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If there is a cardinal system along the EU3 HRE lines or EURome's preferred heir, or however pretenders and sucession criss are going to work in CK2, with the cardinals electing a Pope
then if a bishop has higher piety and the support of the majority of cardinals and the current pope is corrupt or otherwise misusing the posistion then that bishop might be elected Pope by the cardinals and as such become an anti-pope until such a time as the pope in rome is deposed, resigns or dies and in the event on his death another pope is not elected.
 
The problem there is that the most famous antipopes were a run of them, against continually elected popes in Rome. As well as that we had 3 "popes" at one stage.

The newly elected pope in your example wouldn't necessarily get the throne of Peter automatically when the old one dies.

All this could with some programming be interesting though, and potentially lead to yet another schism (East/West Catholic for example), or with some other routes lead to the pope being considered merely the equal of the Eastern Patriarchs, or even a solving of the schism, so that Orthodox and Catholic merge to just give "Christian". (Of course, how this would port to EU III with any converter would be a different matter).
 
The problem there is that the most famous antipopes were a run of them, against continually elected popes in Rome. As well as that we had 3 "popes" at one stage.

The newly elected pope in your example wouldn't necessarily get the throne of Peter automatically when the old one dies.

All this could with some programming be interesting though, and potentially lead to yet another schism (East/West Catholic for example), or with some other routes lead to the pope being considered merely the equal of the Eastern Patriarchs, or even a solving of the schism, so that Orthodox and Catholic merge to just give "Christian". (Of course, how this would port to EU III with any converter would be a different matter).

If when a pope or anti-pope dies during a schism [anytime where there is an antipope] the supporters of said pope get the choice between continuing with a new pope or reconciliation then you could get continual schisms. But eitherway it should be a rare thing to happen.

The Great Western Schism was an exception and at the very very end of the game so it doesnt need to be included as a mechanic as it can only happen once alot of other things have happened too, and not one decade into the game.

And the east/west schism should be solvable. Saying what youre saying would be like saying that the current sundering could be solved if the pope would only convert to protestantism. the east/west divide is hundred of years old and the Great Schism was the formal recognition of the fact it was never going to be healed. The west giving up all its principles and submitting to the east wouldnt unite the two churches, it would simply cause a schism in the west.
 
If when a pope or anti-pope dies during a schism [anytime where there is an antipope] the supporters of said pope get the choice between continuing with a new pope or reconciliation then you could get continual schisms. But eitherway it should be a rare thing to happen.

The Great Western Schism was an exception and at the very very end of the game so it doesnt need to be included as a mechanic as it can only happen once alot of other things have happened too, and not one decade into the game.

And the east/west schism should be solvable. Saying what youre saying would be like saying that the current sundering could be solved if the pope would only convert to protestantism. the east/west divide is hundred of years old and the Great Schism was the formal recognition of the fact it was never going to be healed. The west giving up all its principles and submitting to the east wouldnt unite the two churches, it would simply cause a schism in the west.

As you said, there are a lot of variables here. I do not see a resolution of the Great Schism of 1054 without the political unification of Christianity or a severely weakened East or West (as happened on the eve of the Fourth Crusade). At the same time, many protonational churches existed in the West that were out of communion with Rome, but the primacy of the Pope was always and will always be primarily a political issue. The unity of the western Church is more up for grabs. The Gregorian Reforms set off a tidal wave, the last ripples of which are still being felt today.

The decisive battle was between Gregory VII and Heinrich IV. Had that gone the other way by 1100, IMHO things would have been very different. If Heinrich and his antipope Clement III had prevailed, we might have seen the rise of something approaching the Byzantine emperor's relationship with the Patriarch of Constantinople. At least that's my assessment of the situation. If you step into the shoes of the Holy Roman Emperor or one of the big Italian or German magnates when you fire up CK2 next year, maybe you can change the Western Church as we know it. (Okay, that sounds kind of lame, but you get the idea...)

