A Discussion of Papal Authority in the High Middle Ages (Paper)

A Discussion of Papal Authority in the High Middle Ages

The following paper will discuss papal authority as viewed by Ivo of Chartres and will include a discussion on the Concordat of Worms as read in: Miller, Maureen C..Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. 

Power in Europe in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries was split between the nobility and the church in a murky power arrangement that neither side clearly understood. In the latter half of the 11^th century the Bishops of Rome began to accumulate more direct power over the various sees in Western Europe placing them in direct conflict with the presiding Emperors and Kings. The most notable of these transgressions was with the Holy Roman Emperors of the German States which erupted into a wider battle with both sides claiming the right to appoint bishops and other church officials. What has been termed ‘The Investiture Conflict’ would culminate in the Concordat of Worms in 1122 with the Emperor Henry V coming to terms with Pope Calixtus II.¹ In the agreement the Emperor gives up all claims to investing Bishops in his lands with symbols of spiritual power and returns all lands and goods taken from the church by himself and his father. In return he was granted the right to invest bishops with secular power.² Some years previous to this Ivo of Chartres raised a few fundamental points on the relationship between King and Church in his letter of rejection sent to one Hugh of Lyon, an apostolic legate appointed by the Pope. In his letter he states that papal authorities have been asserting the power of the Bishop of Rome in ways that hinders the church or does not improve the church at all. He further states that it would be much easier for the local councils to vote for new bishops themselves rather than have them appointed to their posts by the Pope. Ivo also argues against the entire investing conflict because he does not see the harm in a king instating a bishop as it does not involve preforming any sacraments.³ While all these claims were made in Ivo’s Correspondence the only one actually addressed in the Concordat is the issue of the actual investing of bishops therefore, the issues presented by Ivo of Chartres were, for the largest part, left unaddressed in the Concordat of Worms.

In Ivo’s letter to the papal legate he asserts many points. The first and most important of these is the request not to be bound so tightly by papal laws that, according to Ivo, are not necessarily within the canonical laws that are exercised by the bishop of Rome. One may view this as a sign that while the Church was united they did not yet view the Bishop of Rome as the supreme power of the church. This is in spite of the fact that The Dictatus papae was written almost 30 years prior claiming more widespread authority for the Pope.⁴ This neglecting of the Pope’s authority can provide the historian with a glimpse into how the church in the High Middle Ages worked. Judging by the fact that many German bishops during the 1070s and 1080s rejected the authority of Gregory VII and called actively for his abdication until his death in 1085, one might say that the church was not centrally controlled by Popes at the time.⁵ This is fundamental to understanding why this conflict came about in the first place. In Ivo’s opinion the Pope was overstepping his authority by trying to broadly increase his authority not only over Emperors like Henry but also over bishops like Ivo. Central to the Pope’s aims was his claiming succession from St. Peter. In the eyes of Gregory VII this gave him the power to bar kings from heaven, appoint bishops from afar, and create new canon law. According to Ivo and his view on earlier church fathers, this should not be the case but rather the see of Rome should act in reference to the writing of predecessors instead of making up laws which benefit itself instead of the entire church.⁶

The second point made by Ivo inquires whether or not investiture by kings is truly a problem. This almost argues for the king to appoint the bishops otherwise, in effect, the church was saying that the kings and emperors were not holy. This was a direct contradiction to the populist ideas of the time as promulgated by Guibert of Nogent shortly after the letter by Ivo. In this account kings were able to miraculously heal their subjects with the slightest touch.⁷ This is powerful evidence for the social acceptability of Kings investing bishops. If kings were holy how could you deny them that power? At the same time Ivo states that it shouldn’t matter whether or not kings took part because in the end the bishop was invested by God himself. In this objection the historian may see why so many bishops supported the German Emperor in the first place. If the King or Emperor were seen as a holy figure in and of themselves as suggested by the tomb of Edward II and subsequent description in which bones of dead rulers where dispersed amongst his kingdom, the Bishops of his territory would naturally support him as: A-he was the one to invest them originally and B- They saw him as a way to contact god, as with saints.⁸

Ivo also argues that it is the power of the local clergy to appoint a bishop by election and that the pope should not interfere with this right unless that power had been granted by ancient rights of church fathers, which it had not. ⁹ Later, this power will be usurped by the pope as shown in the account of a disputed election in Auxerre. In other words the power of the popes is almost insured by the vague wording in the Concordat. Any power not expressly denied to the pope is still open for Papal rulers to somehow take as their own.

