Julian Mayugba
Professor Antonio Acevedo
HIS 210-ONR01
27 April 2017
Unit 6 AS1: Analyzing Sources: Popes and Rulers
“Henry, king not by usurpation, but by the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, not pope, but false monk.” This quote from the Letter of Henry IV to Gregory VII portrays a hostile environment. It depicts two leaders, with one of the leaders refusing to acknowledge the other’s title. What was once an alliance turned into a bitter rivalry. The relationship between the popes and the rulers during the Middle Ages were at first, mutual, but as time progressed, these two sides clashed due to internal power struggles.
The relationship between the papacy and the medieval emperors were initially mutual. The relationship between the Carolingians and the papacy, specifically, was mutually beneficial. Charles Martel of the Carolingians was a successful, ruthless, warmongering ruler of the Franks
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during the 7th century. He had great power and military strength and considered himself the” chief and army commander” of the Frankish people. Despite this, the Carolingians were not the ruling family. This title belonged to the Merovingians, who were direct decedents of Clovis, a previous ruler. Charles Martel’s son, Pepin, wanted to take overthrow this existing ruling family, and used a method that did not involve military force. This alternative method of gaining the power involved the papacy. Pepin sought the help from the widely accepted religious leader, Pope Zachary. Pope Zachary accepted Pepin’s request and a new alliance was formed. Both sides gained from this relationship. Pepin gained the ability to take over as the ruling family of the Franks, and the papacy gained military assistance. One important military conflict was the Franks expelling the papacy’s neighbors, the Lombards. The papacy gained a strip of land which was called “The Donation of Pepin.” This increase in land under the influence of the papacy increased the reach of the papacy and marked the start of the growth of the papacy’s power. Simultaneously, another document emerged which allowed the papacy to claim land and power from emperors up until the sixteenth century. This document was called the Donation of Constantine. This document was later investigated, and proven to be a forgery, but the document shows an idea of the mindset of the members of the papacy. This mindset can be seen during the Investiture Controversy, a conflict between the papacy and the Western, Holy Roman Empire. The conflict lasted from the years 1075 to 1122. From the Investiture Controversy, four important documents give context to the mindset and reasons why the controversy started. These documents were the Dictatus Papae; The Letter of Henry IV to Gregory VII; Gregory VII’s First Excommunication and Deposition of Henry IV; and the Concordat of Worms. Prior to the start of the conflict, Emperor Henry III pushed for reformation within the Roman papacy, and appointed four reform-minded popes. The emperor had died young, which resulted in a child to be the successor of the kingdom. As a result of the lack of leadership after Henry III’s death, radical reformers took control of the papacy. One of these reformers was a man named Hildebrand, who took the name Gregory VII as pope. The Dictatus Papae was a set of unreleased church canons, or laws and traditions that rose during the reign of Gregory VII. Within this document, the mindset of the papacy can be seen. Based on the document, the pope was a man with massive. This is seen in the 12th, 18th, 19th, and 26th canon. The 12th canon explains that the Pope has the power to dispose emperors. The 18th canon explains that the Pope’s word cannot be annulled by anyone, and the Pope has the power to annul the statements of others. The 19th canon states that no one can judge the Pope. The 26th canon explains that someone cannot be regarded as “Catholic,” if they do not follow the word of the church. This document shows that the Pope is all-mighty, but what happens when someone challenges the Pope and his word? An example of one challenging the pope’s rule can be seen in the Letter of Henry IV to Gregory VII and Gregory VII’s First Excommunication and Deposition of Henry IV.
The Letter of Henry IV was a response letter to Pope Gregory VII’s initial letter. Pope Gregory VII’s letter demanded Henry IV to obey papal mandates or face consequences. Henry IV’s reply essentially denounced Pope Gregory VII, stating that he was a false monk and his rule was not legitimate. The reply by Henry IV resulted in his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII. Referring back to the Dictatus Papae, the 19th canon was broken, and the 12th and 26th canon had been enacted. This exchange of letters marked the start of this conflict and had lasted until the resolution was found with The Concord of Worms. The Concord of Worms, was the final document that resolved this conflict. Both sides of this conflict were exhausted, and successors of the papacy and throne ended the conflict. This resolution resulted in the peace between the two sides and the Church recovering its
possessions. To conclude, the nature of the relationship between the papacy and the rulers of the medieval era can be simplified to two words: Alliances and Power Struggles. Alliances marked the start of the power growth of the papacy. Henry III’s reformation based agenda had caused an internal power struggle at his death due to a child successor. Due to this power struggle, a radical reformer had managed to acquire the title of Pope, resulting in this conflict between two ideologies.