After that turning point, the power of the Papacy to intervene in internal affairs first in Germany then wherever the pope wanted only grew. I'm not saying that the church vs. state struggle should be the main question upon which you should focus your attention, but the clergy and nobility were two of the most powerful classes of people in medieval Europe, and as a German would say many centuries later, every class struggle is a political struggle. ;)
 
This is like when people say that the reformation could have been avoided if only the church gave into every protestant demand. You couldnt bring the west in line with the east to unify them without having to kill off half the western clergy and nobility. And the same with the east.
If nyour example prevailed chances are another church would have just broken up in resistance to a subsistent and heretical rome that had broken away from the immortal church, there would had been but another great schism.
And its not one sided, at some moments the church was paralysed by the Empire [for example before the reformation where the much needed church cancels were postponed for over a century due to the Emperor and King of France not letting any priests goto it if priests from the other was going. and there are various example during the CK time but i cant remember them well enough.]. The Church/Empire Dynamic was ever shifting, as was the Church/Naples and Church/Milan etc, as the Church only maintained its independence though its temporal power, which it only maintained by cleverly playing its more powerful neighbours off against each other.

You can have the many church vs. state politics without bringing in fantasty into it. You can athousand intrigues, scandals and powerplays without needing to bring in the impossible or world changing. Probably the game wont do anything to represent the great reforms and revolutions [Gregorian, Friars, etc] that the Church went through during the High Middle Ages, so i dont see any reason why it should include those that did not and probably couldnt.
 
If when a pope or anti-pope dies during a schism [anytime where there is an antipope] the supporters of said pope get the choice between continuing with a new pope or reconciliation then you could get continual schisms. But eitherway it should be a rare thing to happen.

That would make sense - it would be interesting to see how this was handled.

The Great Western Schism was an exception and at the very very end of the game so it doesnt need to be included as a mechanic as it can only happen once alot of other things have happened too, and not one decade into the game.

And the east/west schism should be solvable. Saying what youre saying would be like saying that the current sundering could be solved if the pope would only convert to protestantism. the east/west divide is hundred of years old and the Great Schism was the formal recognition of the fact it was never going to be healed. The west giving up all its principles and submitting to the east wouldnt unite the two churches, it would simply cause a schism in the west.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that there should be a single decision to end the schism! I would rather suggest a long chain of events on both sides that can occur to move the Catholics towards the Orthodox position, and the Orthodox towards the Catholic position. Once they get close enough, then a decision could be taken to merge the two.
Having said this though, the fundamental differences are:
1) Is the Pope supreme, or merely first amongst equals amongst the Patriarchs (being Patriarch of Rome)
2) A dispute over the correct wording of the confession of faith (Credo)
3) Some proceedural differences in the religious service (although there were variations across Europe anyway)

If a solution could be found to 1), with either the Orthodox submitting to the Pope, or the Pope accepting that he is the most prominent leader of a regional church, with minor leadership roles compared to the other regional churches, then unification could be close.

This is like when people say that the reformation could have been avoided if only the church gave into every protestant demand. You couldnt bring the west in line with the east to unify them without having to kill off half the western clergy and nobility. And the same with the east.
If nyour example prevailed chances are another church would have just broken up in resistance to a subsistent and heretical rome that had broken away from the immortal church, there would had been but another great schism.
I wasn't comparing anything to the reformation, but yes, had the church been willing and able to accept at least a significant proportion of the demands, then the reformation could have been if not avoided, certainly softened in effect, and not necessarily a permanent effect. Very unlikely, as some of the high churchmen depended on corrupt income to live in their accustomed fashion, and they were wielding temporal as well as spiritual power.


And its not one sided, at some moments the church was paralysed by the Empire [for example before the reformation where the much needed church cancels were postponed for over a century due to the Emperor and King of France not letting any priests goto it if priests from the other was going. and there are various example during the CK time but i cant remember them well enough.]. The Church/Empire Dynamic was ever shifting, as was the Church/Naples and Church/Milan etc, as the Church only maintained its independence though its temporal power, which it only maintained by cleverly playing its more powerful neighbours off against each other.
So entirely unlike the Patriarch of Constantinople then? He had to deal with the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Emperor continually limiting his powers, and maintained a good portion of his power by playing off factions in the court, either against each other, or against the Emperor.


