This edict was a heavy blow to the German monarchs, for since the reign of Henry II they had sought and found support among the bishops against the increasing power of the nobles. The estates of the church formed a considerable portion of the imperial territory; the monarch disposed of them and of their revenues if he appointed bishops, as he had always done up to this time. Many of Henry IV’s appointments had been made, not with his father’s strict regard for clerical fitness, but for his own profit and to meet the needs of the moment. Some of these bishops had paid money to Henry’s counsellors for their appointment, and for this, in 1075, Gregory VII put them as well as the counsellors under the ban, demanding of the king to depose them, and threatening him with the punishment of the church if he refused. Long had Henry watched unwillingly the encroachments of the pope; after the victory over the Saxons had restored his power in the empire, he attempted, following the example of his father, to depose Gregory—without reflecting how much weaker his power was than his father’s, and how much nobler and greater was the mind of Gregory VII than were those of the previous popes. At Worms in 1076 he held a synod of German bishops, who neither by their worthy living nor their education could be called mirrors of the church. By them on a trumped-up accusation he had Gregory VII deposed. Gregory replied with the ban in 1076. This was the first time a pope had attempted this measure against a German king. And Henry was soon to realise what a ban, which at that time loosed all bonds of feudal obedience, signified. It was the signal for the princes, who jealously saw the royal power restored, to desert him. In the autumn of the same year they held a diet at Tribur on the old election field, and sent word to the king that if in a year and a day he was not free from the ban, they could no longer consider him their lord.
Henry saw himself deserted by all; he heard that Gregory VII was already on the way to Germany to adjudge his cause. He resolved on a reconciliation with the pope as the best way out of his troubles. He started in the severe winter, when the rivers were almost frozen in their beds, and crossed the snow-covered Alps, not as his predecessors with a formidable army, but as a penitent, accompanied by his noble-minded wife, a few faithful servants, and those placed under the ban with him. In Lombardy, in which a strong opposition prevailed against Gregory’s innovations, he had been offered means of resistance, but he rejected them, and hastened to Canossa, the fortress of the powerful Countess Matilda of Tuscany, a daughter of that Beatrice who had once caused Henry III such anxiety. She was as devoted to Gregory VII as to an ecclesiastical father, and now offered him her castle. Henry did not come as an assailant, but as a supplicant.[i]
So picturesque and important was this pilgrimage that it has fallen into proverb, and “going to Canossa” is a metaphor of humiliation. The contrast between Henry IV’s beggar-like penance and the manner in which his forefathers went into Italy and the manner in which the popes received them, is vivid enough to merit a liberal quotation from the old historian Lambert von Hersfeld,[g] a contemporary of the event he describes.[a]
“GOING TO CANOSSA”: A CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT
[1075-1077 A.D.]
Henry IV arrived as he had been ordered, and the castle being surrounded by three walls, he was received in the circuit of the second wall, which went round the castle, the whole of his followers remaining outside, and there, having put down the ensigns of his dignity as a king, and without any ornaments, having no longer any magnificent wearing apparel, he stood with bare feet, fasting from morning until evening, awaiting the sentence of the Roman pope. Thus he spent his second, yea, his third day! Only on the fourth day was he led before him, and after much talking to and fro, delivered from the ban under the following conditions:
Henry IV
(Based on the effigy on his tomb)