Chapter 3 - The Motivations for the Message: A Still Open Can of Worms

Summary

IN VIEW OF the above observations, one must ask what possible motivations the conceivers of the shrine's iconography had in forging the connection between the exorcism and reconciliation scenes and their relationship with the shrine's other medallions, why there existed a renewed concern for the relationship between Church and Empire after the two parties had seemingly reached a settlement in the Concordat of Worms nearly fifty years prior. In reality, the settlement was all but definitively settled given the events and the personalities and temperament of the prime movers involved in them at the time of the shrine's creation.

When looking at the first side of the shrine, one is struck by the fact that half of the scenes are devoted to ceremonial activities in which Heribert is the honoured recipient (Figs. 11, 12, and 14). While all of them represent important events in Heribert's life, taken together they focus attention on the respective roles of ecclesiastical and royal authority with particular emphasis on investiture, an issue of contention that had come to a head in the German Empire in 1076–1077 with the conflict between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV leading to the famous event at Canossa. The power struggle over who had the right to elect and invest bishops—Church or Empire—with the episcopal insignia of their office—ring and crosier—was seemingly resolved in 1122 by the Concordat of Worms and later reaffirmed in 1123 by the First Lateran Council, when Emperor Henry V agreed no longer to invest with ring and crosier or interfere with canonical elections and consecration. In return, in the German Empire, the election of bishops and abbots would occur in the emperor's presence, he would choose between disputed candidates, and, through the sceptre, he could confer the temporalities of the episcopal office even before a bishop was officially consecrated.

Since this settlement had been reached well after the investiture of Heribert, if the creators of the shrine had wished to portray Heribert's actual investiture, Heribert would have been shown, like Saint Adalbert on the Gniezno Cathedral doors,3 receiving the ring and crosier from the emperor as would have been the custom in the year 999 when Heribert was invested.