But what did it mean to be a bishop in the Franco-German region in the eleventh century? We can’t understand Rudiger and his charter to the Jews if we envision him outside his time and place.
The pope, of course, claimed the right to appoint bishops, and ultimate authority over those bishops. Indeed, theoretically, the pope claimed authority over the
emperor. (Charlemagne was crowned “Roman emperor” in 800 by Pope Leo III, laying the foundations of the so-called “Holy Roman Empire” in the west.) But Charlemagne and his successors did not accept the Church’s conception of papal authority, and routinely appointed bishops. The question of who had the right to appoint bishops became one of the hottest issues of the eleventh century, leading to the so-called Investiture Controversy. A compromise was reached only in the twelfth century. It ended the practice of lay appointment of bishops without papal approval; but bishops continued to serve both as ecclesiastical leaders and as the lords of imperial fiefs.
Much of early Carolingian legislation was devoted to the duties of the bishops and the enforcement of their authority. The bishops who emerged from the Carolingian reconstruction of society were chief agents in the royal government of the kingdom. Bishops had a growing sense of their power, but knew they could only be strong bishops under strong kings, and thus became closely allied to the kings. Bishop Rudiger of Speyer was closely allied to Henry IV, an emperor who had openly defied the pope on the question of lay investiture.
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