Investiture Contest Research Articles

St Anselm and the English investiture controversy reconsidered

The Investiture Controversy in England has generally been viewed as a two-sided contest between king and pope. But in reality the struggle was between three parties — king, pope, and primate. St Anselm, devoted to his duties as God's steward of his office and its privileges, worked against both King Henry I and Pope Paschal II to bring into reality his idea of the proper status of the primate of all Britain. Anselm had a vision of a political model which he conceived as God's ‘right order’ in England, and all his efforts were directed toward fulfilling this vision. The Investiture Contest may be divided into two parts. The first phase began when Anselm was thwarted by Henry I's duplicity in the archbishop's attempt to force the king to accept the decrees of Rome at the height of a political crisis. Anselm may have seen these decrees as beneficial to the Canterbury primacy. From 1101 to 1103, Anselm wavered between supporting either party completely, meanwhile securing from Paschal all the most important privileges for the primacy of Canterbury. Each time Paschal refused to grant a dispensation for Henry, as Anselm requested, he granted Anselm a privilege for the primacy. Thus Anselm's vision of the primate as almost a patriarch of another world, nearly independent of the pope, was fulfilled by 1103. At this point, Anselm abandoned his vacillation between king and pope, and worked seemingly on behalf of Paschal, but in reality on behalf of the Canterbury primacy. During this second phase, Anselm's political adroitness becomes clear by a correlation, never before made, between the church-state controversy and Henry's campaign to conquer Normandy. By careful maneuvering and skilful propaganda, Anselm forced Henry to choose between submitting to the investiture decree or failing in his attempt to conquer Normandy. At the settlement, a compromise was worked out, Henry conceding on investitures, and Paschal conceding on homage. But investiture was only secondary to Anselm. He ended the dispute not when Henry submitted on investitures, but only when he had gained from Henry concessions which made the primate almost a co-ruler with the king, as his political vision demanded. Only after a public reconcilliation with his archbishop did Henry feel free to complete the Norman campaign. Thus the Investiture Controversy was a three-way struggle. Both king and pope compromised, each giving up some of their goals. But Anselm emerged from the contest having won nearly all his political objectives.

Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century

Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century

The ‘Colores Rhetorici’ in the Investiture Contest

The polemics of the investiture contest, both those of German and those of Italian origin, in most cases owe their survival to the copying activity of scribes in the monasteries and cathedral chapters of Germany during the twelfth century. This survival is in itself unexpected: the Libelli de lite continued to be copied at a period when their argumentation and critical apparatus must have appeared unsophisticated by comparison with the canonical and theological textbooks of the mid-twelfth century. The polemics seem to have been preserved not for their erudition but for their literary qualities. Thus the two most famous twelfth-century collections of eleventh-century libelli — that of the Codex Udalrici and that transcribed in the sixteenth-century codex, Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek XI. 671 — are found to exploit the polemics for teaching purposes: not for the elucidation of the rights of King Henry IV or of Pope Gregory VII (as their contents might suggest), but as models of epistolary style for the instruction of the twelfth-century pupils of the cathedral school of Bamberg. ‘Codex I’ of the composite Hanover letter collection — which, like the Codex Udalrici, seems to have originated in Bamberg — contains an important group of pro-Henrician and anti-papal materials: the only extant exemplar of the Defensio Heinrici IV regis of Petrus Crassus, the decrees of the imperialist synods of Worms and Brixen, the encyclical of 1089 of the antipope Wibert of Ravenna, and the treatise of Pseudo-Udalric in favour of clerical marriage. However, ‘Codex I’ also includes pro-papal materials: the two letters of Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg in support of Gregory VII, letters of Gregory VII himself concerning German ecclesiastical politics, a well-known letter of Urban II and the decrees of the reforming council of Piacenza of 1095. The eclectic nature of the compilation of ‘Codex I’ suggests that the polemical works were regarded by the compiler primarily as model performances in the rhetorical art of the trivium.

