The Owl, The Pussycat and the Investiture Controversy
The scene is a forest glade, in the middle of which is a log. On one end of the
log sits the Owl, a Medieval History Professor, and on the other end sits the
Cat, a Student. The Cat speaks in italics, and the Owl in plain font.
CHORUS SPEAKS:
The time is early Autumn. Dappled rays of sunlight play
about the forest floor, and soft breezes send leaves twirling down upon the
Owl and the Cat from time to time. What better time and what better place to
discuss Medieval History?
So then to that forest glade let us now hie,
to hear of the Investiture Controversie
The Pussycat Speaks.
Medieval History textbooks always devote a lot of space to the Investiture
Controversy, and have more emperors and popes running around getting
excited about rings, sticks, clumps of dirt, and such stuff that it's hard to
figure out what was going on. Just what is "Investiture" and what makes it
important enough that I should worry about it?
An "investiture ceremony" is when someone gets inducted into a new office
organization and is given some
thing
as a sign that he or she now holds that
office or belongs to that organization. The Chancellor has a chain put around
his neck (
No Chancellor jokes, please. He's new so give him a chance.
),
fraternities and sororities give pins, administrators get nameplates for their
desks, soldiers get chevrons or some other insignia, and so forth. Nowadays,
the ceremony is only symbolic, but in the Middle Ages a person was not
really inducted or whatever until he or she received the insignia of office.
The Investiture Controversy was about the ceremony by which a man became
a bishop or an archbishop. During the investiture, the bishop or archbishop-
elect was given a signet ring representing his authority to act legally for his
territory (
diocese
or
archdiocese
), a long staff like a shepherd's crook
(
crozier
) signifying his spiritual leadership of the people of the diocese, a
lump of dirt (
glebe
) that demonstrated his possession and ownership of the
lands with which the churches in his diocese had been endowed, and a white
woolen stole to hang around his neck (
pallium
) indicating that he was a
legitimate successor to a long tradition of spiritual teaching and leadership
reaching all the way back to the apostles (
apostolic succession
).
Since bishops and archbishops appointed and directed all the clerics below
them, either directly or indirectly, the investiture ceremony was the most
important single factor in selecting church personnel and setting the structure
of authority within the Church as a whole.
Okay, so the ceremony was important, but what was the "Controversy" all
about?
Well, laymen took part in the investiture ceremony...
Why? I thought that you said that it was a ceremony
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investing
churchmen
with their office?

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- Fall '11
- Romero
- History, Investiture Controversy, Gerbert pope, investiture ceremony
-
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