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| rdfs:comment | - The institution has its origins in Ancient Rome, where on more than one occasion the emperor stepped in to resolve disputes over the legitimacy of papal contenders. An important precedent from this period is an edict of Emperor Honorius, issued after a synod he convoked to depose Antipope Eulalius. The power passed to (and grew with) the King of the Ostrogoths, then the Byzantine Emperor (or his delegate, the Exarch of Ravenna). After an interregnum, the Kings of the Franks and the Holy Roman Emperor (whose selection the pope also sometimes had a hand in), generally assumed the role of confirming the results of papal elections. For a period (today known as the "Pornocracy"), the power passed from the Emperor to powerful Roman nobles—the Crescentii and then the Counts of Tusculum.
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| Source | - J.P. Kirsch, 1913
- James F. Loughlin, 1913
- Robert Phillimore, 1855
- William Francis Barry, 1902
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| Quote | - --04-12
- "In the autumn of 1046 the King of Germany, Henry III, crossed the Alps at the head of a large army and accompanied by a brilliant retinue of the secular and ecclesiastical princes of the empire, for the twofold purpose of receiving the imperial crown and of restoring order in the Italian Peninsula. The condition of Rome in particular was deplorable. In St. Peter's, the Lateran, and St. Mary Major's, sat three rival claimants to the papacy. [...] Two of them, Benedict IX and Sylvester III, represented rival factions of the Roman nobility [...] Gregory VI, was peculiar. [...] It was decided that he should summon a synod to meet at Sutri near Rome, at which the entire question should be ventilated. [...] Of the three papal claimants, Benedict refused to appear; he was again summoned and afterwards pronounced deposed at Rome. Sylvester was "stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monastery". Gregory [...] deposed himself [...] the papal chair was declared vacant. As King Henry was not yet crowned emperor, he had no canonical right to take part in the new election; but the Romans had no candidate to propose and begged the monarch to suggest a worthy subject.
- "We have reached the turning-point in Papal history. There had been a Duke of Rome, resident of the Imperial house on the Palatine; an exercitus Romanus, which comprised the nobles who, however mixed their blood, fabled a descent from the Cornelii and the other Patricians of classic renown; last, but greatest, the Pontifex Maximus held his court with its array of clerics about the Church of the Saviour. And how did he stand to Dukes and nobles? While the Emperor governed, he was a subject, his election not valid till confirmed from the Golden Horn; and the "army," which claimed to be the Roman People, shared in his naming with the "venerable clergy." Now, was the Duke to continue when the Emperor has ceased? If not, the whole of Italy might be absorbed into the Lombard Kingdom, and the Pope, exercising a purely spiritual jurisdiction, would still have been a subject, liable to the military chief at Pavia, whose government he would consecrate but never share."
- [...] Short-sighted reformers [...] who saw in this surrender of the freedom of papal elections to the arbitrary will of the emperor the opening of a new era, lived long enough to regret the mistake that was made."
- "Soon after the German Emperors were seated on the throne, the political subjection of the Pope is, as a matter of history, unquestionable. [...] For a time this doctrine was a formidable instrument in the hands of the Emperor. The great Protector of the Church, in the exercise of his office, watched over the interests of the Roman See, convened general councils, and claimed the tremendous prerogative of nominating, or at least confirming, the Pope. Such a prerogative was exercised from the times of Otho the Great to that of Henry IV. Henry III deposed three schismatical Popes, and nominated more than one German Pope."
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| abstract | - The institution has its origins in Ancient Rome, where on more than one occasion the emperor stepped in to resolve disputes over the legitimacy of papal contenders. An important precedent from this period is an edict of Emperor Honorius, issued after a synod he convoked to depose Antipope Eulalius. The power passed to (and grew with) the King of the Ostrogoths, then the Byzantine Emperor (or his delegate, the Exarch of Ravenna). After an interregnum, the Kings of the Franks and the Holy Roman Emperor (whose selection the pope also sometimes had a hand in), generally assumed the role of confirming the results of papal elections. For a period (today known as the "Pornocracy"), the power passed from the Emperor to powerful Roman nobles—the Crescentii and then the Counts of Tusculum. In many cases, the papal coronation was delayed until the election had been confirmed. Some antipopes were similarly appointed. The practice ended with the conclusion of the Investiture Controversy (c.f. confirmation of bishops) due largely to the efforts of Cardinal Hildebrand (future Pope Gregory VII), who was a guiding force in the selection of his four predecessors, and the 1059 papal bull In Nomine Domini of Pope Nicholas II; some writers consider this practice to be an extreme form of "investiture" in and of itself. According to von Hase et al.: "All this, however, did not prevent the emperor who appointed the pope and the bishops, from prescribing laws for the church, and governing it according to his own views rather than theirs, whenever the empire was free from internal distractions." Although the practice was forbidden by the Council of Antioch (341) and the Council of Rome (465), the bishops of Rome, as with other bishops, often exercised a great deal of control over their successor, even after the sixth century. Most popes from the fourth to twelfth century were appointed or confirmed by a secular power.
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