The Problem of Papal Power in the Ecclesiology of St. Bernard

Born in 1090, dying in 1153, Bernard Abbot of Clairvaux lived through the aftermath of that great ideological upheaval which is generally (though rather misleadingly) known as the ‘Investiture Contest’. As he played a leading part in the religious life and ecclesiastical politics of his age it is not surprising that his massive output of sermons, treatises and letters should have given rise to an even more massive output of historiographical comment and interpretation. It is equally understandable that modern Bernardine studies should have tended to concentrate on the question of Bernard's attitude to the basic ideas of the eleventh-century reform movement—and, in particular, to the expression which was given to these by Gregory VII during his stormy pontificate. Yet, as Dr Kennan has recently pointed out, so far from providing a clear answer to this question these studies confront us with a ‘bewildering garden … from which a student can pluck an interpretation of Bernard's … theory as Gregorian, anti-Gregorian,…proto-protestant or any one of a variety of other hues’. Can order be brought into this chaos, or do these various interpretations reflect an inherent ambiguity in Bernard's own thought?

Ecclesiastical Politics and the Ending of the Investiture Contest: The Papal Election of 1119 and the Negotiations of Mouzon

IN 1122, Calixtus II and Henry V reached a compromise agreement which ended the Investiture Contest. The agreement was contained in the Concordat of Worms and was ratified by the First Lateran Council in 1123. Scholars have always been interested in the origins and background of the concordat and have studied the connection between the affair of 1122 and earlier attempts at finding a solution to the contest between pope and emperor.' They have also been interested in the aftermath of the lengthy dispute, especially in its result in Germany and the Church.2 Up to now, histories of the first half of the twelfth century

EcclesiasticaandRegalia: Papal investiture policy from the Council of Guastalla to the First Lateran Council, 1106–23

It is commonly asserted that in the early years of the twelfth century the medieval papacy was suddenly afflicted with a bad attack of apostolic poverty. The consensus of historical opinion accepts that a pope, Paschal II, who had already distinguished himself by launching crusades against both eastern and western Roman emperors, acted so much out of character that, when forced to deal directly with Henry V over the question of episcopal investiture, he abruptly and to the astonishment of contemporaries ‘decreed the poverty of the whole Church’. It was as if St Peter had hiccoughed, and for a brief instant the Roman church was assailed by self-doubt, tacitly admitting that centuries of criticism of ecclesiastical secularity were justified. The attempt by Paschal to renounce the regalian rights of bishops in February IIII has become regarded by many as the turning point in a process described as weaning the papacy away from strict Gregorian principles, permitting the introduction of a spirit of moderation and compromise which would eventually lead to the Concordat of Worms and ‘the end of the Investiture Contest’.

DE INDELING DER MIDDELEEUWSE WIJSBEGEERTE

SUMMARY The author rejects the principles of division as found in most of the current handbooks on the history of Mediaeval Philosophy. Starting from the arbitrary nature of such terms as 'Middle Ages', he takes the historical period for a work-economic unit and tries to find some criterion for the division of philosophic thought in the Mediaeval period by focusing on the distinction of exogenous and indigenous impulses and the variety of responses given to them during the Mediaeval period. This approach seems to lead to the following division of Mediaeval Philosophy: 1. The Early Middle Ages (till c. 1000): the period of increasing acceptance of the legacy of Late Antiquity, brought about mainly by the social need of education.2. The Mediaeval Renaissance (c. 1030-c. 1200): the period of a partial revival of Ancient thought in a form proper to the Mediaeval mind. The different responses called forth by the exogenous factors (Reform-movements. Investiture Contest), were substantially determined by the personal philosophic starting-points of the authors.3. The Period of the Universities (from c. 1200): the period in which, from the proper aims of philosophy, Mediaeval thought developed into several directions, within the frame-work of the University and its statutes and customs.

<italic>Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest</italic>. By Gerd Tellenbach, Professor in the University of Giessen. Translated by R. F. Bennett, Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. [Studies in Mediaeval History, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough.] (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1940. Pp. xxiv, 196. 12s. 6d.)

Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest. By Gerd Tellenbach, Professor in the University of Giessen. Translated by R. F. Bennett, Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. [Studies in Mediaeval History, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough.] (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1940. Pp. xxiv, 196. 12s. 6d.) Get access Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest. By Tellenbach Gerd, Professor in the University of Giessen. Translated by Bennett R. F., Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. [Studies in Mediaeval History, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough.] (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1940. Pp. xxiv, 196. 12s. 6d.) Bernard J. Holm Bernard J. Holm University of California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 46, Issue 4, July 1941, Pages 878–879, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/46.4.878 Published: 01 July 1941

Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest Contest

Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest Contest

Book Review: Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest

Book Review: Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest