Catholic Historians: Please explain "investiture" to me

Factual Questions
1

So I’ve been working my way through J.B. Bury’s “Cambridge Medieval History”, a massive work, for the last several years. This is a work that was published in 5+ volumes over 100 years ago. I’ve been reading through this, in between novels, for several years now.

Currently, I’m reading about the various popes of the 11th century. One thing these different popes fought against was “lay investiture”.

Unfortunately, the text seems to assume that the reader knows what the hell “investiture” is. From what I’ve read in this text, the two big problems in the Roman Church during the time period in question were “simony” and “lay investiture”. Simony is easy enough to deduce from the context: people paying for church titles. Like, “I’ll pay you, lord, X gold if you will name me Bishop.” Instead of the proper course of actual priests being promoted to Bishop.

But I’m not getting exactly what “lay investiture” means. I know what “lay” means in this context, and I’m getting the idea that this is a case of lay nobles/kings naming bishops and/or priests/abbots, instead of the Pope assigning these men to their jobs.

But can a Catholic, or somebody more educated than I am, explain what the exact issue was?

2

Don’t know if it answers your full question, but Investiture Controversy. Basically the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor feuded over who can pick bishops. They hashed it out at the Concordat of Worms, which isn’t as cool as it sounds.

3

You have it pretty much right.

Simony is the sin of selling a church office, and if anyone was going to benefit from the selling of a church office, it wasn’t going to be a lay nobleman, so lay investiture was right out.

The Cambridge History is pretty hard going for the general reader, and out of date in somethings. I’d recommend a more modern narrative like Norman Cantor’s “The Civilization of the Middle Ages.”

ETA: Ninja’d!

4

Basically, the issue was this: you’ve got the Pope, who is supposed to be the boss of all the bishops and whatnot, and you’ve got a bunch of kings, who are supposed to the bosses of their respective realms.

So if you’ve got a town that needs a bishop, who gets to appoint (invest) him? The Pope would like to appoint a Catholic cleric who will represent the Church’s interests. The king would like to appoint a layman who will represent the king’s interests. Even better if he could extract a nice fee for the office.

During this time there were many lay bishops appointed by Holy Roman Emperors and other monarchs, and soon enough you had competing claimants for various titles, one being appointed by the Pope and the other by the nearby nobleman.

This came to a head when HRE Henry IV, denounced the Pope and said he alone ruled by the grace of God and so forth. The Pope excommunicated Henry IV, which greatly amused the motley collection of HRE nobles who were happy to support the Pope.

Then there was a bunch of infighting, popes and anti-popes, kings and anti-kings, and a sacking of Rome.

Eventually the Popes won; Henry V agreed to the Concordant of Worms which specified that kings could invest bishops with secular, authority only, and that only the Pope could rule in matters of the Church. This formalized the idea of Prince-Bishops, who simultaneously held noble titles and clerical offices.

Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the investiture controversy.

(A separate but similar (and likely more familiar) controversy occurred when a different Henry got all uppity in England.)

5

This is exactly what I’ve just finished reading, with Henry IV and Gregory VII and the relevant successors. I’m just about to read about the Concordat of Worms (it’s the next heading). I just thought my reading would be more understandable if I understood what, exactly, “lay investiture” meant. OTOH, I understand that Bury’s work is more or less an “overview”, rather than a detailed history.

For the record, I was raised as a Protestant Christian. My reading into medieval history has inspired me to investigate Orthodox Christianity, and I’ve discovered that my actual pastor is remarkably Orthodox. I just don’t know a lot about Catholicism and the Roman Church beyond what I’ve read.

6

Guelphs and Ghibellines.

7

Orthodox and Catholic doctrines are extremely similar. There are significant differences in organization. The Catholic Church of Rome has (in theory) a unified hierarchy, whereas the Orthodox churches are individual hierarchies. The Catholic Church also has a stronger focus on theology as such, part of the historical importance of universities. However, there hasn’t been a great deal of historic conflict between Orthodox and Catholic faiths on matters of dogma, although there have been a few historical difference. Most of which are functionally nonexistent now. (There was a whole argument on the filioque clause that we now all agree on, ferinstance.)