You can have the many church vs. state politics without bringing in fantasty into it. You can athousand intrigues, scandals and powerplays without needing to bring in the impossible or world changing. Probably the game wont do anything to represent the great reforms and revolutions [Gregorian, Friars, etc] that the Church went through during the High Middle Ages, so i dont see any reason why it should include those that did not and probably couldnt.

Well, from the point you fire up the game and unpause, you are already into fantasy territory. After all, if Harald Hardrada were to win the 1066 scenario, and thus control England and most of Scandinavia then that could be "world changing". The reforms and revolutions may be in game - we'll need to wait and see about that, but they could be in as events "A new order is founded", or as event chains.

With regard to "impossible", you are aware that is has been a goal of both sides of the Schism to find a way to bring the two parts into full communion once more since about the time it happened?
 
theres a difference between things going differently and things going mentally. And this is in line with the saxons suddenly inventing time machines so they could go back and kill the normans with laser guns before they got kicked out of england to goto france and become normans so as to prevent their being a threat in the future/present.
Had the Church being willing an able, then it would have been other-thrown by the general populace so that a new church that wasnt willing and able could be put in its place. The reason the reforms were resisted it because they werent good, corrupt churchmen might have well accepted the reforms but the vast majority of christian civilisation wouldn't have, and this is the same situation. There are too many fundamental differences, and six hundred years were spent trying to bind the two churches together and it failed utterly ending with the great schism. How could it be repaired, If the east tried to westernise, it would splinter into an east that westernised and an east that didnt and in response was driven further east. [not geographically, metaphorically] And if Rome easternised, then a schism in the west would give rise to a new papacly and things would remain more or less the same as they are but probably with a damned lot more bloodshed.
A slow reconciliation is so exception that it could not happen without the player using the tag cheat every two seconds to control every lord, bishop, king etc for about three times as long a time as the game actually runs for, and with all the people he flicks too all have very high stats and good traits. vis-a-vi impossible.

The impossible shouldnt be allowed for, for the same reasons the game will not include flying space tanks. the improbable and unlikely possibilities that come from politics and characters surely, but not the impossible. And just because you think the church is automatically wrong by merit of it being the church, doesn't mean the whole world would jump at the first chance to abandon all its principles, beliefs and knowledge to agree with you and sign up for something they in their heart of hearts disagree with wholelly and utterly.
Orthodoxy would not disappear if its Authority submitted to the Pope, it would appoint a new authority which had more sense, and the Church likewise. It was the goal of both sides for hundreds of years before the schism happened to bring the two parts in communion, those attempts lead to the schism as is plain fact.
If it was as easy as forcing the other at swordpoint or accepting a few minor demands, then that schism wouldnt have happened in the first place and even if it had it wouldnt have lasted long enough to now be being talked about.
it is a question of one side accepting things it knows to be wrong and abandoning what is knows to be right and true and then convincing everyone else in the world to go along with it. And if anyone in the world could do that then he'd rule the whole world and not no-one in the world would be able to imagine any other way it could be. People cannot be rewritten and if you try you end up dead. Impossible is exactly the word.
 
I would advise separating high politics from matters of religious faith. I do not know if you have read the canons of the Council of Trent; I have. The Catholic hierarchy had no intention of compromising, for the reasons that DreadLindwyrm has already intimated. We have no way of knowing what the early XVI century "general populace" of the faithful thought of these proceedings (the hierarchy has a strong tendency against polling). The revolution that you imagine was averted at Trent by not giving in to Luther's demands for reform I find hard to imagine myself.

Now, back to the medieval church and the matter of some sort of reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople. I would lay stress on the political nature of this and every other schism that Christianity has experienced from the beginning. It comes down to a power struggle, over who is the legitimate successor of the Roman Empire, its prestige, and its universal claims of authority. And these divisions were exploited by both religious and secular authorities for the aggrandizement of their own power. As I see it, there is a basic argument over which episcopal see deserves primacy (a sort of king-of-the-mountain game really) on the one hand, and another in both East and West over whether secular or religious authority should have primacy. God and saving souls is kind of lost in the shuffle.