In the Concordat of Worms, the king gives up his ability to invest members of the clergy with symbols of Divine power such as the Staff and Ring. By doing this he has now limited his power to strictly temporal possessions and is therefore reliant on the church to provide him with divine absolution. In return for his cessation of investing with divine symbols Henry receives the ability to invest church officials in a more secular way with a scepter representing the power he is giving them over his lands. In this sense the clergy have now separated themselves further from the nobility by retaining more power for themselves in the form of divine investment which is done at the cost of the Kings and Emperors. The clergy will now solely hold the power to allow people into heaven. This is seen when Gregory VII excommunicates Henry IV, in essence barring him from heaven as the Pope is the direct successor to St. Peter, the Gatekeeper of Heaven.

In addition to the Emperors not investing clergy with divine symbols, the Concordat also states that any property that was seized by Henry or his father was to be given back to the church.¹⁰ This is actually a major setback for the nobility because large tracts of land that were previously granted to the nobility have since fallen into the hands of the Church through bequeathments and wills. This only served to strengthen the demands that the church made on the nobility.

Adjudicating the dispute between the church and the nobility is not an easy task for the brightest of men at the time of The Investiture Conflict and Ivo of Chartres is no exception. While many of his points about the differences in opinion between the two parties is spot-on the only actual point that is resolved in the Concordat of Worms is in regards to investment of actual bishops and leaves unresolved the issues of Papal authority, clergy autonomy, and the holiness of kings.

1 Miller, Maureen C. “The Agreements of Worms” Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. 120-121

2  ibid Miller, "Power and the holy..." pp.120-121

3 Miller, Maureen C.”A Letter to the Apostolic Legate Hugh of Lyon”Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 115-119

4    Miller, Maureen C.. "Pope Gregory VII, The Dictatus papae." In Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. 81.

5 Miller, Maureen C. Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. p. 105

6 Miller, Maureen C.”A Letter to the Apostolic Legate Hugh of Lyon”Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 115-119

7 Miller, Maureen C. “On Royal Powers” Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 162-163

8 Miller, Maureen C. “The Tomb of Edward II, Foreword” Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 168-170

9 Miller, Maureen C.”A Letter to the Apostolic Legate Hugh of Lyon”Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 115-119

10 Miller, Maureen C. “The Agreements of Worms” Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. pp. 120-121

Abelardian Ethics (Paper)

  For Abelard the key to ethics is not in the acts that are perpetrated but in the consent, will, and desire to perpetrate them. In order to illustrate these claims and explain why it is sinful to consent to acts, Abelard uses four examples: a monk among women, a man with a homicidal master, a man marrying his sister, and two hangmen.

  The monk in Abelard's example is forced into sexual relations with women against his will. Here will is used to mean consent, as opposed to will meaning desire. For the monk to be engaged in sexual relations of any kind is prohibited by his solemn vows. The question here is whether the monk has committed any sin. According to Abelard there is no sinning on the part of the monk because he did not consent to the acts performed upon him by others.

  In the case of the servant with the homicidal master who kills his master in self defense, there is sin involved. Because the man desired life and so killed his master to prevent him (the master) from killing the servant, he had the will to murder. Even though he did so in self-defense he had a desire to kill his master to save his own life. However, this desire alone was not sufficient to make him a sinner. That final turn comes when he consents to killing his master. Desire alone cannot commit sin in the same way that a person who has a disposition to being mad is mad only when they consent to be mad, not all the time. Our servant in this case is a sinner for consenting to murder but not for murder itself. In Abelard's words he is a sinner without a bad will for as Abelard points out he is not to be blamed for not wanting to die.

  In the third example Abelard gives a man marrying his sister as the purported sin. In this example we are told that knowledge about the purported act that is going to be committed is necessary for the consent to the act to be considered sinful. If a person knowingly decided to marry his sister he has given consent to eh act therefore, even before the actual marriage, he has committed sin. However if he does not know that the person he is marrying is his sister then he had no intent to commit sin and therefore is free from blame.
  In the fourth and final example given by Abelard we are shown that intent, as mentioned above, is based on what God considers to be sinful or not. When hanging a man to comply with Justice, i. e. God's Law, it is not sinful to kill someone as it is not the intention of the executioner to sin but rather to uphold an ideal. This is opposed to the hanging of a man because the killer holds a personal grievence with the executed and therefore is only seeking vengeance. His intent here is to purposefully commit a sin rather than uphold Justice. Because of this he has committed the act of consenting to kill while the righteous executioner has only consented to upholding Justice.
  In addition to these example Abelard says that a life without sin or the temptation to sin is none existent. We must struggle against our desire to sin in order for us to lead a moral life. The disposition of our mind at a point in time might make sinning more likely but in the end the individual must always willfully, knowledgeably consent to the perpetration of said act, even if that act is not carried out, in order to sin.