Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

The first schism was doctrinal and dated back just over three decades to 1054. In that year, disagreements between the Churches of Constantinople and Rome (concerning matters such as the appropriate duration of fasts and what kind of bread to use for the Eucharist) had flared up in an exchange of mutually contemptuous letters, followed by tit-for-tat excommunications. Relations between the eastern and western halves of Christendom were delicate, and Urban had to seek ways to smooth them where he could. The second schism had its origins across the Alps. In 1076 the so-called Investiture Controversy had erupted between Gregory VII and the German king Henry IV. Although this was ostensibly a disagreement over whether secular rulers could appoint (or “invest”) bishops without papal approval, the contest really drove to the heart of a much bigger question, the roots of which lay in Charlemagne’s reign, when the rulers of Frankish Germany had been allowed to develop notions of imperium. This posed deep constitutional questions. Were popes the single highest authority in the west, as Gregory had asserted in 1075 in a document known as the Dictatus papae? Or were kings supreme in their realms, under God alone? That was Henry’s position.2 With so much at stake, affairs became rancorous, then violent. When Urban was elected, a German-sponsored antipope, Clement III, was at large, and Rome had recently been attacked by the Normans of southern Italy.