(ca. 1020–1085). Pope. Born of a humble Tuscan family, Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII, came to Rome at an early age and received his education at the monastery of St. Mary’s on the Aventine, where it appears he made his monastic profession. He served as chaplain to the reform-minded Pope Gregory VI and accompanied Gregory into exile in Germany when he agreed to step down to end the gridlock of three claimants to the papal throne. After Gregory VI’s death in 1047, Hildebrand was at the monastery of Cluny. In 1049, he met bishop Bruno of Toul, now Pope Leo IX, and returned to Rome in his company. Hildebrand served Leo IX and four succeeding reforming popes in various capacities. In 1073, upon the death of Alexander II, Hildebrand was enthroned pope by popular acclamation and took the name Gregory VII.
Like his predecessors, Gregory first wished to reform the clergy in line with the monastic ideal, eliminating the buying of ecclesiastical offices (simony) and enforcing of clerical celibacy. But Gregory broadened the scope of reform to encompass iustitia, that is, justice and the proper governance of all of Christian society. For Gregory, this meant that just as spiritual realities took precedence over temporal realities, so, too, spiritual authority preceded temporal authority; not only the clergy but princes, kings, and emperors were to be obedient to the pope. Gregory sketched out the implications of this conviction in the Dictatus papae of 1075.
In France, Gregory largely had his way with the higher clergy through his legate, Hugues de Die, who vigorously pursued the reform between 1076 and 1080. In England, William the Conqueror respected the papal decrees regarding clerical celibacy, although he retained the practice of lay investiture without incurring excommunication. But in Germany, where ecclesiastical office and feudal obliga tion were closely intertwined in the administration of the realm, and indeed, where Emperor Henry III had not only appointed archbishops but even popes, almost immediately a conflict arose between Gregory and Henry III’s son and successor, Henry IV. Henry regularly intervened in ecclesiastical affairs; he considered the upper clergy his vassals and invested them with the insignia of their offices. In the wake of papal criticism of his practices, Henry declared Gregory deposed; Gregory proclaimed Henry excommunicated and suspended German bishops. When Henry sought and received absolution from Gregory in the snows of Canossa in January 1077, Gregory’s German allies elected Rudolf of Swabia as antiking without Gregory’s consent and initiated a civil war in Germany that lasted until 1080, when Gregory once again excommunicated Henry and recognized Rudolf. Henry, in 1082, appointed an antipope. In 1084, Robert Guiscard and the Normans, on whom Gregory had called to relieve Henry’s siege of Rome, looted and set fire to a significant quarter of the city and were forced to leave, taking Gregory with them. Gregory died a few months later at Salerno, exhausted.
However much of a failure Gregory’s pontificate may have appeared at the time, Gregory nonetheless established with his new papal administration a mechanism for implementing his ideals; and his archenemy, the German emperor, was never to be so powerful again. In the century and a quarter that followed Gregory’s death, the pope would muster all of Christendom to go on crusade for justice in the world; several of the kings of Europe would receive their kingdoms in fief from the pope; and the renewal of the church, both laity and clergy, would be encouraged and broadly supported by the central vision of the papacy.
Gregory VII. Das Register Gregors VII, ed. Erich Caspar. In Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae selectae, Vol. 2. Berlin: Weidmann, 1920–23. (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1990.)
——. The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII: Selected Letters from the Registrum, trans. Ephraim Emerton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.
——. The Epistolae Vagantes of Pope Gregory VII, ed. and trans. Herbert. E.J.Cowdrey. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
Arquillière, Henri-Xavier. Saint Grégoire VII: essai sur sa conception du pouvoir pontifical. Paris: Vrin, 1934.
Fliche, Augustin. Saint Grégoire VII. Paris: Lecoffre, Gabalda, 1928.
Ullmann, Walter. The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. London: Methuen, 1970.
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