How the world's first concordat came about (documents and commentary)

After two unsuccessful attempts to exercise control over Britain, finally in 1107 the pope found a solution in the Concordat of London. Since then, for over 900 years, concordats have proven so effective that they have formed the cornerstone of Vatican diplomacy. This is how they began.

The pope, had given his blessing to the Norman invasion of England, and he hoped that this would enable him to take the conquered territory for himself — all of it. “In 1066 William I had given over a quarter of the land in England to the Church. His conquest bound the country not only to France, but also to Rome”. [1] Not satisfied with this, the pope pressed his claim to the rest. The pope's first attempt was to rule directly through fealty, his second one was to govern “the whole of Britain” through his legate and his third one was to get a document to let him control the landed churchmen who already owned much of England. This papal document was the world's first concordat.
 

The Pope's demand for fealty refused by William the Conqueror

In line with his Papal dictation, Gregory VII had demanded that the English king recognise him as his overlord. Though William declined to hand over his kingdom, he was still eager to benefit from papal prayers and promised to send along the overdue “money”, that is, “Peter’s pence” — but only as alms, not as tribute. This, however, was not enough to satisfy the papacy. William's refusal set in motion a quarter of a century of wearing down successive English kings until finally William's youngest son, Henry I, signed the first concordat.
 

The Papal Legate's bid to rule Britain

The pope's second attempt to rule Britain, this time through his legate, is recounted by Eadmer, a Benedictine monk, noted historian and close friend of St. Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This portrait of Eadmer sharpening his quill was done a couple of decades after his death. The papal legate he writes about below was Guy, Archbishop of Vienne and the future Pope Calixtus II. 
 

The Concordat of London [2]

The papacy's third attempt to increase its control of Britain was met with success. A quarter-century after the failed attempt to secure fealty from William I Pope Paschal II managed, by threatening to excommunicate the king, to get Henry I to sign the world's first concordat.  

Henry and all other secular overlords lost the power to appoint bishops and abbots. The English Church was now a department of the universal or Roman Church, which was no longer just an expression or an idea, but a real working organisation with its own law, courts and rights over property. It was also growing: the number of monks in England rose from about 1000 in 1066 to 13,000 by 1215. [3] 

The national church wielded secular power in the kingdom. Government business that required literacy was carried out by clerics, the church owned much of the land and when the king was away the Archbishop of Canterbury ruled as regent. The Concordat of London talks about the symbolic objects in the ceremony of investiture, but the change in liturgy reflects a new level of papal control over Britain. Henry I could no longer invest bishops with the symbols of Church authority, the crook and ring, as his father and brother had done, but merely receive their homage, a face-saving gesture. As before, the archbishop’s badge of office, his stole (pallium), had to be fetched from Rome. No text survives of the world's first concordat, only this summary by an eye-witness, the monk Eadmer. 

 

Aftermath: “the sword of St. Peter”

The following year, when Henry I realised that the German king was not bound by any concordat restrictions, he decided not to observe them himself. Thereupon the pope assured him that the Germans were next:

We have indeed waited anxiously to see that uncultured race become more civilised; but as for the King, if he persists in adhering to the wicked ways of his father, he will most certainly feel the sword of St. Peter which we have already begun to draw. [4]

The result of this was the Concordat of Worms (1122), modelled on its London predecessor, which fatally weakened the power of the German king and "would eventually lead to nearly fifty years of civil war in Germany, the triumph of the great dukes and abbots, and the disintegration of the German empire, a condition from which it would not recover until the unification of Germany in the 19th century". [5]

Notes 

1. Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives, (BBC Books, 2004), p. 7.

2. The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges London as the first concordat, however, today the Vatican doesn't mention it. There are many possible reasons for preferring to call the German Concordat of Wurms the first one: the present pope is German, Germany still has concordats and the 900th anniversary of the German one is coming up in 2022. On the other hand, the London concordat got cancelled by the Reformation and, although the Vatican lost its text, a published account of the negotiations still exists which, in pious prose, outlines Vatican tactics:  Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England [Historia novorum in Anglia], translated by Geoffrey Bosanquet, (London, 1964). 

3. Terry Jones and Alan Ereira, Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives, (BBC Books, 2004), p. 97. 

4. Paschal II to Anselm (Archbishop of Canterbury), 12 October 1108. G. Bosanquet, ed., Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England, (London, 1964), p. 217.

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy, which summarises in English this widely accepted historical thesis, e.g., http://www.regionalgeschichte.net/hauptportal/bibliothek/texte/geschichte-mittelrhein.html