Concordat of Worms
The Concordat of Worms, also referred to as the Pactum Callixtinum or Pactum Calixtinum, was an agreement between the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire which regulated the procedure for the appointment of bishops and abbots in the Empire. Signed on 23 September 1122 in the German city of Worms by Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V, the agreement set an end to the Investiture Controversy, a conflict between state and church over the right to appoint religious office holders that had begun in the middle of the 11th century.
By signing the concordat, Henry renounced his right to invest bishops and abbots with ring and crosier, and opened ecclesiastical appointments in his realm to canonical elections. Callixtus, in turn, agreed to the presence of the emperor or his officials at the elections and granted the emperor the right to intervene in the case of disputed outcomes. The emperor was also allowed to perform a separate ceremony in which he would invest bishops and abbots with a sceptre, representing the lands that constituted the temporalities associated with their episcopal see.
Background
During the middle of the 11th century, a reformist movement within the Christian Church sought to reassert the rights of the Holy See at the expense of the European monarchs. Having been elected in 1073, the reformist Pope Gregory VII proclaimed several edicts aimed at strengthening the authority of the papacy, some of which were formulated in the Dictatus papae of 1075. Gregory's edicts postulated that secular rulers were answerable to the pope and forbade them to make appointments to clerical offices.The pope's doctrines were vehemently rejected by Emperor Henry IV, who habitually invested the bishops and abbots of the Holy Roman Empire. The ensuing conflict between the Empire and the papacy is known as the Investiture Controversy. The dispute continued after the death of Gregory VII in 1084 and the abdication of Henry IV in 1105.
Even though Henry IV's son and successor, Emperor Henry V, looked towards reconciliation with the reformist movement, no lasting compromise was achieved in the first 16 years of his reign. In 1111, Henry V brokered an agreement with Pope Paschal II at Sutri, whereby he would abstain from investing clergy in his realm in exchange for the restoration of church property that had originally belonged to the Empire. The Sutri agreement, Henry hoped, would convince Paschal to assent to Henry's official coronation as emperor.
The agreement failed to be implemented, leading Henry to imprison the pope. After two months of captivity, Paschal vowed to grant the coronation and to accept the emperor's role in investiture ceremonies. He also agreed never to excommunicate Henry. Given that these concessions had been won by force, ecclesiastical opposition to the Empire continued. The following year, Paschal reneged on his promises.
Mouzon summit
In January 1118, Pope Paschal died. He was succeeded by Gelasius II, who died in January 1119. His successor, the Burgundian Callixtus II, resumed negotiations with the Emperor with the aim of settling the dispute between the church and the Empire. In the autumn of 1119, two papal emissaries, William of Champeaux and Pons of Cluny, met Henry at Strasbourg, where the emperor agreed in principle to abandon the secular investiture ceremony that involved giving new bishops and abbots a ring and a crosier.The two parties scheduled a final summit between Henry and Callixtus at Mouzon, but the meeting ended abruptly after the emperor refused to accept a short-notice change in Callixtus's demands. The church leaders, who were deliberating their position at a council in Reims, reacted by excommunicating Henry. However, they did not endorse the pope's insistence upon the complete abandonment of secular investiture. The negotiations ended in failure.
Historians disagree as to whether Calixtus actually wanted peace or fundamentally mistrusted Henry. Due to his uncompromising position in 1111, Calixtus has been termed an "ultra", and his election to the papacy may indicate that the College of Cardinals saw no reason to show weakness to the emperor. This optimism about victory was founded on the very visible, and very vocal opposition to Henry from within his own nobility, and the cardinals may have seen the emperor's internal weaknesses as an opportunity for outright victory.
Further negotiations
After the failure of the Mouzon negotiations, and the disappearance into the horizon of the chances of Henry's unconditional surrender, the majority of the clergy became willing to compromise in order to settle the dispute. The polemic writings and pronouncements that had figured so highly during the Investiture Dispute had died down by this point. Historian Gerd Tellenbach argues that, despite appearances, these years were "no longer marked by an atmosphere of bitter conflict".This was in part the result of the papacy's realization that it could not win two different disputes on two separate fronts, as it had been trying to do. Calixtus had been personally involved in negotiations with the Emperor over the last decade, and his intimate knowledge of the delicate situation made him the perfect candidate for the attempt. The difference between 1119 and 1122, argues Stroll, was not Henry, who had been willing to make concessions in 1119, but Calixtus, who had then been intransigent, but who now was intent upon reaching an agreement".
