Henry IV: The Catholic Reformation

The Pope is the head of the Church: he represents the ultimate religious authority. However, as a Bishop of Rome, the Pope is also in command of certain secular affairs, including some military aspects. Certainly, the Pope is a link between the earthly and the divine realms. Problems arise when the imperfect world the Pope physically lives in interferes with his heavenly objectives. Taking Pope Gregory I as an example, I am going to look at his letters to analyze how he reconciled his political and spiritual goals, whether he valued one category over the other, and how he justified it.

During the late 14th century and the early 15th century there was a great division in the Catholic Church. The Papacy was becoming blurred. The center of the Roman Catholic Church had been moved from Rome to the city of Avignon during the reign of Pope Clement V; and there was now a movement to return the center of power back to Rome. This movement was first truly seen under Pope Gregory XI and his successor Pope Urban VI. Earlier Pope Urban V had moved the center to Rome but it had been proven to be no more than a temporary idea; he had gone back to Avignon to die and there his replacement, Pope Gregory XI was elected . This along with other political problems and circumstances created a split in the loyalty among

For this reason, Pope Loe IX led other church officials in implementing reform efforts that would see ensure that the church could get back its lost power. For this reason, Pope Loe IX gave orders to the Roman Catholic clergy to dismiss the church officials that had taken part in selling church offices, and to renounce their wives (McKay et al., 2014). The orders were essential for ensuring that the church could control the corruption that was becoming rampant in the church. The measures were also essential for sending a message to the secular leaders, which was presumably an indication that they were working on regaining their lost power. After the death of Pope Leo, Gregory VII, Leo’s successor, continued with the reform work based on his ideological foundation (McKay et al., 2014). One of the reforms was the expelling of secular influence within church and the papal institution, which led to the expansion of the papal powers. such reforms solved the problems that the church was facing, which means that they were appropriate for the realization of the predetermined

Furthermore, in England, King Henry VIII considered himself a worthy Catholic king. He had “enthusiastically attacked the outbreak of Protestant heresy when it began, and the papacy gave him the title Defender of the Faith as a result”. This did not matter when Henry wanted to divorce from Catherine of Aragon. When the church would not grant the divorce he wanted, Henry’s resulting decision to create the Church of England set the standards for more than a century of religious conflict/isues in England. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 essentially “took power away from the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.” Henry VIII made an entirely new church which he made himself head of, because he was the king. This demonstrates the actions that politics affected Europe and that they were not always necessarily for religious purposes but for power and personal

The papacy assumed so much power in the 1200 because it had gained loyalty from a great amount of people for practical purposes.With a lot of people showing loyalty and trust towards the Papacy, it was able to expands its power over Europe. Since the papacy was the most influential and advanced government during its time it had “legislative power, law courts, bureaucracy, formal procedures, written records and considerable incomes from fees,

The reigns of Gregory VII and Innocent III were remarkably similar in their attempts to exert ecclesiastic power over secular rulers. Gregory's outlook was characterized by his reformist behavior, supporting the notion of challenging the sacred character of kings. "Implicit in the concept of ‘lay investiture' was the idea that kings were layman. Yet kings were anointed, and in the eleventh century most people, including ecclesiastics, viewed royal consecration as akin to priestly ordination." Gregory intelligently avoided being named a radical, whereby he took a more complicated position: he did not comment directly on the status of kings, but he believed them semi-laymen, placing their rank below that of the minor clerical order and therefore not in a position to elect or invest bishops or other ecclesiastic officials. He articulated his beliefs through a decree, the Dictatus Papae, which succinctly and articulately stated his demands

The power of the Bishop in Rome resulted from several factors, including the barbarian invasions, the failure of the emperors to defend their homeland, the success of Christianity, and the fame of the Church. The Roman generals battled over who would rule and thus failed to defend their borders adequately. This created gaps in the land, which was a factor the fall of Rome. With the invasion of the barbarians, it was up to the Church to defend the lands. Pope Gregory greatly influenced the situation. He was responsible for the improved standing of the papacy. He became Rome’s financial officer, and he managed food and water supplies. He created peace with the Lombards, and was able to ransom prisoners from them in the 6th century. He created a new Liturgy of the church, and he believed the purpose of the papacy was to help the poor, thus establishing the papal title “Servant of the servants of Christ.” Gregory turned a self-seeking papacy into an office of kindness and humility.

