April 11, 2023 • 26 mins
Chris explores the period of Gregorian popes, or papal monarchs. This is when several popes took on emperors in the battle to be the ultimate authority in Europe.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
This is half hour history Secrets of the Medieval World.
(00:35):
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last episode we explored life
in the medieval city. This week the rise of monarchies
and the election of popes and even a time of
papal monarchs. All this power leads to a lot of
fighting over who was the ultimate authority in Europe. I'll
Chris Filia. So our next two topics kind of fitty together,
(01:05):
and they fit together because what we have in this
high medieval period of about ten fifty to about thirteen
hundred is the creation, not out of nothing, the development
is a better way of putting it. Of monarchies. We've
had monarchies in the past. Obviously, certainly the Roman emperors
were monarchs. We've had monarchs called pharaohs in Egypt, and
(01:30):
monarchs called kings and other things in ancients Mesopotamian civilizations.
But this creation of a monarchy, a whole culture around
a king and a court really gets going in the
Middle Ages in a way that we haven't seen since
the time of Charlemagne, and that was shortlived, an important precedent,
but short lived. And it's important to remember that monarchies
(01:54):
are being built, let's use that word built, in both
the papacy and in these things that we're going to
call nations. They're not nations in any modern sense. But
there's this thing called France coming together, something called England,
and Germany and Spain coming together in a form that
we haven't seen earlier. The relationship between different powers is
(02:20):
the key to the story, because one, what's the relationship
between religious power and political or civil power in a
context that wouldn't separate them when we come at them
from a context where we would separate them. Two which
is the higher authority? And where does that authority come from?
(02:42):
And three how does it really play out in real life?
So one of the interesting things is that these relationships
among so called church and so called state phrases that
wouldn't mean anything to medieval people. What is the context
and where does that come from? It actually comes from feudalism,
(03:03):
that rural structure we saw, that hierarchy that we saw
several topics ago. And so let's go back to a
particular aspect of feudalism. That's very important, that's very key
to this story, and that's full of competition and conflict
and controversy, and it's this thing called invested chair. So
(03:25):
let's go back to the feudal oath. If you remember,
the feudal oath took place when a man knelt down
and put his hands like this, and his superior put
his hands around those praying hands, and the kneeling person
pledged his oath of fealty inferior to his superior. Now
(03:50):
to an illiterate audience looking at that, if I'm kneeling
in front of you and my hands are like this
and you put your hands around mine, it's pretty clear
that you're the boss and I'm the worker. But remember
that I, in turn down the line would have replicated
that ritual, and now I would be the superior and
(04:13):
I would have an inferior below me. Well, this thing
is called investiture. This process by which I give authority
to you, you hand authority down, you owe me certain
actions is called investiture. And the investiture controversy with a
capital LIE and a capital C is something some of
(04:35):
you may remember from medieval history courses, but I think
it's more helpful to look at it in terms of
invested your controversies, because the big one that you know,
we'll be looking at in a little while is this
big battle between a pope named Gregory and a holy
Roman emperor named Henry. And that's sometimes called the invested
your controversy, Da da dada, and it really played out
(04:59):
all across the map of medieval Europe. Now, what are
the issues, So that kind of high level of the
feudal structure. When a bishop or an abbot received his
beneficium or his office or his benefice from a superior
he received two sets of symbols. One are the symbols
(05:24):
representing his temporal authority, and that might be some form
of a scepter or a crown or earth itself symbolizing
his authority over the land. It was typically a bowl
with some soil in it. And then he would receive
symbols of his spiritual authority. Now this might be more
familiar to us if you've ever seen an image of
(05:45):
a bishop. Right, So there's a crozier, which is a
shepherd's crook, a miter what a lot of people call
the pointy hat, and then a ring which is worn
here on the ring finger on the right hand. And
as part of this ritual, the superior, who was a
(06:05):
lay lord, would say to the inferior, a bishop or
an abbot, a cheap a ecclesiam, accept the church, sometimes
translated as received the church. Now, if I'm looking at that,
it sure looks to me like the bishop or the
abbot is below the local lay lord. And that might
be true in his temporal relationship, his vassal relationship, but
(06:30):
it certainly isn't true in terms of his religious relationship,
because the bishop does not report to the local duke.
If he's got a theological question, he's going to go
to an archbishop or the pope himself. So you can
see that there's some ambiguity built in here that's not
going to help the church. And on the largest scale,
(06:54):
the biggest question as to which is the higher authority.
We have examples of emperor's vetoing papal elections or certain
papal actions, because the emperor is going to say, Hey,
I'm Constantine, I'm Charlemagne, I'm Charles Martel, I'm the defender
of the faith. On the other hand, pope, so they're
gonna sometimes veto the action or the election or the
(07:16):
appointment of an emperor, because emperor has kind of needed
the support of people. They're kind of a first among equals,
And so the pope might say, well, that person looks
suited for the government job, but morally no way. That
person is certainly not suited in order to be an emperor,
and I don't want him battling me for ultimate power.
