Papal roots of secularization. Tom Holland traces the roots of Western secularization in his book Forge of Christendom to the events in Canossa when Emperor Henry IV humiliated himself before Pope Gregory VII in 1077. The emperor had previously made church appointments without the pope’s clearance and even called for Gregory’s abdication. The Pope excommunicated him.
This image shows the emperor and his wife waiting for three days at Cannosa to get an audience with the Pope and seek his forgiveness.
“To be sure, Gregory today may not enjoy the fame of a Luther, a Lenin, a Mao – but that reflects not his failure but rather the sheer scale of his achievement. It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those that succeed is to end up being taken for granted. Gregory himself did not live to witness his ultimate victory – but the cause for which he fought was destined to establish itself as perhaps the defining characteristic of Western civilization. That the world can be divided into church and state, and that these twin realms should exist distinct from each other: here are presumptions that the eleventh century made “fundamental to European society and culture, for the first time and permanently.” What had previously been merely an ideal would end up a given.”
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