ng the outrage offered to the civil
chief of Christendom. It was the 25th of January when the Emperor
elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery, into the Pope's
presence. There he prostrated himself in the dust, crying aloud for
pardon. It is said that Gregory first placed his foot upon Henry's
neck, uttering these words of Scripture: 'Super aspidem et basiliscum
ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem,' and that then he raised
him from the earth and formally pronounced his pardon. The prelates
and nobles who took part in this scene were compelled to guarantee
with their own oaths the vows of obedience pronounced by Henry; so
that in the very act of reconciliation a new insult was offered to
him. After this Gregory said mass, and permitted Henry to communicate;
and at the close of the day a banquet was served, at which the King
sat down to meat with the Pope and the Countess.

It is probable that, while Henry's penance was performed in the castle
courts beneath the rock, his reception by the Pope, and all that
subsequently happened, took place in the citadel itself. But of this
we have no positive information. Indeed the silence of the chronicles
as to the topography of Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers
of the picturesque in historic detail, now that there is no
possibility of tracing the outlines of the ancient building. Had the
author of the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his
beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he
would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much
that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s
penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury, might now be clear.

Very little remains to be told about Canossa. During the same year,
1077, Matilda made the celebrated donation of her fiefs to Holy
Church. This was accepted by Gregory in the name of S. Peter, and it
was confirmed by a second deed during the pontificate of Urban IV. in
1102. Though Matilda subsequently married Guelfo d'Este, son of the
Duke of Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him; nor was there any
heir to a marriage ridiculous by reason of disparity of age, the
bridegroom being but eighteen, while the bride was forty-three in the
year of her second nuptials. During one of Henry's descents into
Italy, he made an unsuccessful attack upon Canossa, assailing it at
the head of a considerable force one October morning in 1092.
Matild