There, I've said my peace on the subject. A year from now, my brethren, pay this fine production company for its fine product, install your copy of Crusader Kings 2, and modify the game files to fit what you think is plausible. Want to unify Christendom in the face of the Muslim advance? Want to allow the Holy Roman Emperor to be able to vassalize the Papal States and name the successor of St. Peter on his whim? Want to construct Harold Godwinson's time machine? The good folks at Paradox will allow you to mod to your heart's content. Not everyone will agree on what is plausible or even "I can't believe this worked," but Crusader Kings is all about rewriting medieval history. You are the prime mover in your own alternative universe, so feel free to go *nuts*. And once you iron out the details, share it with the rest of us, and don't forget the screenshots. :cool:
 
theres a difference between things going differently and things going mentally. And this is in line with the saxons suddenly inventing time machines so they could go back and kill the normans with laser guns before they got kicked out of england to goto france and become normans so as to prevent their being a threat in the future/present.
Hyperbole much??

Had the Church being willing an able, then it would have been other-thrown by the general populace so that a new church that wasnt willing and able could be put in its place. The reason the reforms were resisted it because they werent good, corrupt churchmen might have well accepted the reforms but the vast majority of christian civilisation wouldn't have, and this is the same situation. There are too many fundamental differences, and six hundred years were spent trying to bind the two churches together and it failed utterly ending with the great schism. How could it be repaired, If the east tried to westernise, it would splinter into an east that westernised and an east that didnt and in response was driven further east. [not geographically, metaphorically] And if Rome easternised, then a schism in the west would give rise to a new papacly and things would remain more or less the same as they are but probably with a damned lot more bloodshed.

Your average peasant wouldn't have noticed the difference. The nobles might have been concerned, if they were particularly religious. The kings, and the HRE might have liked the Orthodox/eastern approach, where the bishop/metropolitan/patriarch is more firmly under control than was commonly the case in the west, especially with some of the popes.

Do you actually know what the origins of the (religious) schism were?
An added line in the statement of belief of the Catholic church, that the Orthodox disagreed with. It could even had been a clarifier in latin that failed to translate properly, or was mistranslated to greek. Other than that, the religious outlooks of the church were, and remain remarkably similar - to the point where if you are Catholic and there isn't a Catholic church in your area, you can attend Orthodox services and they are acceptably licit, and vice versa.
Politically the schism comes from whether the Pope is supreme, or merely the most important Patriarch (under the principle of primus inter pares).

A slow reconciliation is so exception that it could not happen without the player using the tag cheat every two seconds to control every lord, bishop, king etc for about three times as long a time as the game actually runs for, and with all the people he flicks too all have very high stats and good traits. vis-a-vi impossible.
Well, the same could have been said about unifying Germany, or the Italian city states becoming subject to, and dissolved by Sardinia-Piedmont to form Italy. Admittedly both out of time frame, but examples of "the impossible" happening.
I think it would be difficult, but ultimately it requires only two "powers" to make decisions, the pope and the patriarch of constantinople, or, their controllers if they are not directly represented. Alternatively, had the HRE forced the Papacy to back down and become functionally subject to the HRE, then he could have ended up as "merely" Patriarch of the West, and as there wouldn;t have been as much concept of the Pope being absolutely supreme they may have been more likely to negotiate with Constantinople.
However I think we are going to end up failing to agree at all about this.

