Also known as "Papal Reform” or “papal revolution”, the Gregorian Reformation was a series of measures initiated by the Papacy in the eleventh century to free the Church from interference lay within the Church, resolving the tension between State and Church, while seeking to moralize the clergy themselves.
This struggle between temporal power and spiritual power lasted about two centuries, until the victory of monarchic power over Papal power.
Historical Context: Summary
In effect, this was an institutional response taken by the Church to the political and economic needs arising from the commercial and urban renaissance.
Nevertheless, the nobility, especially the Holy Roman Empire, held an enormous influence on the Holy See, from which some nobles, kings and emperors exercised authority over the clergy, actively interfering in the appointment of ecclesiastical offices, including that of the prelates who would hold the most ecclesiastical offices. important.
In the same vein, the Byzantine Empire had a political structure that favored the union between the secular and spiritual power, materialized in the figure of the emperor, in what became known as “cesaropapism”.
Thus, to affirm the Catholic faith, as well as the autonomy of the clergy, Pope Gregory the Great I (590-604) would have presented the first formulations that established papal infallibility, as well as the supremacy of the Church Catholic.
Later, Pope Leo IX (1049-1054), continued his work and his successor, Pope Gregory VII (1073 and 1085), took a decisive step in erecting the Dictatuspapa (1074-1075), an epistle that established a series of rules and determinations that sought to consolidate a papal theocracy. For this reason, this movement was identified as the Gregorian Reformation.
From the start, this incites even more the Querela das Investiduras (that fight for the assertion of papal power in the face of feudal power), as well as initiates the Great schism of the east (1054), when the Churches of the West and East excommunicate each other.
The Gregorian Reformation will be consolidated by the ecclesiastics of the Abbey of Cluny, who will condemn and to combat the heretical practices of lay investiture, as well as the influences of barbaric paganism in the Christianity.
However, this process will last for many years and will be resolved by holding four councils in Lateran, a district of Rome - Lateran I (1123); Lateran II (1139); Lateran III (1179) and Lateran IV (1215) - as well as by the First Council of Lyons (1245).
Main features
Among the main measures taken by the Catholic Church in the Gregorian Reformation, the following stand out:
- Papal infallibility in matters of morals and faith;
- Papal authority to excommunicate the emperor and thus depose him;
- The Church's exclusive appointment to ecclesiastical positions;
- The fight against simony (sale of ecclesiastical offices and “sacred” objects) and against Nicolaism (concubinage of Catholic priests).
- The “Ecclesia Primitivai Forma”, a set of measures to restore the Church to primitive Christianity in the time of the Apostles;
- Imposition of celibacy (Code of Canon Law -1123).
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