8

Yes, I should have added that the local, extremely small Orthodox church had fliers outside their building (they meet in a storefront downtown) explaining the differences between Orthodoxy/Catholicism/Protestantism. And most of their arguments against Protestantism fell flat versus what my Protestant pastor teaches. Because what he teaches falls right in line with the Orthodox position, for the most part.

My reading into medieval history actually makes me sympathize with the Orthodox position, particularly in the claim that the Roman Church added to the Nicene Creed (the filioque clause you mentioned? is that the bit about the procession of the Holy Spirit?)

9

At least it wasn’t as bad as the Diet of Worms.

10

Yes. But note that most Protestant traditions line up with the Roman Catholics rather than the Orthodox on this point (Protestantism having emerged within the Western church centuries after the filioque was adopted). The Moravians, I think, are the conspicuous exception.

As smiling bandit says, on most theological issues the Catholics and the Orthodox are extremely close. The main beef between them is ecclesiological rather than theological; the nature of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the degee of jurisdiction it gives him over bishops and churches outside Rome.

Protestants would agree with the Orthodox rejection of Catholic claims in this regard, but in fact most would go a lot further, many Protestant traditions having abandoned the whole idea of bishops altogether. Plus, Protestants would also reject a good deal of theology and ecclesiology that the Catholics and the Orthodox agree on.

11

Eh. I’ve been told that ‘the doctrinal differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy look tiny from the Catholic side, gaping from the Orthodox side’.

From what I understand, the Orthodox generally don’t believe in original sin in the way that Protestants and Catholics do, they allow remarriages (in some cases) on the basis of ‘economia’, they don’t have a unified teaching against contraception (Orthodox clergy are allowed to have differing opinions on the matter), they don’t believe in purgatory, and they don’t subscribe to substitutionary atonement theory.

12

I found this entire Cambridge Medieval History for $2.99 as a Kindle book. Given that it was pub;ished around 1910, I expected some … “old” scholoarship. But I see itg as a good starting point.

13

The Pope’s, rather, as they were not necessarily the same (see for example the troubles getting most of Europe to use the Roman Rite). A constant in the history of the Church as in any other large organization is power struggles, and specifically centralization vs local management; IamBoss vs consensus is another, closely-linked big one.

Again, not necessarily a layman (in fact if he was a layman he’d have to get ordained anyway), so long as it was someone willing to say “yes your majesty” and/or to pay a nice fee… or one of the king’s extra sons, who’d go from “drain on the Crown” to “has a nice cushy job”.

14

As an example, consider Frederick, Duke of York, second son of George III, who was the Bishop of Osnaburgh in Hanover, without taking holy orders.

15

The church held a great deal of land (and hence money) in most medieval countries. Who controlled that was part of the issue in picking bishops. Plus, the local church officials had a great deal of influence at court, and as Henry VIII found out in England, could make some fairly significant decisions. Additionally, the usual parking spot for younger sons ( the “spare” of “heir and a spare”) was the military or the clergy. Medieval nobility ran on a web of gifts and favours to curry influence and get support, so the ability to hand out plum positions was very useful to a monarch. For all these reasons, the local king wanted to be able to pick his bishops; while the church had the same idea, but wanted someone more supportive of the church’s interests.

16

And here you can get it for free. A publication date in 1910 (or 1911, for that matter) puts the book irrevocably and indisputably in the public domain under American law, which means it no longer has a copyright owner: It can legally be sold, given away, and used as the basis for new works, as every movie producer who’s ever used a public domain soundtrack, or played a public domain film in the background, can tell you.

17

It wasn’t just a case of nobles interfering with the church. The nobles could make a strong argument that tradition was on their side. Bishops (including the Pope) were generally chosen by lay people for the first thousand years or so of Christianity.

18

Well, possibly a bit of an oversimplification.

