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Pope Gregory VII: The Gregorian Reforms

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The Gregorian Reforms were a series of reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII and the circle he formed in the papal curia, c. 1050–80, which dealt with the moral integrity and independence of the clergy. These reforms are considered to be named after Pope Gregory VII, though he personally denied this and claimed his reforms, like his regnal name, honored Gregory the Great. Overview The conciliar approach to implementing papal reform took on an added momentum during Gregory’s pontificate. The authority of the emphatically ‘Roman’ council as the universal legislative assembly was theorised according to the principles of papal primacy contained in Dictatus papae. There is no explicit mention of Gregory’s reforms against simony or nicolaitism …show more content…

The powers that the Gregorian papacy gathered to itself were summed up in a list called Dictatus papae about 1075 or somewhat later. The major headings of Gregorian reform can be seen as embodied in the Papal electoral decree, and the resolution of the Investiture Controversy was an overwhelming papal victory that by implication acknowledged papal superiority over secular rulers. Within the Church important new laws were pronounced on simony, on clerical marriage and from 1059 laws extending the prohibited degrees of Affinity. The reforms are encoded in two major documents: Dictatus papae and the bull Libertas ecclesiae. The Gregorian reform depended in new ways and to a new degree on the collections of canon law that were being assembled, in order to buttress the papal position, during the same period. Part of the legacy of the Gregorian Reform was the new figure of the papal legist, exemplified a century later by Pope Innocent …show more content…

Gregory VII did not introduce the celibacy of the priesthood into the Church, but he took up the struggle with greater energy than his predecessors. In 1074 he published an encyclical, absolving the people from their obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. The next year he enjoined them to take action against married priests, and deprived these clerics of their revenues. Both the campaign against priestly marriage and that against simony provoked widespread resistance. The Pope was to be the absolute head of the church, and the Dictatus papae also declared the Pope's authority to depose

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