Henry is the mirror of all Christian kings. He is a great king. He is
Einhard, in his The Life of Charlemagne, makes clear the fundamental integration of politics and religion during the reign of his king. Throughout his life, Charles the Great endeavored to acquire and use religious power to his desired ends. But, if Charlemagne was the premiere monarch of the western world, why was religious sanction and influence necessary to achieve his goals? In an age when military power was the primary means of expanding one's empire, why did the most powerful military force in Europe go to such great lengths to ensure a benevolent relationship with the church? One possibility may be found in the tremendous social and political influence of Rome and her papacy upon the whole of the continent. Rather than a force to be opposed, Charlemagne viewed the church as a potential source of political power to be gained through negotiation and alliance. The relationship was one of great symbiosis, and both componants not only survived but prospered to eventually dominate western Europe. For the King of the Franks, the church provided the means to accomplish the expansion and reformation of his empire. For the Holy Roman Church, Charles provided protection from invaders and new possibilities for missionary work.
Pope Urban II was sought by Alexius Comnenus, a Byzantine Emperor who wanted the papacy to help his army hold off the advancing Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. The reason for Alexius Comnenus contacting the pope rather than another emperor or monarch wasn’t just the fact they were secular, but because the pope would have more power to persuade the people. The Gregorian movement in 1050-80 was ultimately was responsible for the new instilled power of the papacy’s position over nonreligious rulers. The pope agreed to aid the Byzantine emperor, but he also had his own agenda when it came to the military advances and the new power of his position. The papacy did not intend to only help the Byzantine Empire but to further save all of Christendom from being overrun.
In the play Henry V written by Shakespeare. Henry was presented as the ideal Christian king. His mercy, wisdom, and other characteristics demonstrated the behavior of a Christian king. Yet at the same time he is shown to be man like any other. The way he behaves in his past is just like an ordinary man. But in Henry’s own mind he describes himself as “the mirror of all Christian kings” and also a “true lover of the holly church.
Carleton- Munro, Dana. The Speech of Pope Urban II. At Clermont, 1095. The American Historical Review. 11. no. 2 (1906): 231.
In 768 A.D., Charlemagne at the age of 26, along with his brother Carloman inherited the kingdom of Franks. However, in 771 A.D. Carloman died, making Charlemagne the sole ruler of the kingdom. At this time the northern part of Europe was out of order and unruly. In the south, the Roman Catholic Church was asserting itself alongside the Lombard kingdom in Italy. While in Charlemagne’s own kingdom, the people were becoming and acting as barbarians and neglecting education and faith.
Throughout the middle ages, many empires were working on expanding their territory, but it was not always a success unless they had the appropriate leadership to guide them in the right direction. The main empire that grew to extraordinary lengths is that of the Roman Empire. Through many conquests and battles and with an amicable government, it attained its fortune. However, on the other hand, there was another government that shared similarities with that of Rome; this was the empire of Charlemagne, otherwise known as the Carolingian Empire, but it failed to have a prosperous eternity.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century church theologian, Martin Luther, wrote the 95 Theses questioning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In this essay I will discuss: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther wanted to reform, what Martin’s specific criticism of the pope was, and the current practices Pope Francis I is interested in refining in the Roman Catholic Church today.
