DOI: 10.36253/979-12-215-1076-8.05 ISSN: 2704-6362

Investiturverbot or definition of the canonical procedure for promoting bishops? The Gregorian turn of February 1075 and its consequences until 1122-3

Mauro Ronzani
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This essay aims to shift attention from the alleged existence of a “prohibition of investiture” issued by Gregory VII in 1075, to the strictly canonical approach he, at the Lateran Synod of that year, chose to give to the process of promoting bishops. Referring to the canons of Leo I, the pope established that the sequence of election, confirmation, and consecration could not be interrupted by external intervention, although he was willing to leave to King Henry IV (as with any other Christian king) the task of overseeing the regularity of the election and, once the ca-nonical procedure was completed, of confirming the bishop’s royal property and rights. Henry IV, however, refused to give up the right to freely choose bishops and then invest them with the pastoral staff, even before they were consecrated. The Investiture Controversy was therefore above all a procedural dispute: after two solutions put forward in 1111 but not accepted by both sides, the final agreement was reached at Worms (1122).

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