Concordat of Worms

The Concordat of Worms, also called the Pactum Callixtinum, was an agreement between the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire regulating the appointment of bishops and abbots within the Empire. Signed on September 23, 1122 in the German city of Worms by Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V, it ended the Investiture Controversy, a conflict between church and state over the right to appoint religious officeholders that had begun in the mid-eleventh century. By signing the concordat, Henry renounced his right to invest bishops and abbots with the ring and crosier and opened ecclesiastical appointments in his realm to canonical elections, while Callixtus agreed to the presence of the emperor or his officials at those elections and granted the emperor the right to intervene in disputed outcomes; the emperor was also permitted a separate ceremony investing bishops and abbots with a scepter, representing the lands making up the temporalities of their episcopal see. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/