Archdeacon Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85), is associated with a radical and swift change in the Roman Church. The vision of a Christendom jointly administered by emperor and clergy, the famous model advanced by Pope Gelasius II (r. 492–96), was transformed into a new order where regnum and sacerdotium occupied separate stacked spheres, with the spiritual claiming superiority. Unlike tenth-century reform movements, the later eleventh-century Roman reforms centered on the papacy. Popes assembled a curia featuring more professional officials, legates, councils, and other technologies of power. The reformed Church cultivated trained lawyers and sympathetic lay leaders. It has been credited with launching a legal “big bang,” the invention of propaganda, the creation of a semi-institutionalized public sphere, and the formation of a persecuting society. Closer examination of institutional changes helps reveal the achievements and limits of this “new world order.”

Pope Gregory VII and his personal views as expressed in the Dictatus papae and his references to the forged “Donation of Constantine” opened the way for the debated papal monarchy of the twelfth century. The gradual reversal of the ancient Gelasian doctrine of the relationship between spiritual and worldly powers was achieved and furthered by division within the Salian dynasty and the general social evolution and feudalization of Western society. It was not a revolution. Against the background of the council of Sutri of 1046, when Emperor Henry III arranged for the settlement of disputed papal elections, this chapter focuses on the internal changes – especially since the time of Leo IX (d.1054) – leading to a reformed papacy prior to Gregory VII (including monastic and clerical renewal as well as eventually organizational changes within the Church, such as, in no particular order: the College of Cardinals, the use of legates, the use of privileges, revival of ancient canon law, a camera along the pattern of Cluny, oaths of obedience, etc.). These changes enabled the papacy to challenge in particular the claims to sacrality first of all by the Salian monarchy but eventually of all monarchies.

Usage of the title “Vicar of Christ” and the extent of powers implied in it supposedly peaked with Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) and Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303); the image of popes as monarchic hegemons suited the attempts of legal, political, and constitutional historians to portray the growth of royal power, bureaucracy, and “nations” in competition with other forms of identity. More recently, the medieval papacy has been characterized as responsive and dialogic. Popes’ multiple roles as leader of the universal Church, Bishop of Rome, and ruler of the Papal States meant continual dialogue between center (Rome) and periphery in terms of appeals and petitions presented to the papal curia. Papal opinion and legal rulings mattered precisely because they were sought by regional churches and by secular rulers, and popes relied heavily on the College of Cardinals, judges delegate, and papal legates to represent papal decision-making. While the papal claim to the vicariate of Christ was often challenged by secular powers, this typically occurred in instances where earthly powers sensed that the vicariate of Christ was being wielded to intervene in matters critical to a definition of overlapping and occasionally competing spheres of government.