(07:37):
It takes us back to this notion that we saw
with Justinian, of sacred kingship and the iconography of political
theology in this blurred context of civil and state claims.
So certainly one of those kings or emperors would say, hey,
I got lots of precedents. I have my own authority.
(07:58):
Look at me. I'm in charge, I have an army.
You don't. But I'm the heir of constant Seen and
Charlemagne and Justinian, and certainly we have examples of you,
the church authority, giving me authority, giving my mandate by
an anointing or a crowning. Remember Pepin the Short had
(08:21):
been crowned and anointed Charlemagne Christmas Day. So too, a
series of popes by the name of Otto, Otto the
First and Otto the Second, both crowned in Rome. In fact,
there were even discussions at this time as to whether
the anointing of a king was a sacrament. And after
this period of time, nobody talks about it as a sacrament,
(08:42):
because the Church did not want that. The particular problem
it really comes together around the ten forties. There's a
really good emperor by the name of Henry the Third,
and this emperor takes his responsibility as defender of the
faith very seriously, and he comes from Germany down into
Italy a couple of times, and the papacy is as
(09:05):
in the ten forties. There are three or four people
in the ten forties claiming to be the true pope,
and they are in and out of office. One of
them is in and out of office three times over
the course of about twelve years. Nobody knows who's in charge.
And along comes the emperor and Henry the Third by
dint of being the heir of Constantine, and Charlemagne says,
(09:28):
you know what, it's my job to clean up this mess,
because you obviously are not cleaning up this mess, and
he begins to appoint a engineer. The election of a
series of reform minded popes who happen to be of
German extraction. Perhaps no surprise there. And the interesting thing
is that even though he says I'm fulfilling the role
(09:49):
of defense or fidei or defender of the faith, those
reforming popes start to say, thanks a lot for putting
me on the throne. Now leave and I'll tell you
what to do. Henry probably thought that he was faced
with a great deal of ingratitude, but those reform warm
minded popes probably thought, no, they're cleaning up the shop.
(10:10):
And so we look upon this period of time as
one of Gregorian revolution. Now at this point, having listened
to six topics, you might think I never knew there
were so many revolutions in this period, But there were.
There were really big changes, and some people used to
call this a Gregorian Reformation. But the papacy before ten
fifty and the papacy after ten to fifty they look
(10:30):
entirely different, same sources of authority, but the way they
operate entirely differently. And they take this title Gregorian off
of a particular pope named Gregory, you know, top ten
on everybody's list, And Gregory was Pope ten seventy three
to ten eighty five, but he was involved in the
resolution of all of these sisms, and he worked for
(10:50):
those reform minded popes before that, so he was there
for about twenty years before he himself was elected. So
we call the popes before Gregory and after Gregory for
about two hundred years, Gregorian popes. They're part of this revolution.
And these Gregorian popes had a couple of goals. One
(11:13):
was a slogan called the libertasa clasier the freedom of
the Church, and what that meant was the freedom of
the church to name her own leaders. So it used
to be that a bishop died or an abbot died,
and the local lord says, no, Well, that church, that basilica,
that monastery is in my jurisdiction as a vassal of
(11:36):
the king, and so it's my job, it's my responsibility,
it's my right to name that person. Well, pope says, well,
that's terrific. That person might be your secular vassal, but
that person is certainly not below you in the spiritual
hierarchy or the spiritual authority. No way, you're not going
(11:58):
to name that person. So libertasa clasier, the freedom of
the church to name her own because what was happening
was that these dukes and counts were naming their brothers
in law who might have nothing to do with a
religious vocation. They're cronies. It's cronyism, that's what it is.
So they were also against something called simony. Simony is
the buying and selling of church offices. It refers back
(12:19):
to a passage in Christian Scripture or the New Testament
where Peter Simon Peter is performing miracles in the name
of Jesus and Simon magus. The word magus in the
ancient world meant a magician system. Come on, there's got
to be a trick here. I'll pay you to show
me how you do this trick. So that became the
buying and selling of church offices became called simony. And
(12:43):
they were also against something called concubinage. No little controversy here.
Sometimes people say, well, priests in the Catholic tradition we
used to be could be married for a thousand years,
and that they've only been prohibited from marriage for a
thousand years. It actually is true. It was on the
books as far back as three or four hundred that
priests should be celibate, but more often than not, they
(13:04):
had what we would call a common law marriage, a
common law marriage by which a person wasn't illegally married
or sacramentally married in any modern sense, but everybody knew
who the priest's wife was, and he would hand them
the parish church, just like the butcher, the baker, or
the candlestick maker to his son, whether or not the
(13:24):
son had a religious vocation. So this obviously is a
problem because again you don't have the integrity of the sacraments.
