Pope Gregory VII
Pope of the Catholic Church from 1073 to 1085
Pope Gregory VII (Latin: Gregorius VII; c. 1015 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (Italian: Ildebrando di Soana), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 22 April 1073 to his death in 1085. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
One of the great reforming popes, he initiated the Gregorian Reform, and is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Emperor Henry IV to establish the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy in the years preceding his election as pope. He was the first pope to introduce a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, which had until then commonly married, and also attacked the practice of simony.
During the power struggles between the papacy and the Empire, Gregory excommunicated Henry IV three times, and Henry appointed Antipope Clement III to oppose him. Although Gregory was hailed as one of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs after his reforms proved successful, during his own reign, he was denounced by some for his autocratic exercise of papal power.
In later times, Gregory VII became an exemplar of papal supremacy to both supporters and opponents of the papacy. Beno of Santi Martino e Silvestro, who opposed Gregory VII in the Investiture Controversy, accused him of necromancy, cruelty, tyranny, and blasphemy.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q133063. VIAF identifies the subject as 95301181. The Library of Congress control number is n50082275. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1015, 1085 and 1073.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pope Gregory VII” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.