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January 1077Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Henry IV Kneels at Canossa

A German king begs forgiveness in the snow, the dramatic low point of a decades-long fight over who controls the church

On the timeline · around January 1077 · Germanic Tribes and the Holy Roman EmpireGermanic Tribes and the Holy Roman EmpirePrinting, Reformation, and the Thirty Years WarHenry IV Kneels at Canossa700 CE800 CE900 CE1000110012001300

Quick facts

Location
Canossa Castle, northern Italy
German king
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Pope
Gregory VII
Final resolution
Concordat of Worms, 1122

What happened

The Investiture Controversy, a conflict running from 1076 to 1122, pitted the German king (and Holy Roman Emperor) Henry IV against a succession of popes over who had the right to appoint bishops and abbots: the king, who invested them with the symbols of their office, or the pope. In 1076 Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Henry after Henry tried to depose him. Facing rebellion from German princes who used the excommunication as an excuse to move against him, Henry traveled to the castle of Canossa in northern Italy in January 1077 and, according to contemporary accounts, waited outside the gate for three days in winter weather, doing penance, before Gregory lifted the excommunication.

Why it matters

Canossa became the symbol, for centuries afterward, of the tension between German royal authority and papal power, a tension that ran through the rest of the empire's history. The underlying dispute over investiture was not actually settled at Canossa. It dragged on until 1122, when the Concordat of Worms split the difference by letting the church choose bishops while the emperor retained a say over their secular authority.

How we know

The events at Canossa are described by contemporary and near-contemporary chroniclers on both sides of the conflict, and historians note the confrontation has since become a byword in German for humiliating submission, so much so that Otto von Bismarck declared centuries later, during his own fight with the Catholic Church, that he would not go to Canossa.

Sources

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