For this assignment, you will be doing a "standard" essay exercise enhanced with a few resources from the WWW. In preparing your answer, be sure to read carefully the sources in your Roots of Western Civilization (pp. 90-91) for the counter arguments made by the two principal characters in this dispute, the Pope Gregory VII and the Emperor Henry IV.(1) ____________________________________________
Discuss the conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV over the issue of lay investiture, treating in particular the causes of the controversy, the actions of the contending parties, and the outcome of the struggle. What was at stake for each of the disputants and what were the ramifications of the struggle? Compare the "Dictates" of Pope Gregory with his treatment of Henry IV at Canossa (p. 90 of Roots.). Do you see him as a reformer or a despot?
For background reading, you may want to read the complete assertions in the famous Dictatus Papae of Gregory VII might have particularly rankled the emperor, the pope's forbidding of lay investiture in 1074 and 1080, the emperor's sharply worded response (January 24, 1076) to these papal proclamations, and the final resolution of the issue at the Concordat of Worms in 1122, long after both of the main antagonists had died.
====>> Responses are due NOT LATER THAN midnight on 13 October
1. Emperor Henry IV was accused by Pope Gregory
VII of simony and lay investiture in appointing his own choice
to be the archbishop of Milan. Gregory accordingly summoned Henry to Rome
to explain his conduct. Henry's answer was to convene in 1076 a synod of
German
bishops that declared Pope Gregory a usurper and unfit to occupy
the Roman See. In retaliation, Gregory excommunicated Henry and
deposed him, absolving his subjects from their oaths of allegiance.
Eventually, Henry was driven to make peace with the Holy Father because
of a revolt among the German nobles. Henry appeared before Gregory in January
1077 at Canossa,
a castle in the mountains of Italy. Dressed as a penitent, the emperor
stood barefoot in the snow for three days and begged forgiveness until
he was received "into the lap of the Holy Mother Church."