John D. Beetham

17 October 2001

Paschal II and the End of the Investiture Controversy

          When Rainerius, cardinal-priest of San Clemente, was elected as Pope Paschal II in August 1099, he faced the difficult task of resolving the conflicts that had broken into the open during the pontificate of Gregory VII and continued under Urban II. At the time he was elected, the papacy itself was in schism, since the antipope Clement (Wibert of Ravenna) was still alive and active. Eleventh-century attempts to end simony and clerical concubinage were still a cause for discord. Most important, the papacy and the empire remained divided over the question of lay investiture. In some ways Paschal II is the forgotten man of the investiture controversy. His predecessors Gregory and Urban, as well as his successor Calixtus, have tended to receive much more attention, despite the fact that Paschal’s pontificate was the longest of any pope during the period of the controversy, and that the foundation for a resolution of the conflict was laid while he was pope.

          The problem of the papal schism solved itself fairly quickly. Soon after Paschal’s election, the antipope died, leaving Paschal as the sole legitimate pope. Though other antipopes were appointed in the future, none posed as serious a threat as Clement. According to Morris, the issues of simony and concubinage ceased to occupy the papacy’s attention, and were dropped, at least for the time being (C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 154-155).

That left the investiture controversy as the remaining difficult issue. Though the issue had led to open conflict with the empire, the prohibition of lay investiture affected the relations of the papacy with all governments in western Europe, and separate understandings had to be reached with each. In England, the question came to a head while Anselm was archbishop of Canterbury. He was forced to go into exile twice while the question of what to do with bishops who had received lay investiture was debated. Eventually, the papacy decided to allow such bishops to stay in office until the king, Henry I, reformed his behavior. While this understanding appeared to be a compromise, in effect the king of England retained the right to appoint and invest his bishops (Morris, 157).

The situation in France was perhaps the easiest to handle and proved a useful precedent for handling the empire. French canonists such as Ivo of Chartres, even during the time of Urban II, had interpreted the decrees against lay investiture to apply only to the spiritual aspects of a bishop’s office. There was no reason, in their minds, why a king could not invest a bishop with temporal authority. The position of the French canonists became the basis for an agreement between Paschal II and the French king, Louis VI (Morris, 156, 158).

As was the case during the pontificates of Paschal’s predecessors, the conflict with the empire was harder to manage. Hopes for a quick end to the dispute were raised by the revolt of Henry V, culminating in his father’s death at Liege in 1106. In that same year, Paschal held a council at Guastala (a city on the Po in northern Italy) which reaffirmed the basic ruling against lay investiture that had been set forth by Gregory and Urban.

Things came to a head when Henry visited Italy in 1111 for his imperial coronation. Prior to the coronation, he and Paschal negotiated an agreement in which the emperor would have returned the patrimony of Peter to the pope and given up investiture in return for bishops in the empire giving up their regalia. Here, regalia most likely referred to lands held specifically because of grants from the king, rather than lands or revenues inherited by a bishopric (on this distinction, see M. J. Wilks, “Ecclesiastica and Regalia: Papal Investiture Policy from the Council of Guastala to the First Lateran Council, 1106-1123,” Studies in Church History 7 (1971): 69-85; U.-R. Blumenthal, “Patrimonia and Regalia in 1111,” in Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. K. Pennington and R. Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), 9-20). Had the agreement been ratified, it would have changed the position of bishops radically. Along with the regalia, bishops would have had to give up their function as secular lords and would have lost their position at court. In the event, however, when the agreement was to be read out at Henry’s coronation ceremony, a protest by many bishops, possibly at Henry’s instigation, interrupted the proceedings. Henry then seized Paschal and his supporters. After two months of captivity, Paschal issued a privilege at Ponte Mammolo which allowed Henry the right to invest bishops. Paschal also promised to crown Henry emperor and took an oath not to excommunicate him in the future.

Needless to say, this privilege was not well-received among reformers, who called on Paschal to repudiate the privilege (or the pravilegium, as some termed it) and excommunicate the emperor. One year after the events just described, a council was held in the Lateran. At this council, Paschal managed to appease his critics by revoking the privilege, claiming that it was invalid because he had been forced to make it, but would not excommunicate the emperor. For the rest of his pontificate, Paschal was forced to walk a fine line between radical reformers and imperial supporters. The political situation in the empire continued to be unstable for the remainder of the decade, and neither side could gain a clear advantage. Pressure from within the empire guaranteed that some sort of agreement would eventually be reached, but it was slow in coming, and Paschal did not live to see it (Morris, 161-162).

After Paschal’s death in 1118, he was succeeded by Gelasius II, whose pontificate lasted less than a year. The ensuing conclave elected Guy of Vienne, who took the name Calixtus II. He had been an outspoken opponent of the settlement at Ponte Mammolo in 1111, and was a key figure in continuing opposition to imperial investiture of bishops (for more on this election, see S. A. Chodorow, “Ecclesiastical Politics and the Ending of the Investiture Contest: The Papal Election of 1119 and the Negotiations of Mouzon,” Speculum 46 (1971): 613-640). Soon after being elected, Calixtus sought to reach an agreement with Henry V. The first attempts at negotiations in 1119 fell apart, and it would take another three years for an agreement to be reached. German supporters of both the emperor and the pope had been suggesting a solution along the lines of the French model. When the concordat was signed at Worms in 1122, the emperor agreed to give up investiture with the ring and staff, symbols of the bishop’s office, but the bishop would receive the regalia of his see from the emperor via the scepter. Although the emperor could not appoint bishops, he could be present when canonical elections took place. In addition, Henry promised to return all ecclesiastical properties that he or his father had occupied (Morris, 162-164). The agreement was ratified at the First Lateran Council in 1123 (for the text of the Concordat of Worms, as well as documents from 1111, see B. Tierney, ed., The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 (Toronto: Medieval Academy of America, 1988; reprint of 1964), 89-92).