Penitence of Canossa

The pope Gregoire VII having refused that the bishops are named by the laic ones, the German king Henri IV made deposit Gregoire VII by the council of Worms in January 1076. The pope, in February, retorted in excommunicating Henri, and untying his vassal of their oath of fidelity.

The princes of the kingdom raise themselves and in October 1076, with Trebur, threaten to deposit Henri IV if excommunication is not raised before February 1077. The situation is blocked because the pope refuses to receive Henri in Rome. Then the pontiff undertakes a voyage towards north, to judge the king with the diet of Augsburg, at the request of the feudal ones revolted.

Henri must absolutely precede the pope. He must cross the the Alps to most extremely of the winter; the Col of Brenner is the easiest way because of its low altitude but it is closed by the princes of the south; it will pass by the Col of the Mount-Cenis, that no sovereign had borrowed more since nearly two centuries.

Here the account which makes the monk chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld in his Annals: The high mountains whose summits touched the clouds, and by which passed the way, were covered with masses of so monstrous snow and ice that no rider, no man with foot could take a step without danger on the steep slopes and slipping… The king thus rented some people who knew the ground, of people of the vintage, familiar of the tops precipice, to walk in front of his continuation on the escarpés rocks and the immense firns, and to do all that was possible to make this horrible way easier to traverse for those which followed them. Those advanced sometimes with four legs, sometimes while being clutched with the shoulders of their guides, sometimes the foot of the one two skidded on the icy ground, it fell while slipping on a good part of the slope. However, the queen and her court had sat on skins of ox and trails by the mountain guides. The horses could be, for a part of them, gone down using special devices, while others were drawn by the legs that one had attached to them. But among those much succumbed, much were seriously wounded, some only left unscathed this péril

The pope remains with the castle of Canossa, a village located at 20 kilometers in the south-west of Reggio of Emilie. In front of the ramparts, barefeet in snow and vêtu only of one wool coat like penitent, king Henri waits three days and three nights in the cold. Never a king was at such humiliated point. But its stratagem succeeds, seemingly at least: Gregoire VII did not have of another choice, the January 28th 1077, to accommodate the penitent one repented in the bosom of the church - the risk which the king was deposited was for the isolated moment.

See too

Put in scene of the political power

Random links: