Walk to Canossa
As Canossa is called the Italian expedition of King Henry IV from December 1076 to January 1077. He wanted by the union of Pope Gregory VII with the German princes ( Prince opposition) prevent. Pope Gregory VII was on his way to Augsburg, where he was invited in February 1077 to decide on the conflict.
The Pope took refuge in the castle of Canossa loyal to the Pope of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Before this castle then Henry tried to obtain the solution of his person from excommunication ( anathema ). It is debatable whether it actually came to the ( for laymen provided ) ritual of penance, as all historical traditions of partisans of the Pope come.
In today's parlance, a demeaning perceived as Bittgang is called " Walk to Canossa " figuratively.
- 3.1 Kulturkampf
- 3.2 20th century
- 3.3 reinterpretation by Fried
Prehistory
The walk to Canossa was an important milestone in the Investiture Controversy. In the 11th and 12th centuries, fought the Emperor and the Pope about the relationship between temporal and spiritual powers and the role of the imperial church. Ostensibly, it was a matter of the right of investiture, the appointment of bishops and abbots in their church offices. The holders of these offices exercised at the same time from the highest functions in the state apparatus of the Empire.
Banishment of King Henry IV
Pope Gregory VII in 1073 had come into office by acclamation of the people, ie in disregard of the papal election decree of 1059, which provided for election by the Cardinals. Two years later, the investiture controversy came to a head, the opposition to Gregory VII committed suicide on Christmas Day 1075 even a failed attack on the Pope. Shortly before Gregor had sent a Redacted sharply written warning for " Milan matter " to Henry on December 8, 1075. He replied in a very convenient for him the political situation on 24 January 1076 the imperial synod at Worms with a Gehorsamsaufkündigung the German bishops. At the same time he demanded the Pope, whom he addressed deliberately with his baptismal name Hildebrand, the abdication.
On the Roman Lenten synod this letter of the German king to the indignation of those present was read, and Gregory VII reacted with the excommunication of Henry. This was a spiritual and political inability to act for the king. Spiritually, Heinrich were denied all church sacraments such as marriage, confession or communion. However, the high priests, bishops and abbots in Henry's environment did not recognize this as they mostly rejected the Pope as the supreme bishop. At the same time Gregory VII also sparked all Treueide that tied Henry's subjects to the king, so that Henry was deposed as king. By banishing Henry was the power is not immediate, but removed piece by piece and as a result of domestic unrest.
National assembly of Trebur
Due to the particularism of the German Empire of the secular nobility against Henry IV had built up positions of power that went far beyond his Lehnsrechte. An whatsoever weakening of Henry IV would have shown a further weakening of the central authority, in their view and promoted their particularistic interests. In this sense, the Investiture Controversy is also a milestone in the centuries-long conflict between central government and the " centrifugal forces ", ie the nobility, who was working persistently to set in the him by the king as a fief ( flags fief ) given principalities in the long run, so shake off the suzerainty of the King.
The nobility built over time the areas with which he was actually invested only limited financial basis as their offices, through the installation of a dedicated administration and bureaucracy with ministry officials to dynastic territories (see also Norbert Elias territorialisation ) and depleting these Office areas and their associated offices the actual lords, the king. This meant for the king the loss of power over the free allocation of the highest offices of state and the loss of funding and the secure military allegiance from these areas.
The investiture dispute between King and Pope to the so-called imperial church system prevailing in Germany offered them the opportunity to advance very far with one blow their interests. The imperial church system meant the regular insertion educated and celibate, not dynastic oriented nobleman in high levels of government and church offices and scepter in fief from which these were financed.
Nevertheless, the princes granted to the national assembly of Trebur in October 1076, King Henry the then current term of one year and one day in order to withdraw from the excommunication of the Pope. Until February 2, 1077 (according to another source on the 6th of January) Henry should free themselves from the spell and submit to the judgment of the Pope in Augsburg.
Act of repentance at the castle of Canossa
To regain its full capacity, the then 26 -year-old Henry drew the Pope opposed to Italy. The southern dukes, however, barred him from their control, simple Alpine crossings, so Henry had to take the long and dangerous detour through Burgundy and the Mont Cenis. The strenuous alpine crossing was described by the historian Lampert of Hersfeld, a follower of the pope, in his Annals ( 1077 ) as follows:
" They crawled forward on hands and feet soon, soon they relied on the shoulders of their leaders; sometimes, when her foot slipped on the smooth floor, she fell down and slid a long way down; Finally they arrived but at great risk to life in the plane. The Queen and the other women of her entourage they put on cattle hides, and [ ... ] they pulled it down. "
Henry and Gregory finally came together at the castle of Canossa of Matilda of Tuscany. Lampert of Hersfeld described the act of repentance of the king thus:
" [H ] ere he stood after passing the royal robes without all the badges of the royal dignity, without providing the slightest splendor on display, barefoot and sober, from morning to evening [ ... ]. So he behaved on the second, so on the third day. Finally, on the fourth day he was admitted to him [ Gregory ], and after many speeches and counter- speeches he was finally [ ... ] absolved from excommunication. "
The multi-day endurance in the hair shirt in front of the castle (25th - January 28th, 1077 ) to persuade the Pope to lift the excommunication church, is of medieval view represents only a formal act of repentance, which was formalized common and severe. The very dramatic and pictorial representation in the only detailed source at Lampert of Hersfeld is, however, rated by recent research as tendentious and propagandistic, as Lampert was a partisan of the Pope and of the noble opposition. The second important source to Canossa comes from Pope Gregory VII itself This spread his version of events in a letter to all archbishops, bishops and other church officials of the empire. After the presentation of Lampert's whole act was negotiated in advance lengthy and laid down its course, one at the deditio quite common practice of political communication in the Middle Ages.
