investiture contest

Conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire between 1075 and 1122, which centred on the right of lay rulers to appoint prelates (investiture).

It began with the decree of 1075 in which Pope Gregory VII forbade lay investiture and with Henry IV's excommunication the following year after he refused to accept the ruling. There was a lull in the conflict after Henry's death 1106, but in 1111, Henry V captured Paschal II (c.1050–1118), and forced him to concede that only lay rulers could endow prelates with their temporalities (lands and other possessions). When this was overturned by the Lateran Council of 1112, the church split between propapal and pro‐imperial factions, and fighting broke out in Germany and Italy. Settlement was reached 1122 at the Diet of Worms, when it was agreed that lay rulers could not appoint prelates but could continue to invest them with their temporalities.