The Crusades

Western Civilization

28 February 2017

The Crusades

In the times between 1000 to 1100 C.E. Western Europe was in the midst of a great power struggle.  This battle, waged between the kings and the Papacy, was creating a time of turmoil.  The Papacy’s struggle to gain power of its churches and those within them was leading Western Europe into great conflict. Kings had their hands in, what the church thought should be their realm.  Using simony as a tool for the ruling classes to sway churches and their followers in their favor; the kings and their powerful minions were maintaining a tight grip over the power of the church.  This led to a movement of reform from the church. The book states how King Henry III not only deposed three Roman nobles, all claiming to be pope, and appointed his cousin to the papacy.  The new pope, Leo IX, however, started down the path of eliminating the practice of simony.  Going as far as travelling around the countryside removing from position those in place because of the practice that put he himself in the papal hot seat. One can only see this as a backfiring of Henry’s, and the secular leaders’ practices.

It seems to me the church and the state were on a crash course at this time, destined to butt heads in the church’s struggle to redefine their role and make their power grab.  In 1073 this all came to a head when the, now adult, King Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII locked horns over the issue of investiture.  As the book puts it: the right to appoint bishops and to invest them with the trappings of office.  Joshua Cole states that this had been the tradition since the time of the Carolingians.  These points of contention created a chasm between King and church that soon led to excommunications, renunciations, humiliations and exiles.

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