It gets caught up in these inheritance issues. And so
how did these Gregorian popes fight back through Peter the
ideology of Saint Peter and papal supremacy. So Catholics believe
that the Christians believe at this point Catholics and Protestants
(13:46):
are going to be split on the interpretations of this
later on, about five hundred years later, that Peter receives
from Christ the mandate or the commission. You are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church. And
so all bishops of Rome later called the popes, will
say that they have a unique commission. All bishops receive
their authority from God. All bishops are equal, but there's
(14:09):
one bishop who's more equal than others. And so what
these popes begin to do is they use this phrase
by apostolic succession in their sermons, in their letters, and
so as they're writing to emperors, they say literally as
some popes had said in the four hundreds, a pope
name Leo had said in the Foreign when you speak
(14:29):
to me, you speak to Peter. When I make a decision,
I don't make a decision. Peter makes a decision. And
therefore it's Jesus. Now, if you'd like to come after me,
you'd have to come after Peter. And if you'd like
to come after Peter, you'd like to come after Jesus.
Perhaps you'd like to rethink your challenge to my authority.
And so they begin to use this ideology of Peter.
And they also realize that if you can't meet them,
(14:52):
join it. It seems like the medieval popes were throwing
down the gauntlet to establish their authority. We'll find out
how that worked after the break. So, since they're going
(15:15):
against this imperial monarchy and a king in France and
kings in Spain and a king in England, they need
to set up a parallel monarchy. So just as there's
a court or a couria among a king, they set
up the college of cardinals, which had kind of precedence earlier,
but doesn't cohere. Remember, the papacy doesn't look after eleven
hundred as it did before. This college of cardinals, which
(15:37):
gets a little bit bigger. But in the medieval worlds
couple of dozen would be a large college of cardinals.
Now we have about one hundred and twenty. And the
college of cardinals become the ambassadors, become the legates, become
the representatives, and they are the ones who exclusively elect
the popes. Why because the freedom of the church to
name her own needs an example, and the best example
(15:58):
would be the election of a pope to show all
the others this is how it's done. This is the
freedom of the election. And so if I'm creating this
administrative top down structure, I need to set up to
what we would call departments, sometimes called congregations nowadays. And
so these structures begin to get cohered. They had precedents
(16:18):
in the past, but now more organized, such as a chancery,
which is an office for the receiving, recording, copying, sending
out of documents, in a world before printers and copy machines,
a financial department called the camera. A camera is a room,
and they would count the money in a sealed room.
(16:41):
Court systems as well, and cardinals would be in charge
of all of these and work their way up to
pope usually. So now let's look at, you know, the
movie version of this, right, the case study, the big scene,
and it's spread out of Hollywood. Somebody really needs to
make a movie out of this. Between Gregory the seventh
and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry the Fourth, Henry the
(17:03):
Fourth is a very, very long reign. Henry the Fourth
likely knew Gregory the seventh before he was made pope.
His name was Hildebrand and some German blood, some Italian
blood as well. Gregory the seventh involved in all of
these reform minds and popes. And now the question is
who's in charge. This is a battle royal. The flashpoint
(17:26):
is Milan. Now I think of where Milan is right,
It's at the top of Italy. So it's kind of
like a connection between the Empire. Most of the most
of the territory of the Empire is modern day Germany
and Italy, so that Archbishop of Milan is a pretty
key person if you're the Emperor looking to come down
or the Pope looking to extend your authority north. And
(17:46):
so each appoints his own man, claiming that he emperor
or Pope has the ultimate authority, and that is the
trigger and what happens, or like the series of acts
in a play, it's Henry versus. But the big problem
(18:07):
for Gregory is you have these bishops who are in
Germany who owe their secular power and their wealth and
in some cases their jobs, their appointments to the king,
the emperor. We call these the prince bishops. The prince
bishops are going to give Luther paroxysms of anger five
(18:28):
hundred years later. And these prince bishops line up with
Henry Gulp, not with Gregory their religious authority. So now
Gregory is facing a revolt from his own men as well.
And so Gregory says, you know what I'm going to
do it. In his letters he writes by apostolic succession.
At one point he sends him it was the formula
(18:50):
to send someone an apostolic blessing, the blessing of Peter,
and Gregory sends of Henry a letter and says, I
send you an apostolic blessing, provided that you are an
obedient son, kind of like raising your hands and giving
a blessing and then stopping say I won't do this
unless you clean up your toys. And Gregory excommunicates and
(19:11):
deposes Henry. Well, there is no greater exercise of your
authority than to say you're out right. Someone can say
to me, you know you are you have no authority
to teach, and I would say, well, by what authority
do you say? I have no authority to teach. You
don't like my class, you didn't like your grade. You
know that's not how it works. Everybody has got a boss, right,
(19:32):
So Gregory is saying, I'm your ultimate boss. I don't
really care that your Holy Roman Emperor. My boss is
bigger than your boss. And so he excommunicates and deposes Henry,
and then he turns the feudal system on its head.
