Påve gregorius vii
At the same time, the pope sent a verbal message threatening not only the ban of the Church against the emperor, but the deprivation of his crown. The high-handed demands and threats of the pope infuriated Henry and his court, and their answer was the hastily convened national synod of Worms on 24 January In the higher ranks of the German clergy, Gregory had many enemies, and the Roman huvudregel Hugo Candidus , once on intimate terms with Gregory but now his opponent, hurried to Germany for the occasion.
Pope Gregory VII was one of the few popes elected by acclamation. Thirty years before, Henry III had deposed three unworthy claimants to the papacy, a service acknowledged by the Church and public opinion. Contemporary evidence suggests that the excommunication of Henry made a profound impression both in Germany and Italy. Gregory was born Hildebrand Italian : Ildebrando in the town of Sovana , in the County of Grosseto , now southern Tuscany , the son of a blacksmith.
Gregory VII replied with a harsh letter dated 8 December , in which he accused Henry of breaching his word and of continuing to support excommunicated councillors. In another, Henry pronounced him deposed, and required the Romans to choose a new pope. In the two years following Gregory's election, the Saxon rebellion fully occupied Henry and forced him to come to terms with the pope at any cost. Mary on the Aventine , where his uncle was reportedly abbot of a monastery on the Aventine Hill.
On the death of Alexander II on 21 April , as the obsequies were being performed in the Lateran Basilica , there arose a loud outcry from the clergy and people: "Let Hildebrand be pope! The effectiveness of this sentence depended entirely on Henry's subjects, above all on the German princes.
Pope Saint Gregory VII
In the same year Gregory VII summoned a council in the Lateran palace, which condemned simony and confirmed celibacy for the Church's clergy. Candidus declaimed a list of accusations against the pope before the assembly, which resolved that Gregory had forfeited the papacy. Gregory VII's first attempts in foreign policy were towards a reconciliation with the Normans of Robert Guiscard ; in the end the two parties did not meet.
Clemente, who rushed into a pulpit and began to declaim to the people. Gregory VII's earliest pontifical letters clearly acknowledged these events, and thus helped defuse doubts about his election and popularity. Henry sent Count Eberhard to Lombardy to combat the Patarenes ; nominated the cleric Tedald to the archbishopric of Milan , settling a prolonged and contentious question; and made overtures to the Norman duke Robert Guiscard.
Cowdrey writes, "[Gregory VII] was surprisingly flexible, feeling his way and therefore perplexing both rigorous collaborators His zeal, moral force, and religious conviction, however, ensured that he should retain to a remarkable degree the loyalty and service of a wide variety of men and women. These decrees were further stressed, under menace of excommunication, the next year 24—28 February.
At the same time, Gregory was menaced by Cencio I Frangipane , who on Christmas night surprised him in church and kidnapped him, though he was released the following day. Roland of Parma faced the pope with these decisions before the synod which had just assembled in the Lateran Basilica. On 22 May , the Feast of Pentecost , he received ordination as a priest , and he was consecrated a bishop and enthroned as pope on 29 June, the Feast of St.
Peter's Chair. Many of the accusations against him may have been expressions of personal dislike, liable to suspicion from the very fact that they were not raised to attack his promotion until several years later. For the moment the members were frightened, but there soon arose such a storm of indignation that only the calming words of Gregory saved the envoy's life. Since the death of Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, the strength of the German monarchy had been seriously weakened, and his untried son Henry IV had to contend with great internal difficulties, presenting an opportunity for Gregory to strengthen the Church.
In one document full of accusations, the bishops renounced their allegiance to Gregory. In May Henry did penance at Nuremberg —in the presence of the papal legates—to atone for his continued friendship with the members of his council who had been banned by Gregory; he took an oath of obedience, and promised his support in the work of reforming the Church. In later times, Gregory VII became an exemplar of papal supremacy , and his memory was invoked both positively and negatively, reflecting later writers' attitude to the Catholic Church and the papacy.
The council sent two bishops to Italy, who then procured a similar act of deposition from the Lombard bishops at the synod of Piacenza. One of the great reforming popes, he initiated the Gregorian Reform , and is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy , his dispute with Emperor Henry IV to establish the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals.
It was debated, at the time and since, whether this extraordinary outburst in favour of Hildebrand by clergy and people was wholly spontaneous, or could have been pre-arranged. He was the first pope to introduce a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, which had until then commonly married, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] and also attacked the practice of simony. On the following day, 22 February , Gregory solemnly pronounced a sentence of excommunication against Henry IV, divested him of his royal dignity, and absolved his subjects of their sworn allegiance.
But it is klar from Gregory's own account of the circumstances of his election, [ 25 ] in his Epistle 1 and Epistle 2, that it was conducted in a very irregular fashion, contrary to the Constitution of the Pope of This ecclesiastical statute forbade a papal election to begin until the third day after a pope's burial.
Gregory VII, Saint Pope
He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope. Pietro in Vincoli. Though Gregory was hailed as one of the greatest of the långnovell pontiffs after his reforms proved successful, during his own reign he was denounced bygd some for his autocratic use of papal powers. In Leo sent Hildebrand as his legate to Tours in France in the wake of the controversy created by Berengar of Tours.
He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.