The so-called Investiture Conflict was a watershed moment in the political life of the Latin West and the history of the papacy. Occurring at a time of rapid social change and political expansion, the eleventh-century reform movement became a debate centered on a ritual: the investment of bishops with the signs of their sacred and secular authority. The consecration of bishops, however, was only one of several contemporaneous conflicts over the significance of consecrations. Less well known is that which occurred over the dedication of churches. An examination of the consecration places the fundamental questions of the Gregorian Reform and Investiture Conflict back into their original liturgical framework. This context allows us to consider the symbolic richness of the liturgy that attracted large numbers of people. Our earliest examples of crowds shaping the life of the Italian cities occur at these moments. The intellectual leadership of the reform developed a papal ecclesiology using the metaphor of the dedication through preaching, law, and liturgical commentary, even as popes from Leo III to Paschal II consecrated churches with increasing regularity. Thus, the reformers attempted to coordinate and direct the crowds gathered at the consecration, but this was never a simple process. Violent conflict often erupted between monasteries, lords, citizens, popes and bishops for the control of sacred space. That violence reveals the power of the rite, the limited capacity of the reformers to define its significance, and their pragmatic approach to the traditional and emerging powers of the Italian Peninsula.