Posted on: August 17th, 2021 Pope Gregory VII’s _Reformatio_ (Tom Holland’s _Dominion_)
What Tom Holland, in his Dominion, is showing me is that, prior to Gregory VII (formerly Hildebrand), it was the Holy Roman Emperor who “held together” (or served as a locus of unity) between the Church and the ruling power(s) of the lands. In times past, the HRE had both deposed and appointed popes.
But all that changed with the emergence of Gregory the VII (who believed that “the Pope is permitted to depose emperors,” 227), who essentially took power away from the HRE of the time (Henry IV). The net effect of this was to “divide and conquer” the HRE and his power … so after this “Lands that had long existed in the shadow both of the vanished order of Rome, and of the vastly wealthier, more sophisticated Empires on their Eastern flank, had been set at last upon a distinctive course of their own.” (230).
In Holland’s view, this is a hugely important moment, building the concepts of Augustine such as the saeculum, in the development between the secular and the profane. Gregory’s “reforms” went a long way toward establishing in the West the distinction between church and state.
