The Concordat of Worms
The Investiture Controversy had run since 1075, when Gregory VII forbade lay rulers to invest bishops with ring and staff. Bishops in the Empire were also great landholders and administrators, so whoever appointed them controlled a substantial part of its government; the quarrel had produced the excommunication of Henry IV, his penance at Canossa, two decades of civil war in Germany and a line of rival popes. The settlement at Worms in September 1122 worked by separating what had been treated as one office. In two paired documents, Calixtus II granted that elections in Germany would take place in the emperor's presence and that the elected bishop would receive his regalia — his lands, rights and secular jurisdiction — from the emperor by the touch of a sceptre; Henry V renounced investiture with ring and staff, the symbols of spiritual office, and conceded free canonical election. In practice the emperor retained decisive influence over who became a bishop in Germany. What he lost was the claim that the office was his to give.
- Year: 1122 CE
- Category: Religious
