Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History & 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 allow 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.