The Itinerants

of feudalism at bay. But he could also be a cause of it. Like his ancestors, he controlled the appointment of all bishops and required of them an oath of fealty. This was formalized in a ceremony of investiture during which they received from him personally the symbols of their authority—the crosier and ring. The Church of Germany, Henry frequently declared, was his church, and no one but he had the right to appoint her bishops. Most reformers could live with this as it had been the custom since the time of Otto.

But this facet of German caesaropapism was beginning to rub others the wrong way. A century after the founding of Cluny, some were tiring of the proprietary status quo. A reformer named Abbo of Fleury (d. 1004) issued a particularly strong protest. “Let him who wishes the health of his soul,” the abbot threatened, “beware of believing that the church belongs to any save God alone. For He said to Peter, the Prince of the Apostles: ‘I will give thee My church’; ‘Mine’, not ‘thine’ . . . In truth, dear princes, we neither live nor speak as Catholics when I say ‘this church is mine’, and some other says ‘that church is his’.” 22

Nevertheless, Henry was seen by reformers as a generally reliable patron for their cause. His empire was home to some of the

Holy Roman Emperor Henry III

22 Quoted in Geoffrey Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), 70.