He says, to all of the vassals who had taken
an oath of fealty to Henry, who had notes before Henry,
he says, no deal, that oath is dissolved. You owe
(19:56):
this man nothing, and if you follow this man, you
will be excommunicated and deposed because you are following somebody
who is out of the body of the church, and
that's a bad scene. Now you have a lot of
people who are gonna say, oh, this is terrific. Henry
has not been a great emperor to me. Yeah, he
gave me a job. That's terrific, but he taxes me.
Let's get rid of Henry. Henry's in a tough situation.
(20:17):
So in this dramatic scene known as the Snows of Knasa,
this is the drama. Apparently, we're told that Henry stood
barefoot as a penitent in the snow outside of a
monastery at Kanasa, begging Gregory the Seventh for forgiveness for
three days. Likely that meant five minutes over the course
(20:37):
of three days as a symbolic action, and Gregory is persuaded, well,
let me show some mercy here, and he forgives Henry.
He puts him back on the throne, and he brings
him back into the body of the church. But the
damage has really been done for a couple of years
back home, and Henry can't fight Gregory for a while
(20:59):
because he's got all these people who are now risen
up against him. In a civil war. So it's not
until a few years later that Henry gathers himself again
at attacks Rome. Gregory flees, and in fact Gregory dies
in exile a few years later. So it looks like
Henry's one hell, let's step away from the drama. Cooler
(21:24):
heads are going to prevail. People are going to say, listen,
we have to coexist. This is a difficult question. We're
not going to resolve the question. We need to do
business with each other. Let's come to an arbitration. And
about forty years later, that arbitration produces a truce. It's
(21:44):
called the Concordat of Vorms in eleven twenty two, and
a later pope in this case by the name of
Calixtus and a later emperor, in this case an emperor
by the name of Henry the Fifth decide we're going
to find a middle ground. And this is the middle ground.
Henry the Fifth says, I'm going to renounce my rights
(22:06):
to give you the spiritual symbols, not my place. A
religious representative will give you the crozier, the miter, and
the ring and collects. That says fair enough. Therefore, I
am going to renounce any right that I claimed, or
my predecessors claimed that I had, and I am going
(22:27):
to concede that you have the right to invest with
the temporal symbols, the scepter, the crown, the clod of earth.
So now we've kind of separated these two, this one
ritual into two separate rituals. So let's look at how
that actually would have worked. So a bishop or an
(22:47):
abbot now typically appointed by the pope or elected among
his own monks or local priests, is going to kneel
before a representative of the pope, likely a cardinal, and
receive miter, crozier and ring. Then he's going to move
(23:14):
to another spot. Typically this is done in a church,
might be done in the same ceremony, might be done
later on in a castle, and that bishop or abbot
will kneel before a representative of the emperor, maybe Henry himself,
and receive this temporal symbols scepter, crown, bowl of soil
(23:35):
or earth. But there's a catch. There's always a catch, right.
The catch is Henry has said I agree to a
free election. If there's a bishop who dies and the
priests are going to elect him or an abbot who
dies or an abbess who dies, and the monks or
(23:58):
nuns are going to elect him. I claim a right
that my legate can be present. Now you can see
here what's going on. Right, You could see a situation
where all of a bunch of priests are in a
diocese are gathered together. They're talking and they're thinking, they're politicking,
they're praying, and they say, we settle on Father Max,
(24:22):
and Father Max is going to be Bishop Max. And
the legate of the emperor does this, and everyone says,
you know, maybe Father Max isn't such a good idea,
and so they'll go to Father Michael or the next
person in line. So it's an uneasy truce. I mentioned
(24:44):
earlier that it's a truce, but it is in fact
an uneasy truce. But you know, half a loaf is
better than none. That's at least how the popes see it. Now,
this thing about election, let me just say very quickly,
is nowadays, if a bishop dies, in the Catholic tradition,
nobody looks to the mayor or the governor to appoint
the bishop. The pope appoints the bishop. But Protestant churches
(25:06):
sometimes there's an appointment, and sometimes there's an election, whether
it's an appointment or an election, an appointment from the
top or an election from below. The church is still
asserting this principle of freedom, the freedom of the church
without inside interference, although as we've seen, the cleared throat
clause as it's sometimes called in the Concord out of Worms,
(25:27):
gives the legate an opportunity to make his boss's name known.
So what we really have through about thirteen hundred are
a series of papal monarchs, all gregorian in terms of
their goals, some more successful than others, some stronger than others,
and some who really tried to be the ultimate authority
(25:49):
in Europe, which in that time would be the world.
And the most important one of those would be Innocent
the Third. Someone once said that Innocent the Third the
cannon lawyer pope elected at thirty seven, but dies at
fifty one. What if he had lived another thirty or
forty years, That Innocent the Third was the last pope
who could have aims to have been the emperor of
the world. What a note to end on. Thanks for
(26:14):
listening to another episode of half hour History Secrets of
the Medieval World. Next time, The beginnings of the modern
nation state. We're a long way from the un but
every idea has to start somewhere right Half Hour History
Secrets of the Medieval World from One Day University is
(26:36):
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(26:59):
Humans
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
This is half hour history Secrets of the Medieval World.
