Editing Gregorian Reform (section)

==Overview==
{{main|History of the papacy (1048–1257)|Papal selection before 1059}}
The Gregorian reform was a frontal attack against the political-religious collusion dating from [[Carolingian dynasty|the Carolingians]], in which institutions and church property were largely controlled by secular authorities while the clerics from pope and bishop to country priest were subject by customary law to the authority of the emperor, the king, the prince or the lord.

The following practices were thus most protested against:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cushing |first=Kathleen G. |title=Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century |publisher=Manchester University Press |date=29 September 2005 |isbn=978-0719058349 |pages=117–120}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Simons |first=Walter |url=https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/59226926/Jean_de_Warneton_et_la_reforme_gregorien-libre.pdf?1557689660=&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B+filename%3DJean_de_Warneton_et_la_reforme_gregorien.pdf&Expires=1727998926&Signature=WsXiCs4iaUu~JV0yJN1W29xq5TXFLhdyH1OJhApGz-cANe3f7u-q69tkqjeS10LkJZpUKSQiCjbljzYT9H82TyUgsnplhbCxQRD3tU96fIF~XPvXg1NCHft4AchuDvwgEgG1L3SV5zyl-EpCwsl83Vd5y5HfXEWofeSlFS-HyUmuWfSyyngU4TxWVdGJHd97mf3weGGUs-7IzBn672mq1xv8O2CTxYiRY2oKuOPpYHKOcuhfHOLq2ctZOZdlGUvaxCvtNGFAm6DuBkx8BF~Jdy3DGSmgGAnuEMbGU7tV7ZhIQYIMvosp68R4ewtilOMCWkD3P6d9Sv76ZL-wPosBGw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA |title=Jean de Warneton et la réforme grégorienne |pages=36–37}}</ref>

# The investiture of clerics or the handing over of a religious function to a cleric by a layman: The custom had, in the eyes of the reformers, led to the greatest aberrations in Germany, where the emperor granted his vassals, the prelates, ecclesiastical investiture with a crozier and ring, while at the same time granting them secular power over their diocese or religious principality.
# Layman’s control over church property: some bishoprics and abbeys not only belonged to the patrimony of the sovereigns, but they had also usurped important ecclesiastical revenues (dimes, altars, etc.).
# Simony, or trading in religious functions: this accusation was levelled primarily at those laymen who collected ecclesiastical revenues for their own account and who entrusted these functions to those who offered the most, with the complicity of certain ecclesiastical authorities.
# The marriage of priests: the moral decadence of the clergy was seen as the logical consequence of the entanglement of the spiritual and the temporal. The temporal limits of this protest movement are the Roman Synod of 1059 on the one hand, and the compromise solution instituted by the Concordat of Worms (1122) on the other hand.

During Gregory's pontificate, a conciliar approach to implementing papal reform took on an added momentum. [[Conciliarism]] properly refers to a later system of power between the Pope, the Roman curia, and secular authorities. During this early period, the scope of Papal authority in the wake of the [[Investiture Controversy]] entered into dialogue with developing notions of [[Papal supremacy]]. The authority of the emphatically "Roman" council as the universal legislative assembly was theorised according to the principles of papal primacy contained in ''[[Dictatus papae]]''.

Gregory also had to avoid the [[Catholic Church]] slipping back into the abuses that had occurred in Rome, during the [[Rule of the Harlots]], between 904 and 964. [[Pope Benedict IX]] had been elected Pope three times and had sold the Papacy. In 1054 the [[East–West Schism|"Great Schism"]] had divided Western European Christians from the [[Eastern Orthodox Church]]. Given these events, the Catholic Church had to reassert its importance and [[authority]] to its followers. Within the church, important new laws were pronounced on [[simony]], on [[clerical marriage]] and from 1059 on extending the prohibited degrees of [[affinity (Catholic canon law)|affinity]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Gilchrist|first=John|title='Pope Gregory VII and the juristic sources of his ideology', in Canon Law in the Age of Reform, 11th-12th Centuries|year=1993|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|location=UL|isbn=0860783685|page=5}}</ref> Although at each new turn the reforms were presented to contemporaries as a return to the old ways, they are often seen by modern historians{{who|date=May 2025}} as novel.{{citation needed|date=May 2025}} The much later [[Gregorian calendar]] of [[Pope Gregory XIII]] has no connection to those Gregorian reforms.