The impossible shouldnt be allowed for, for the same reasons the game will not include flying space tanks. the improbable and unlikely possibilities that come from politics and characters surely, but not the impossible. And just because you think the church is automatically wrong by merit of it being the church, doesn't mean the whole world would jump at the first chance to abandon all its principles, beliefs and knowledge to agree with you and sign up for something they in their heart of hearts disagree with wholelly and utterly.
Again, you're introducing a bit of hyperbole here. I have not stated it would be a case of "the church is wrong", merely that decisions of faith that had not yet been taken might have been taken differently if different paths had been followed. The disagreement about how to say that you believe there is only one god, and he is all three of the father, son and holy ghost/spirit, yet at the same time being only one, could have been revisited, and a wording that all agreed on could have been found. Then it is a relatively small matter to resolve the drifts in form of service, or to simply allow them as regional variants, as was common at least in Western Christianity. The political matter of how the Pope should be recognised by the highest churchmen in the world would be seen as a matter solely for the church, not the peasants or nobility.

Orthodoxy would not disappear if its Authority submitted to the Pope, it would appoint a new authority which had more sense, and the Church likewise. It was the goal of both sides for hundreds of years before the schism happened to bring the two parts in communion, those attempts lead to the schism as is plain fact.
If it was as easy as forcing the other at swordpoint or accepting a few minor demands, then that schism wouldnt have happened in the first place and even if it had it wouldnt have lasted long enough to now be being talked about.
it is a question of one side accepting things it knows to be wrong and abandoning what is knows to be right and true and then convincing everyone else in the world to go along with it. And if anyone in the world could do that then he'd rule the whole world and not no-one in the world would be able to imagine any other way it could be. People cannot be rewritten and if you try you end up dead. Impossible is exactly the word.

With this last couple of paragraphs, you should really look at how many ideas in the church moved between heresy and mainstream theology thus the church "accepting things it knows to be wrong and abandoning what is knows to be right and true and then convincing everyone else in the world to go along with it". Before the schism the two churches were in communion. The point at which they separated was the schism. Although, this is give or take the attempts to excommunicate the other half of the church, but those were rescinded.

Come to think of it, the concept of convincing people to change what they believed in - that's largely converting religious populations, like the entirety of the Roman world to Christianity, then the expansion into the rest of Europe and Africa; followed by the rise of Islam converting large portions of Jewish, Christian and various pagan areas.

And, in view of your statement that it is impossible to make people abandon their beliefs, how do you view the reformation - both stages of it?
 
The Reformation is exact proof of what im saying.
In order to change things that much everything else would have to change first.
THe Reformation is a series of things going terribly badly for centuries, and each generation taking a tiny step in ignorance of the world before them.
First dramatic climate change from the European Warm Period into the Little Ice Age, causing massive crop failures after a time of population boom, co-inciding with a deadly plague sweeping across the whole of europe. These two things effectively whipe out the educated classes and especially the clergy, leading to so great staffing issues that most new priests are untrained and overworked leading to corrupting and submission to secular authority, which leads to more corruption and schism.
Now you have a couple generations where no-one alive can remember either when the system worked or when it wasnt divided, let alone what it stood for. After the schism the church is too paralysed by fear of another and by constant French and Imperial interference to stand up to the secular princes who force their elections onto the throne of st. peter bringing corruption to previously unheard of levels. And the Church is unable to make any of the reforms its been working on centuries as it has come entirely at the mercy of the secular princes who for short-term political gain prevented the councils from being called. Alongside this you have the fear of the Turk causing an extension of the Schism's war taxes in preparation of the crusade that never came and alot worse besides.
Then you have the reformation, first a huge explosion of undirected anti-clericalism, that neither the empire or the church pay any attention to as the Turk is perceived as the greater threat than civil difficulties. The generation following this cannot even imagine that the church could have ever worked, having grown up only hearing debate and only knowing conflict and ignorant anger. From this come those who call for a new Church or a return to a romantised roots of the church and for no church at all.

In short i go back to what i said before. If you want that kind of change to be possible in the short amount of time the game covers, you'll going to have to kill half the people of europe to do it. Especially with the game being during the height of christian civilisation when more or less everything was going well aside from a bit of mad plutonics but that gets solved pretty quickly. In the game the world wont turn upside down.
Maybe it might be possible if say Paris is held by the mongols or the moslems march north the whole way from rome to holstien. But barring the insane the world ought be based in sanity. As if it based in insanity then it wont be fun. For the same reason that it wouldnt be fun if you could choose not to die or to never have bad stats, For the same reason the map starts off historically. Youre changing the world, not changing an orange duck's nightmare, it should be based in possibility and history so that it means something, so that its fun.