Henry IV granted to them by the lifting of the ban back much of his freedom of action had thus finally achieved his goal.
Reception
When Pope Benedict XIII. the feast of Gregory VII in 1728 binding for the whole Church and introduced the Offizium ( Breviary text) to the strengthened by this pope freedom of the Church and to the overthrow of the "godless " Emperor Henry IV recalled by the Pope at Canossa, aroused this greatest offense in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Italy. The Paris Court of Parlement and the Emperor Charles VI. , According to him, Maria Theresa, forbidden in the Habsburg Empire and the Austrian Netherlands, the publication of Offiziumstextes for tough penalties against the clergy. Gallican and Austrian state church of Rome made the conscious looking for remembering the subordination of the Empire under the papacy, which should also apply in the present, not to. These prohibitions it remained until the 1830s.
In the late 19th century Canossa became a symbol of papal- curial arrogance and German shame. The painting discovered the drama of the situation as a substance that could be made in terms of national- liberal progress and the Empire, in the sense of historicism, which interpret and understand was the presence in the mirror of the past. But not only in the history painting, in one of the great historical dramas of the late Austrian realism, in Ferdinand von Saar Emperor Henry IV, was " Canossa " in the central third act of the first part to the mirror of the relationship between the papacy and the modern world.
Kulturkampf
The background for this was provided by the Austrian Kulturkampf in which the government had come to the German Liberals interspersed civil marriage against the Concordat of 1855 among others. Count Anton Auersperg ( popular among the poets name Anastasius Grün ) achieved greatest journalistic response in the debate of the mansion on March 20, 1868, when he performed to great acclaim, the Concordat of 1855 seemed to him " like a printed Canossa, in which the Austria had to expiate the 19th century for the Josephinism of the 18th century in sackcloth and ashes. " About the dispute and Auerspergs appearance reported in detail the Vienna and also the North German press. Otto von Bismarck also received reports of the Vienna embassy.
On May 14, 1872 Bismarck attacked in a speech before the Reichstag on the penitence: "Be save worry, we will not go after Canossa, either physically or mentally. ". This was in connection with the introduction of the pulpit paragraphs and the Jesuit law in the context of the Kulturkampf, the struggle of the National Liberals in Prussia with the Roman Curia on the relationship between church and state, according to the Empire after Pope Pius IX. had rejected the appointment of Cardinal Hohenlohe to the German ambassador to the Holy See. Hohenlohe had as cardinal earlier in conflict with Pius IX. about the Infallibilitätsdogma leave the Vatican Council. In this respect, Bismarck's appointment proposal was a clear provocation by Pope and Curia. But Bismarck's turn of " Canossa " became a household word and now stands as name for a humiliating penance - and for the rejection of subordination to the papal primate.
20th century
However, this view corresponds to the former view of history, as it is mainly Wilhelm Giese Brecht had developed in the third volume of his History of the German Empire ( 1868) in a peculiar mixture of source criticism and suggestion. From this interpretation of events 1076/77 differs historical research since the 1930s from considerably. The 19th century like projected problems of the present to the past. The phrase " go in sackcloth and ashes " for a rueful people is attributed to the historical event of " Canossa ", as Heinrich be asking for forgiveness and to repeal said to have eight underlined by his outward humility full appearance.
The exhibition, with effects on the self-understanding of the diocese to the present day, shown in 2006 in Paderborn, a stronghold of Ultramontanism in the 19th century " Canossa 1077th shake the world. History, art and culture at the rising of the Romanesque " banished the historical impact of the event of Canossa in a separate building, away from the gems on the directed the audience's interest. Also, the catalog is not addressed the famous Bismarck's dictum since the early 18th century prior to the controversial debate between the papacy and the Catholic monarchs of Europe view " Canossa ".
Reinterpretation by Fried
The respected medieval historian Johannes Fried has recently proposed a radical reinterpretation of the aisle to Canossa. By considering neglected sources Fried came to the thesis that the long time valid chronology of events is wrong. Thus Henry had been since late summer 1076 ( ie before Trebur ) searched contact to the Pope to come to an understanding, and thus to defuse its internal political tense situation. The Pope went on it also, so as to achieve a peaceful, consensual solution. Since Henry did not want to travel as Gebannter to Augsburg and the Pope settled with the northward journey time, he traveled directly to Italy, where the Pope welcomed the excommunicated king and from him after a purely formal act of repentance on January 25, 1077 spell solved.
According to Fried, it had therefore never one for the king might humble penitence given, but a meeting between King and Pope, the longer time had been prepared. Henry and Gregory have accordingly on January 28, 1077 and signed a contract, whose exact content is not known, but probably should restore peace and consensus. However, the pact unfolded no effect, as the enemy of the pope and the king thwarted the agreement. According to Fried's interpretation of the passage of Henry to Canossa shows the willingness of King and Pope to act considered not in conflict, but by consensus and based on reason. This position has recently been the medievalists Gerd Althoff, Stefan Weinfurter and Steffen Patzold decisively contradicted. Fried 2012 has set out its arguments in its full form again.
Swell
- Lampert of Hersfeld: annals. University Press, Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 3-534-00176-1 ( Selected sources on German history of the Middle Ages 13; Latin- German text )