ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the historical and legal relevance of the Concordat of Sutri (February 9, 1111), through which a consensual solution is imagined to the age-old controversy of investitures that opposed Papacy to the Empire. First of all, the historical and legal presuppositions of the concordat stipulation are recalled, referring to the main reasons from which it originates and to the pamphlets produced by the supporters of the two parties in conflict. The agreements signed are then examined, with specific reference to formal and substantial profiles, for a better understanding of the settlement given to the question of investitures. On a systematic level, the predominant attention is reserved for the concordatory institution, as a legal and diplomatic instrument, understood in its first historically documented debut. Since its inception, the ecclesiastical concordat takes on peculiar distinctive features and generates dynamics, in the relations between civil and ecclesiastical authorities, destined to recur, practically, up to the contemporary age.