The Investiture Controversy.

In 1075 conflict broke out between Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire and Pope Gregory VII. 
Initially the disagreement centered on the right of investiture i.e. the power to appoint bishops,
but soon the conflict escalated to encompass the overall problem of the relationship between
sacred and secular authority.  The two documents below present some of the major issues and
arguments.

Letter from Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII,  (1076)

Henry, King not by usurpation but by holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, now no Pope but
false monk: 

Such greeting as this hast thou merited through thy disturbances, for there is no rank in the
Church but thou hast brought upon it, not honor but disgrace, not a blessing but a curse. To
mention a few notable cases out of the many, thou hast not only dared to assail the rulers of the
holy Church, the anointed of the Lord, archbishops, bishops, and priests, but thou hast trodden
them under foot like slaves ignorant of what their master is doing. By so crushing them thou hast
won the favor of the common herd; thou hast regarded them all as knowing nothing, thyself alone
as knowing all things. Yet this knowledge thou hast exerted, not for their advantage but for their
destruction; so that with reason we believe St. Gregory, whose name thou hast usurped,
prophesied of thee when he said, "The pride of the magistrate commonly waxes great if the
number of those subject to him be great, and he thinks that he can do more than they all." 

We, forsooth, have endured all this in our anxiety to save the honor of the apostolic see(1), but
thou hast mistaken our humility for fear, and hast, accordingly, ventured to attack the royal power
conferred upon us by God, and threatened to divest us of it. As if we had received our kingdom
from thee!  As if the kingdom and the empire were in thy hands, not in God's! For our Lord Jesus
Christ did call us to the kingdom, although he has not called thee to the priesthood: that thou hast
attained by the following steps. 

By craft abhorrent to the profession of monk, thou hast acquired wealth; by wealth, influence; by
influence, arms; by arms, a throne of peace. And from the throne of peace thou hast destroyed
peace; thou hast turned subjects against their governors, for thou, who wert not called of God,
hast taught that our bishops, truly so called, should be despised. Thou hast put laymen above their
priests, allowing them to depose or condemn those whom they themselves had received as
teachers from the hand of God through the laying on of bishops' hands. 

Thou hast further assailed me also, who, although unworthy of anointing, have nevertheless been
anointed to the kingdom, and who, according to the traditions of the holy fathers, am subject to
the judgment of God alone, to be deposed upon no charge save that of deviation from the faith,
which God avert!  For the holy fathers by their wisdom committed the judgment and deposition of
even Julian the Apostate(2) not to themselves but to God alone.  Likewise the true pope, Peter,
himself exclaims: "Fear God. Honor the king." But thou, who dost not fear God, art dishonoring
me, his appointed one. Wherefore, St. Paul, since he spared not an angel of heaven if he should
preach other than the gospel, has not excepted thee, who dost teach other doctrine upon earth.
For he says, "If any one, whether I, or an angel from heaven, shall preach the gospel other than
that which has been preached to you, he shall be damned." 

Thou, therefore, damned by this curse and by the judgment of all our bishops and ourselves, come
down and relinquish the apostolic chair which thou hast usurped.  Let another assume the seat of
St. Peter, who will not practice violence under the cloak of religion, but will teach St. Peter's
wholesome doctrine. I, Henry, king by the grace of God, together with all our bishops, say unto
thee: "Come down, come down, to be damned throughout all eternity!" 

Letter of Gregory VII to Bishop Hermann of Metz (1081) 

Bishop Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved brother in Christ, Hermann,
Bishop of Metz, greeting and the apostolic benediction:

It is doubtless through God's grace that thou art ready, as we hear, to endure trials and dangers in
the defense of the truth. . . .  However, thy request to be supported and fortified by a letter from
us directed against those persons who are constantly asserting, with perverse tongues, that the
holy and apostolic see had no authority to excommunicate Henry--the scorner of Christian law,
the destroyer of churches and of the empire, the patron and companion of heretics--nor to absolve
any one from the oath of fidelity to him, hardly seems necessary to us when so many and such
absolutely decisive warrants are to be found in the pages of Holy Scriptures. . . . 

Shall not an office instituted by laymen--by those even who did not know God--be subject to that
office which the providence of God Almighty has instituted for his own honor, and in compassion
given to the world? For his Son, even as he is unquestioningly believed to be God and man, so is
he considered the chief of priests, sitting on the right hand of the Father and always interceding
for us. Yet he despised a secular kingdom, over which the men of this world swell with pride, and
came of his own will to the priesthood of the cross. Whereas all know that kings and princes are
descendants of men who were ignorant of God,  and who, by arrogance, robbery, perfidy,
murder--in a word by almost every crime--at the prompting of the prince of this world, the devil,
strove with blind avarice and intolerable presumption to gain the mastery over their equals, that is,
over mankind. 

