Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History With Documents

By: Maureen C. Miller

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Synopsis: 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.