Church Realities (11th-16th century) Flashcards
Henry III, Leo IX, and the “Cleansing of the Papacy”
The desire for reform of the church was widespread, spurred by 10th century developments such as the Cluniac movement in monasticism and finding fellow enthusiasts in northern reform movements and leaders as well. When the Saxon Emperor Henry III went south to receive coronation from the Pope, he found Rome divided between three claimants backed by Roman factions. He deposed all of them, and eventually installed his countryman and Reformer, Leo IX, who began the process of papal discipline in the Church. This Papal reform movement proceeded on to the creation by Pope Nicholas II of the college of Cardinals, who were henceforth to be appointed by the Pope, both to advise him and to nominate future popes, thus taking that choice out of the hands of Roman factional politics. The momentum for papal control of the Church in the Latin West—and hence the leading voice for the Christian Commonwealth in the West—peaked in the program of papal authority and control under the German reformer Hildebrant who became Pope Gregory VII. Claiming complete independence from secular rulers, and even authority to depose rulers, the Gregorian reform ideal of an independent Church hierarchy headed by the Pope standing astride the various secular powers of the West gained ground.
Investiture controversy
The Gregorian reform to wrest control of the church away from King, Emperor, and Barons resulted in the struggle between the Pope and the Emperor over who could choose important bishops and abbots in the Imperial lands. Especially under the program of the Saxon emperors to use church appointments (bishops and abbots of important monasteries) to maintain control of extensive lands against the feudal barons, the “investing” of the bishop with his office (ceremonially giving the candidate the tokens of office) was understood naturally to fall in the authority of the Emperor (after all, Henry III had deposed popes and installed Leo IX to begin the papal reform movement). The new Papal reform movement thought this illegitimate and contested it. The Investiture Controversy came to a head in 1076, after Gregory had promulgated a decree forbidding clergy to receive their churches from lay rulers. Emperor Henry IV (1056-1106) refused to obey the pope’s decree and, in January 1076, condemned Gregory as a usurper. Gregory replies by excommunicating Henry in February. Because of difficulties Henry was having with several of his princes and barons, he is forced to submit to obtain the pope’s support. He undergoes penance outside the papal residence at Canosa in Italy for several days, until Gregory is forced to acknowledge him and readmit him to communion. This reconciliation provides Henry a freer hand to
secure his power, until Gregory is forced to excommunicate and dethrone Henry in 1080, though now with less effective results. The Controversy drags on with the successor of Gregory, and various solutions are proposed to overcome the differences. Finally a compromise is obtained in the Concordat of Worms in 1122, the result being promulgated by both the Pope (Calixtus II) and Emperor Henry V. In this Concordat the Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II came to an agreement on investiture, whereby the Pope would invest the candidate with the tokens of spiritual power, and the Emperor the claimant with the tokens of temporal power. Thus a form of Church-state distinction was worked out, ending the immediate controversy, establishing in the minds of many the claims of the Gregorian reform for the independence of the Church, and marking the rise in prestige of the Roman see over Latin Christendom. th
Innocent III, apex of papal power
throughout the 12 century the power of the popes increased through adroit diplomacy, balancing of rulers against each other, appropriate and successful interventions, and further developing the discipline of the Church. This papal control of the Church was becoming codified at this time in canon law, the disciplinary procedures for Church clergy, possessions, lands, and concerns. [Many of the popes of the later 12th century were in fact originally canon lawyers in training.] The final peak of Papal authority comes in the time of Innocent III (1198-1216), who called the Fourth Lateran Council (1214) which decreed yearly confession and communion to be incumbent on all Christians and set forth the doctrine of transubstantiation as the official teaching of the Church with regard to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Innocent also instituted a crusade in southern France against the heretical Cathars [the “Albigensian” Crusade], promoted the new Friar orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans to official status, and generally adjudicated the claims and successions between various secular rulers, seeming to make good the Gregorian claim for the papacy, that it had the authority over even secular rulers as pronounced by God to Jeremiah: “Behold, I set thee over nations and over kingdoms to root up and to pull down and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). For as the Sun outshines and gives its own light to the moon, as supernatural grace enables and perfects nature, so Spiritual authority is greater than secular authority, according to the Papal apologists.
Boniface VIII and Unam Sanctum
By the time of Boniface, though the papacy seemed to have effectively countered the power of the Holy Roman (German) Emperor in its campaign against the Hohenstauffen dynasty (Frederick II and Frederick Barbarossa), the rising central monarchies such as France posed more intractable problems. In this conflict, Boniface VIII shrilly (or desparately) repeated the exalted claims of the papacy over kings and princes in his bull Unam Sanctam (1302). Soon after its issuance (1303), Boniface was humiliatingly captured by French mercenary troops who plundered his residence of Anagni and
took him prisoner, soon to die, a victim of the expanding powers of the French
monarchy.
“Babylonian Captivity of the Church” (Avignon papacy)
the succeeding Pope,
Clement V, decides to move the papacy to Avignon (on the border of the French kingdom) in 1309. The Avignon papacy, though not peculiarly beholden to French monarchial wishes, developed bureaucratic and administrative powers already in process, and a reputation for profligacy grew around it (though not borne out by actual evidence). Opponents of the Avingon residence dubbed this the “Babylonian captivity,” as though this was an illegitimate exile. Urged to return to its traditional base in Rome, this happened finally under Gregory XI in 1377.
The Great Schism
Back in Avignon, several disgruntled cardinals, claiming the last papal election was forced, in 1378 elected Clement VII as Pope. Thus there existed two rival popes with two rival factions of cardinals in two different locations, each with some claim to legitimacy. This Schism caused enormous problems for Latin Christendom, with the different nations having to declare for on Pope or another, but was a crisis for transnational orders like the Mendicants who were split by their nations’ allegiances. This ongoing situation created a crisis in leadership in the West, and was very harmful to the claims of the papacy.
The Conciliar Movement and the Councils of Constance and Basel
momentum built through theological and political developments toward solving the need to reform the Church “head and members”—not only in the papal government but also in the ongoing problems experienced everywhere down to the local level—by new conceptions of church power. Most prominent was the conciliar movement, which argued that the main governing authority in the Church was not the Pope but the Councils representing the Church as a whole. Support for this solution swelled with the inability of the two papal claimants to reconcile and unite. The first council to lay the groundwork for this was the Council of Pisa in 1409, culminating in the great Council of Constance begun in 1414. Not only did the Council put John Huss on trial (followed by his condemnation and execution– 1415), but it succeeded in deposing the two papal claimants and through its own authority as a general council elected Martin V to replace them, thereby creating the precedent that the Council could depose and elect Popes (in opposition to the Gregorian conception of the Papacy). Yet once in power, their “child” (Martin V and his successors) subsequently fought back against the curtailment of papal power by the Council. The tide began to turn in the subsequent Council of Basel (1431) when reaction set in against further attempts to curtail the power of the Pope and the papal curia, and especially in the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438- 1445), where the Conciliar Movement splits and becomes ineffective to resist restoration of Papal supremacy in the Church. By the end of the 15th century the Popes had mostly reasserted their claims to sovereignty over the Church, and with a very decided antipathy toward councils (unless tightly controlled by the Popes themselves)—though cooperation with rulers was often achieved by ceding control of Episcopal appointments and revenue sources in countries like France.
