Examine individual changes

': ''Should not be confused with the [[Gregorian calendar]]''. {{canon law}} The '''Gregorian Reforms''' were a series of reforms initiated by [[Pope Gregory VII]] and the circle he formed in the [[Roman Curia|papal curia]], c. 1050–80, which dealt with the moral integrity and independence of the clergy. The reforms are considered to be named after [[Pope Gregory VII]] (1073–85), though he personally denied it and claimed his reforms, like his [[regnal name]], honoured [[Pope Gregory I]]. ==Overview== {{cleanup |reason=redundant paragraphs; need to be rearranged into a more logical order. |date=April 2020}} {{main|History of the papacy (1048–1257)|Papal selection before 1059}} During Gregory's pontificate, a conciliar approach to implementing papal reform took on an added momentum. [[Conciliarism]] properly refers to a later system of power between the Pope, the Roman curia, and secular authorities. During this early period, the scope of Papal authority in the wake of the [[Investiture Controversy]] entered into dialog with developing notions of [[Papal Supremacy]]. The authority of the emphatically "Roman" council as the universal legislative assembly was theorised according to the principles of papal primacy contained in ''[[Dictatus papae]]''. Gregory also had to avoid the Church slipping back into the abuses that had occurred in Rome, during [[The Rule of the Harlots]], between 904 and 964.<ref name = "FMG">{{cite journal |first=Lindsay |last=Brook |year=2003 |url=http://fmg.ac/FMG/Articles/Popes.pdf |title=Popes and Pornocrats: Rome in the early Middle Ages |format=[[PDF]] |journal=Foundations |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=5&ndash;21 |publisher=Foundation For Medieval Genealogy |access-date=2009-01-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081029184837/http://fmg.ac/FMG/Articles/Popes.pdf |archive-date=2008-10-29 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Pope Benedict IX]] had been elected Pope three times and had sold the Papacy. In 1054 the [[East–West Schism|"Great Schism"]] had divided western European Christians from the eastern [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Church]]. Given these events, the Church had to reassert its importance and [[authority]] to its followers. Although at each new turn the reforms were presented to contemporaries as a return to the old ways, they are often seen by modern historians as the first European Revolution.{{Citation needed|date=January 2018}} The much later [[Gregorian calendar]] of [[Pope Gregory XIII]] has no connection to these Gregorian reforms. ==Documents== The reforms are encoded in two major documents: ''[[Dictatus papae]]'' and the [[Papal bull|bull]] ''[[Libertas ecclesiae]]''. The Gregorian reform depended in new ways and to a new degree on the collections of [[Canon law (Catholic Church)|canon law]] that were being assembled, in order to buttress the papal position, during the same period. Part of the legacy of the Gregorian Reform was the new figure of the ''papal legist'', exemplified a century later by [[Pope Innocent III]]. There is no explicit mention of Gregory’s reforms against [[simony]] (the selling of church offices and sacred things) or [[nicolaism]] (which included ritual fornication) at his Lenten Councils of 1075 or 1076. Rather, the gravity of these reforms has to be inferred from his general correspondence. By contrast, Gregory's Register<ref>{{cite book|last=Cowdrey|first=H.E.J. |authorlink=H. E. J. Cowdrey |title=The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073-1085: An English Translation|year=2002|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=USA|isbn=0199249806|pages=600}}</ref> entry for the Roman Council of November 1078 extensively records Gregory’s legislation against ‘abuses’ such as simony<ref>{{cite journal|last=Gilchrist|first=John|title="Simoniaca haeresis" and the problem of orders from Leo IX to Gratian|journal=Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law|year=1965|volume=Monumenta Iuris Canonici|series=C|issue=1|pages=209–235}}</ref> as well as the first ‘full’ prohibition of lay investiture. This record has been interpreted as the essence of the Gregorian ‘reform programme’.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Gilchrist|first=John|title=Was there a Gregorian reform movement in the eleventh century?