The Investiture Controversy

This study attempts to survey the historiography, history and central interpretative problems surrounding the issue of investiture and the clashes between church and monarchy during the Middle Ages.

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"This book describes the roots of a set of ideals that effected a radical transformation of eleventh-century European society that led to the confrontation between church and monarchy known as the investiture struggle or Gregorian reform. Ideas cannot be divorced from reality, especially not in the Middle Ages. I present them, therefore, in their contemporary political, social, and cultural context."—from the Preface