BUT THATS NOT ON THE SUBJECT OF THE POPE AND THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS so lets be on topic and have no more quibbling over which historial bias to go for.

which as i said before, I think should be something of a mix of EU3's HRE window and EU:R VV's Preferred Heir Mechanic with Cardinals in the place of Electors/Court members, voting on new popes and in church councils to call crusades, pass reforms, choose a posistion of friars etc. [i.e. Successions and Decisisons.]
I think thatd work. any objections?

Antipopes can be when the Cardinals lose confidence in the current pope, and possibly using the Kingdom's succession crisis mechanic whatever that might be or possibly with a decision or event chain, elect a new pope and the declare the other an anti. Which one wins might depend on which secular powers choose what something to how EU3's catholic mod [now DG but im not sure if DG still does it the way it first did] did it.

If a Cardinal is corrupt with his traits then he might be bribeable but with a high risk of being caught unless the others are too. If a Cardinal is a family member he might be pressured, but once again with consequences if a king who wants something else finds out about it.

And If you get any control over dynasty members when they are outside of your court, maybe you might even get to try your hand at poping. But applying pressure as a secular prince would be more in the spirit of the game.

And maybe the EU3 Imperial authority thing could be brought in with the Church and the Empire both having authority values and certain events/decisions might be dependant on which of the two is higher. [i.e. who to appeal to for something, or the Emperor putting forward a candidate for pope etc]
 
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I disagree that our conversation was vastly off topic, as it was addressing the powers of the Pope, and his relative position in the world.

But, I am willing to put this away unresolved as well.

The videos that have been released from Paradox's presentation indicate that you as a king can try to "create" your own antipope by giving more power to your "bishop", and if you get sufficient power there you can effectively promote them. It does come at the cost of weakening the church as a whole, and can prodice interesting new heresies, and put holes in the overall power structure of Europe.
 
I disagree that our conversation was vastly off topic, as it was addressing the powers of the Pope, and his relative position in the world.

But, I am willing to put this away unresolved as well.

The videos that have been released from Paradox's presentation indicate that you as a king can try to "create" your own antipope by giving more power to your "bishop", and if you get sufficient power there you can effectively promote them. It does come at the cost of weakening the church as a whole, and can prodice interesting new heresies, and put holes in the overall power structure of Europe.

It could also result in invasions endorced by the (legitimate) papacy to remove the heretic king from. The pope could offer to crown and all territories held by the current king to the leader of this invasion. William the Conqueror received papal support and Charles d'Anjou was offered the crown of Sicily, before he had conquered that kingdom.
 
Also there could be negotiations in a diplomatic level between the legitimate Pope and the King in whose realm the Antipope resides... Should the negotiations be successfull the Antipope is expelled from the Kingdom and has 2 options... Either submit to the legitimate Pope and abdicate (perhaps the winning Pope could grant him a Cardinal's hat or a bishopric... happened in middle ages... or burn him as a heretic) or relocate to another realm who supports him (if there is one)... Should negotiations fail then the legitimate Pope could order one of his supporters to invade and depose the heretic Antipope (perhaps with promises of land/gold or the crown of the impious King who protects him...)
 
Also by having an Antipope this could lead to the creation of a rival College of Cardinals with the Cardinals obediences swinging between the 2 (or more if u prefer :D) Popes... With Kings and Lords bribing them or negotiating in order to lure them to the Papal faction they support...
 
Also by having an Antipope this could lead to the creation of a rival College of Cardinals with the Cardinals obediences swinging between the 2 (or more if u prefer :D) Popes... With Kings and Lords bribing them or negotiating in order to lure them to the Papal faction they support...

