54 THE MIDDLE AGES. A. I). 1073-1085.
of Susa, was betrothed to Henry in 1055 at Zurich, and mar ried to him, July 13, 1066. She was young, beautiful, vir tuous, and amiable; but he preferred to live with mistresses; and three years after the marriage he sought a divorce, with the aid of the unprincipled archbishop Siegfried of Mainz. The pope very properly refused his consent. The king gave up his wicked intention, and became attached to Bertha. She was born to love and to suffer, and accompanied him as a comforting angel through the bitter calamities of his life.
The royal couple passed through Burgundy and Susa un der the protection of Count William and the mother of Ber tha, and crossed Mont Cenis. The queen and her child were carried up and lowered down the icy slopes in rough sledges of oxhide; some horses were killed, but no human lives lost. When Henry reached the plains of Lombardy, he was received with joy by the anti-Hildebrandian party; but he hurried on to meet the successor of Peter, who alone could give him absolution.
He left his wife and child at Reggio, and, accompanied by his mother-in-law and a few friends, he climbed up the steep hill to Canossa, where Gregory was then stopping on his journey to the Diet at Augsburg, waiting for a safe-conduct across the Alps.
Canossa, now in ruins, was an impregnable fortress of the Countess Matilda, south of Reggio, on the northern slope of the Apennines, surrounded by three walls, and including a castle, a chapel, and a convent.1
The pope had already received a number of excommuni cated bishops and noblemen, and given or promised them ab-
1 The castle was destroyed by the inhabitants of Reggio in 1255. The site affords a magnificent view of the Apennines towards the south, and of the plain of the Po towards the north, and the cities of Parma, Reggio, and Modena. An excursion from Reggio to Canossa and back can be made in eight hours. For Gregory's own account of the meeting, see Beg., TV. 2, in Migne, 148, 465, and Mirbt, Quellen, 101. See also Hauck, III. 792 sqq.
§ 16. OANOSSA. 55
solution after the case of the chief sinner against the majesty of St. Peter should be decided.
Henry arrived at the foot of the castle-steep, Jan. 21, 1077, when the cold was severe and the ground covered with snow. He had an interview with Matilda and Hugo, abbot of Cluny, his godfather, and declared his willingness to submit to the pope if he was released from the interdict. But Gregory would only absolve him on condition that he would surren der to him his crown and forever resign the royal dignity. The king made the last step to secure the mercy of the pope: he assumed the severest penances which the Church requires from a sinner, as a sure way to absolution. For three days, from the 25th to the 28th of January, he stood in the court between the inner Avails as a penitent suppliant, with bare head and feet, in a coarse woollen shirt, shivering in the cold, and knocked in vain for entrance at the gateway, which still perpetuates in its name, " Porta di penitenza," the memory of this event.1
The stern old pope, as hard as a rock and as cold as the snow, refused admittance, notwithstanding the earnest en treaties of Matilda and Hugo, till he was satisfied that the cup of humiliation was drained to the dregs, or that further resistance would be impolitic. He first exacted from Henry, as a condition of absolution, the promise to submit to his de cision at the approaching meeting of the German nobles un der the presidency of the pope as arbiter, and to grant him and his deputies protection on their journey to the north. In the meantime he was to abstain from exercising the func tions of royalty.2
1 "/Hie," says Berthold (Monum. Germ. 88., V. 289), "laneis indutus, nudis pedibus, frigorosus, usque in diem tertium foris extra casteUum cum suis hospUabatur." During the night the king was under shelter. See Hefele, V. 94 sq.
2 The last point is omitted by Berthold, but expressly mentioned by Lam bert of Hersfeld, and confirmed by Gregory, who says in his account of the Canossa event to the German prelates and princes, that he received Henry