If we travel back to the year 1500, the Church (what we now call the Roman Catholic Church) was very powerful both politically and spiritually in Western Europe. For some time the Church was seen as an institution weighed down by internal power struggles. Popes and Cardinals often lived more like kings than spiritual leaders. Popes claimed political as well as spiritual power. They commanded armies, made political alliances and enemies, and, sometimes, even waged war.

Gregory was born during politically turbulent times in Europe. Economies suffered, agriculture waned, and a plague ravaged rural areas amidst Justinian’s reconquest of Italy (535–554). The bridges, aqueducts, and infrastructure of Rome degraded with age too. The Lombards held North Italy and less than a generation later, they seized Milan, and were threatening Rome. Even still, the Byzantine emperors, who were too far to protect Rome, demanded loyalty and taxes from the people of Italy from its imperial post at Ravenna. Gregory witnessed all of that turmoil which certainly would inspire his career and outlooks. Gregory came from a wealthy Roman family and as a young man he served as prefect of Rome (from 573). The Roman aristocracy which he would have known was losing faith in the power of Rome. Many looked instead to the Church’s message during times that many, including Gregory, viewed as apocalyptic. Gregory gave his property Italy and Sicily to the Church, converted his family mansion in Rome into a monastery, and lived there as a devoted and highly contemplative monk. These early experiences influenced Gregory and his subsequent development of the role of the papacy: “when I rose in contemplation above all changeable and decaying things, and thought of nothing but the things of heaven.” Gregory’s aristocratic background, preference for monasticism, and deep interest in eschatology pervaded his greatest contributions to role of the bishop of Rome by influencing his

Pope Gregory warns Henry IV against disobedience of papal mandates and asserts the church's authority to run itself without the interference of kings. He reminds Henry of the ills the church has suffered when lay people have appointed church leaders in the past. “Since we know that investitures have been made by laymen in many places, contrary to the decrees of the holy fathers, and that very many disturbances injurious to the Christian religion have thereby arisen in the Church, we therefore decree: that no clergyman shall receive investiture of a bishopric, monastery, or church from the hand of the emperor, or the king, or any lay person, man or woman. “ Gregory could have offered an olive branch by agreeing to accept those clergy who had

Rulers acted on their own accord, using an agenda that was separate from that of the Pope’s. Some Kings were known to rebel against the Pope’s decrees and Christian rules, which shows the minimal influence the Popes had. A prime example of this

In the 11th century, the Church held a lot of power, so it wasn’t about to bow down and let the secular kings walk all over it. A power struggle soon broke out between Pope Gregory VI and Henry IV. Both sides launched a propaganda war and distributed pamphlets on the nature of power and where it comes from. There were numerous arguments – that power comes from God and is given to the Pope. That power comes from the people who elect their King.

In 1136, a man named Nicetas stated that “The Roman Church separated herself by her pretensions. She became a monarchy.” (Document 2) The document goes further and explains that the Roman Pope has become more of a supreme ruler, hurls orders at the people and even judges them. That is not the way to rule the church, but to let the supreme God rule instead of man.

Occurring throughout the middle ages, conflict between the Christian church and nations led by kings were high and tense, leading to the bitter feud between Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV in the early 11th century. Coming into power at a very young age, King Henry moved to increase his power over clergy in the Holy Roman Empire. Pope Gregory VII, being one of the great leaders of the medieval church, sought to increase power and authority of Popes, and believed the churches were the supreme authority on Earth, leading him to excommunicate many individuals, and believe that rulers and civilians alike were subject to the power of the church. Henry believed in his own right to the power of appointing bishops to the German church, but was then

People faced the rise and the fall of the Catholic Church during the medieval time. The Popes used to hold the final authority for the church and over the state. Pope Gregory VII asserted the Pope had granted the divine power from God because Saint Peter was the first of getting this