(00:35):
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last episode we explored life
in the medieval city. This week the rise of monarchies
and the election of popes and even a time of
papal monarchs. All this power leads to a lot of
fighting over who was the ultimate authority in Europe. I'll
Chris Filia. So our next two topics kind of fitty together,
(01:05):
and they fit together because what we have in this
high medieval period of about ten fifty to about thirteen
hundred is the creation, not out of nothing, the development
is a better way of putting it. Of monarchies. We've
had monarchies in the past. Obviously, certainly the Roman emperors
were monarchs. We've had monarchs called pharaohs in Egypt, and
(01:30):
monarchs called kings and other things in ancients Mesopotamian civilizations.
But this creation of a monarchy, a whole culture around
a king and a court really gets going in the
Middle Ages in a way that we haven't seen since
the time of Charlemagne, and that was shortlived, an important precedent,
but short lived. And it's important to remember that monarchies
(01:54):
are being built, let's use that word built, in both
the papacy and in these things that we're going to
call nations. They're not nations in any modern sense. But
there's this thing called France coming together, something called England,
and Germany and Spain coming together in a form that
we haven't seen earlier. The relationship between different powers is
(02:20):
the key to the story, because one, what's the relationship
between religious power and political or civil power in a
context that wouldn't separate them when we come at them
from a context where we would separate them. Two which
is the higher authority? And where does that authority come from?
(02:42):
And three how does it really play out in real life?
So one of the interesting things is that these relationships
among so called church and so called state phrases that
wouldn't mean anything to medieval people. What is the context
and where does that come from? It actually comes from feudalism,
(03:03):
that rural structure we saw, that hierarchy that we saw
several topics ago. And so let's go back to a
particular aspect of feudalism. That's very important, that's very key
to this story, and that's full of competition and conflict
and controversy, and it's this thing called invested chair. So
(03:25):
let's go back to the feudal oath. If you remember,
the feudal oath took place when a man knelt down
and put his hands like this, and his superior put
his hands around those praying hands, and the kneeling person
pledged his oath of fealty inferior to his superior. Now
(03:50):
to an illiterate audience looking at that, if I'm kneeling
in front of you and my hands are like this
and you put your hands around mine, it's pretty clear
that you're the boss and I'm the worker. But remember
that I, in turn down the line would have replicated
that ritual, and now I would be the superior and
(04:13):
I would have an inferior below me. Well, this thing
is called investiture. This process by which I give authority
to you, you hand authority down, you owe me certain
actions is called investiture. And the investiture controversy with a
capital LIE and a capital C is something some of
(04:35):
you may remember from medieval history courses, but I think
it's more helpful to look at it in terms of
invested your controversies, because the big one that you know,
we'll be looking at in a little while is this
big battle between a pope named Gregory and a holy
Roman emperor named Henry. And that's sometimes called the invested
your controversy, Da da dada, and it really played out
(04:59):
all across the map of medieval Europe. Now, what are
the issues, So that kind of high level of the
feudal structure. When a bishop or an abbot received his
beneficium or his office or his benefice from a superior
he received two sets of symbols. One are the symbols
(05:24):
representing his temporal authority, and that might be some form
of a scepter or a crown or earth itself symbolizing
his authority over the land. It was typically a bowl
with some soil in it. And then he would receive
symbols of his spiritual authority. Now this might be more
familiar to us if you've ever seen an image of
(05:45):
a bishop. Right, So there's a crozier, which is a
shepherd's crook, a miter what a lot of people call
the pointy hat, and then a ring which is worn
here on the ring finger on the right hand. And
as part of this ritual, the superior, who was a
(06:05):
lay lord, would say to the inferior, a bishop or
an abbot, a cheap a ecclesiam, accept the church, sometimes
translated as received the church. Now, if I'm looking at that,
it sure looks to me like the bishop or the
abbot is below the local lay lord. And that might
be true in his temporal relationship, his vassal relationship, but
(06:30):
it certainly isn't true in terms of his religious relationship,
because the bishop does not report to the local duke.
If he's got a theological question, he's going to go
to an archbishop or the pope himself. So you can
see that there's some ambiguity built in here that's not
going to help the church. And on the largest scale,
(06:54):
the biggest question as to which is the higher authority.
We have examples of emperor's vetoing papal elections or certain
papal actions, because the emperor is going to say, Hey,
I'm Constantine, I'm Charlemagne, I'm Charles Martel, I'm the defender
of the faith. On the other hand, pope, so they're
gonna sometimes veto the action or the election or the
(07:16):
appointment of an emperor, because emperor has kind of needed
the support of people. They're kind of a first among equals,
And so the pope might say, well, that person looks
suited for the government job, but morally no way. That
person is certainly not suited in order to be an emperor,
and I don't want him battling me for ultimate power.
(07:37):
It takes us back to this notion that we saw
with Justinian, of sacred kingship and the iconography of political
theology in this blurred context of civil and state claims.
So certainly one of those kings or emperors would say, hey,
I got lots of precedents. I have my own authority.
(07:58):
Look at me. I'm in charge, I have an army.
You don't. But I'm the heir of constant Seen and
Charlemagne and Justinian, and certainly we have examples of you,
the church authority, giving me authority, giving my mandate by
an anointing or a crowning. Remember Pepin the Short had
(08:21):
been crowned and anointed Charlemagne Christmas Day. So too, a
series of popes by the name of Otto, Otto the
First and Otto the Second, both crowned in Rome. In fact,
there were even discussions at this time as to whether
the anointing of a king was a sacrament. And after
this period of time, nobody talks about it as a sacrament,
(08:42):
because the Church did not want that. The particular problem
it really comes together around the ten forties. There's a
really good emperor by the name of Henry the Third,
and this emperor takes his responsibility as defender of the
faith very seriously, and he comes from Germany down into
Italy a couple of times, and the papacy is as
(09:05):
in the ten forties. There are three or four people
in the ten forties claiming to be the true pope,
and they are in and out of office. One of
them is in and out of office three times over
the course of about twelve years. Nobody knows who's in charge.
And along comes the emperor and Henry the Third by
dint of being the heir of Constantine, and Charlemagne says,
(09:28):
you know what, it's my job to clean up this mess,
because you obviously are not cleaning up this mess, and
he begins to appoint a engineer. The election of a
series of reform minded popes who happen to be of
German extraction. Perhaps no surprise there. And the interesting thing
is that even though he says I'm fulfilling the role
(09:49):
of defense or fidei or defender of the faith, those
reforming popes start to say, thanks a lot for putting
me on the throne. Now leave and I'll tell you
what to do. Henry probably thought that he was faced
with a great deal of ingratitude, but those reform warm
minded popes probably thought, no, they're cleaning up the shop.
(10:10):
And so we look upon this period of time as
one of Gregorian revolution. Now at this point, having listened
to six topics, you might think I never knew there
were so many revolutions in this period, But there were.
There were really big changes, and some people used to
call this a Gregorian Reformation. But the papacy before ten
fifty and the papacy after ten to fifty they look
(10:30):
entirely different, same sources of authority, but the way they
operate entirely differently. And they take this title Gregorian off
of a particular pope named Gregory, you know, top ten
on everybody's list, And Gregory was Pope ten seventy three
to ten eighty five, but he was involved in the
resolution of all of these sisms, and he worked for
(10:50):
those reform minded popes before that, so he was there
for about twenty years before he himself was elected. So
we call the popes before Gregory and after Gregory for
about two hundred years, Gregorian popes. They're part of this revolution.
And these Gregorian popes had a couple of goals. One
(11:13):
was a slogan called the libertasa clasier the freedom of
the Church, and what that meant was the freedom of
the church to name her own leaders. So it used
to be that a bishop died or an abbot died,
and the local lord says, no, Well, that church, that basilica,
that monastery is in my jurisdiction as a vassal of
(11:36):
the king, and so it's my job, it's my responsibility,
it's my right to name that person. Well, pope says, well,
that's terrific. That person might be your secular vassal, but
that person is certainly not below you in the spiritual
hierarchy or the spiritual authority. No way, you're not going
(11:58):
to name that person. So libertasa clasier, the freedom of
the church to name her own because what was happening
was that these dukes and counts were naming their brothers
in law who might have nothing to do with a
religious vocation. They're cronies. It's cronyism, that's what it is.
So they were also against something called simony. Simony is
the buying and selling of church offices. It refers back
(12:19):
to a passage in Christian Scripture or the New Testament
where Peter Simon Peter is performing miracles in the name
of Jesus and Simon magus. The word magus in the
ancient world meant a magician system. Come on, there's got
to be a trick here. I'll pay you to show
me how you do this trick. So that became the
buying and selling of church offices became called simony. And
(12:43):
they were also against something called concubinage. No little controversy here.
Sometimes people say, well, priests in the Catholic tradition we
used to be could be married for a thousand years,
and that they've only been prohibited from marriage for a
thousand years. It actually is true. It was on the
books as far back as three or four hundred that
priests should be celibate, but more often than not, they
(13:04):
had what we would call a common law marriage, a
common law marriage by which a person wasn't illegally married
or sacramentally married in any modern sense, but everybody knew
who the priest's wife was, and he would hand them
the parish church, just like the butcher, the baker, or
the candlestick maker to his son, whether or not the
(13:24):
son had a religious vocation. So this obviously is a
problem because again you don't have the integrity of the sacraments.
