Medieval Europe †Papal Reformation Essay

Since the Council of Nicaea called in the fourth century by Constantine to the premature ordinal century, the perform was never relieve oneselfed as a alleviate standing installation. For over eight hundred years the church building had been infra the authority of profane powers. Charlemagne and the Carolingians emperors saw themselves as the ones to maintain the church building materially, organizationally, and spiritually, bit the pope was merely an example of i bring off Christian living. Social descent led to the corruption of the Church and its offices simony being the biggest problem. The pontificate itself was pervert by simony and Roman politics. While reform had been taking send emerge in the local levels for some sequence, the papacy was the last part of the Church to be reformed. The papacy reformation came or so through three major popes king of beasts IX (1049-1054), Nicholas II (1059-1061), and Gregory VII (1073-1085). The actions by these popes in the eleventh century would root out the corruption within the church and perplex conflict surrounded by the worldly authorities and the papacy resulting in the breakup and contributeing of the Church as a power on its admit. subsequently legion(predicate) corrupt popes, king of beasts IX is considered to be the pope that started the papacy reformation. Ironically, he was appointed pope by his cousin Emperor Henry III. After being coroneted, Leo spent less than six months in capital of Italy traveling through Italy, Germany, France, and as far as Hungary ( Blum, 485). According to Backman, Leo recognized two things from the very start send-off, the papacy could non be properly reformed so long as it remained mired in Roman factional politics and second, the papacy needed to be canvassn by the sheepcote in order to secure the gains of the reform (Backman, 268). Leo was literally the prototypical pope to be seen by most Christians (Backman, 268), and he wanted to get wind an image of the papacy in action (Blum, 485). For a long time the title of pope was just a name without any moment or power however, Leo would change that with his travels. Leos wide accomplishments were abolishing simony, help ending the practice of clerical marriage, and improving the clergies training and education.pope Leo IX, through his travels had plans of establishing his authority while similarly rooting out corruption still in local churches. Leo staged large-scale Masses, pronounced Peace and Truce decrees, and offered all the faithful the opportunity to advertise grievances about their local church and ecclesiastical strainers (Backman, 269). Clergy that had obtained their vista by way of simony were given the chance to retain their office entirely if the confessed their faults and swore publicly to dedicate themselves to the reformed Church.According to Backman these acts were performed in public for two reasons First, the people themselves got to hear the confes sion of their clergy, and second, the pope got the pleasure of having the faithful see the priest, bishops, and archbishops kneeling before Leo, in other words, used the reform-celebration itself as a means for establishing papal authority over the episcopacy. Hence fore, everyone understood that the bishops served as the sure leaders of the Church because the Holy Father himself had publically bestowed their office upon them. The papacy now stood at the head of a new hierarchy and situated its legitimacy. 269The last major contri provideding act Leo had towards the reformation was the humans of the College of Cardinals. Leo saw that the Church was not intellectually fitting to deal with issue it was faced with. He created a body of advisors for the papacy that include theologians, fair playyers, philosophers, historians, scientists, and diplomats. These handpicked advisors would lend expert council to the pope on settling and resolving opinionated issues never really solved b y the Church. One of the issues they dealt with was celibacy for the clergy this would not be settled until pope Nicholas II. The papacy was now the decision reservation center on doctrinal issues for the Church.Leo IX was a major turning point for the Church, but unfortunately he would not bring to an end what he started. The next pope to further the papal reformation was Nicholas II. pontiff Nicholas II built upon what Leo IX had already done. Nicholas and a council produced the Lateran synod of April 1059. The synod stop clerical marriage and established clergy celibacy. It also added to the strict prevention of simony. as well with the synod, Nicholas and the council do two major decisions that would shape the papacy up until today. The first of these decisions was to condemn the practice of amaze investiture. The ritual by which a lay prince invested a priest or bishop with the insignia of his office suggested that the ecclesiastical authority was low-level to the secul ar (Backman, 270).The papacy now condemned this seeing as the reforming popes were trying to establish the Church as an entity on its own. The Church wanted to condition everything about itself and completely cut off any secular ties trying to control it. The second major decision Nicholas and the council made was mad in the papal Election Decree of 1059. This was to ensure no pope could ever be placed in power by a secular prescript but only elected by the College of Cardinals. Backman describes it as this for all eternity the only way for any individual to become the legitimate pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church was to be freely elected to the position by the College of Cardinals. This decree removed the Holy See from the clutched of the Roman magnates, but it also declared the papacys independence from the imperial power. 270These actions changed the kingdoms authority over the church that had been present since Constantine. When Henry IV came to power in 1056, he did not l ike the actions taken by the Church and trying to separate from his authority. The tension between the papacy and secular powers came to a high during the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII. Now Gregory VII had begun his travel in Rome during the pontificate of Leo IX as Leos secretary of state and author of his important papers (Blum, 485). So Gregory had been around since the beginning of the papal reformation. His actions and policies would lead to the biggest conflict between the Church and State during this reformation.After dealing with carious rebellions, Henry IVs resent meant lead him to prepare to attack Rome and deal with the papacys action. Henry wanted to show that he had achievement and was the rule of two Church and State. Before Henry could attack, Gregory responded with a declaration called the Dictatus Papae. This was a list of twenty-seven single sentence decrees about papal power. Gaudemet defines them as, lapidarist and unrestrained terms the universal power o f the pope his authority over bishops, clerics and councils, and his right to depose the emperor, to certify every canonical text, to make law and to deliver judgment from which there is no appeal (Gaudemet, 470). Gregory was trying to establish that he alone, as the pope, had complete supremacy over both Church and the emperor. Henry took these Dictates as a direct attack on his kingly rights and power. This led to both Gregory and Henry writing letters back and forth to each other with increasing tensions with each letter. These letters led to both of them excommunicating and deposing the other from office at the end of 1076.The excommunicating of each other would lead to a major event in establishing supremacy to the pope. Gregory, being the pope, was still head of the Church, and Henry found himself still excommunicated. Henry and his advisor devised a plan to get him forgiven and restored into the Church. Being the pope meant that Gregory was a priest, and he would abide to f orgive a penitent sinner. Gregory was caught off guard at his go in Canossa, Italy by Henrys arrival and asking of forgiveness.This had made Gregory furious, but he had to forgive him. Gregory used this to his advantage, showing that he had supremacy over the emperor. Gregory made Henry stand outside his window barefoot wearing penitential rags for three days begging for forgiveness and invoke for restoration. While this move by Henry helped him with his enemies and restored him back into the Church, this move also hurt him. This move now shifted the supremacy towards the pope. The emperor was now seen as submissive to the pope and had to do what the pope said.While more conflicts happened between Gregory VII and Henry IV, the investiture struggle would not end with them. It was officially ended in 1122 with Henry IVs son, Henry the V, and Pope Calixtus II (1119-1124) with the Concordat of Worms. This allowed ecclesiastical appointment to be made by the Church alone but also allo wed secular rulers to participate with the lands and appurtenances secondary to the positions. The issue of papal supremacy over imperial supremacy was circumvented, only to erupt again in centuries later.While Urban II (1088-1099) was able to finalize the reform of the Church during his pontificate, it wasnt really until the end of the twelfth century that the Church reform came to a conclusion. Gregory VII and the popes following openly proclaimed the Churchs supremacy and main(a)ty over the secular world. They had not only made the Church a standing institution on its own, but they had reversed the historical roles of the Church and State. Since the time of Gregory VII, the papacy had become a massive bureaucracy. The Church now had an ostentatious monetary machinery, judicial system, bureaucratic structure, police network, and standing army. The Church was now its own free standing institution and would eventually become its own sovereign city-state.