The Growth of Papal Government

A central feature of medieval history was the long struggle for supremacy between the Papacy and the German "Holy Roman" Emperors. In AD 800, the Pope had crowned Charlemagne, King of the Franks, as Roman Emperor, "restoring" the Empire in the West, and establishing by implication the principle that the Papacy was the highest authority in Western Christendom, an authority that could make  and, perhaps, by further implication, unmake  Roman Emperors.

The Frankish line of Emperors went into abeyance by the end of the century, and their place was taken in the tenth century by a succession of German Emperors, while at the same time the Papacy fell into profound decadence. The German Emperors attempted to establish a regime of "caesaropapism," similar to that of Byzantium, whereby the Emperor was a sacral figure and the supreme head of Church as well as State, with the ability and right to make or depose bishops, including Popes. But, in the conventional interpretation, a wave of reform took hold in the Papacy, culminating with the great figure of Gregory VII, who humbled Emperor Henry IV at Canossa and thus definitively put an end to caesaropapism and established the Papacy itself as the highest fount of moral

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tal purposes of the sacerdotium by Conrad II, the first Salian emperor, is perhaps the most characteristic feature of his reign. Consequently, the criterion he applied to episcopal appointments and depositions was not so much that of suitability for the spiritual office, but rather that of usefulness to the crown. (p. 249) Yet the Church always extended farther, in simple geography, than the material power of the Emperors. Moreover, given the paucity of established imperial institutions, a la Byzantium, the symbolism of Rome itself was vital to imperial ideology and pretensions. An Emperor was merely "rex romanorum" until he could receive the Imperial crown in Rome  at the hands of the Pope. And as it evolved, the order of coronation itself emphasized the Emperor's subservience as merely the armed protector of the Papacy. The Imperial ideology contained the seeds of its own destruction. It was in the interest of Emperors to reform and revitalize the Church ... but the consequence would ultimately be to "reform" and revitalize the Papacy itself, a process which culminated in the papal reign of Gregory VII. Ullman emphasizes at the outset (p. 262) that "reform" is much too wea
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Approximate Word count = 1848
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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