Key Ideas
Students who play the Reacting to the Past game will:
Examine the ideals and goals of the 11th century reform movement
Explore the differences between the imperial and papal viewpoints on secular authority
Gain appreciation for the medieval importance of tradition
Develop an understanding of medieval political organization, including lordship and church hierarchy
Use primary sources to gain a deeper understanding of the motivations of historical actors
Debate Topics
Links are to entries from the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (online via library)
Lay investiture (tags = #layInvestiture)
Legitimacy of papal supremacy over bishops (#papalSupremacy, #papalPrimacy, #episcopalElections)
Legitimacy of papal freedom from established tradition and papal precedents (#papalPrecedent)
Clerical celibacy (tag = #clericalCelibacy, #Nicolaitism)
Legitimacy of papal supremacy over secular realm (#papalSupremacy, #TwoPowers)
Proprietary church system (tag = #simony, #proprietaryHouses)
Key Concepts:
The fragile nature of authority in the 11th century (for kings and popes alike)
competing and overlapping notions of how secular and religious authorities ought to influence each other's spheres (secular investiture of bishops/abbots, papal preeminence, bishops acting as secular leaders of cities, etc.)... and how the division between the two is a modern concept
the disruptive power of church reform in secular contexts (and also how some reform initiatives might not have been championed for exclusively altruistic reasons)
the importance of monastic reform to the Gregorian Reforms. So much of the Gregorian reforms in one way or another traces back to monastic ideas about ‘fixing’ the secular clergy by making them look more like the regular clergy—priestly celibacy, obedience to a hierarchical superior, the evils of money (simony)—these are all essentially monastic values that the reformers want to impose on the secular clergy.
simply the notion that the Catholic Church has not been a monolithic, uniform entity for two millenia; it would be great if students grasp that the institution has been a work in progress for centuries and that 1,000 years ago there was a great deal more variability in how Catholicism appeared from one region to the next
that kingship and papal authority were not as absolutist as many students might suppose; both positions required the support of councils (and often electors/cardinals) in order to wield power. This could extend somewhat into how "feudalism" permits a hierarchy of power to operate, but that is not my main objective.
the multifarious roles of a bishop/abbot in a community and the different avenues through which noble families maintained power and political ties
[Adapted from Matthew E. Parker & Andrew Larsen's The Investiture Controversy: Church and State on the Road to Canossa, 1075-77 (version 1.02; November 2019).]
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