Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 45

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be practiced as a means to be ordained or promoted to an ecclesiastical office.79 Addressed well
before the pontificate of Gregory VII, over the decades that followed this initial prohibition of
the practice of lay investiture was viewed as an increasingly dangerous threat to the integrity and
authority of the monarchy.
The Reform Movement
The reformers
understood that in order
for the papacy to
champion ecclesiastical
reform, it must also be
reformed. Peter Damian
stressed in 1045 that the
world would remain in a
state of sin so long as the
Holy See was not in a
state of grace.80
Between the years of
955 and 1057 there had
been twenty-five popes
of which twelve were by

79

Tierney, 43-44.

80

Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 73.