MATILDE OF CANOSSA - Ruins of the castle of M. of C. (10th–11th c.) - Canossa.
MATILDE OF CANOSSA - In the great struggle between Papacy and Empire of the 11th century the feminine element is represented in the noblest and purest manner by the countess M., commonly called of Canossa. She was the last representative of the house of the Attonids, which in the 11th century had united in its hands the two marches of Lombardy-Emilia and Tuscany. M.’s father was Boniface III, the most powerful of the dynasty; her mother was Beatrice of the dukes of Lorraine; her birth is to be placed around 1045–46. After the death of her father, assassinated around 1052, the young M. was betrothed to Godfrey of Lorraine, whose father Godfrey the Bearded at the same time married M.’s mother. The two princely houses, thus united, formed a territorial bloc that could be dangerous for the Empire: the consequence was that Emperor Henry III intervened energetically in Italy, and while Duke Godfrey escaped by flight, Duchess Beatrice had to present herself in Florence before the feudal tribunal and was taken prisoner by Henry III in Germany together with her daughter M. The latter was now the sole heir to the ancestral domains, since her elder brother Frederick and her other sister Beatrice had died in those years. The death of Henry III in 1056 allowed the marchional family to return to its states in Emilia-Tuscany. M. grew up near her mother and stepfather, beginning to learn the art of government; politics, however, did not prevent Beatrice and M. from living a life dominated by a profound religious sense.
The family was entirely devoted to the Church: an uncle of Duchess Beatrice was Pope Leo IX; a brother of Duke Godfrey was Pope Stephen IX; a close associate of the ducal court was the bishop of Lucca Anselm of Baggio, who became Alexander II. Duchess Beatrice, as a letter of St Peter Damian states, having married for political necessity in second marriage her cousin Godfrey, established with him a pact of mutual continence; it appears that M. had aspirations toward a monastic life. The exigencies of dynasty and state compelled her in 1069 to marry the son of her stepfather, Godfrey known as the Hunchback, and from 1069 to 1071 she lived in Lorraine with her spouse. The marriage was not very happy. Around 1071 a child was born who soon died, and shortly afterward M. returned to Italy to her mother, who had lost her second husband in 1069. M., urged by her husband to return to Germany, refused, and Godfrey’s journey to Lombardy in 1073 was of no avail. The conflict was not merely personal but political: M. and her mother followed a policy of absolute devotion to the religious movement centered on Pope Gregory VII; Duke Godfrey, having abandoned the promises initially made to the Pope, had become one of the most ardent supporters of Emperor Henry IV.
In 1076 the countess M. was freed from the concerns of her husband, who was assassinated that year by an enemy, but she also lost her mother Beatrice, who was buried in Pisa. Thus the countess remained alone to govern the vast state. She was strongly supported by Gregory VII, who regarded M. as a faithful disciple; she was advised by the bishop of Lucca Anselm, the nephew of Alexander II: “to her belonged the exercise of power, he governed,” says the biographer of Anselm. M. had blind trust in Anselm, as the man of God placed at her side by Gregory VII and by Providence.
As the violent conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV took shape, the countess remained faithful to the Pope, though she did not wish to break completely with her supreme feudal lord, the Emperor. M.’s influence may have been felt by the German princes at the Diet of Tribur, to which she attended, obtaining decisions of deferral. When Gregory VII, as a result, decided to go to Germany for the Diet of Augsburg, to examine as supreme judge the question of the Emperor and the princes, the countess supported him, aided him in his journey through her states, and gave him hospitality in her Apennine castle of Canossa when in January 1077 it was announced that Henry IV had come into Italy with unclear intentions. The negotiations that took place between Gregory VII and Henry IV in the last days of January had as authoritative mediators M. of Canossa and her cousin Adelaide of Turin, mother-in-law of the Emperor: in a conversation between Henry IV and Countess M. held in the chapel of St Nicholas near Bianello, reconciliation was prepared; M., urged by Henry IV to intercede with the Pope in fulfillment of her feudal duty, complied. Gregory VII accepted Henry’s assurances because they were guaranteed by the assurances of the two princesses. After the agreement of Canossa (28 January 1077), the Pope remained for several months a guest of M.’s residence. The crisis in M.’s political stance began when the definitive rupture between Henry IV and Gregory VII occurred, and while the Pope again excommunicated the prince, an antiking was elected in Germany. M. adopted an increasingly decisive stance in favor of the anti-imperial Gregorian policy, and at an unspecified time, while in Rome (1078–1080), she made a donation to St Peter in the hands of Gregory VII of all her allodial goods that she had and could have, either by right of inheritance or otherwise, both this side and beyond the Alps, though taking them back in lifelong enjoyment.
The political motives behind this donation are not entirely clear, but they certainly gravely affected the countess’s relations with Henry IV, who must have believed himself the only kinsman entitled to claim the succession. After 1080 M. was openly at war with the Emperor, who, during his descent into Italy in 1081, occupied much of the Matildine march; in various cities the bishops of imperial allegiance rebelled and fomented revolts against the countess. Henry IV avenged his cousin’s hostility by placing her under imperial ban and stripping her of all her fiefs, both in Italy and Germany. M., steadfast in her stance, aided the Pope with her private treasury and the gold of the churches, and openly negotiated with the German princes against the Emperor. The flight from Rome and the death of Gregory VII, the occupation by the Emperor and his antipope of the Urbe, marked the most critical moment for Countess M., who remained alone to defend with purity of spirit and self-abnegation the papal program of Church reform. Yet she did not lack successes: the victory of Sorbara over imperial forces on 7 July 1084 showed that she still had loyal vassals; the elections of the two Gregorian popes, Victor III and Urban II, took place under her protection. To secure support beyond the Alps for her anti-imperial policy, M. married in 1089 the very young Duke of Bavaria Welf, but provoked a fresh violent reaction from Henry IV: in 1091 he seized the principal Matildine stronghold in Lombardy, Mantua. The countess responded by taking under her protection the Empress Praxedis, confined by Henry IV at Verona, and aiding Prince Conrad in his rebellion against his father. In 1097 she was present in Rome at the great Lateran Synod convoked by Urban II. A setback came in the same year with the separation from her young husband Welf of Bavaria, who reconciled with the Emperor. The countess adopted as her son Count Guido Guerra, doubtless to secure support; Guerra appears in comital documents from 1099 until 1108, after which the adoption seems to have been revoked. In 1102 M. reconfirmed the donation of her allodial lands to the Church of Rome. When in 1111 the new Emperor Henry V descended into Italy, he sought to establish cordial relations with the aged countess: an agreement was reached whose contents remain unknown. It appears that Henry V granted the countess the office of his representative in the Kingdom of Italy; whether M., as has been conjectured, in some way promised to leave her lands to the Emperor is doubtful. Probably one may suppose that the Emperor recognized the countess’s personal authority over the two marches, renouncing the right to impose his own representative as margrave. In her final years M. devoted her beneficent activity to churches and monasteries. She died at Bondeno on 24 July 1115, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried in the church of her beloved monastery of S. Benedetto di Polirone. Her remains were identified on 18 June 1613 and transferred to Rome, where they repose in the great tomb erected by Bernini at the instance of Urban VIII in 1633. The figure of Countess M., “the honor and glory of Italy,” as her biographer Donizo calls her, was not forgotten by medieval historical tradition, and it is indeed likely
that she is the feminine ideal portrayed by Dante in the Earthly Paradise.