The same sentiment prevailed in much of the German nobility. In 1121, pressured by a faction of nobles from the Lower Rhine and Duchy of Saxony under the leadership of Archbishop Adalbert I of Mainz, Henry agreed to submit to make peace with the pope. In response in February 1122, Calixtus wrote to Henry in a conciliatory tone via the bishop of Acqui. His letter has been described as "a carefully crafted overture".
In his letter, Calixtus drew attention to their blood relationship, suggesting that while their shared ancestry compelled them to love each other as brothers, it was fundamental that the German kings draw their authority from God's servants, not from God directly. However, Calixtus also emphasised for the first time that he blamed not Henry personally for the dispute but his bad advisors who had dictated unsound policy to him. In a major shift in policy since the Council of Reims of 1119, the pope stated that the church gifts what it possesses to all its children, without making claims upon them. This was intended to reassure Henry that in the event of peace between them, his position and Empire were secure.
Shifting from the practical to the spiritual, Calixtus next asked Henry to bear in mind that he was a king, but like all men limited on his earthly capability; he had armies, and kings below him, but the church had Christ and the Apostles. Continuing his theme, he referred, indirectly, to Henry's excommunication by himself, he begged Henry to allow the conditions for peace to be created, as a result of which the church's, and God's glory would be increased, as concomitantly would the emperor's. Conversely, he made sure to include a threat: if Henry did not change his ways, Calixtus threatened to place "the protection of the church in the hands of wise men".
Historian Mary Stroll argues that, in taking this approach, Calixtus was taking advantage of the fact that, while he himself "was hardly in a position to sabre rattle" due to his military defeat in the Kingdom of Sicily and his difficulty with his own cardinals, Henry was also under pressure in Germany in both the military and spiritual spheres.
The emperor replied through the bishop of Speyer and the abbot of Fulda, who travelled to Rome and collected the pope's emissaries under the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. Speyer was a representative of Henry's political opponents in Germany, whereas Fulda was a negotiator rather than politically partisan. Complicating matters was a disputed election to the bishopric of Wurzburg in February 1122 of the kind that was at the heart of the Investiture Dispute. Although this almost led to an outbreak of civil war, a truce was arranged in August, allowing the parties to return to the papal negotiations.
In the summer of 1122, a synod was convened in Mainz, at which imperial emissaries concluded the terms of their agreement with representatives of the church. In a sign that the pope intended the impending negotiations to be successful, a Lateran council was announced for the following year.
Worms
The Emperor received the papal legates in Worms with due ceremony, where he awaited the outcome of the negotiations which appear to have actually taken place in nearby Mainz, which was hostile territory to Henry. As such, he had to communicate via messenger to keep up with events. Abbot Ekkehard of Aura chronicles that discussions took over a week to conclude. On 8 September, he met the papal legates and their final agreements were codified for publication.Although a possible compromise solution had already been received from England, this does not seem to have ever been considered in depth, probably on account of it containing an oath of Homage between emperor and pope, which had been a historical sticking point in earlier negotiations. The papal delegation was led by Cardinal Bishop Lamberto Scannabecchi of Ostia.
Both sides studied previous negotiations between them, including those from 1111, which were considered to have created precedent. On 23 September 1122, papal and imperial delegates signed a series of documents outside the walls of Worms. There was insufficient room in the city for the number of attendees and watchers. Adalbert of Mainz wrote to Calixtus of how complex the negotiations had been, given that, as he said, Henry regarded the powers he was being asked to renounce as being hereditary in the Imperial throne. It is probable that what was eventually promulgated was the result of almost every word being carefully considered. The main difference between what was to be agreed at Worms and previous negotiations were the concessions from the pope.