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| 1077, Jan |
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| Dangerously threatened, Henry sought and received papal absolution at Canossa, Countess Matilda's castle in Tuscany, where Gregory was visiting. (Legend holds that Gregory kept Henry waiting three days in the snow.) Older scholarship described the incident as marking the peak of medieval papal power: the emperor had bowed before the pope. Recent research sees Henry as the temporary victor, since getting the ban of excommunication lifted meant that he regained the kingship and authority over his subjects. Canossa settled nothing, and the conflict continued. | 1 |
| Henry's second deposition (1080) was without serious effect. After a series of invasions (1081–84), Henry entered Rome and was crowned by his antipope, only to be expelled by Gregory's Norman ally, Robert Guiscard, with a motley army that included Saracens; the atrocity of the Norman sacking made it impossible for Gregory to remain, and he died a virtual exile, almost a prisoner of his allies at Salerno, leaving Henry and his antipope master of Rome for the time. | 2 |
| Gregory was on excellent terms with William the Conqueror, but William, true to the Norman conception of strong monarchy, ignored Gregory's pressure to make England a fief of the papacy and forbade the circulation of papal bulls in England without his permission. Gregory asserted papal suzerainty over Hungary, Spain, Sardinia, and Corsica. After a vacancy of a year, Victor III (1086–87), an aged, unwilling pontiff, was elected pope but was soon driven from Rome by Henry's partisans. | 3 |
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| 1088–99 |
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| URBAN II. A Frenchman of noble blood, long intimate with Gregory; handsome, eloquent, learned; he continued Gregory's policy of maintaining the complete independence of the papacy and vigorous opposition to the emperors. Urban arranged the marriage of Countess Matilda and the son of the (Welf) duke of Bavaria (1089). | 4 |
| Henry invaded northern Italy successfully, but Matilda held out in the hills; Urban, profiting by the anarchy in Germany, urged Henry's son Conrad to a revolt (1093), which was taken up by half of Lombardy. Urban received the appeal of the Byzantine emperor for help against the Turks at the Synod of Clermont (1095), excommunicated King Philip I of France for adultery, and proclaimed the First Crusade (See 1096–99), directing his appeal to the nobles and peoples rather than the monarchs, most of whom were hostile to the papacy. On a visit to southern Italy, Urban made Roger of Sicily his legate (1098), thus exempting him from the visits of an ordinary legate. The First Crusade was the first great victory for the reformed papacy; the papal dominance of the military effort to defend Christendom is significant of the new prestige of the papacy and the decline of the emperors. | 5 |
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| 1099–1118 |
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| PASCHAL II renewed the excommunication of Henry IV; intrigued with Henry, his son. Anselm waged the investiture battle in England (1103–7), ending in a compromise (1107), followed almost at once by the lapse of lay investiture in France (formerly one of the worst offenders). Paschal's humiliating renunciation (1111) of papal fiefs and secular revenues, his repudiation by his clergy, and his arrest by Henry V made a much more profound impression in Europe than Canossa. Paschal recalled (1112) his concessions. | 6 |
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| 1115 |
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| The Countess Matilda, having made a donation (1086 and 1102) of her allodial lands (the second great addition to papal holdings) to the papacy (subject to free testamentary disposition), willed them at her death (1115) to Henry V, who came and occupied the Matildine lands (1117), which were destined to be a bone of contention between the popes and emperors for a century. | 7 |
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| 1119–24 |
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| CALIXTUS II, a Burgundian, related to half the rulers of Europe and a skilled diplomat, arranged the Concordat of Worms (1122), which closed the investiture controversy with a compromise. Bishops were to be chosen according to canon (Church) law, by the clergy in the presence of the emperor or his delegate; the emperor surrendered the right of investing with the ring and staff. Since lay rulers were permitted to be present at ecclesiastical elections and to accept or refuse feudal homage from the new prelates, they retained an effective veto over Church appointments. The papacy won the technical victory. The Synod of Reims (1119) renewed the decrees against simony, clerical marriage, and lay investiture, as well as the excommunication of Henry V. | 8 |
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| 1130–38 |
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| Papal schism. Precipitated by the corrupt election of the (Cluniac) Cardinal Pierleone (son of a rich converted Jewish banker of Rome), as Anacletus II (1130–38), and the hostility of the rival houses of Corsi and Frangipani. The rival pope, Innocent II (1130–43), supported by Bernard of Clairvaux and most of Europe, was given military support by Lothair in return for confirmation of his rights under the concordat of 1122, imperial coronation, and investiture with the Matildine lands. Anacletus confirmed Roger II's title as king in return for his support. | 9 |
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| 1139 |
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| The Second Lateran Council (the tenth general council in the west) was attended by a thousand bishops. It marked the end of the schism. | 10 |
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| 1140–60 |
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| Great acceleration of appeals to Rome (disputes over Church property, ecclesiastical elections, and, above all, issues of marriage and annulment) and development of system of local judges delegate who heard, with papal authority, cases in their own countries. Through Church courts, the popes pressed goals of reform. | 11 |
| The papal curia, or administrative bureaucracy, represents the first well-organized institution of monarchical authority in medieval Europe. The first half of the 12th century witnessed the steady expansion of the papal curia, which contained secretarial (the chancery), financial, and legal agencies. The publication in 1140 of the monk Gratian's Decretum (Concordance of Discordant Canons) provided a standard reference book for all ecclesiastical tribunals. | 12 |
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| 1143 |
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| The Commune of Rome established in opposition to the non-Roman pope; it defied three feeble popes (Celestine II, Lucius II, Eugene III). Arnold of Brescia, pupil of Abelard, emerged as the eloquent leader, with bitter denunciations of clerical wealth and papal bloodshed and burning appeals for a return to apostolic poverty and simplicity. Temporary restoration of the ancient Roman state, appeal to the emperor's protection. Bernard of Clairvaux agreed with Arnold's indictment (cf. De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius), but saw salvation for the Church in purification from within, not in diminution of its powers, and opposed Arnold as he had Abelard. | 13 |
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| 1154–59 |
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| Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear, the only English pope). Son of a poor man, learned, kindly, of high character, he had risen by his own merits; Roman anarchy ended by a stern interdict. Arnold expelled; alliance with Frederick Barbarossa against William, king of Sicily; altercation with Frederick over his haughty refusal of ceremonial service to the pope. The bitter hostility of the Romans to pope and emperor forced a surreptitious coronation and hurried departure from Rome. | 14 |
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| 1155 |
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| Frederick executed Arnold as a heretic, but abandoned Adrian to the Normans and forced him into an independent Italian policy (i.e., alliance with an anti-Norman league of southern barons and with Constantinople) which brought William of Sicily to his knees as the pope's vassal. Adrian accepted the Roman Commune and returned to Rome. | 15 |
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| 1158–62 |
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| Frederick's second expedition to Italy: the League of Pavia (Brescia, Cremona, Parma, Piacenza) supported Frederick; Milan and its league were reduced to submission. The great Diet of Roncaglia: Frederick, using Roman law to justify an extreme assertion of imperial rights and a brusque resumption of imperial regalia, substituted an imperial podestà for the consuls in the Lombard cities, drove Milan into open revolt (1159–62), and turned the towns to alliance with the pope. Renewal of the papal alliance with Byzantium; formation of an alliance of Lombard towns under papal auspices. | 16 |
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