The totality of the transformation of Western Christendom in the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, its rapidity, and its violence would not in themselves justify its characterization as the first of the great revolutions of Western history, if the revolutionary movement had not endured for several generations.
At first, the long duration of a revolution may seem to contradict its speed and violence; in fact, however, it is partly because of the speed and violence of the changes, as well as their totality, that their underlying principles must be reconfirmed and reestablished by successive generations.
Moreover, the basic goals of the revolution must be preserved in the face of necessary compromises with its initial utopianism. Just as the totality of the transformation distinguishes a revolution from reform, and just as the rapidity and violence distinguish it from evolution, so the transgenerational character of the great revolutions of Western history distinguishes them from mere rebellions, coups d'etat, and shifts in policy, as well as from counterrevolutions and military dictatorships.The Papal Revolution was the first transgenerational movement of a programmatic character in Western history. It took almost a generation, from about 1050 to 1075, for the papal party to proclaim the program to
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be a reality. Then followed forty_seven years of struggle before another pope could reach an agreement with another emperor on the single question of papal versus imperial investiture of bishops and abbots. It took even longer for the respective criminal and civil jurisdictions of the ecclesiastical and secul ar powers within each of the major western European kingdoms to be defined. In England it was not until 1170, the year of Becket's martyrdom______________________________________________ ninety_five years after
Gregory Dictatus and sixty_three years after Henry I, the English king, had yielded on the investiture issue that the Crown finally renounced its pretension to be the supreme ruler of the English
clergy. Ultimately compromises were reached on a whole range of issues involving not only the interrelationship of church and state but also the interrelationship of communities within the sec ular order __ the manorial system, the lord_vassal unit, the merchant guilds, the chartered cities and town s, the territorial duchies and kingdoms, the secularized empire. The children and grandchildren of the revolution enacted its underlying principles into governmental and legal institutions. Only then was it more or less secure for succeeding centuries. Indeed, it was never w holly secure; there were always disputes at the boundaries of the ecclesiastical and secular powers.