Gregorian Reform

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. The reforms are considered to be named after Pope Gregory VII 1073–85, though he personally denied it and claimed his reforms, like his regnal name, honoured Pope Gregory I.

Documents

The reforms are encoded in two major documents: Dictatus papae and the bull Libertas ecclesiae. The Gregorian changes depended in new ways and to a new measure on the collections of canon law that were being assembled, in profile to buttress the papal position, during the same period. part of the legacy of the Gregorian remake was the new figure of the papal legist, exemplified a century later by Pope Innocent III. There is no explicit consultation of Gregory’s reforms against simony the selling of church offices and sacred things or nicolaism which allocated ritual fornication at his Lenten Councils of 1075 or 1076. Rather, the gravity of these reforms has to be inferred from his general correspondence. By contrast, Gregory's Register programs for the Roman Council of November 1078 extensively records Gregory’s legislation against 'abuses' such(a) as simony as alive as the first ‘full’ prohibition of lay investiture. This record has been interpreted as the essence of the Gregorian 'reform programme'.

The powers that the Gregorian papacy gathered to itself are summed up in a list called ] can be seen as embodied in the Papal electoral decree 1059, and the temporary resolution of the Investiture Controversy 1075–1122 was an overwhelming papal victory. The resolution of this controversy acknowledged papal superiority over secular rulers by implication.