Iraq 381Time of Pope Innocent III, 1198–1216(Washington, D.C.:
American Historical Association, 1909).
investiture controversy or disputes This was a
struggle over who performed investiture,a public and
symbolic act by which a lay person conferred on a cleric a
property, an office, or rights by using a material symbol.
This implied control over a piece of land, the means of
production, the right to levy taxes, or an office in the sec-
ular or ecclesiastical sphere. The gift, given symbolically,
demonstrated real possession. It was usually linked with
power and control, ranging from a scepter, a lance, a staff,
a crosier, or a straw to a branch, a knife, a lump of earth,
or a cord.
Investiture permeated medieval society and was fun-
damental to the granting of lordships. The most impor-
tant investitures involved positions of power, whether
exercised by the LAITYor the clergy. Moreover, they were
usually accompanied by an act of homage as a vassal. The
ensuing dispute over who could grant to whom was in
reality a conflict over who held ultimate authority over
the temporal or spiritual world.
THE QUESTIONFrom the early Middle Ages, kings exercised control over
lay counts as well as bishops. Both actually received the
dignity of their office from the secular ruler. From the 11th
century, the church began to react to the growth of royal
control over sacramental offices, which until then had pri-
marily concerned the ecclesiastical authorities alone. The
so-called investiture contest was about the conferring by
the LAITYof a sacramental office embodied in the giving of
the crosier and the ring. It constituted a refusal to
empower lay rulers or proprietors of churches to choose
officeholders or to control their selection. Lay control was
thought by the church to be dominated by familial and
material concerns irrelevant to the criteria and background
required for appointment to ecclesiastical offices.
SOLUTIONSIVO OFCHARTRESoffered a solution that split a religious
office, episcopal, abbatial, or priestly, into spiritual and
temporal components, and each one might be the object
of a particular investiture. The former had to be conferred
by an ecclesiastical superior, the latter by the lay holder.
The layman should deferentially allow the church investi-
ture to precede his. The Concordat of WORMSin 1122 reg-
ulated episcopal elections in the empire and effected a
compromise, ending this aspect of the conflict between
clericalism and the laity, religious power and lay power.
The symbolic crosier and the episcopal rings could not be
conferred except by any prelate or churchman of high
standing. Lay princes were to invest only the secular patri-
mony represented by a scepter.
See alsoCANOSSA;GREGORYVII, POPE;SIMONY.
Further reading:Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investi-
ture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to
the Twelfth Century(Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1988); Christopher N. L. Brooke, The Investi-
ture Disputes(London: The Historical Association, 1958);
Karl F. Morrison, ed., The Investiture Controversy: Issues,
Ideals, and Results(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1971).Iona(Hy) SeeCOLUMBA,SAINT.Iran (Persia) Iran,a word developed in the SASSANIAN
period in the third to the seventh centuries, properly
meaning “Aryans,” became synonymous with Persia. Per-
siaetymologically actually only designated a province in
the southwest of modern Iran, modern-day Fars.
When the last of the Sassanian kings, Yezdegerd III
(r. 632–651), was murdered by one of his subjects in 651,
Iran was divided among its new Arabic provincial gover-
nors and became subject to a rapid Islamization. It was in
northeastern Khorasan that Iranian culture began to
flourish once more from the 10th century. This involved
a blossoming of Persian court poetry and a language that
borrowed its script from the Arabic conquerors and was
enriched by the Arabic vocabulary. There were revolts in
the ninth century against the Arabs and for the restora-
tion of ZOROASTRIANISM, the old religion.
Over time the SHIITEmovement developed in Iran
more than elsewhere. The SELJUKTURKSbecame masters
of the country in the 12th century, and there was a turn-
ing of culture toward the West. The MONGOLinvasion in
the 13th century devastated AGRICULTUREand led to a
process of nomadization. The Mongol IL-KHANIDdynasty,
however, after its conversion to Islam, ushered in a
period of cultural and slow economic recovery that led to
a renewed Iran under the Saffarids in the 16th century.
See alsoHERAKLEIOSI, BYZANTINE EMPEROR;ISLAMIC
CONQUESTS AND EARLY EMPIRE.
Further reading:John Andrew Boyle, ed., The Cam-
bridge History of Iran,Vol. 5, The Saljuk and Mongol Peri-
ods(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); R.
N. Frye, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran,Vol. 4, The
Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuks.(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975); Peter Jackson and
Laurence Lockhart, eds., The Cambridge History of
Iran,Vol. 6. The Timurid and Safavid Periods(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986); David Morgan,
Medieval Persia, 1040–1797(New York: Longman, 1988).Iraq Iraq is a modern ARABstate in the Near East estab-
lished in the 20th century, extending over both parts of
ancient Mesopotamia. Its northern part was Jazira, for-
merly Assyria, and the southern part was Iraq proper or
Sawad, formerly Babylonia. Though the term was not