5 th Century – 11 th Century

1. The Rise of the Papacy 5th Century – 11th Century

2. Overview • Churches became united under the Pope • Previously all churches were controlled by individuals • The Pope brought all the churches under his power. He regulated all the churches, the church men and therefore essentially all Christian souls. • Pope had more power over people through the Church due to them all being under his control.

3. 5th Century • During the 4th and 5th centuries, after the Roman emperor Constantine's grant of toleration to Christianity and its rise to the status of an official religion, a series of popes, most notably Leo I translated that claim into a primacy of jurisdiction over the church. That claim was matched by the rival claim of the church at Constantinople in the East equal to that of Rome in the West. For at least another century, it was the Byzantine emperor of Constantinople who could actually claim to be functioning as the supreme leader of Christendom in spiritual as well as temporal matters.

4. 6th and 8th Century • The late 6th to the late 8th century, was marked by the turning of the papacy to the West and its escape from subordination to the authority of the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople • In the 8th century, after the rise of Islam had weakened the Byzantine Empire and the Lombards had renewed their pressure in Italy, the popes finally sought support from the Frankish rulers of the West and received it from the Frankish king. With the crowning by Leo III of Charlemagne, the first of the Carolingian emperors, the papacy also gained his protection.

5. 9th Century • By the late 9th century, however, the Carolingian Empire had disintegrated, the imperial government in Italy was powerless, and the bishopric of Rome had fallen under the domination of the nobles. Once again the papacy sought aid from the north, and in 962, Pope John XII crowned the German king Otto I, emperor. In this revived empire, soon called the Holy Roman Empire, the pope theoretically was the spiritual head, and the emperor the temporal head. The relationship between temporal and spiritual authority, however, was to be a continuing arena of contention. Initially, the emperors were dominant and the papacy stagnated. The emperors themselves, however, set the papacy on the road to recovery.

6. 11th Century • In 1046, Emperor Henry III deposed three rival claimants to the papal office and proceeded to appoint, in turn, three successors. With the appointment in 1049 of Leo IX, the third of these, the movement of church reform, which had been gathering momentum in Burgundy and Lorraine, finally came to Rome. It found there in Leo and in a series of distinguished successors the type of unified central leadership it had previously lacked.

7. 11th Century Continued • With the papacy taking the leadership in reform the second phase of its rise began to take place with Urban II's launching in 1095 of the Crusades in an attempt to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim domination. This marshaled under papal leadership the aggressive energies of the European nobility. Both these efforts, although ultimately unsuccessful, greatly enhanced papal prestige in the 12th and 13th centuries. Such powerful popes wielded a primacy over the church that attempted to vindicate a jurisdictional supremacy over emperors and kings in temporal and spiritual affairs.