sourced story
January 1077Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Henry IV Begs Forgiveness at Canossa

A Holy Roman Emperor stands in the snow for three days to end his excommunication, at a castle in Tuscany

On the timeline · around January 1077 · Medieval Italy and the City-StatesMedieval Italy and the City-StatesRenaissance and Foreign RuleHenry IV Begs Forgiveness at Canossa800 CE900 CE10001100120013001400

Quick facts

Excommunication
1076, by Pope Gregory VII
Walk to Canossa
January 1077
Host and mediator
Matilda, Countess of Tuscany
Dispute finally resolved
Concordat of Worms, 1122

What happened

A long-building conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire over who had the right to appoint bishops, known as the Investiture Controversy, reached a crisis in 1076 when Emperor Henry IV called for Pope Gregory VII's abdication and Gregory responded by excommunicating him. In January 1077, Henry crossed the Alps into northern Italy and traveled to the castle of Canossa in Tuscany, held by Countess Matilda of Tuscany, a committed ally of the pope. Matilda and Gregory VII rerouted to her castle as Henry approached, and Matilda mediated the encounter as Henry stood outside the castle walls in the winter cold, seeking absolution. Henry received his absolution in exchange for public repentance and submission to the pope, an episode that became known as the Walk to Canossa. The underlying dispute was not fully resolved until the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which ended lay investiture by requiring that bishops be chosen according to canon law while letting the emperor still grant them secular authority and property.

Why it matters

Canossa became the medieval world's most vivid demonstration that a pope could bring an emperor to submission, and the phrase "going to Canossa" still means submitting to humiliating terms. The episode took place on Italian soil at the estate of an Italian noblewoman, Matilda of Tuscany, whose military and political backing of the papacy for decades afterward helped cement the independence of the Church from imperial control across central Italy.

How we know

The Walk to Canossa is documented by multiple contemporary chroniclers writing from both the papal and imperial sides of the conflict, and Matilda of Tuscany's role as host and mediator is corroborated in her own surviving charters and in later biographical accounts of her reign as Countess of Tuscany.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineHistory of Italy27 events · A peninsula that fractured into rival kingdoms and city-states after Rome fell, then spent thirteen centuries putting itself back together as one countryView all →