The Nobility's Reform of the Medieval Church

Abstract

THE FIRST REFORMATION BEGAN IN THE MID-ELEVENTH CENTURY. A small group of clergymen, whose ranks included the future Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), decided that reform of the church required not only interior changes in individuals, a shifting of hearts toward God, but also external changes in corporate structure, a return to the early church, or at least to selected Constantinian and Carolingian practices. They sought to recover ecclesiastical property, to restore religious discipline, and to establish a purified priesthood free from the buying and selling of church offices (simony) and clerical marriage (nicolaitism), a goal that ultimately led to attacks on lay investiture and lay involvement in episcopal elections. These reformers never completely achieved a renewed, liberated church in a just society. Nevertheless, their calls for right order in the world had momentous consequences: papal power and prestige were vastly increased, kingship in the style of the Old Testament received a severe blow, cathedral chapters began to choose their own bishops, simony and nicolaitism became far less acceptable, the Benedictine ascetical monopoly was broken, and revived legal and theological debate brought rational enquiry and dispute back to the center of Western thought.'