It gets caught up in these inheritance issues. And so
how did these Gregorian popes fight back through Peter the
ideology of Saint Peter and papal supremacy. So Catholics believe
that the Christians believe at this point Catholics and Protestants
(13:46):
are going to be split on the interpretations of this
later on, about five hundred years later, that Peter receives
from Christ the mandate or the commission. You are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church. And
so all bishops of Rome later called the popes, will
say that they have a unique commission. All bishops receive
their authority from God. All bishops are equal, but there's
(14:09):
one bishop who's more equal than others. And so what
these popes begin to do is they use this phrase
by apostolic succession in their sermons, in their letters, and
so as they're writing to emperors, they say literally as
some popes had said in the four hundreds, a pope
name Leo had said in the Foreign when you speak
(14:29):
to me, you speak to Peter. When I make a decision,
I don't make a decision. Peter makes a decision. And
therefore it's Jesus. Now, if you'd like to come after me,
you'd have to come after Peter. And if you'd like
to come after Peter, you'd like to come after Jesus.
Perhaps you'd like to rethink your challenge to my authority.
And so they begin to use this ideology of Peter.
And they also realize that if you can't meet them,
(14:52):
join it. It seems like the medieval popes were throwing
down the gauntlet to establish their authority. We'll find out
how that worked after the break. So, since they're going
(15:15):
against this imperial monarchy and a king in France and
kings in Spain and a king in England, they need
to set up a parallel monarchy. So just as there's
a court or a couria among a king, they set
up the college of cardinals, which had kind of precedence earlier,
but doesn't cohere. Remember, the papacy doesn't look after eleven
hundred as it did before. This college of cardinals, which
(15:37):
gets a little bit bigger. But in the medieval worlds
couple of dozen would be a large college of cardinals.
Now we have about one hundred and twenty. And the
college of cardinals become the ambassadors, become the legates, become
the representatives, and they are the ones who exclusively elect
the popes. Why because the freedom of the church to
name her own needs an example, and the best example
(15:58):
would be the election of a pope to show all
the others this is how it's done. This is the
freedom of the election. And so if I'm creating this
administrative top down structure, I need to set up to
what we would call departments, sometimes called congregations nowadays. And
so these structures begin to get cohered. They had precedents
(16:18):
in the past, but now more organized, such as a chancery,
which is an office for the receiving, recording, copying, sending
out of documents, in a world before printers and copy machines,
a financial department called the camera. A camera is a room,
and they would count the money in a sealed room.
(16:41):
Court systems as well, and cardinals would be in charge
of all of these and work their way up to
pope usually. So now let's look at, you know, the
movie version of this, right, the case study, the big scene,
and it's spread out of Hollywood. Somebody really needs to
make a movie out of this. Between Gregory the seventh
and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry the Fourth, Henry the
(17:03):
Fourth is a very, very long reign. Henry the Fourth
likely knew Gregory the seventh before he was made pope.
His name was Hildebrand and some German blood, some Italian
blood as well. Gregory the seventh involved in all of
these reform minds and popes. And now the question is
who's in charge. This is a battle royal. The flashpoint
(17:26):
is Milan. Now I think of where Milan is right,
It's at the top of Italy. So it's kind of
like a connection between the Empire. Most of the most
of the territory of the Empire is modern day Germany
and Italy, so that Archbishop of Milan is a pretty
key person if you're the Emperor looking to come down
or the Pope looking to extend your authority north. And
(17:46):
so each appoints his own man, claiming that he emperor
or Pope has the ultimate authority, and that is the
trigger and what happens, or like the series of acts
in a play, it's Henry versus. But the big problem
(18:07):
for Gregory is you have these bishops who are in
Germany who owe their secular power and their wealth and
in some cases their jobs, their appointments to the king,
the emperor. We call these the prince bishops. The prince
bishops are going to give Luther paroxysms of anger five
(18:28):
hundred years later. And these prince bishops line up with
Henry Gulp, not with Gregory their religious authority. So now
Gregory is facing a revolt from his own men as well.
And so Gregory says, you know what I'm going to
do it. In his letters he writes by apostolic succession.
At one point he sends him it was the formula
(18:50):
to send someone an apostolic blessing, the blessing of Peter,
and Gregory sends of Henry a letter and says, I
send you an apostolic blessing, provided that you are an
obedient son, kind of like raising your hands and giving
a blessing and then stopping say I won't do this
unless you clean up your toys. And Gregory excommunicates and
(19:11):
deposes Henry. Well, there is no greater exercise of your
authority than to say you're out right. Someone can say
to me, you know you are you have no authority
to teach, and I would say, well, by what authority
do you say? I have no authority to teach. You
don't like my class, you didn't like your grade. You
know that's not how it works. Everybody has got a boss, right,
(19:32):
So Gregory is saying, I'm your ultimate boss. I don't
really care that your Holy Roman Emperor. My boss is
bigger than your boss. And so he excommunicates and deposes Henry,
and then he turns the feudal system on its head.
