Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 33

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candidates for episcopal sees and enforced a system of royal consent.54 He viewed himself as the
vicar and type of Christ whose actions were legitimized by his perspective of Christian kingship.
Decades before, Otto I had defined royal authority as divinely ordained and a manifestation of
God’s will. Henry II would be the ruler who enforced the standard methodically by subjecting
all ecclesiastical and secular princes to his mandates.55 He exercised systematic royal control
over the imperial bishoprics and wielded them as governmental tools. His policies were
continued by the first Salic king, Conrad II, whose bishoprics become beneficiaries of royal
endowments and were removed from the jurisdiction of the counts.56

54

Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 43.

55

Weinfurter, 15.

56

Ibid., 57.