Kingship in the political thought of Pope Gregory V11 (1073 - 85)

Abstract

Gregory VII is remembered as the pope who initiated the notion of the supremacy of the apostolic see in temporal as well as ecclesiastical matters. The assumption in the twentieth and twenty-first century secondary literature is that this was inadvertent, that it was an unintended consequence of Gregory's pursuit of spiritual reform, and that his political ideas were subsidiary to his religious motives.