He says, to all of the vassals who had taken
an oath of fealty to Henry, who had notes before Henry,
he says, no deal, that oath is dissolved. You owe
(19:56):
this man nothing, and if you follow this man, you
will be excommunicated and deposed because you are following somebody
who is out of the body of the church, and
that's a bad scene. Now you have a lot of
people who are gonna say, oh, this is terrific. Henry
has not been a great emperor to me. Yeah, he
gave me a job. That's terrific, but he taxes me.
Let's get rid of Henry. Henry's in a tough situation.
(20:17):
So in this dramatic scene known as the Snows of Knasa,
this is the drama. Apparently, we're told that Henry stood
barefoot as a penitent in the snow outside of a
monastery at Kanasa, begging Gregory the Seventh for forgiveness for
three days. Likely that meant five minutes over the course
(20:37):
of three days as a symbolic action, and Gregory is persuaded, well,
let me show some mercy here, and he forgives Henry.
He puts him back on the throne, and he brings
him back into the body of the church. But the
damage has really been done for a couple of years
back home, and Henry can't fight Gregory for a while
(20:59):
because he's got all these people who are now risen
up against him. In a civil war. So it's not
until a few years later that Henry gathers himself again
at attacks Rome. Gregory flees, and in fact Gregory dies
in exile a few years later. So it looks like
Henry's one hell, let's step away from the drama. Cooler
(21:24):
heads are going to prevail. People are going to say, listen,
we have to coexist. This is a difficult question. We're
not going to resolve the question. We need to do
business with each other. Let's come to an arbitration. And
about forty years later, that arbitration produces a truce. It's
(21:44):
called the Concordat of Vorms in eleven twenty two, and
a later pope in this case by the name of
Calixtus and a later emperor, in this case an emperor
by the name of Henry the Fifth decide we're going
to find a middle ground. And this is the middle ground.
Henry the Fifth says, I'm going to renounce my rights
(22:06):
to give you the spiritual symbols, not my place. A
religious representative will give you the crozier, the miter, and
the ring and collects. That says fair enough. Therefore, I
am going to renounce any right that I claimed, or
my predecessors claimed that I had, and I am going
(22:27):
to concede that you have the right to invest with
the temporal symbols, the scepter, the crown, the clod of earth.
So now we've kind of separated these two, this one
ritual into two separate rituals. So let's look at how
that actually would have worked. So a bishop or an
(22:47):
abbot now typically appointed by the pope or elected among
his own monks or local priests, is going to kneel
before a representative of the pope, likely a cardinal, and
receive miter, crozier and ring. Then he's going to move
(23:14):
to another spot. Typically this is done in a church,
might be done in the same ceremony, might be done
later on in a castle, and that bishop or abbot
will kneel before a representative of the emperor, maybe Henry himself,
and receive this temporal symbols scepter, crown, bowl of soil
(23:35):
or earth. But there's a catch. There's always a catch, right.
The catch is Henry has said I agree to a
free election. If there's a bishop who dies and the
priests are going to elect him or an abbot who
dies or an abbess who dies, and the monks or
(23:58):
nuns are going to elect him. I claim a right
that my legate can be present. Now you can see
here what's going on. Right, You could see a situation
where all of a bunch of priests are in a
diocese are gathered together. They're talking and they're thinking, they're politicking,
they're praying, and they say, we settle on Father Max,
(24:22):
and Father Max is going to be Bishop Max. And
the legate of the emperor does this, and everyone says,
you know, maybe Father Max isn't such a good idea,
and so they'll go to Father Michael or the next
person in line. So it's an uneasy truce. I mentioned
(24:44):
earlier that it's a truce, but it is in fact
an uneasy truce. But you know, half a loaf is
better than none. That's at least how the popes see it. Now,
this thing about election, let me just say very quickly,
is nowadays, if a bishop dies, in the Catholic tradition,
nobody looks to the mayor or the governor to appoint
the bishop. The pope appoints the bishop. But Protestant churches
(25:06):
sometimes there's an appointment, and sometimes there's an election, whether
it's an appointment or an election, an appointment from the
top or an election from below. The church is still
asserting this principle of freedom, the freedom of the church
without inside interference, although as we've seen, the cleared throat
clause as it's sometimes called in the Concord out of Worms,
(25:27):
gives the legate an opportunity to make his boss's name known.
So what we really have through about thirteen hundred are
a series of papal monarchs, all gregorian in terms of
their goals, some more successful than others, some stronger than others,
and some who really tried to be the ultimate authority
(25:49):
in Europe, which in that time would be the world.
And the most important one of those would be Innocent
the Third. Someone once said that Innocent the Third the
cannon lawyer pope elected at thirty seven, but dies at
fifty one. What if he had lived another thirty or
forty years, That Innocent the Third was the last pope
who could have aims to have been the emperor of
the world. What a note to end on. Thanks for
(26:14):
listening to another episode of half hour History Secrets of
the Medieval World. Next time, The beginnings of the modern
nation state. We're a long way from the un but
every idea has to start somewhere right Half Hour History
Secrets of the Medieval World from One Day University is
(26:36):
a production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. If
you're enjoying the show, leave a review in your favorite
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