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 Gregory the Great (Gregory I).

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 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 entry for the Roman council of November 1078 extensively records Gregory’s legislation against ‘abuses’ such as simony as well as the first ‘full’ prohibition of lay investiture. This record has been interpreted as the essence of the Gregorian ‘reform programme’.

Although at each new turn the reforms were presented to contemporaries as a return to the old ways, they are often seen by modern historians as the first European Revolution.

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 (1059), and the resolution of the Investiture Controversy (1075–1122) was an overwhelming papal victory that by implication acknowledged papal superiority over secular rulers. Within the Church important new laws were pronounced on simony (the purchasing of positions relating to the church), on clerical marriage and from 1059 laws extending the prohibited degrees of Affinity.

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