MATILDA OF CANOSSA. - In the great struggle between the Papacy and the Empire in 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 gathered into its hands the two marches of Lombardy-Emilia and of Tuscia. 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 disappearance of her father, murdered 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, uniting in this way, formed a territorial bloc that could be dangerous for the Empire: the consequence was that the emperor Henry III intervened energetically in Italy, and while duke Godfrey saved himself by flight, the duchess Beatrice had to present herself in Florence before the feudal tribunal and was led by Henry III as a prisoner to Germany with her daughter M. The latter was by now the sole heir of the ancestral domains, her elder brother Frederick and her other sister Beatrice having died in those years. The disappearance of Henry III in 1056 allowed the marchional family to return to its states of Emilia-Tuscia. M. grew up near her mother and her stepfather, being initiated into the art of government: politics, however, did not prevent Beatrice and M. from living a life wholly dominated by a profound religious sense.
The family was entirely bound to the Church: an uncle of the duchess Beatrice was pope Leo IX; a brother of duke Godfrey was pope Stephen IX; an intimate of the ducal court was the bishop of Lucca Anselm of Baggio, who was Alexander II. The duchess Beatrice, as a letter of St. Peter Damian says, marrying for political necessity in second nuptials her cousin Godfrey, established with him a pact of mutual continence; it appears that M. had aspirations to a monastic life. The demands of the dynasty and of the State forced her in 1069 to marry the son of her stepfather,
Godfrey called the Hunchback, and from 1069 to 1071 she lived in Lorraine with her spouse. The marriage was not too happy. A child was born around 1071 who soon died, and immediately 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 the journey that Godfrey made in 1073 to Lombardy served no purpose. The conflict was not only personal but political: M. and her mother followed a policy of absolute devotion to the movement of religious reform centered on pope Gregory VII; duke Godfrey, having abandoned the promises he had first made to the Pope, had become one of the most vigorous supporters of the emperor Henry IV.
In 1076 the countess M. was freed from the worries of her husband, who was murdered in that year by an enemy of his, but she also lost her mother Beatrice, who was buried in Pisa. Thus the countess remained alone to govern the vast State. Gregory VII supported her effectively, considering M. a faithful disciple: the bishop of Lucca Anselm, the nephew of Alexander II, advised her: «she exercised power, he governed», says Anselm's biographer. M. had blind trust in Anselm, as the man of God placed at her side by Gregory VII and by Providence.
Once the conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV had become violent, the countess remained faithful to the Pope, although she did not wish to break entirely with her supreme feudal lord, the Emperor. M.'s influence was perhaps felt by the German princes at the Diet of Tribur, in which she took part, obtaining decisions of postponement. When Gregory VII consequently decided to go to Germany to the diet of Augsburg, to examine as supreme judge the question of the Emperor and of the princes, the countess supported him, helped him on the journey through her States, and hosted him in her Apennine castle of Canossa when in Jan. 1077 it was announced that Henry IV had descended into Italy with intentions that were not very clear. The negotiations that took place between Gregory VII and Henry IV in the last days of Jan. had authoritative mediators in M. of Canossa and in her cousin Adelaide of Turin, the Emperor's mother-in-law: in a conversation between Henry IV and the countess M., which took place at the chapel of St. Nicholas near Bianello, the reconciliation was prepared; M., urged by Henry IV that, fulfilling her feudal duty, she intercede with the Pope, worked to this end. Gregory VII accepted Henry's assurances, because they were guaranteed by the assurances of the two princesses. After the agreement of Canossa (28 Jan. 1077), the Pope remained for several months a guest of the Matildine residence. The crisis of Matildine policy began when the rupture between Henry IV and Gregory VII was definitive and, while the Pope again excommunicated the prince, an anti-king was elected in Germany. M. assumed an attitude ever more decisively favorable to the Gregorian anti-imperial policy, and at a moment that cannot be precisely determined, finding herself in Rome (1078-1080), she made a donation to St. Peter into the hands of Gregory VII of all her allodial goods that she had and could have, whether by rights of inheritance or otherwise, both on this side and beyond the Alps, resuming them however in lifelong enjoyment.
What the political motives of such a donation were is not clearly seen, but it certainly weighed heavily on the countess's relations with Henry IV, who must have believed himself the only relative who could claim the succession. After 1080 M. is in open struggle with the Emperor, who in his descent into Italy, in 1081, occupies a great part of the Matildine march; in various cities the bishops of the imperial party rebel and promote rebellions against the countess. Henry IV takes revenge for the hostility of his cousin by placing her under the ban of the Empire and stripping her of all her fiefs both in Italy and in Germany. M. persisted in her attitude, helping the Pope with her private treasure and with 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 of the City by the Emperor and his antipope, represent the most critical moment for the countess M., who remained alone to defend with purity of spirit and self-denial the papal program of the reform of the Church. She was not, however, lacking in successes: the victory of Sorbara over the imperial forces on 7 July 1084 shows that she still had faithful vassals; the elections of the two Gregorian popes Victor III and Urban II took place under her protection. In order to have support beyond the Alps for her anti-imperial policy, M. married in 1089 the very young duke of Bavaria Welf, but provoked a new violent reaction on the part of Henry IV: in 1091 he occupied the principal Matildine center of Lombardy, Mantua. The countess responded by taking under her protection the Empress Praxedes, confined by Henry IV to Verona, and by helping prince Conrad in the rebellion against his father. In 1097 she attended in Rome the great Lateran Synod, held by Urban II. A setback was the separation that occurred in that same year from her young husband Welf of Bavaria, who reconciled with the Emperor. The countess adopted as her son the count Guido Guerra, probably in order to have support; Guerra appears in the comital documents from 1099 until 1108, then the adoption was, it seems, revoked. In 1102 M. reconfirmed the donation of her allodial goods to the Church of Rome. When, in 1111, the new emperor Henry V came down into Italy, he sought to establish cordial relations with the old countess: an agreement was reached whose content is unknown. It seems that Henry V granted the countess the office of his representative in the Kingdom of Italy; whether M., as has been thought, promised in some way to leave her possessions to the Emperor is doubtful. Probably it is to be supposed that the Emperor recognized the countess's personal authority over the two marches, renouncing the right to impose a representative of his own as margrave. In her last years M. developed her charitable activity on behalf of churches and monasteries. She died at Bondeno on 24 July 1115, at the age of 69. She was buried in the church of her beloved monastery of S. Benedetto di Polirone. The body was identified on 18 June 1613 and was transported to Rome, where it rests in the great tomb erected by Bernini under the care of Urban VIII in 1633. The figure of the countess M., "more e gloria d'Italia", as her biographer Donizone calls her, was not forgotten by medieval historical tradition, and it is quite likely that she is the female figure idealized by Dante in the Earthly Paradise.
Bibliography8 works
Francesco Cognasso