Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 444.

Holy Beef.

This show is ad-free due to member support, and as a way of thanking members for keeping

the show independent, I offer members only content including extra episodes and rep transcripts.

And you can get instant access to all the members extras by signing up for

membership at the British History Podcast.com for about the price of a latte per month and

thank you very much to Tilda, Sylvia, and Jennifer for signing up already.

Beast on the emails I've been getting.

Some of you are having a hard time understanding why on God's green earth did Odo think he could just trot down to Rome and become the new Pope?

The truth is that actually he was less crazy than we might think, and I'm going to take a moment

to explain the situation a little better, partly because this becomes important for our story later on, and partly because it's hilariously messy, and I love mess.

Okay, do you recall the fight that Pope Gregory had with King Henry the 4th of Germany?

It was the one where Henry declared Gregory wasn't the Pope, and Gregory declared Henry wasn't king.

At its core, this was a gargantuan battle over power at the highest level.

Henry had found himself in a weakened political state and Pope

Gregory the seventh saw an opportunity. He wanted the church to rule above all kings

and emperors and so he publicly moved against Henry trying to put him in his place.

Henry didn't appreciate that and thus began the big holy beef of the 11th century.

But this conflict wasn't constrained to two men in their hurt feelings.

When Gregory went so far as to excommunicate Henry and declar him not a king, A bunch of German nobles saw an opportunity to

advance their own goals and they selected their own king, a guy named

Rudolph. And the new anti-King Rudolph and his supporters were causing Henry so many problems that he was on the verge of losing his crown. So Henry had no choice but to seek Gregory out and beg for absolution and repeal his excommunication.

...