Investiture

Abstract

In the eleventh century, the language and forms of papal–royal relationships were not abstractly theorized, nor were the consequences and implications of the language considered. As arguments about royal investiture of bishops became more important in the later eleventh century, papal investiture of secular rulers—hitherto unproblematic—fell out of fashion. If kings should not invest bishops, then why should popes invest princes? Kings who had been invested in the eleventh century, such as the Norman rulers of Sicily and southern Italy, would instead, in the twelfth century, be crowned by an archbishop. Rulers who received their realms ‘from the pope’s hand’, such as the kings of Aragon, would not do so after 1122.