58 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
Northern Italy, and afforded to the pope the best protection against a possible invasion of a Northern army. She was devoted to Hildebrand as the visible head of the Church, and felt proud and happy to aid him. In 1077 she made a reversionary grant of her dominions to the patrimony of Peter, and thus increased the fatal gift of Constantino, from which Dante derives the evils of the Church. She contin ued the war with Henry, and aided Conrad and Henry V. in the rebellion against their father. In the political interest of the papacy she contracted, in her fifty-fifth year, a second marriage with Guelph, a youth of eighteen, the son of the Duke of Bavaria, the most powerful enemy of Henry IV. (1089) ; but the marriage, it seems, was never consummated, and was dissolved a few years afterwards (1095). She died, 1115. It is supposed by many that Dante's Matilda, who carried him over the river Lethe to Beatrice, is the famous countess ; l but Dante never mentions Gregory VII., probably on account of his quarrel with the emperor.
Canossa has become a proverbial name for the triumph of priestcraft over kingcraft.2 Streams of blood have been shed
(VII. 280), and Hefele (V. 07 sq.). Ranke says : " Sole-he VerMltnisse giebt e$ ja zwischen Individuen beiderlei Geschlechtes, die, sich nur auf geistigem Bnden entwickeln, in welch en <>hne sinnUche Annaherung die tiefste inner e, Vereinigung der Cresinnungcn und Utberzeuyunyen bestelit. Die Markgrafin glaubte an die Wahrhaftigkeit und den geistigcn Be ruf des Papstes, und der Papst andererseits bedurfte Hirer Hulfe."
iPwgr., XXVIII. 40, XXXII. 92 ; XXXII. 28, 82, XXXIII. 119, 121.
2 Mirbt, Publizistik, 181-200, seeks to make out that Henry's act at Canossa was regarded by his age as an act of humility and not of humiliation. The contemporary writers speak of it as an act of unheard of and wonderful humility, " mira inaudita humilitas, officium humilitatis." In view of the profound reverence for the Church which prevailed it may be taken as cer tain that the people looked upon it as an act of humble piety. But for Henry it was a different thing. As Mirbt agrees, the king was not moved by deep religious concern but by a desire to hold on to his crown. For him Canossa was a humiliation and before the bar of historic judgment the act wherein the State prostrated itself at the feet of the pope must be regarded as a humiliation. For other instances of princely submission to the pope, see Mirbt, p. 198, note.
§ 17. RENEWAL OF THE CONFLICT. 59
to wipe out the disgrace of Henry's humiliation before Hildebrancl. The memory of that scene was revived in the Culturkampf between the State of Prussia and the Vatican from 1870 to 1887. At the beginning of the conflict, Prince Bis marck declared in the Prussian Chambers that" he would never go to Canossa"; but ten years afterwards he found it politic to move in that direction, and to make a compromise with Leo XIII., who proved his equal as a master of diplomacy. The anti-papal May-laws were repealed, one by one, till noth ing is left of them except the technical Anzeigepflicht, a mod ern term for investiture. The Roman Church gained new strength in Prussia and Germany from legal persecution, and enjoys now more freedom and independence than ever, and much more than the Protestant Church, which has innocently suffered from the operation of the May -laws.
§ 17. Renewal of the Conflict. Two Kings and Two Popes.
The result of Canossa was civil war in Germany and Italy : king against king, pope against pope, nobles against nobles, bishops against bishops, father against son, and son against father. It lasted several years. Gregory and Henry died in exile. Gregory was defeated by Henry, Henry by his own rebellious son. The long wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines originated in that period. The Duke Guelph IV. of Bavaria was present at Forchheim when Henry was deposed, and took up arms against him. The popes sided with the Guelphs against the Hohenstaufen emperors and the Ghibellines.
The friends and supporters of Henry in Lombardy and Germany were dissatisfied, and regarded his humiliation as an act of cowardice, and the pope's conduct as an insult to the German nation and the royal crown. His enemies, a small number of Sax on and Swabian nobles and bishops, assembled at Forchheim, March 13, 1077, and, in the pres ence of two legates of the pope, but without his express