Claudia Zey (graduate student of Rudolf Schieffer at the University of Bonn and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zürich since 2004) was an excellent choice as author of this latest installment in the »C. H. Beck Wissen« series. This Sachbuch on the Investiture Struggle provides a vast amount of specific substance in return for a very modest paperback purchase price. Zey begins with outstanding Vorgeschichte chapters on early medieval sacral kingship and a papacy buffeted and often subjected by both external powers of Byzantine, Lombard, Carolingian, Saracen, and Norman, and Ottonian rulers and internal battles among Roman aristocratic dynasties. A final introductory chapter describes the energizing tenth-century reform movements of monks (Cluny, Gorze) and secular clergy (clerical celibacy and simony). Such historical contextualization frames sharply the improbability of the remarkable rise of papal authority that would soon emerge from quite unpromising beginnings.

Claudia Zey (graduate student of Rudolf Schieffer at the University of Bonn and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zürich since 2004) was an excellent choice as author of this latest installment in the »C. H. Beck Wissen« series. This Sachbuch on the Investiture Struggle provides a vast amount of specific substance in return for a very modest paperback purchase price. Zey begins with outstanding Vorgeschichte chapters on early medieval sacral kingship and a papacy buffeted and often subjected by both external powers of Byzantine, Lombard, Carolingian, Saracen, and Norman, and Ottonian rulers and internal battles among Roman aristocratic dynasties. A final introductory chapter describes the energizing tenth-century reform movements of monks (Cluny, Gorze) and secular clergy (clerical celibacy and simony). Such historical contextualization frames sharply the improbability of the remarkable rise of papal authority that would soon emerge from quite unpromising beginnings.

The remainder this slim yet packed volume (118 pages) covers in five dense chapters the heart of the Investiture Struggle, beginning with the independent reforms of Nicholas II during the minority of Henry IV followed by the tumultuous rise and fall of the Gregorian Reform era (rightly the longest chapter), and finally the dreary coda of Henry V’s rise and reign from the Council of Clermont (1095) through the coerced Treaty of Ponte Mammolo (1111) to the final resolution in the Concordat of Worms (1122). Through the unprecedented storm of excessive claims to primacy, excommunications, depositions, imprisonments, civil wars, and schisms unleashed by pope and emperor alike during these decades, Zey wisely weaves a thread of discourse representing a serious and principled search for a new formula to resolve the deeply embittered conflict over investiture – one that would satisfy the material, symbolic, and conceptual needs of both sides. Furthermore, though this volume is in German and thus designed primarily for a German audience, there are sections that provide comparative looks at reform efforts in England, France, and the Spanish peninsula regarding clerical celibacy, simony, and investiture.

This easily readable volume (good news for non-native German speakers) uses accessible prose pitched to an educated though not necessarily a specialist reading audience. With this in mind, the inclusion of the polemical literature generated by the Investiture Struggle in addition to charter and letter evidence proves to be a welcome choice. Bonizo of Sutri’s »Liber ad amicum«, Wido of Ferrara’s »De scismate Hildebrandi«, Bishop Anselm II of Lucca’s »Liber contra Wibertum et sequaces eius«, Manegold of Lautenbach’s »Liber ad Gebhardum«, the anonymous »Liber de unitate ecclesia conservanda« are all considered here, being too remarkable for them to be overshadowed by the mostly partisan chronicle accounts of the Gregorian pontificate (the »Dictatus Papae« is not the only polemical literature to hand). The same applies to the inclusion of Bishop Rangerius of Lucca’s »Liber de anulo et baculo«, Placidus de Nonatola’s »Liber de honore ecclesiae«, and the all-important anonymous »Disputatio vel defensio Paschalis papae« in the aftermath of the debacle of Ponte Mammolo in 1111. Their inclusion in the book reveals not only a movement of thought away from attacks on personal character and toward attempts to fashion a principled compromise solution to traditional royal investiture of bishops and abbots. Zey is quite deft in using primary sources like these in her account, while also gracefully inserting assessments of nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiographical traditions of interpretation under which the subject often still labors (Canossa’s meaning, for example). All in all, the reader will find an expansive yet focused presentation of all the nuances and meanings of the history under consideration, and anyone would be wise to retain this fine paperback as a future reference work once read.

This meticulous and easy-reading book provides a narrative account for the most part, almost solely focused on the papal reform party and the imperial court. Such a bifurcated account can tend to be recursively bipolar, and a battle of ideas above all. Though monastic reform impulses are mentioned in the opening chapters, there is little connection of them to the ideals of celibacy and separation from the impurities of lay society imposed on secular clergy in the Gregorian Reform movement (perhaps this could help explain the hostility behind the derogatory name of »false monk Hildebrand« used by German bishops for Pope Gregory VII). The German and Italian aristocracy are given little agency except as they intersect with the narrative of imperial and papal courts at war, with the German princes only asserting themselves with effect in the Concordat of Worms at the end of the story. The impact of the Investiture Struggle was also profound for German cities, many of whom were ruled by prince-bishops, yet their part of the story remains untold here. One might consider as one example Ursula Lewald’s classic article, »Köln im Investiturstreit«, in: Josef Fleckenstein (ed.), Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung, Sigmaringen 1973, p. 373–393. And finally, a study of the Investiture Struggle without a close consideration of the agency of and changes to the individuals most immediately shaped by the specific issue of investiture – the German episcopate – is a missed opportunity. If the Norwegian historian Leidulf Melve’s work Inventing the Public Sphere. The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030–1122) (Turnhout 2007) is cited as the only English-language publication in the volume, surely it is an oversight worth mentioning that Robert Benson’s standard work, The Bishop-Elect: A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office (Princeton, NJ 1968) is completely neglected, as is Ian Stuart Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge 1999). These suggestions would broaden the volume beyond intellectual history to produce a truly cultural history of interest to a wider reading audience.

Surely this volume should find its way onto any graduate school medieval history reading list, including those in the Anglo-American world of scholarship. Since the volume’s remit was not to include a companion set of primary source documents, professors should consider coupling with Zey’s volume the reader by Maureen Catherine Miller (ed.), Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict. A Brief History with Documents (Boston, New York 2005) and Ian Stuart Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest. The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester 1978).