Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

Historians tracing the emerging division between church and state in the West have long recognized the importance of the eleventh-century Gregorian reform movement and the investiture conflict — events that reached a dramatic climax in Pope Gregory VII’s excommunication of Emperor Henry IV. In her introduction to this ground-breaking volume, Miller recasts the narrative of reform and the investiture conflict — traditionally portrayed as an elitist struggle between church and state — in terms of a broad shift in conceptions of the nature of power and the holy. The volume brings together a wide selection of compelling documents — many of which have been largely unavailable — that allows students to place the investiture conflict within the wider context of social and political change in medieval Europe. Document headnotes, a chronology, a selected bibliography, and questions for consideration provide further pedagogical support.