Magdeburg and Strasburg, Conrad || at Worms, Neuhausen and Eichstatt, Henry {ll at Cologne, Bagel. Freising; and Henry v at Lieges; Henry IV was a canon of Spier and a suffragan of Echternach. These offices were performed by deputies as a rule, but if the emperor were present he did the duties himself, Indeed, the ecclesiastical function of the ruler was not just symbolic but actual, particularly as an ecclesiastical judge. Wipo, chaplain to Conrad Il, writes in his biography of his master: ‘Although he was ignorant, nevertheless he prudently gave instruction to every cleric, not only lovingly and courteously in public, but also with fitting discipline in secret.’ He presided over synods, either by himself or jointly, on one occasion, with the Pope. He punished bishops and bestowed privileges on religious establishments. His son, Henry Ill, showed himself zealous in reforming the Church and seems to have set no limit to his powers in ecclesiastical matters. As ‘head of the Church’, he presided in 1046 at Sutri over a synod which deposed two popes, secured the abdication of a third, and elected yet another. Three years later he, and the outstanding reforming pope, Leo IX, presided jointly over the innovatory Council of Mainz and again at the Council of Constance, where he is described as ‘ascending the steps of the altar together’ with Leo. Yet within a few decades the harmony which ruled Church and State, based on papal acceptance of the wider and superior status of the monarch, had been completely shattered. It was never restored. The pontifical king, Henry IV, found himself challenged by a regal pontiff, in the shape of Pope Gregory VII. The dispute began in the 1070s when Henry, who had succeeded as a minor, began to redress the erosion of the power which had taken place during his minority, and in particular to assert his full right to appoint bishops in imperial Italy. The Pope hotly denied his power to invest bishops with ring and staff, and the dispute quickly became a confrontation over the whole range of Church and State authority, culminating in the excommunication of Henry, his election of an anti-pope, open warfare, the king's submission at Canossa, and then a long, inconclusive period of attrition. How did this come about? Why did the papacy abruptly attempt to reverse a situation which had at least the merit of tradition and feasibility? There can be little doubt that Gregory VII was the aggressor, in that Henry IV was merely doing what all his predecessors had done. Henry seems to have been a pious and earnest man - Ebo, the biographer of Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, says that Henry used his Psalter so much that it became ‘wrinkled and almost unreadable’. But this was irrelevant: or, rather, it could be said that a pious emperor might be storing up trouble for his successors. The efforts of Conrad Il, and especially Henry lll, to improve standards in the Church, in Rome and elsewhere - their conscientious discharge of their pontifical duties - did a great deal to create a reformed body of clergy which promptly denied Henry IV the right to exercise such duties. The mid-eleventh century was a spring time for Europe. The worst phase of the Viking raids from the north, and the Saracens from the south, was over; western Christendom was no longer a sandwich about to be devoured between barbarous and infidel fangs, but an expanding society. The production of food was growing; so was population, and trade; new ideas were circulating in the Mediterranean. There was an increase in books and in learning, and also in literacy, which meant an expansion of the clergy. Old records, and claims, were being re-examined, and forgotten texts brought back into use. Many documents in the papal archives were incompatible with the idea of a pontifical king, and the Pope as a mere sacerdotal functionary of the empire. The Donation of Constantine had been joined by a succession of elaborate forgeries, especially the so-called 'pseudolsidorian decretals', which served to enhance clerical claims in all directions. And there were perfectly genuine papal pronouncements, by Gelasius, Gregory the Great, Nicholas |, and so forth, which could be cited as precedents for almost anything the papacy chose to advance. There had also been a real shift in the relative positions of power. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, the power of the crown vis-a-vis other elements in society - lay and ecclesiastical magnates slowly declined throughout Western Europe. The process was very marked in tenth century France, and in eleventh century Germany and Italy. Power rested essentially on the amount of land the crown held in 42