|journal=The Canadian Catholic Historical Association: Study Sessions|year=1970|volume=37|pages=1–10}}</ref> The powers that the Gregorian papacy gathered to itself are summed up in a list called ''[[Dictatus papae]]'' around 1075 or shortly after. The major headings of Gregorian reform{{explain|date=April 2020}} can be seen as embodied in the Papal electoral decree (1059), and the temporary resolution of the [[Investiture Controversy]] (1075–1122) was an overwhelming papal victory. The resolution of this controversy acknowledged papal superiority over secular rulers by implication. Within the [[Roman Catholic Church|Church]] important new laws were pronounced on [[simony]], on [[clerical marriage]] and from 1059, laws extending the prohibited degrees of [[Affinity (canon law)|Affinity]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Gilchrist|first=John|title=‘Pope Gregory VII and the juristic sources of his ideology’, in Canon Law in the Age of Reform, 11th-12th Centuries|year=1993|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|location=UL|isbn=0860783685|page=5}}</ref> ==Central status of the Church== Before the Gregorian Reforms the Church was a heavily decentralized institution, in which the pope held little power outside of his position as Bishop of Rome. With that in mind, the papacy up until the twelfth century held little to no authority over the bishops, who were invested with land by lay rulers. Gregory VII's ban on lay investiture was a key element of the reform, ultimately contributing to the centralized papacy of the later Middle Ages.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/source/g7-reform2.asp|title=Internet History Sourcebooks Project|website=sourcebooks.fordham.edu|access-date=2017-11-04}}</ref> The reform of the Church, both within it, and in relation to the [[Holy Roman Emperor]] and the other lay rulers of Europe, was Gregory VII's life work. It was based on his conviction that the Church was founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which divine will is the only law; that, in his capacity as a divine institution, he is supreme over all human structures, especially the secular state; and that the pope, in his role as head of the Church under the petrine commission, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God: or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. But any attempt to interpret this in terms of action would have bound the Church to annihilate not merely a single state, but all states. Thus Gregory, as a politician wanting to achieve some result, was driven in practice to adopt a different standpoint. He acknowledged the existence of the state as a dispensation of [[Divine Providence|Providence]], described the coexistence of church and state as a divine ordinance, and emphasized the necessity of union between the ''[[sacerdotium]]'' and the ''imperium''. But, during no period would he have imagined the two powers on an equal footing. The superiority of Church to State was to him a fact which admitted no discussion and which he had never doubted. He wished to see all important matters of dispute referred to Rome; appeals were to be addressed to himself; the centralization of ecclesiastical government in Rome naturally involved a curtailment of the powers of bishops. Since these refused to submit voluntarily and tried to assert their traditional independence, his papacy was full of struggles against the higher ranks of the clergy. ==Clerical celibacy== This battle for the foundation of papal supremacy is connected with his championship of compulsory [[celibacy among the clergy]] and his attack on [[simony]]. Gregory VII did not introduce the celibacy of the priesthood into the Church {{citation needed|date=August 2019}}, but he took up the struggle with greater energy than his predecessors. In 1074 he published an [[encyclical]], absolving the people from their obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. The next year he enjoined them to take action against married priests and deprived these clerics of their revenues. Both the campaign against priestly marriage and that against simony provoked widespread resistance. ==See also== *[[Cluniac Reforms]] *[[Concordat of Worms]] *[[Diploma Ottonianum]] *[[Donation of Constantine]] *[[Donation of Pippin]] *[[First Council of the Lateran]] *[[Liber Gomorrhianus]] *[[Pope Gelasius I]] and the "Gelasian doctrine" *[[Walk to Canossa]] ==Notes== {{reflist}} ==External links== *[http://en.lahistoriaconmapas.com/religion/the-gregorian-reform-and-the-first-crusade/ Gregorian Reform and the First Crusade] {{EB1911 poster|Gregory (Popes)/Gregory VII|Gregory VII}} {{CE poster|Pope St. Gregory VII}} {{InvestitureControversy}} [[Category:Investiture Controversy]] [[Category:History of the papacy]] [[Category:11th-century Catholicism]]'