That did happen at least once IIRC, where the Italian and French cardinals each formed their own conclave. Personally, I would go for the direct appointment of the antipope. The college of cardinals as the body to appoint the pope was only a decade old when our 1066 campaign starts (1056-1059 is when the college evolved into the basis of what it is today). Before that, the HRE or some other secular ruler had a big say in who became pope, and the Papal States were technically part of the empire.
 
That did happen at least once IIRC, where the Italian and French cardinals each formed their own conclave. Personally, I would go for the direct appointment of the antipope. The college of cardinals as the body to appoint the pope was only a decade old when our 1066 campaign starts (1056-1059 is when the college evolved into the basis of what it is today). Before that, the HRE or some other secular ruler had a big say in who became pope, and the Papal States were technically part of the empire.

I agree with the direct appointment of the Antipope... But with a twist... I would suggest that this Antipope could form his own College of Cardinals, a College formed by clergymen who support him (and granted them the Cardinal's hat) and if he submits to the legitimate Pope then the rival College is dissolved and "pseudocardinals" are either absorbed to the legitimate College if there are vacancies or just lose the trait Cardinal and retire to their liege's court or Pope's court if u prefer...
 
surely the cardinals being split would represnt two colleges fine, as being all the cardinals in the world rather than the ones on this side. Then they are absorbed by when they change to supporting the legitimate authority
 
I think that we should adhere to the ancient principle (going back to Pope Leo I, in the V century) that bishops should be elected, at least with a say from the local cathedral chapter (a council of local clergymen that advised the bishop) if not the "people" however defined, but with the reality that bishops served the interests of their immediate lieges. What I see again and again for appointed offices in the high medieval and early modern eras is that a consultative body, or council, would nominate three worthy candidates, and the sovereign power would select one. I'm not sure if this could be implemented in CK2, but I wanted to throw it out there. The local churchmen were as defensive of their prerogatives as the Papacy and the secular authorities, so I would tend to see the struggle over investiture in this way:

First, the local clergy and according to traditions the laypeople as well wanted a good share of power in determining whom the bishop should be--they did not want a foreigner being imposed on them but rather a local priest who knew the diocese and what needed to be done from day one. The same would go for an abbey, monastery, or convent, in which the monks or nuns would want to be able to elect their own leader without either their patron (a layman) or an episcopal or secular authority saying who should be in charge.

Second, the secular authority whether a king, count, duke, or their female equivalents wanted a say because of the clergy's importance to both local governance and economy. King noted in NYC that bishops would be caught between their king and the Pope in terms of loyalty, and with loyalty where the money goes. (and the collection and distribution of tithes were also a point of confrontation too.)

Third, the Papacy and/or the archbishop (in the case of a suffragan bishop): By the XI century, just as Gregory VII argued forcefully for the right of papal election by the College of Cardinals, he and his successors pushed for the Pope's right to name bishops and archbishops, without needing to consult either the laypeople whom they swore to serve, the diocese's other clergymen, or the secular authorities who claimed sovereignty over that diocese.

To sum it up, investing bishops was a three-way struggle between the local clergy (who wanted one of their own to be their primus inter pares), the king (who wanted to appoint one of his proteges or do a favor for a local magnate family), and the Pope (who wanted to reserve for himself the power to consecrate any and all bishops in the West).

A good review of this historical problem can be found here: http://americancatholiccouncil.org/resources/elect-bishops/ This issue will be modeled in vanilla CK2, but I thought that a religion mod (like Dei Gratia for EU3: IN) would be something to strive for. I think that it would appeal to those players who want to set up geographical boundaries and rule, but less so to those interested in world domination (not that there's anything wrong with that). For the moment, just some food for thought.

By the way, if you are curious I am a grassroots Roman Catholic (for lack of a better term) interested in medieval and early modern Church history (the latter is the subject of my doctoral work) and all the ways that things might have worked out differently. My interest is in popular religion, and I tend to be skeptical of either religious and secular hierarchies. So if I do a lot of what-ifs on the Catholic Church, and get long winded in the process, I beg your indulgence (no not that kind of indulgence ;) )