Contextualising Canossa: excommunication, penance, surrender, reconciliation
Timothy Reuter|Janet L. Nelson
On 27 or 28 January 1077 the excommunicated German king Henry IV, after standing in sackcloth and barefoot snow on three successive days courtyard of Tuscan margraves' castle at Canossa, was allowed into presence Pope Gregory VII, who lifted sentence excommunication which had been laid him previous year, certain conditions. The immediate resonance act perhaps less than we might have expected, certainly IV's nearly a year beforehand. But awareness its importance symbolic significance gradually grew, then since. Many reformers sixteenth century saw VII's pontificate as turning-point, moment medieval church took crucial step down road to popery. With revived nineteenth-century interest Kaiserzeit, Canossa new, nationalistically interpreted meaning. Plans include scene historic wall-paintings restored Salian palace Goslar – crystallisation link between new Reich old one were modified extent that depicted lost most meaning, result public outcry official intervention. When 1872 Bismarck said, ‘We shall not go neither body nor spirit’, he did spell out allusion.
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