rulers truly the king of kings. No two empires could exist at once - indeed, the term Emperor signified that the bearer was above all others. 

The abstraction we now call the Holy Roman Empire was born on Christmas day, 800. After the Frankish king Charles “rescued” the Papacy from the Lombards, the Pope crowned him King of the Romans in an elaborate ceremony - establishing a precedent that the Pope had the authority to give out the title of Roman emperor. Meanwhile, Charles had himself militarily protected the Pope, establishing a power contradiction - was the Pope subservient to the Emperor, or was the Emperor more subservient to the Pope? In the early years, the issues were not hammered out, and this would come back to bite the popes and emperors of later centuries. 

Undeniably, the Pope had spiritual authority over the Emperor. Indeed, as the successor to Saint Peter, the Pope claimed spiritual authority over all Christendom. However, where the Popes and Emperors fought was over temporal authority - how much worldly power did the Pope have?

II: Ottonians

    In those early years, this question seemed answered - the Pope was subservient to the Emperor. When the Frankish state splintered due to succession laws, the pontiff continued naming the Kings of Italy as Roman Emperors merely for self-preservation. The Pope held token lands given by Charlemagne, but still needed a protector to make sure the Eternal City did not fall, a fear only intensified by the Muslim raid of Rome in 846. The kings of Italy were the only ones who could serve as protector - the only other christian power on the continent, the Byzantines, resented the papacy for contesting the title of Roman Emperor.

    Further evidence that the Pope held very little authority was his christening of Otto I, a Saxon, as King of the Romans in 936. Whereas Charlemagne might have been able to claim some semblance of being Roman, Otto was culturally and genetically very far away from the Medditerranean. Regardless, Otto had just conducted a very effective shock and awe campaign in Northern Italy, and Leo VII wanted protection from this new German conqueror. Through the crowning of Otto, Leo established a correlation between the titles of King of the Germans and King of the Romans which would last through the rest of the Empire’s history. 

    The Ottonians were extremely domineering towards the Papacy. Otto I published the Ottonianum, which both confirmed the Pope’s right to own the Papal States, and claimed they were under his suzerainty. Sadly for Ottonian ambitions, Italy was separated from Germany by a large, deadly mountain range, and as a result Northern Italy and the Papacy were never completely subjugated by Otto or his successors. They definately tried, though, starting with his “Roman Expedition” (Romzug), in which Otto deposed the then-resistant pope John XII and then allowed a totally free and fair election to elect Leo VIII as a replacement. When Otto left in January 964, the Romans rebelled and reinstated John XII, who was then deposed again by Otto. To punish the Romans, Otto ordered the execution of all those opposed to German control of Rome. This genocidal response, or “Germany Fury” (Furor Teutonicus), was repeated again in Pavia in 1002 and 1027, and showed how unstable Imperial hold of Italy was. Because of the logistical nightmare of occupying Italy, the Emperors were forced to keep the Italians in line through brutal suppression. Nevertheless, Imperial hold on Italy held, and the domineering attitude of the Ottonian emperors towards the Pope would go on to breed a papacy resistant to external influence.

III: Investiture

The Papal resistance and self-assertion manifested as the reform movement of the early eleventh century. This was a movement towards making the church less corrupt, less materialistic, more moral, and more authoritative. The movement culminated with Gregory VII, who asserted that the Church, as a spiritual body, was definitively superior to any temporal one. Gregory believed that the Pope should be able to depose both clerical and secular rulers, a massive expansion of his power. This power grab was facilitated by the Norman invasion of Southern Italy. The Pope was now in a situation where he could look towards another secular protector, and therefore play Emperor and Norman off of one another. 

A conflict occurred next which historians later dubbed the “investiture” controversy. It revolved around whether or not the emperor could install clergy in the numerous imperial bishoprics around the empire, as was the norm beforehand. This was important because if the Pope was allowed to crown, and therefore have power over bishops, it would connect his spiritual authority to an influential temporal one. Bishops within the Empire controlled a large number of towns, and if the Pope could have power over the bishops, he could levy enormous resources.

This political issue came to a head on 1073 with the imperial investment of Archbishop Gregory of Milan. Usually, when bishops were elected by clergy and the people, the lord would give the aspiring bishop a staff to represent political power, and a papal legate would present a ring, to represent spiritual authority. However, in the case of Gregory, both items were presented by the king. Even though this investment was common practice, to the reform-minded papacy of Gregory VII it was an affront. Gregory VII then did the unprecedented - he excommunicated emperor Henry IV and released all Henry’s subjects from their oaths of fealty. This essentially was a move towards deposing the old monarch.

Desperate, Henry IV literally crawled across the snowy alps to where Gregory was staying at Canossa, and barefoot and freezing, was allowed an audience with the pontiff. Under pressure from clergy sympathetic with the king, Gregory cancelled his excommunication, but the damage was done to the balance of imperial-papal power. Henry implicitly endorsed Gregory’s ability to excommunicate and depose him, two major concessions, and Henry would never return to Italy, the site of his humiliations. Imperial prestige only got worse with the First Crusade. For the first time, the king of France acted as defender of the Catholic faith through military support of the holy war. This put into question the superiority and neccesity of the Emperor - why have one when one of his primary functions was being done by another king?

The investiture dispute ended with Henry IV’s successor Henry V and his Concordat of Worms. Bishops were now to be chosen by election (neither the Pope or the Emperor could choose), and a papal legate would hand the new bishop the ring and staff. However, an imperial legate could hand the bishop a scepter as a symbol of temporal power. 

Overall, the Investiture crisis was a tremendous loss of power for the Emperor. It and the church reform movement centralized the church and made it more autonomous. Now, the Emperor would have to contend with another powerful institution which more often than not would get in his way. It dragged the church deeper into politics, as the Pope could more or less depose rulers. In addition, the guaranteers of the Worms treaty were the lords of the Empire - it gave the feudal elite more power as they were entrusted with holding the Emperor to his word. Finally, it made the Emperor subservient to the Pope. This new power dynamic was shown in the coronation of Lothar III (the Emperor after Henry V), in in which Lothar performed Strator service to the Pope- in short, admitting he was superior.

Join me next time when we round out the story of Emperor vs Pope, from the Staufers, to the Little Kings, and finally to everyone’s favorite inbred mess, the Hapsburgs.