| | "Sacred Conquest and Ecclesiastical Politics: The Normans and the Church in the Eleventh Century," by Sean ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14) |
 | | Consequently, the prelates of Sicily and Southern Italy, whom the Normans almost always appointed with the Pope's approval, all stood by Pope Nicholas II's decrees establishing the system of Papal elections and abolishing simony, clerical marriage, and lay investiture--let the contradiction be duly noted. |
 | | Gregory VII could also rest assured that the prelates of Sicily and Southern Italy would stand by his Dictatus Papae, which he issued in 1075 to assert the virtually all-encompassing powers of the Papacy. |
 | | The Dictatus claimed the existence of a Papal (not royal) theocracy, a divine hierarchy with the Pope directly below God and everyone else on Earth subordinate to the Pope. |
| www.janus.umd.edu /Feb2001/McGee/31.html (307 words) |