Walk to Canossa

Background

In eleventh-century Western Europe, popes and secular rulers clashed over who had the right to appoint high-ranking clergy such as bishops and abbots. This dispute is known as the Investiture Controversy. Investiture refers to the authority to confer ecclesiastical office. At the time, bishops in the German lands were also princes who governed extensive territories, so for the king the appointment of bishops was essential to governing the realm. Gregory VII, who became pope in 1073, pressed forward with a program of church reform that prohibited simony (the buying and selling of church offices) and clerical marriage. He held that the practice of lay rulers conferring ecclesiastical office undermined the freedom of the Church.

Course of Events

• 1075: The pope declared his opposition to lay investiture. The German king Henry IV resisted, for example by appointing the archbishop of Milan himself.
• January 1076: Henry IV convened a council of German bishops at Worms and declared the pope deposed.
• February 1076: At a synod in Rome, Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV. He also released the king's subjects from their oaths of allegiance to him.
• Autumn 1076: German princes opposed to the king assembled at Trebur. They pressured him by threatening to elect a new king if he did not obtain absolution within a year of his excommunication.
• January 1077: In the depths of winter, Henry IV crossed the Alps to the castle of Canossa in northern Italy. The castle belonged to Matilda of Tuscany, a supporter of the pope, and the pope was staying there on his way to Germany. According to tradition, the king stood barefoot outside the castle gate for three days, clad in penitential garments, begging forgiveness. The pope ultimately lifted the excommunication.

Outcome and Impact

The absolution did not end the conflict. In March 1077 the German princes elected Rudolf of Rheinfelden as antiking, and Germany descended into civil war. When Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV a second time in 1080, Henry set up Clement III as antipope. In 1084 Henry captured Rome and received the imperial crown from Clement III. Gregory VII escaped from Rome with the help of the Normans and died in 1085 at Salerno in southern Italy. The investiture question was resolved by compromise in the Concordat of Worms of 1122, under which the Church conferred spiritual authority and the emperor conferred secular authority.

The event continued to be invoked in later times. In 1872, during the Kulturkampf, when the German Empire was in conflict with the Catholic Church, Otto von Bismarck famously declared, "We will not go to Canossa." In Korean as well, the phrase "the humiliation of Canossa" is used idiomatically to describe submitting under pressure.

Assessment

• As a symbol of papal power: As the scene of an emperor kneeling before a pope, the event was long understood as a symbol of papal authority rising above secular power.
• As a pragmatic move by Henry: Many historians regard the event as a strategic choice on the part of Henry IV. By obtaining absolution, he weakened the princes' justification for deposing him. Historians also note that the pope, as a priest, could hardly refuse a penitent.
• Catholic accounts: These often describe the event as one stage in a reform effort to defend the freedom of the Church from interference by secular power.
• Protestant accounts: The Reformers rejected the claim that the pope stands above secular rulers. Protestant historiography sometimes presents the event as an example of the Church attempting to dominate secular power. It is also treated as a case in which excommunication, the gravest form of church discipline, was used as a political instrument. The event is frequently cited in discussions of the relationship between church and politics.