The sense of Papal right as paramount is seen still more plainly in the action of Nicholas 11. (1058-61). To check the disorders consequent upon the Papal elections and to establish the electoral process on a firm and permanent basis, he procured the passage at the synod of 1059 of a decree whereby the election of the Pope was henceforth to be in charge of the Roman 'cardi nals,' including members from all three clerical orders. The initiative was to lie with these, but they were then to procure the assent of the 'lloman people,' and a certain undefined right of participation was reserved to the Emperor. On these three elements—the Roman cardinals, the Roman people. and the Roman Emperor— rested the Papal constitution for the next two hundred years. The greatest conflicts of this period arose from attempts to define more pre cisely the limits of each element. On the whole, the cardinalate gained steadily upon flue other factors. and succeeded ultimately in winning exclusive eontrol. not, however. without de cisive modifications in its own make-up.
The Papacy was now definitely committed to the work of reform. The influence of Hildebrand grows more and more perceptible. Under his far-seeing direction what had been started as a purely moral movement becomes in the clearest sense a political one as well. Adding to the two articles. of the Cluny programme a third—the prohibition of lay investiture—he combined all three under the one general demand for the 'free dom of the Church' from all external control. (1) The celibacy of the secular clergy was to be the guarantee that the clergy should be free from all the obligations arising from and the social and economic duties that it. (2) The abolition of simony was to make the clergy free from all the complieations of worldly interest that must arise if clerical office were to be bought and sold for any valuable considera tion whatever. (3) The prohibition of lay in vestiture was to free the clergy from any re lation toward the State which might interfere with the exclusive control of all elmical inter ests by the supreme ecclesiastical authority. the Papacy itself. The effect of the first was to separate the priest from the family; of the second, to separate him from the temporal inter ests of the society about him; of the third, to cut him off from any secular service to the State. It was 'freedom' in the sense of a separation that must tend to place a gulf between the clergy and all purely secular interests. On the other hand. it is doubtful if any other process could have stayed the progress of a fatal secularization of the Church that threatened to absorb it en tirely in the life of the society of the full feudal period.
As to the question of :jimmy. all thinking men were agreed that it was an evil. The celi bacy of the clergy in the major orders was al ready well established in the habits of most of the European populations, and the sympathy of the masses was decidedly setting toward its extension to the minor orders as well. It was,
therefore, a well-considered policy that led Hil debrand from the moment of his accession as Pope Gregory VII. (1073-851 to throw his whole energy into the fight against the lay investiture.
The Moment chosen for the conflict with Ger many was most favorable. Henry III.. the vigorous champion of Imperial right and duty as the guardian of Papal honor. died in 1056, leaving a son. Henry IV., six years old. who was accepted as King under the regency of his pious mother. Agnes of Poitou. in 1073 this son was a clever, headstrong youth of :twenty three, already at odds with many parts of his kingdom, but prepared to press to the utmost all his royal rights. The first proclamation against lay investiture was in 1075. and, though couched in general term,. was plainly aimed at Germany. To give up the right of investiture would have meant for the German King the loss of the most important means of political control. and Henry threw himself upon the loyalty of his clerical subjects. A German synod at Worms 110701 denounced the Pope in unmeasured and threatened him with deposition. He replied by excommunicating the King, whose political ene mies utilized the excommunication as a weapon to keep him in a semi-imprisonment until Greg ory could carry out his purpose of settling the whole German question in person at a German assembly. Gregory was on hi, way to this meet ing at Augsburg when Henry IV.. leaving Ger many, hurried over the Alps, met the Pope in the famous at Canossa, and won from him the absolution which reinstated him in the al legiance of his subjects, and thus averted the grave political danger of a settlement of Ger man affairs by a Papal council on German soil. Through the long reign of Henry IV., under Gregory and his successor:. the tight went on. The Pope repeatedly excommunicated the King and sanctioned the election of anti-kings. The King replied in virtue of his Imperial rights, actual or to be, by 'deposing' and causing the election of a series of anti-popes. The im mediate question of the investiture was lost sight of in the larger issue—whether Church or State was to control. Henry V. (1106-25) had joined the Papacy against hi, lather. but Will, no sooner King himself than he was forced into an oppo-i• tion as much more dangerous as he was more powerful. hi WI he was able to force the Papacy into a momentary agreement that the clergy of the Empire should be exempt from the Imperial investiture on condition that they should surrender all their temporal propert3. This agreement was promptly rejected by those most interested on both sides, and led to the tinal settlement in the Concordat of Worms (11'•'), ?vhereby the dual nature of the clerical otlice once t14111Mla I and spiritual was recognized. The investiture with the spiritualities (ring and staff) was left to the Papacy, while that with the temporalities (sceptre) was held by the Em peror. Similar but less violent conflicts in France anti England led to a similar result.