In the year of 1122, 47 years since Pope Gregory’s decree against the investiture, the conflict ended with The Concordant of Worms, a document written by Pope Calixtus II and the new Roman Emperor, son of Henry IV, the appropriately named Henry V. Though this document is signed as a compromise, its terms greatly favored the Catholic Church in the grand scheme.
Henry V, comparably weaker than his father, states in his half of the concordant, “For the love of God and his holy Church and of Pope Calixtus, and for the salvation of my soul, I, Henry, by grace of God, emperor of the Romans, Augustus, hereby surrender to God and his apostles, Sts. Peter and Paul, and to the holy Catholic Church, and investiture by ring and staff.” Though this was a major victory for the church, in his half, Pope Calixutus does state, “In the case of disputed elections you [the emperor] shall have the right to decide between the parties, after consulting with the archbishop of the province and his fellow bishops.”
It was in this way that the papacy gained control of the bishops of the Roman Empire, and thus the Roman Empire itself through influence. As it is said, when you control who is in power, you control the power itself. For a generation more, there would be peace between the Roman Empire and the Papacy, not because the Empire’s government didn’t desire power, but it simply no longer had the power to gain ground over the Papacy. Therefore, the outcome of the investiture controversy determined political power in Western Europe favoring the papacy for the next five hundred years.
The City of Worms, Germany, where the concordant was written and signed.