Boating in Canossa

At the beginning of his tenure as Pope, Gregory VII tried to reform the investiture process (in the Diktat of the Pope ), but met opposition from the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Heinrich, however, argued that he was in favor of preserving the well-established right of emperors to “impose” bishops and other clergymen . Heinrich refused to recognize Gregory as pope; in response, Gregory excommunicated the emperor and declared his rule illegal. The excommunication was announced in the 1076 Leninist Synod, in Rome. Gregory also said that in one year excommunication will become permanent and irreversible.

On June 9, 1075, a battle took place between Langensalza between the forces of Henry IV and the Saxon rebels , in which Heinrich prevailed.

Later, on October 16, 1076 in Oppenheim, the patriarch of Aquileia and the papal legate met with the German princes. At this meeting, the princes took an oath not to recognize Henry until the excommunication was removed. In an effort to avoid new uprisings of the German aristocracy, Heinrich realized that he must meet with the Pope. Following the proposal of his opponents, Heinrich appointed Gregory VII meeting in Augsburg .

Henry IV began his journey from Speyer and, moving to the south, found his position precarious. He still enjoyed the support of the common people, but the nobility constantly threatened to elect a new ruler. Heinrich had to urgently secure his position before the time given to him by the pope.

Heinrich crossed the Alps through the Mont Senis pass ^[1] and accepted repentance : he put on his hair shirt and allegedly went barefoot. Presumably, many of his retinues also took off their shoes. On January 25, 1077, Henry IV reached the gates of Canossa.

Gregory VII , however, refused to accept Henry. According to first-hand information (letters that Henry and Gregory wrote in subsequent years), Heinrich waited at the gates of the fortress for three days. All this time he did not take off his hair shirt and fasted . It is believed that a significant part of this time, Heinrich spent in the village at the foot of the hill, although in medieval sources this is not stated.

On January 28, the gates opened, and Heinrich was let into the fortress. Medieval sources report that he knelt in front of Pope Gregory and asked for his forgiveness. Gregory forgave the emperor and called him back to the bosom of the church. That evening, Gregory, Heinrich, and Matilda of Tuscany shared communion in St. Nicholas Cathedral in the fortress, which meant the official removal of the excommunication ^[2] .

Heinrich quickly returned to the management of the empire, and Gregory and Matilda spent a few more months in the fortress and other parts of Tuscany. Later, historians put forward a version that there was a love relationship between them (in particular, Protestant historians of the 17th century used this accusation), but if any evidence existed on this occasion, they have not survived to this day ^[3] .

The immediate consequences of the meeting at Kanossa were quite small. Although Henry IV returned under the patronage of the church, all expectations that the pope would support him as the legitimate ruler ^[4] did not come true. In March, a small group of powerful Saxon and South German landowners gathered in Forchheim , among which were the archbishops of Salzburg , Mainz and Magdeburg, and several other bishops. Having decreed that Heinrich irretrievably lost imperial dignity, they in absentia deprived the Salic dynasty of the right to transfer the imperial crown by inheritance and that "the royal son, even if he were a positively worthy person, should become king only as a result of voluntary election" (according to the German chronicler Bruno of Saxony, who was present in the retinue of the Archbishop of Magdeburg). Pope Gregory VII supported this agreement ^[5] . The ban on the board for Heinrich was still in force, and he found himself embroiled in a civil war against the Duke Rudolf Schwabsky . Gregory VII again excommunicated Henry, but in the meantime he won the civil war and moved to Rome. Gregory was forced to flee, and in his place was Clement III ^[6] .

Nevertheless, the significance of the events at Canossa for Germany and Europe as a whole was significantly greater. During the Reformation of the XVI century, Henry IV was praised as the defender of the rights of both Germans and opponents of the pope. Many of the Lutherans considered him "the first Protestant" and used his example in the struggle against the government, which they considered tyranny.

Later in German history, the same events received a more worldly perception: they began to signify Germany’s refusal to submit to any external authority (especially the Roman Catholic Church , although not only to it). Otto von Bismarck assured his compatriots during his Kultukkampf : “We will not go to Canossa - neither in body nor in spirit!”, Implying this to be free from external interference in the country's political, religious and cultural life ^[7] .

On the other hand, the Italian philosopher and politician Benedetto Croce called Canossa, the first after the fall of the Roman Empire, a tangible victory for the Pope, who personified the Italian people of the 19th century, the Italian people over German supremacy. Croce considered the events in Canossus the beginning of a departure from Italy as part of the Holy Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance , during which Germany had lost power over northern Italy by the 15th century.

Nowadays, the phrase “to go to Canossa” is most often understood as an act of repentance or submission. Similar expressions exist in German: “nach Canossa gehen”, in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: “Canossavandring” or “Kanossagang”, French: “aller à Canossa” and Italian: “andare a Canossa” languages. All these expressions mean repentance, often against will or forced. Hitler , for example, used this expression to describe his meeting with the Bavarian Minister-President Heinrich Held, where Hitler, recently released from Landsberg prison , asked to remove the ban from the National Socialist Party ^[8] .

• Hlawitschka, E. "Zwischen Tribur und Canossa" Historisches Jahrbuch 94 (1974: 25-45).
• Kämpf, Hellmut, Canossa als Wende. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur neueren Forschung . Darmstadt, 1963.
• Morrison, KF Canossa: a revision, Traditio 18 (1962: 121-58).
• Struve, Tilman, Mathilde von Tuszien-Canossa and Heinrich IV.
• Zimmermann, Harald, Der Canossagang von 1077. Wirkungen und Wirklichkeit . Mainz, 1975.