Luther uses harsh words to describe the popes and the bishops by calling them names such as “humbug”, “block head”, and “hypocrite”. According to Martin Luther’s Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, it states “He might well make a man into a hypocrite or a humbug, and block head, but never a Christian or spiritual man”. Martin Luther believes that the priests, bishops, and popes are not different from the Christian people. Martin Luther points out that Christians were baptized and read the Bible, so why do the popes receive so much authority and power than Christians. In the Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther questions “Why are your life and limb, your property and honor, so cheap and mine not, inasmuch as we are all Christians and have the same baptism, the same faith, the same Spirit, and all the rest?”. Therefore, Martin Luther believes that the popes, bishops, and priests are given too much authority and power even though the popes, bishops, and priests do not possess that many special abilities. Martin Luther claims that everyone is a priest since the Christian people can interpret and read the Bible, carry the same faith and spirit, and were baptized just like the popes, priests, and bishops
In 1162, Henry II, king of England, appointed Thomas Becket, as Archbishop of Canterbury. This was the most important religious position in England. No-one was surprised by Henry’s choice as both he and Thomas were very good friends. They enjoyed hunting, playing jokes and socialising together. Becket was known to be a lover of wine and a good horse rider. Henry II loved to ride as well but his personality was troubled by his fearsome temper. He tried to keep his temper under control by working very hard as it distracted him from things that might sparked off his temper.
She examines 6 popes between 1470-1530 who she claims lead in a way similar to politicians. They lost touch with the common people both emotionally and intellectually. A little known cleric led the revolution challenging papacy that culminated in the reformation of the church. In that context, Barbara outlines that the popes were venal, immoral, and their power politics was calamitous. The faithful were distressed by their leadership, which ignored all the protests and the signs that a revolt was coming. In the end, the papal constituency lost almost half of its followers to Protestants. Barbara says that these people were driven by the greed and the urge to create a family empire that would outlive them. This chapter sums up the essence of folly in these major failures, lack of a fixed policy, over extravagance, and the illusion that their rule was
Henry IV is a play that concerns itself with political power and kingship in English history. References to kingship are prevalent throughout the play, especially in the depiction of the characters. Although most of the characters in this play could teach us about kingship, I would like to focus my attention to Prince Henry. I think that this character helps us to best understand what kingship meant at this particular time in history.
The Church was organised into a hierarchical system that sustained the Church’s stability and control over the people and lower clergy, by organising them into different groups. First there were the ordinary believers, the citizens of the kingdom who followed the Christian faith. Then there was the clergy, the members who devoted their lives to the church. Each group of the clergy was assigned specific functions by the clergy nobles to help run the Church competently. Amongst all the clergy associates, the Pope was at the top, he had the equivalent if not more power than the ruling monarch and was in charge of all political affairs and administered the clergy. He was able to dictate political laws and even comment on the Monarch’s decisions. Under the Pope, there were the bishops. The bishops directed church courts and managed cases correlated to the public such as marriage, wills and other public predicaments. Priests held religious services that consisted of sacraments, baptisms and the usual Sabbath services. The monks and nuns received manual labour that required helping clean the monasteries and assist the needy. Educated monks copied manuscripts of medieval and ancient knowledge in the Scriptorium. Finally...
The Reformation, a schism that took place around the start of the 14th century, occurred due to people being fed up with the Catholic Church’s misuse and exploitation of power. The Church had run into this power through issues that occurred centuries earlier. Following a major disagreement between Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII over who had the right to appoint clergymen in the year 1075, the church and the state fell into a great power struggle. The conflict, which had tarnished the relationship between the two, was finally resolved in 1122 by Pope Calistus II and Henry V. This resolution was sealed between the church and the state by a peace agreement called the Concordat of Worms. Ultimately, however, the Concordat of Worms failed to fix the outstanding issues between the two parties. In fact, it actually brought more theoretical power to the church. As a result, the Church attempted to restructure their control of
Perhaps no other event was as influential to the rise of papacy in Rome as the decline of the Roman empire. With the decline of the empire, the church became the last refuge of stability. Without the protection of the empire, Rome was subject to poverty, disrepair, and attack from enemies.1 The rise of the papacy was a response to this situation. It was further cemented by the leadership of such men as Leo I and Gregory I, the latter sometimes referred to as the father of the medieval papacy.2 Finally, the granting of lands and authority to the bishop of Rome greatly increased the power of the Roman church.3