Yes, bishops were not usually (or normatively) chosen by the pope until modern times. That would have been impossible. Prior to the development of modern communications it could have been weeks, months or years before Rome became aware of a diocesan vacancy. And, even if the diocese was to be left vacant until Rome did become aware, Rome would not be in a position to know who the credible candidates for the post were, still less to make a judgment between them. And this persisted long after the investiture controversy was ancient history; it’s not until well into the nineteenth century that we reach a point where most Catholic bishops are appointed from Rome. And it’s still not the case that all are.

It’s not quite right, though, to say that bishops “were generally chosen by lay people for the first thousand years or so of Christianity”. For the first thousand years (and considerably longer) lay people - the king, the duke, local burghers, etc - were normally involved in the process by which bishops were chosen. But so were clerics - the clergy of the diocese concerned, particularly the senior clergy, and the bishops of neighbouring dioceses. Precise practices and procedures varied widely from place to place, as did the relative roles, and degree of control or influence of laity and clerics in the process, and whatever the formal position each side had to take account of the sensitivities of the other. And even far-away Rome had some influence - when a metropolitan (archbishop) was appointed, word was sent to Rome (or, occasionally, the new Archbishop went on pilgrimage to Rome) so that Rome could send him the pallium - literally, a particular liturgical vestment but, symbolically, a confirmation of his authority within the church. Rome could (and occasionally did) withhold the pallium, which could severely affect the archbishop’s status and credibility, so there was a strong incentive not to choose an archbishop that Rome would object to.

Unsurprisingly, in general, the closer you were to Rome, the more influential Rome was in the selection of your bishop.

The Pope was chosen by the senior clergy of the diocese of Rome, and by the bishops of the immediately adjacent dioceses. Lay people in the diocese of Rome had no formal role in the process, but were not slow to express views, and the clerical electors were generally sensitive to popular opinion. The Emperor claimed a right of veto - he couldn’t tell the electors who to elect, but he could tell them not to elect a particular candidate to whom he objected.

The investiture controversy was not really about whether bishops would be appointed by the pope or by the king, but whether the process of choosing bishops would be controlled by, and ultimately derive its validity from, the church or the state. At the time, it was never contemplated that popes would appoint all bishops.

In regard to lay people being appointed bishops, Northern Piper points to a Duke of York being appointed Bishop of Osnabruck. This wasn’t an isolated case. Ironically, it is largely because the church won the investiture controversy that such things became practical. It was always the case that both church and civil authorities accepted that a bishop had to be ordained. If the successful candidate had not already been ordained to the episcopacy, then he had to be ordained before he could take up his office. If (which happened more rarely, but did happen) he had not even been ordained a priest, then he had to be ordained as both a priest and a bishop. But the outcome of the investiture controversy was that a bishop owed his spiritual jurisdiction to the church, but his civil status - including the revenues of the diocese - to the civil power. The result was that a layman could be appointed, and could enjoy the diocesan revenues for many years, without being ordained and taking up the spiritual aspects of the office. Some obliging cleric was appointed to deputise for him in the discharge of his spiritual functions until he would be ordained (which, of course, in the case of the Duke of York and many similar cases never happened). If the bishop-elect irrevocably decided not to accept ordination, he was supposed to resign the civil entitlements of his office. But, oddly enough, people in this situation often remained undecided for years, even for decades.

19

Yeah, I know about all that. But this work was something I stumbled upon very shortly after I bought my Kindle, and I wasn’t yet aware of the various sources for free, public domain works. And $2.99 is still one heck of a bargain.

UDS - thanks for the detailed reply.

20

I was trying to summarize a thousand years of history in a couple of lines, so oversimplification is going to happen.

The thing to remember is that while we often think of Christianity in its modern form, there was a long period when it was not the mainstream. Christianity spent its first few centuries as a minority faith. If you had gone to Rome in the year 200, most people couldn’t have told you who the Pope was. Christianity was just a bunch of isolated communities. The organization that you described wasn’t going to exist for a couple more centuries.