To whom, indeed, can we better compare them, when they seek to make the priests of God bend
to their feet, than to him who is chief of all the sons of pride and who tempted the highest Pontiff
himself, the chief of priests, the Son,of the Most High, and promised to him all the kingdoms of
the world, saying, "All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me"? (3)

Who doubts that the priests of Christ should be regarded as the fathers and masters of kings and
princes, and of all the faithful? Is it not evidently hopeless folly for a son to attempt to domineer
over his father, a pupil over his master, or for any one, by iniquitous exactions, to claim power
over him by whom he himself, as he acknowledges, can be bound and loosed both on earth and in
heaven? Constantine, the great lord of all kings and princes throughout nearly the whole world,
plainly understood this, as the blessed Gregory observes in a letter to the emperor Mauritius, for
Constantine took his seat after all the bishops in the holy Council of Nicaea;(4) he presumed to
issue no decisions superior to theirs, but addressed them as gods, and declared that they should
not be subject to his judgment, but that be was dependent upon their will. . . 

Armed accordingly with such decrees and authority, many bishops have excommunicated, in some
cases kings, in others emperors. If the names of such princes are asked for, it may be said that the
blessed pope Innocent excommunicated the emperor Arcadius for consenting to the expulsion of
St. John Chrysostom from his see. Likewise another Roman pontiff, Zacharias, deposed a king of
the Franks, not so much for his iniquities, as for the reason that he was not fitted to exercise his
great power.   And he substituted Pippin, father of the emperor Charles the Great, in his place,
releasing all the Franks from the oath of fealty which they had sworn to him, as, indeed, the holy
Church frequently does, by its abundant authority, when it absolves servitors from the fetters of
an oath sworn to such bishops as are deposed by apostolic sentence from their pontifical rank. 

The blessed Ambrose -- who, although a saint, was yet not bishop over the whole Church --
excommunicated and excluded from the Church the emperor Theodosius the Great for a fault
which was not looked upon as very grave by other priests.(5) He shows, too, in his writings that
gold does not so far excel lead in value as the priestly dignity transcends the royal power. He
speaks in this fashion near the beginning of his pastoral letter: "The honor and sublimity of
bishops, brethren, is beyond all comparison. To compare them to resplendent kings and diademed
princes would be far more unworthy than to compare the base metal lead to gleaming gold. For
one may see how kings and princes bow their necks before the knees of priests, and kiss their
right hands so as to believe themselves protected by their prayers." . . .

Furthermore every Christian king, when he comes to die, seeks as a poor suppliant the aid of a
priest, that he may escape hell's prison, may pass from the darkness into the light, and at the
judgment of God may appear absolved from the bondage of his sins. Who, in his last hour,
whether layman or priest, has ever implored the aid of an earthly king for the salvation of his soul?
And what king or emperor is able, by reason of the office he holds, to rescue a Christian from the
power of the devil through holy baptism, to number him among the sons of God and to fortify him
with the divine unction? Who of them can by his own words make the body and blood of our
Lord, the greatest act in the Christian religion? Or who of them possesses the power of binding
and loosing in heaven and on earth? From all of these considerations it is clear how greatly the
priestly office excels in power. 

Who of them can ordain a single clerk in the holy Church, much less depose him for any fault? For
in the ranks of the Church a greater power is needed to depose than to ordain. Bishops may
ordain other bishops, but can by no means depose them without the authority of the apostolic see.
Who, therefore, of even moderate understanding, can hesitate to give priests the precedence over
kings?  Then, if kings are to be judged by priests for their sins, by whom should they be judged
with better right than by the Roman pontiff ? 

Source:   James Harvey Robinson, Readings in European History, v. 1 (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1904) 
		pp. 279-281; 284-287

Notes:

1.  Apostolic See.  Refers to the official position of the Pope as Bishop of Rome

2.  Julian the Apostate.  A fourth century Roman emperor who rejected Christianity and
attempted to revive the traditional Roman religion.

3.  "All this I will give to thee..."  Gregory is referring to the passage in the New Testament in
which Christ goes into the wilderness to pray and it tempted by the devil.

4.  The Council of Nicaea in 325 was presided over by the Roman emperor Constantine

5.  "The blessed Ambrose.." refers to Bishop Ambrose of Milan who in the year 390
excommunicated the Emperor Theodosius for ordering the massacre of the inhabitants of the
Greek city of Thessalonika