1122 An End to the Investiture Controversy
Like every long-enduring institution, the papacy has had its up and downs, with moments of greatness mixed with periods of lassitude or decline. Around the turn of the first millennium the office of the Bishop of Rome was in a sorry shape. The era of corruption known as the Pornocracy had seen the papacy in the hands of Roman gangs with the bastard teenage sons of harlots ascending the papal throne. Despite attempts at correction by the Cluniac movement and the German emperors, this corruption continued into the eleventh century with popes trying to sell their position and three men simultaneously claiming the See of Peter.
The papacy was finally set on the path of reform by Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, who in 1049 sponsored Leo IX as pope. Leo and his successors set about to repair the damage of centuries – mandating clerical celibacy, banning absenteeism, pluralism and simony. The latter sin had been originally defined as the buying or selling of church offices but zealots now widened the term to include any kind of lay interference in the naming of abbots, bishops or popes, especially where the secular ruler invested the clergyman with the symbols of rank: the staff and ring. The College of Cardinals was established and henceforth it would be charged with naming popes. This spawned the Investiture Controversy, a struggle between lay and clerical spheres that broke out into open warfare. Popes were deposed and anti-popes named; emperors were deposed and rival claimants named.
The newly-reformed papacy was anxious to ensure that never again would local lords control the church; local rulers argued that these powerful church officials were also holders of feudal rights and vast land-holdings. As such they were political players who ought to be nominated by their kings or emperors. Though the most heated exchanges and open battles were in Germany and Italy, this was a crisis that occurred in many western European realms.
On this date in 1122, Pope Calixtus II and Emperor Henry V agreed to the Concordat of Worms, whereby secular rulers would cease their formal investing but retain considerable say in the appointment of church officers in their lands. The struggle between popes and emperors would continue, however, in other areas, to the detriment of both.